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The legacy of Samuel Westing wormed its way back into Theo Theodorakis's life in a plain white envelope, addressed in longhand, with an anonymous return address. The letter inside was a single sheet of paper in the same longhand, short on detail in the way Theo had gotten used to: a request for assistance on a time-sensitive matter of great importance, best discussed in person. Indeed, it was the stringent vagueness that came standard for Theo's freelance clientele, but with two details that caught his eye. First, the offered fee. Second, the signature, or rather the line below it: "T. R. Wexler."
Wexler meant Westing, sure as anything. (At least she hadn't written it out on paper towel.) If he had his choice, Theo would never hear the name again -- but he didn't quite have his choice, did he? Work for a freelance writer, researcher, and arcanist had been thin on the ground all summer, and the University fellowship hadn't panned out. Reinforcing spirit wards for his regulars was keeping the lights on in his apartment, but it wasn't putting much beyond rice, beans, and coffee-shop leftovers on his table. What Wexler was offering was steak-and-shrimp money, even after he budgeted for rent and heat and reagents. If there was one thing she'd learned from the Westing affair, Theo guessed, it was how to buy people's attention. And if there was one thing Theo had learned, it was that pride didn't pay, at least not for him.
Theo arranged for the initial meeting at the University's arcana library in Madison: quiet, a likely starting point for whatever research he'd be asked to do, and comfortable home territory. He dressed smartly but didn't bother with the jewelry or satchel of paraphernalia that he would normally demonstrate his bona fides to a new client, because what was the point? Maybe a haircut would have helped, but he didn't have that Westing money yet. Rice-and-beans-and-free-coffee Theo would have to be enough.
T. R. -- Tabitha-Ruth, Turtle -- Wexler hadn't dressed up, either. She met him in his usual meeting room in a soft blue autumn sweater and neat slacks, hair bobbed just below her chin. She'd grown up pretty, like Theo'd noticed at the last Sunset Towers function he'd attended: the understated pretty of someone whom life was treating well, who didn't have much to prove. There was something nervous in her posture, though, and pinched in her face, a tension that made the lingering turtlishness come out again.
"Theo," she began. "It's nice to see you. You're looking well."
Not as well as her, but Theo just shrugged and tried to put on a smile. "I try. Are you still in school?"
"Harvard Law. On a leave of absence, before you asked, for all of this business. I'll try to be blunt. Westing Paper Products has a sacrifice coming due to the Spring Court at the end of November -- one last fulfillment of Samuel Westing's contract. The board isn't willing to take chances. I told them you were the best man for the job, and I'd personally supervise. Are you in, Theo, or am I in trouble?"
The money said he was in. Some bitter chunk of his heart said he was out, as did a certain element of his rational mind. Getting entangled with a Fair Folk contract was a losers' game, even for the Spring Court, and especially for whatever contract Samuel Westing had forged, no matter what side of the line he'd been on. (Did the WPP board know? Did T. R. Wexler? Did Samuel Westing know, after he'd spent so long making everyone guess? Theo couldn't begin to venture a theory.) It was bad business... but here was Wexler, wound up tight and sounding honest. And then there was the money, again. And maybe, just maybe, there was a chance for a rematch.
"I'm in," said Theo. "I'll warn you, though. The last game I played with Westing, I lost."
"And I won. That gives us even odds, and I'm told that's as good as it gets with the Fair Folk. Now, what do you know about the Spring Court? I've got a list of the contract stipulations here, but they're not exactly precise, and arcana was never my strong suit..."
The contract stipulations were more precise than Theo expected. That didn't help.
The first sign of trouble is that it was a short list. The Spring Court was mercurial even by the standards of the fae, but they were fairly consistent in their demands for large quantities of relatively simple sacrifices, usually food and produce -- what you might expect from inhabitants of a realm in constant flower but never in fruit. The Westing list, by contrast, was brief, primarily intangible, and wholly inedible:
1. THE BRILLIANCE OF HUMAN ARTISTRY
2. THE EFFORTS OF THE MASSES
3. THE POWER OF A MONARCH
4. THE BLOOD OF THE HEIR
The first was feasible enough, if tricky in the specifics; the Spring Court did appreciate human art, but "brilliance" could mean many things, and Theo didn't enjoy the prospect of being at the mercy of fae tastes. The second and third... puzzles, presumably, or metaphors, of the sort with several classic interpretations. Bees and ants combined both masses and monarchs. So, in a pinch, did most multicellular organisms, a mass of cells ruled by a single mind. Animal sacrifice wasn't traditional for Spring, though, except as abstract components of feasts.
And then there was the fourth. Few riddles there; when the Fair Folk asked for blood, they meant it, and Spring fae rarely had a taste for it. What had Westing bought that came at that high a cost, and whom had he bought it from?
