“How do you know that?” She crossed her arms. “Is that what Celia and Oswald were doing? Spying on me? I thought they were enjoying the festival.”
Maybe a little of both. “Is it true, then?”
She leaned against the windowsill. “I saw the hellhound who will be coming for you. He’s enormous, and very powerful. He’s in Canada now, but he’ll be here soon.”
Dread rippled through him. “Do you know anything about a way out?”
She sighed. “The loophole you all keep going on about.”
“Is there one?”
“Maybe.”
He was losing patience. “So why don’t you tell me what it is?”
“Because it will send you off on a wild goose chase that probably won’t even get you anywhere.” She turned to him, running a finger over his chest. His muscles tensed at the contact. “I want you to come with me into Maremount. You and Oswald and Thomas can help me overthrow the Throcknells. My people and the Tatters will finally have a home, safe from Picaroons and Purgators, free from the Throcknell tyrants. Thomas told me all about Maremount—how your people are kept out of schools, how they starve in the streets. Your king can execute anyone he wants in horrible ways. It’s not a real life for your people. You can rescue them so they don’t have to live in squalor anymore, dying from curable diseases.” Her eyes flashed. “Don’t you want that?”
The way she put it, it almost made him feel like a jerk for caring about his own fate. “Of course I want that. But I’m not too keen on the eternity in hell.”
“You’re the one who carved yourself. Actions have consequences. But it doesn’t mean you can’t make a difference while you’re still alive. Don’t you want your life to have meaning?”
Of course he wanted his life to have meaning, and of course he wanted to make life better for the Tatters, but he had no desire to spend his life with Estelle. He rubbed his temple. “Why does this loophole prevent me from getting into Maremount?”
She inched closer to him, eyes locked on his. “We have one simple plan. We fight the Throcknell army here, and we enter Maremount together. We seize an undefended city. If you run off looking for your loophole, I don’t see this working out as planned.”
“I think you need to let me decide for myself.”
“Fine. Come with me.” She grabbed his hand, leading him to the copper cauldron. “You might not like what you see.”
“Why?”
“The cauldron has shown me the person who has your answers. He’s searching for something called ‘the relic.’ And I think you know him.”
Ice crept over Tobias’s heart. “Who?”
“Let me show you.” She stood over the cauldron, holding her palms over dark, simmering liquid. She whispered in Angelic, throwing her head back. Her body trembled as the potion swirled. Her hand ran over her chest, eyes closed. “Show us Tobias’s salvation. Show us how Tobias can avoid Emerazel’s hellfire.”
The liquid brightened, and he saw an image form. Pale skin, blue eyes, rosy cheeks. Sickeningly pretty. Rage simmered in his chest. It was Rawhed. The image shifted, showing Rawhed crawling out of Maremount’s tunnel, then flipping through ancient tomes in old libraries. Rawhed sitting by a window at night, reading by candlelight. Rawhed raising a Puritan corpse from the ground, creating his army of Harvesters, stalking Boston’s dark streets. Sitting in his apartment, flipping through an ancient book with strange drawings.
Rawhed, frantically scribbling one word over and over: relic, relic, relic…
Tobias went numb. That’s what Jack was searching for in Maremount. Jack was condemned, too—sentenced to Druloch’s eternal hell. He was looking for his own salvation, desperate for some kind of relic to save himself. He’d torn Maremount apart searching for this thing.
All these years, Rawhed had been looking for a way out, just like Tobias. What horrors would a person commit to avoid eternal agony? Tobias didn’t want to think what sort of monster he himself would become with this curse hanging over him for hundreds of years.
The image rippled, settling again on Jack, lying in bed. His face was wan and bruised, but he still breathed. Munroe sat in the corner of the room.
Tobias’s heart stopped. Munroe. That meant Jack was still alive. And somehow, he knew the key to Tobias’s salvation.
“Not him,” he breathed. “He’s not the way.”
Estelle’s eyes met his. “He’s the only answer the cauldron will show us. Believe me, I tried. I don’t know what that book means, but it looks like Jack does.”
Tobias felt sick, and his head swam. He stumbled back from the cauldron, fire rising in his chest. This can’t be the only way. The cedarwood smoke felt suddenly suffocating. He needed fresh air. “I need to get out of here.”
She touched his arm. “Are you okay?”