A man in blue robes came toward her. He was handsome, dark-skinned, taller than X even. The light was coming from his palms. He was still a hundred feet away when he spoke, but it was as if he whispered into her ear: “I am called Regent. Is my name known to you?”
“Yes,” said Zoe, relieved. “You’re the nice one. What do you want? You scared the crap out of me.”
“Is this the manner in which you address everyone?” said Regent.
“Generally,” said Zoe.
Regent gave the tiniest hint of a smile.
“We have business, you and I,” he said.
He pointed to the lodge.
“I couldn’t get in,” said Zoe.
“Perhaps I can,” said Regent.
They went to the door, and he dipped his hand through the glass as if it were a pool of water. Zoe followed him into the restaurant, which was only marginally warmer than the mountain. She felt along the walls for switches, but everything had been disconnected.
“The electricity’s off,” she said.
All Regent had to do was touch the sconces along the walls with his fingertips, and they glowed to life, giving off not just light but heat. The two of them sat at a wooden table, which was empty except for salt and pepper shakers, a container of sweetener packets, and an ad for a drink called a Powder Hound.
Regent looked too grand for the place, like a king in a kitchen. He accidentally set the legs of his chair down on his robe. It tore a little when he pulled up to the table.
Zoe took a Sweet’N Low from the container, and spun it on the tabletop.
“This is weird,” she said.
Regent seemed to agree. His eyes caught the pool table.
“You know how to play?” said Zoe.
“I do not,” he said. “My father had a billiards table among his possessions in Portugal, but it had hoops and ramps. There was even a small castle, in which one had to somehow deposit the ball.”
“You’re thinking of miniature golf,” said Zoe.
Regent gave her a confused look.
“You’re Portuguese?” said Zoe. “I assumed you were from Africa.”
“You are not the first,” said Regent. “I corrected people for a hundred and fifty years, then realized that I didn’t especially care what they believed.”
“Sorry,” said Zoe. She spun the pink packet around. “Is X okay? Why are you here?”
“He is in no pain but for the pain of missing you,” said Regent. “He begged to come here in my stead. I refused him, for every time I send him to the Overworld, chaos follows.”
“I know,” said Zoe. “Your friend Dervish tried to kill my brother.”
“Dervish is no friend to me,” said Regent. “And believe this or not as you like, but I knew Jonah to be safe when we brought down your house. As did Dervish. We’re forbidden from taking the life of an innocent mortal. It is a lucky thing, for Dervish would have cut a bloody swath through the world by now.”
“He threatened my family so many times,” said Zoe. “He was bluffing?”
“Even I find him convincing,” said Regent.
Zoe returned to her original question.
“I want to know about X,” she said. “Did he find his mother?”
“Not yet,” said Regent. “But the quest continues.”
“He said you knew her,” said Zoe. “Is that why you’re helping him?”
“It is partly that, yes, and that is no small thing,” said Regent. “If you had known Versailles—”
“That was her name?” said Zoe. “It’s beautiful.”
“She deserved it,” said Regent.
“Were you in love with her?” said Zoe.
Regent pushed himself back from the table, tearing his robe again.
“You know, it is possible to wonder something without immediately blurting it out,” he said.
“It is?” said Zoe. She took out some more sweetener packs and built a tower. “Were you in love with her?”
“No, as it happens, I was not,” said Regent. “If you must know, my heart expired many years before I did.”
“I don’t understand that,” said Zoe. “What does that mean?”
Regent exhaled.
“In my nineteenth year, my father hired a woman to plant black cherry trees in his vineyard,” he said. “After two months, I announced that I loved her, for I was enormously vain and assumed that she loved me, too. I remember saying to my younger brother, ‘How could she not be smitten, when it is I who am the smiter?’ ”
“Is ‘smiter’ really a word?” said Zoe.
“It was once,” said Regent.
He went to the pool table, and bounced the cue ball off the cushions. The ball careened around the table without stopping or even slowing down. Regent dug into the pockets, and set three more going. The balls rushed by one another without colliding.
“What happened with the girl in the vineyard?” said Zoe.
“She chose my brother,” Regent said. “So I killed him.”
He crossed the room to the windows. The night had turned them into mirrors.
“I strangled him,” he said. “Our mother screamed for me to stop. Servants came running, but no one could pull me off. My father could have, but he was elsewhere, as he often was. Testing grapes, probably.” Regent paused. “Would you believe me if I said I loved my brother very much? I did. Yet in that moment I did not see my brother. I saw only a wall standing between myself and what I wanted.”
He drifted back to Zoe.
“Have I explained the death of my heart sufficiently?” he said.
Zoe nodded.
“How long have you been carrying this guilt around on your back?” she said.
“Two hundred and seventy-eight years,” said Regent.
“Dude,” said Zoe, “put it down.”
“I cannot,” said Regent. “The weight on my back is now a part of my body. The point is, I loved someone once, too, and well remember how it sets everything in you on fire.”
“Nothing feels real right now,” said Zoe. “I can’t sleep. I can’t concentrate. People talk, and it takes me forever to figure out that they’re actually talking to me.”
“I remember the symptoms,” said Regent. “And I believe I can alleviate yours a little by offering you a task. There is someone that X is desperate to find. If you can locate the man—perhaps talk to him a little—I believe it will soothe X greatly.”
Regent asked for a piece of paper and a pen. Zoe found a magic marker behind the bar, and plucked the Find Something Else to Do with Your Life sign off the door so he could write a name on the back.
Regent’s handwriting looked like an invitation to a wedding.
“This,” he said, “is X’s father.”
Zoe burst out of the lodge, desperate to google the name.
She lifted her phone up high, hoping it would help her get a signal. It didn’t.
Regent swept across the snow behind her, as she descended the slope beneath the chairlift, first slowly and calmly, then not so slowly and not so calmly. The paper was rolled in her hand. She couldn’t bear to fold it. The paper, the name, the handwriting—it all seemed sacred.
There were stars thrown across the sky, but otherwise darkness had descended completely, like a dome. She could barely see.
She called back to Regent.
“Thank you for this,” she said. “For everything.”
“X’s father is closer than you may imagine,” said Regent. “X’s mother lived in these mountains and, when she became a lord, she would sometimes return just to lay her eyes upon them.”
“She lived here?” said Zoe.
“Her entire life,” said Regent. “She met Timothy Ward twenty years ago.”
“I’ll find him,” said Zoe. “I bet I can find him tonight.”
She looked up at the chairlift, watching for Val and Dallas. Empty chairs and gondolas creaked overhead.
“A word of caution,” said Regent. “Mr. Ward is likely unaware that he has a son—and he is certainly unaware that his son was born into a darkness beyond life. Do not let word of the Lowlands pass your lips. If the father is anything like the son, he will go on some passionate quest, enrage the other lords, and never be safe again. Even now, this gold band singes my neck to warn me that I take a grave risk in trusting you.”
“I understand,” said Zoe. She gestured to the band. “Why don’t you just take that thing off?”
“Because my powers would disappear if I did,” said Regent. “And then Dervish and others like him would run riot.”
Zoe heard Val calling for her.
Regent took her small, cold hands in his own. Warmth seeped through her.
“Be well and be safe, Zoe Bissell,” said Regent.