“He’s dead?” Maddie sounded baffled as if the words made no sense.
Cassie and Griffin were too shocked to speak.
“Yeah, he’s dead.” The tyro glanced at the chatelaine regretfully. “I heard one of the guards yell that they’d got him. Then their security chief showed up. Two of the sentries dragged Erik out of the woods. Another one of the guards called out that he was dead. Then I heard them ask their boss what to do about the body. After that, I had to clear out of there, or they might have gotten me too.”
Cassie turned toward Griffin and buried her head against his shoulder. He wrapped his arms around her and bent his head over hers.
“This can’t be,” he whispered in disbelief.
To her own amazement, Cassie didn’t cry. She was too stunned by the news to feel anything at all.
The four of them remained frozen in place for what seemed like hours. The only sound was the ticking of the wall clock.
Maddie broke the stillness by walking to the dining room to retrieve her purse. Then, without saying a word, she drifted back toward the door in a kind of stupor and let herself out.
“Maddie!” the pythia called after her.
They all heard the sound of her engine as she drove away.
Zach seemed frightened and confused. Looking from Cassie to Griffin, he asked, “So what do we do now?”
His question was met by bleak silence.
Chapter 48—Phantom Pains
Cassie sat on the top step of the schoolhouse in the glade. Afternoon sunlight was slanting through the canopy of budding trees, forming bright patches on the grass. It had been over a week since Zach had returned from the failed attempt to rescue Hannah—a week since the night Erik had died. The last seven days had passed in a kind of blur as the pythia and her colleagues mechanically performed their duties.
Shock hadn’t quite dissolved into acceptance yet. They all felt the loss, but Maddie had taken it hardest of all. She’d grown very subdued, reminding Cassie of the chatelaine’s meltdown when she’d tried to quit smoking. The pythia allowed herself a brief smile of irony. Everybody knew Maddie was alright when she was yelling, but during the past week, she’d barely spoken a sentence to any of them. For the most part, she’d spent the interval locked in her office. Cassie didn’t need to be a psychic to predict that this behavior didn’t bode well for Maddie or for anybody else.
All further attempts to rescue Hannah had been placed on hold until Maddie showed some inclination to tackle the problem once more. Zach was understandably anxious about his girlfriend’s plight, but he knew better than to pester the chatelaine before she was herself again. Like Cassie and Griffin, Zach kept out of her way. The tyro went back to combat training and filing, the pythia returned to validating artifacts, and the scrivener resumed management of the Central Catalog.
Cassie drew in a deep breath of soft spring air. She’d hoped to shake off her lethargic mood outdoors, but the strategy didn’t seem to be working.
At that moment, Griffin emerged from the schoolhouse and stood on the platform. Gazing down at the pythia with a troubled expression, he asked, “How are you today?”
Cassie glanced up at him. “I came out here to clear my head. So far, no luck.”
The scrivener took a seat beside her on the stairs.
The pythia scowled pensively. “Griffin, do I strike you as a cold person?”
He stared at her in confusion. “I beg your pardon?”
“I mean do I seem uncaring?”
“That’s ridiculous! Given your sensitivity and your empathy, coldness would be impossible for you. Why would you ask such a question?”
She swiveled to face him directly. “Then why can’t I cry?”
“You mean about Erik?”
She nodded.
“I imagine people have different ways of handling their grief.”
Unconvinced by his theory, she knit her brows. “Maybe it’s because we ended things between us for good last month.”
Griffin seemed taken aback. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Didn’t I?” Cassie registered confusion.
He drew himself up. “I’m quite sure if you had, it’s the sort of thing I would have remembered.”
“That’s funny. I could have sworn I told you.” Her voice took on a faraway quality as she recalled the scene. “It was the night of my birthday.”
“Pillock!” Griffin muttered. “Although one shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, I must say Erik couldn’t have chosen a more inappropriate time to terminate your relationship.”
Cassie laid a restraining hand on his arm. “Hey, it wasn’t his fault. He’d just come back from Spain, and you and I were about to leave for China. There wasn’t going to be another chance.”
Griffin relented slightly. “Perhaps I overreacted.”
“Ya think?”
“If I’m not being presumptuous, would you mind giving me the details of your conversation?”
“Sure, why not.” Cassie shrugged in resignation. “For starters, he admitted that I’d been right about him in India.”
“Very magnanimous of him, I’m sure.”
“Do you want to hear this or not?”
“You’re quite right. Please proceed.”
The pythia stared off toward the tree line at the edge of the clearing. “He said that he didn’t think he could be the guy I needed. At least not now anyway.”
Griffin’s eyes narrowed. “Let me guess. Like most women who have fallen under Erik’s spell, you forgave his weakness and promised to carry a torch for him indefinitely.”
“You’re automatically assuming I cut him some slack because he’s so pretty?” Cassie asked in an annoyed tone.
“Reductive but accurate,” the scrivener admitted.
“Please! Give me a little credit!” she protested. “Since when have I ever been like most women? I told him that by the time he got around to being the kind of guy I needed, I wouldn’t still be the kind of girl who needed that kind of guy.”
“I see.” The scrivener pondered her comment. “It sounds as if you made a clean break and parted ways with no further expectations from one another.” He raised a skeptical eyebrow as a
