“Alex.” I finally find my voice. Lord, he’s really starting to unravel, to lose it. “What’s gotten into you, how on earth would the Feds—”
“I promise the Unit will cut a deal with you. I’ll make sure of it.” His words are soft, but now assured, and he keeps his eyes trained on a random spot to the left of my head. “We say that Gunn was the mastermind, that he had you and the rest of his sorcerers working like dogs for him, that he was blackmailing you—at the end, that’s what it’s been like, it’s not too much of a stretch from the truth. We’ll tell the troupe the same—have them corroborate the story. They all think there’s something else going on between you and Gunn anyway.”
He steals another breath as my head starts spinning. “If you give up Gunn and his team and everything you know, you’ll walk. But it needs to be all of it, Joan—everything about the eternal shine, anything Gunn’s said about his plan for expansion, plus D Street’s distribution routes. And that spell, Joan—it can’t get out, you need to tell the Unit everything, we need to contain it. You give all that up, and I promise your family will stay safe. I’ll make sure the cabin stays yours if that’s what you want. Maybe the Feds will keep you under surveillance, but you’ll be free.” He pauses, then adds in a more tentative voice, “Or you and your family could stay here in DC with me.”
I can’t speak. The world feels like it’s opening up underneath me, and that I’m falling, unable to hold on to any of his words, descending down down down. “What are you—Alex,” I stutter, “how the hell do you know this?”
He shakes his head.
He looks pitiful. Repentant. Afraid.
And then the pieces start falling into place.
Or maybe the picture has always been completed, and I’ve just been too blind—too willfully blind—to see it.
“Are you . . .” I close my eyes. I can’t look at him anymore. “Are you a cop?”
“They had me, Joan, over a barrel,” he rushes, squeezing my hands, “all my old crimes. At first I was doing it because I had to. But then I started to understand everything that magic is capable of, all the darkness of this underworld, and I met you, and—” He stops. “I believe in what I’m doing now, more than ever. I want to end Gunn and the rest of them. I want to save you. Please, please let me do both.”
A cop.
Alex is a fucking cop.
Of course, this all makes sense, looking back at the full picture. His cloudy past, his questions about Gunn, the way he kept burning bright, right through the Shaws. But even still, it feels like the greatest magic—the one I’ve come to know as real, the one I’ve come to build my hopes and dreams on top of—it all teeters, then comes spiraling, crashing down.
“You piece of shit.” I close my eyes. The tears come hot, fast, and overwhelming. “You liar. You’ve been playing me this whole time?”
“I never played you.” Alex rushes to grab my hand again, but I jerk away from him, stumble to the edge of his gazebo manipulation. I want to tear it down with my nails. Alex. Alex is a cop.
“Please, Joan, me and you—that’s the only thing that’s always been real.” His voice cracks. “I can’t deny that I lied about some things—I had to in order to survive—but there’re some things that you just can’t lie about. You know that’s true.”
I don’t look at him. Alex tries to angle around, force me to, but I turn away. But he gently grabs my hand and pulls me around to face him. I want to resist again. I want to tell him to leave me alone. But his look, his face. This, right here, right now, there’s no trick.
“I’ve made sure the Feds don’t know your name yet, but they know about the eternal shine,” he says slowly. “I told you, I’ve got it all figured out. We’ll get ahead of it, and spin your story—we’ll tell them that you were coerced, that Gunn forced you to use your blood-magic. Like I said, we’ll use the troupe to back it up. If they cooperate, they get off easy. Besides, we’ve always been after the gangsters, not the sorcerers—Gunn and Colletto are the masterminds.”
When I don’t answer, because I can’t, because everything I might say is stuck like a thick, knotted ball in my throat, he leans in and whispers, “I would never give you up, don’t you see that? You were right, Joan. We’re the same, we deserve this—we deserve each other.”
Those words. They’re the right words.
Maybe, despite all things, they’re the only words that matter.
“Please, Joan,” he says. “Think of your family, of yourself. Hell, think of me.” He takes my other hand, so that both of mine are wrapped in his. “This is the only way you get out of this. Please. Please tell me you’re with me.”