She arranged the camera so that the lens pointed at the wall to our right. Then she lowered her hand over the camera and muttered something I couldn’t catch.
“There’s no on or off switch that we could find,” J.B. murmured. “Chloe figured out by trial and error that you need magic to turn the machine on.”
A second later the camera sprang to life and pictures were projected on the wall. Some of the pictures moved like video, and some were like camera images. All seemed random. There was a clip of a little boy catching soap bubbles, a gumball whirling down a ramp in one of those big gumball machines with the red top, a girl swinging on a piece of rope that dangled from a tree over a ravine, a half-eaten pepperoni pizza, a fragment of text that came and went too fast for me to read.
“What is this?” I asked. “It all seems random.”
“Memories,” Chloe said.
“Memories?” I asked. “Are you sure?”
“It’s our best guess,” J.B. said. “And it makes sense. The machine scans people’s brains and extracts their memories, and then when they die the ghost is damaged because most of what made up its identity is gone.”
I watched a white cloud shaped like a turtle drift by, a large buck leaping in front of a car’s headlights, an older boy picking apples and laughing.
“Okay, I guess it makes sense. But why take the memories in the first place?”
“Don’t know. We’re trying to look into that now. Listen, Chloe, can you take a break?” J.B. asked.
Her eyes slid from me to J.B. to Gabriel. “Top-secret information about to be discussed. Got it. I’m sure I can use a milk shake.”
She left the room with one last covert glance at Gabriel. I couldn’t blame her for that. He was just about the prettiest thing you’ve ever seen.
As soon as the door closed behind Chloe, J.B. spoke.
“You were right—my mother is involved,” he said heavily.
“How do you know?” I asked.
“The spiders,” J.B. said. “My mother breeds them. No one else in the world has spiders like that. So either she’s directly involved in this or she sold the spiders to whoever is. Either way, this goes back to Amarantha’s court.”
“And Beezle said that the charcarion demons are only present in two courts of the fallen. One of them sounded like a sneeze, and the other one was Focalor.”
J.B.’s eyes glinted. “And we know that Amarantha and Focalor have worked together in the past.”
“Yes, but how are they doing it?” Gabriel asked. “Lord Lucifer will surely be watching the two of them most closely to ensure that they do not continue their plans for sedition. They can hardly meet and plan, or even pass messages to one another without arousing suspicion.”
“So, are we going to Amarantha’s court to confront her or what?” I asked J.B.
“Well, you have a price on your head in the faerie kingdom…”
“And that’s different from the regular world how? Lucifer’s enemies try to kill me every other day.”
“And I’m forbidden from coming to court at this time, as my mother is displeased with me for openly allying myself with you. I haven’t been to court since I was there with you, and I have heard no communications since the edict to stay away.”
“Come on, J.B., break the rules. Live a little. I’m forbidden from doing stuff that I do all the time,” I said.
J.B. looked uncertain. It went deeply against the grain of his personality to even consider bending the law. J.B. is very devoted to order.
“It is the best lead that we have,” Gabriel said.
“Yeah.” I nodded. “This isn’t just about the ghosts. I still need to find Wade. We know that the kidnapping is tied to whoever is responsible for these machines. If Amarantha provided security in the form of spiders while the machines did their work, then she might know where Wade is being held.”
J.B. still hesitated.
“Look, I’m going whether you do or not. So you might as well come with me and try to mitigate the diplomatic damage that you know I’ll do.”
J.B. and Gabriel shared a look of acknowledgment of the truth of this statement.
“All right,” J.B. said. “But we can’t go now. I have things to finish here.”
“Meetings to attend, paperwork to photocopy?” I said sweetly.
“I know you don’t think much of bureaucracy, Black, but every cog needs to do their part for the machine to work,” J.B. said, annoyed.
“People are being kidnapped and having their memories stolen. Many of them are dying. You really think the upper brass wouldn’t cut you a break on your cog work?”
“No,” J.B. said grimly. “You think I’m obsessed with paperwork? You should meet the board members sometime. I’ll come by your house later with a car, around seven.”
“Won’t it take us a few hours to get to court by car?” I asked.
“More than a few,” J.B. said. “We’ll arrive in the early morning.”
“That’ll take too long,” I said. “Let’s portal it.”
“You can’t portal in and out of Amarantha’s kingdom.”
“It breaks the rules, right?” I asked. “Who cares?”
“No, I mean you literally can’t. It used to be possible, but since you and Nathaniel burned down half her forest she’s closed the magical loopholes that allow the creation of portals in her kingdom.”
“Oh,” I said, and rocked back on my heels, thinking. “Wait. What about portals that already existed, like the one that we found in the alley? The one that led to the swamp?”
The portal had been in the same alley where we’d found the body of a werewolf and later Gabriel had gone missing. It had been invisible, and I’d discovered it by throwing a magical net over the area.
“What about it?” J.B. asked. “Surely it’s been closed by now.”
“We might as well see,” I said. “It will be faster than a car. Once we portal through we can fly to the castle.”
“Fine, look into it,” J.B. said impatiently. “And let me know what you find. I’ll be at your house later regardless.”
“Okay,” I said.
We exited through the door and found Chloe sitting halfway down the hallway eating a gigantic burrito wrapped in foil. She gave the three of us a little finger salute and hopped to her feet, heading back to the room and her work.
J.B. parted ways with us on the floor of his office. I retrieved the sword from security and Gabriel and I exited through the rooftop door.
“Do you want to go to the alley now?” he asked.
“Nah, we’ll wait and go with J.B. later,” I said.
“Very well,” Gabriel said.
He took my hand as we flew home. It was lovely just to be with him, not to hide my emotions, to know that I could touch him if I wanted and no one could take him away from me.
We landed in the backyard, smiling at each other.
“So I see that it is true,” said a strained voice from the porch, and we looked up.
It was Nathaniel.
12
IF I’D THOUGHT NATHANIEL LOOKED MUSSED YESTERDAY at Samiel’s trial, it was nothing compared to the way he looked now. He was positively ragged. He looked like he hadn’t showered or combed his hair, there were huge bags under his eyes, his shirt had been buttoned incorrectly and the tails were left hanging out of his pants.