Before today, Theo thought, he'd have sworn on his life that Westing had been on the other side of that contract. It had seemed so obvious that Westing was fae, even as a dumb kid -- or maybe, he had to admit, because he'd been a dumb kid, but nobody in Sunset Towers seemed to know any better. The riddles, the traps, all the efforts to befuddle and conceal without ever technically lying... it had seemed so simple. (Why had he ever thought he might have tricked him? That he could beat him at his own game? Stupid kid.) But if instead it had all been careful camouflage by a mortal, someone who had learned to play the Fair Folk's games well enough to fool Sunset Towers but not well enough to fool his creditors? Maybe that's why Sandy McSouthers didn't live to see the end of his game play out.
The problem was, none of that helped Theo understand how much of this debt was left unpaid. Westing's death wouldn't have fulfilled any of the clauses; maybe the brilliance of human artistry, but surely the great American patriot was no monarch, nor an heir. Theo'd have to work assuming the whole bill was still unpaid, just to be safe. Unless Wexler knew better? If she was holding out on him, better he know now. He dialed the number he'd been given for her hotel suite.
It was almost midnight, but Wexler still answered on the second ring. "T. R. Wexler," she said, with a squirrely edge to her voice. "... Theo? Nobody else has this number."
"Theo," he echoed. "I'm working on the contract, but before I do any more work, I need to know something. Did anyone at WPP know this asks for human sacrifice? Did they not tell you?"
There was a long pause, one Theo expected to end in a dial tone, or the thump of the receiver hitting the table. "I know," said Wexler, in a voice much more like her child self. "Who do you think is Westing's heir, Theo?"
He was still a fool, wasn't he? He hadn't even thought about it. Another queen sacrifice, this one a promoted pawn, and all Theo could see was the face of the girl he'd known: the angry, petulant, grieving girl, too old and too young at once. She'd loved Sandy McSouthers, and he'd used it. "Goddamn Westing," Theo said before he could stop himself. "Whatever he did, we'll stop it. There are workarounds, other options. I promise you that."
"I trust you," said Turtle, a bit of adult composure returning to her voice. "I wouldn't have called you otherwise. Can we resume in the morning? We both need sleep."
Theo agreed, hung up the phone, but didn't sleep. Half the night was spent searching for and pulling increasingly dusty books from his shelves; the other half was taking notes and sketching out connections. It was possible to play against the fae and get away clean, and he would figure out how, now that there was a life on the line. Even Turtle Wexler's life.
(Especially Turtle Wexler's life, he thought, and then forced himself to set that thought aside. Not right now. Not while the clock was ticking.)
It was another feverish day in the University arcana stacks before Theo stumbled on the building blocks of a solution. Starting with bees, the simple answer, led him to archival documents on the history of mellified men: mostly myth, but with verifiable reports of their being offered and accepted as pact sacrifices by the Fair Folk, including by Spring fae. More to the point, those verifiable reports implied the fae weren't picky. Ritualistic pre-death mellification may or may not have ever happened, but hastily honey-steeped corpses served just as well... and so, it turned out, did wooden skeletons covered with molded honey and wax, dressed in old clothes and garnished with hair cuttings. Anything with the essence of both honey and human seemed to suit the fae appetite.
The Westing sacrifice wouldn't be that easy, Theo suspected -- that contract-holder was likely suspecting something animate, and that meant finding someone who could animate a homunculus -- but it was a place to start. A few calls to his contacts, and Theo got the address of a ritual-grade apiarist just northeast of Pierre, about nine hours' drive from Madison. Once he had the route sketched out, he made the call to Wexler. "I've got a lead on decent materials. I'll need to expense the cost, of course, and a rental car. A night in a motel, probably, and meals on the road."
"Why bother? I'll come with you, and I've got a company card. It'll save us a paperwork step."
T. R. Wexler (Wexler? Turtle? What the hell should Theo call her, anyway?) showed up in the parking lot of Theo's apartment building in a two-door Subaru utility coupe, camper shell covering the rear bed, which was empty save for an overnight bag. "Plenty of room," she said, "and four-wheel drive. I don't know much about cars, I'll admit, but it seemed prudent for the weather." She had a point. Clouds were gathering. It had been a balmy autumn so far, with first snowfall nowhere in sight, but you never knew how the winds might change.
The sky opened up an hour into the drive, before they'd reached the Dells; when they stopped in La Crosse to stretch their legs and change drivers (Wexler had suggested short shifts, to head off fatigue, and Theo was inclined to agree), the wind had picked up and the rain had turned to sleet. Wexler swore. Theo tried to convince himself it was a coincidence, natural Midwest weather, not an omen of something worse: that someone was watching them. Another level of misdirection, a suspicious coincidence. A chance to waste energy and time hunting shadows. A trap in the classic Westing fashion, if Westing or someone with his sense of humor was still pulling the strings. It was the kind of thing that was easy to fixate on, but pointless in the end. What other option did they have, but to drive through the snow and hope? Theo finished squeegeeing the windows, handed the keys over to Wexler, and settled into the passenger seat to nap.
