The Dark Remains - Mark Anthony [178]
Perhaps that was just the Seeker in her, the part that wanted to be able to continue studying her fascinating subjects. And yet that was a lie as well. The reason she didn’t want Travis and Grace to go was simple: She was going to miss them.
“How long until the police arrive?” she said.
“Their ETA is three minutes. We’ll be well away by then.”
Farr had set down the radio. He was flipping through a folder of papers now—documents related to the cases that had all become inextricably linked: Sarsin, Beckett, Wilder. And what other cases were connected to these without their knowing it? When she joined the Seekers, she had always hoped one day she would find those who had otherworldly connections. She never thought she would be the one with such ties herself.
More chatter on the police radio. Farr seemed not to notice. He stared at something in the folder on his lap, brushed it with a finger. It was a strangely tender motion for the usually brusque Farr. Deirdre craned her neck, then saw what he was looking at. It was a photo. A tall, elegant woman with pale hair ran down a set of steps before a concrete building. She was looking to one side, gazing into the darkness, her expression desperate and regal.
In the space of a heartbeat it struck Deirdre. Her grandfather would have said it was a message from the spirit world, for such messages come suddenly, and often with pain, and they were always true.
“Damn you,” she murmured.
Farr looked up, brown eyes startled. “Deirdre?”
She sat up straight on the seat, heat rising. “Damn you, you really think you are him, don’t you? Marius Lucius Albrecht. The greatest Seeker in history. You’re not just trying to follow his career. You’re trying to be him.”
Farr splayed his hand on the photograph. “What on Earth are you talking about?”
“No, this has nothing to do with Earth.” The words exploded out of her: angry and true. “Albrecht fell in love with her—Lady Alis Faraday, the woman the Philosophers sent him to study. And now you think you love her. Grace Beckett.”
He opened his mouth to speak, but she didn’t let him.
“By the Book, are you insane, Farr? Do you have a list of all the accomplishments of Albrecht’s life so you can check something off once you’ve matched it? All of this—everything we’ve done here in Denver—it was all so you could have her, wasn’t it? Well did you? Did you get your moment alone with her? Did you check that off your list as well?”
She was shaking now, fists pounding against the knees of her black jeans. “The others were right; I didn’t want to believe them when I first started working with you, but now I do. You are one cold, arrogant son of a bitch, Hadrian Farr. And if you really are the next Marius Albrecht, then he was a bastard just like you are.”
Deirdre flung herself back against the seat, glaring. He did not move, did not counter her words with smooth, eloquent arguments as she would have expected. Instead he gazed at the photograph through his fingers. Then, slowly, he closed the folder and looked up at her with haunted eyes.
She gasped, and the anger drained from her in a cold flood, leaving her hollow.
“No,” she whispered. “God, no, don’t say it.”
It was too late.
“I do love her,” he said.
The words were small and broken. There was no room for irony in them, nor carefully calculated effect. She had never heard Farr speak like this—this plainly and without guile. The cost to him must have been more than she could imagine.
“You can’t have her,” she said. “Everything in the Book forbids it. In the end, even Albrecht gave up Lady Faraday.”
He leaned forward, elbows on knees, head bowed. “I know.”
The whir of traffic seeped through the windows. They were heading toward her even at that moment—Grace Beckett. But now Deirdre found herself hoping that she and Travis and Vani did manage to use the artifact, that they did step through an impossible gate into another world.