He awoke to a solid field of grey-white, parking-lot floodlights barely cutting through the frosted windshield, and Wexler's hand on his shoulder. "We're about 50 miles out of Rochester," she began, "and I don't think we can keep driving in this weather. I know it's early to stop, but better safe than sorry."
"Better safe than sorry," echoed Theo and pulled a hat from his jacket pocket. "Where are we? A truck stop?"
"A motel. There's an attached restaurant. Does that make it a hotel, technically?"
"It makes it a very good choice." Theo unbuckled his belt. "Do you want to check in, and I'll get us a table and have them get some coffee started?"
By the time they reunited in the motel restaurant, both Theo and Wexler had bad news to share. Theo's was that the restaurant's coffee was awful: not quite undrinkable, but unpleasant, and shockingly weak. (What kind of roadside motel made weak coffee?) Wexler's was that the motel was nearly booked up, and the only room she'd been able to secure had a single king bed. "Some kind of district sports meet this weekend," she said, over a plate of scrambled eggs that at least looked fit for purpose. "Out here between Rochester and Mankato. What are the odds?"
"Slim," said Theo, after he swallowed his mouthful of pancake. (The pancakes were better than he'd expected, light but filling, alongside some bacon that was only slightly overdone. Who knew? Maybe the coffee was a fluke.) "I don't like this, Wexler. I can't help but feel like something's out for us, trying to frustrate us, wear us down."
"You may be right. I'll tell you more about it in the room. Not here. And call me Tabitha-Ruth, all right?" Wexler -- Tabitha-Ruth -- looked up and locked eyes with him. "T. R., if you're squeamish, but it seems silly to ask you to do all this and then stay formal." Her voice lowered as she looked down, pushing a gobbet of scrambled egg across her plate. "And I don't think I can be Turtle right now."
"Then it's Tabitha-Ruth," Theo said, with a faint twinge of guilt that he didn't have anything similar to offer; he'd always just been Theo. "So how are your eggs, anyway?"
"Better than I expected. Better than this coffee, at least. I've been trying to give up milk and sugar, but this is just wretched."
Theo nodded, then drained his mug anyway. "To the room?"
"Let's. I think it's died down enough outside that we can bring in the bags."
The room was as advertised, not much besides the bed, a television slightly too large for the cabinet it sat on, and a "living area" with a desk, chair, and armchair. (The armchair would serve for sleep, Theo was fairly sure. He'd had worse in his undergraduate days.) No sooner had Tabitha-Ruth stepped inside and dropped her bag than she sat down heavily on the bed, shoulders slumping. "What you were saying earlier... it's possible something or someone is sabotaging us. More likely something than someone -- bad luck and odd coincidences. It's the way the whole ritual was intended to work from the very beginning."
"The will-reading," said Theo. A ritual. Of course. Theo'd considered it over the years, but he'd never learned enough practical thaumaturgy to think through the details, when he'd even been in the mood to think about it. "And everything else. The whole game."
"A ritual to pick the 'heir,' yes: the one to be given to the Spring Court. Westing had gotten into a bind, you see. He'd expected to hand over a child -- had hoped to have so many children that he could give one away and hardly miss them -- but then he had Violet, and just Violet, and he started begging for time. When that ran out, she was old enough that the Spring Court wanted her for a bride and not a changeling-child, and she was old enough to... stop it the only way she could. That left Westing with nobody but himself. Somehow he bought enough time to come up with the ritual bindings and a list of candidates. A list of us poor saps he thought would play along, and whom he thought he could turn over to the fae with a clean conscience."
"What, his old enemies? Crow? Mr. Hoo?"
"Baba and Mrs. Pulaski, too -- well, the right Mrs. Pulaski. I guess they both told Violet she ought to say no, even as Crow was insisting she had to... I think he blamed everyone in arm's reach for what happened. Beyond that, there were a few plausible heirs, by blood or otherwise. Judge Ford. My family. You and Chris, too. You weren't his blood, but you could have been, and it seemed like he thought the sympathetic magic was enough."
"That raises more questions than it answers. If us, why not Mom and Dad?"
"Sentiment, as far as I can tell. He barely knew anything about your mother, and he didn't think your father needed to be punished just for loving Violet. That, and they were too happy. That was the third part of it: unhappy people. Frustrated, angry people. His notes say it was more sympathetic magic, that he was at his lowest when he made the deal so the heir should be as well, but I think he just wanted to convince himself that they'd deserve it."
"And so he set us up to fail," Theo cut in. "Faked a murder, convinced us one of us was a killer, and gave us meaningless clues to track down and money to be at each other's throats about. And put us all in one apartment tower, to boot. The blackouts, the funny floor plans, everyone sneaking around... that awful restaurant, so the Hoos couldn't catch a single break..."
"... and that busy coffee shop, so you'd never have a spare moment to yourself," Tabitha-Ruth finished. "He wrote a lot about you, Theo. He thought you were a front-runner, and not just because you played chess with him. I think he saw a bright, unfocused kid who never had a chance to focus, between Chris and the coffee shop, and he was waiting for you to get fed up with it, like he had."
"He wasn't the only one. Everyone always said that, and yeah, it was hard with Chris so sick, and sometimes it felt hopeless, but my parents worked as hard as I did or harder, and Chris was always fighting. How could I resent any of that?"
"A lot of people would have. That's the problem with you, Theo -- the problem for Westing's ritual, anyway. You're too damn good, too damn patient. Chris, too: persistent, but gracious, until it paid off. We were all better than we could have been, and better to each other than he expected, and the whole ritual unraveled. One of his last notes was about the wind shifting. He was losing control."
"Yes," said Theo, "I think I see this. This whole setup designed to tear us down, and then suddenly it just... flipped. Doug wore himself out chasing down clues, and then he won State anyway. Chris got that new medication. Your mom bought out Mr. Hoo, and both their new businesses took off. Angela got free --"
"They're back together now, actually, and happy. They needed the time apart, I suppose."
"-- Angela getting to college, then. Getting her time. Even Ms. Pulaski! And she wasn't even supposed to be there. Fair winds for everyone but Westing, I suppose."
Tabitha-Ruth grimaced, and Theo knew at once he'd misspoken. She'd really loved him, hadn't she? And she still did, even after he'd left her with this mess to clean up and her life on the line. "He didn't find an heir he was willing to sacrifice, no, and he didn't clear the debt. Too hard-headed to figure out another solution, but too soft-hearted to do what his contract demanded. That's why the final terms of his will were so generous; he knew what he was leaving us with, everyone he left with a burden. And that's you, too. He left you wondering what might have been."
"Every time I saw you, or I heard what you were up to. It felt like he'd given you a pass to some elevated world, the kind of place we mere mortals could never dream of -- easier to imagine when I thought he was fae. You'd grown up and become something new, and I was the same old Theo from Sunset Towers."
Tabitha-Ruth smiled, a real smile, maybe for the first time since this had started. "You're too damn good for any of this, Theo. Maybe too good for me, even. I should have been honest about all of this earlier, but I figured you'd give me a report and be on your way. I thought I'd be paying for a few dry answers to a few old riddles. And now... here we are."
"Here we are." God, he wanted to kiss her. It felt like he ought to kiss her. Instead, he was halfway towards reaching for her hand when she leaned in close to kiss him, and he let her take the lead. It was dry at first, tentative -- she hadn't had much practice, he guessed, but it wasn't like he was much better -- and it took a moment for their lips to find each other properly, for warmth to start crawling up Theo's spine. He reached for her, rested a hand on her waist, and she didn't pull away.
Before Theo could get his thoughts in order, Tabitha-Ruth broke the kiss. "We... I don't know if this is the time. We've got so much to do. I just had to."
"You have nothing to apologize for. But you're right. I never called the apiarist about the delay. And I've got these schematics to work on."
"And I've got a few calls to make myself. Just... don't you dare think about sleeping in that armchair tonight, Theo. It's a king bed, we've got room. We'd have room even if I didn't like you."
"You drive a hard bargain, Miss Wexler. I'll have to accept."
They spent the night mostly quietly, with only the faintest expectant tension in the air. Whatever had happened, there seemed no point on moving forward while the sword of Damocles was hanging over them. Tabitha-Ruth left the room a few times for her phone calls, returning with ice or sodas, then BLTs from the restaurant (crisp and delicious) when dinnertime came; Theo sat at the cramped desk and sketched out their homunculus. His animation knowledge was more theory than practice, but wax was a tractable material for spell-work, and it didn't have to last longer than it took for a fae arbiter to void a contract. A few days of lifelike motion would be simple enough, especially if Westing Paper Products had a competent theurgist on hand.
He didn't want to get his hopes up. The end of November was coming quicker than he liked to consider, and another run of bad weather or bad luck could ruin them. Theo told himself that their luck just had to hold until they were back in Wisconsin with the supplies -- back to Westingtown. Just a little longer, and maybe Samuel Westing could rest easy at last.
Tabitha-Ruth was right; it was a king bed, with plenty of room. They still slept back to back, the heat of Tabitha-Ruth's body cutting through Theo's thick flannel pajamas. He resisted to the urge to roll over, to touch -- she was right, this wasn't the time -- but that warmth so close was enough.
The next morning dawned bright, chilly, and clear: not ideal driving weather, but nothing the four-wheel-drive Subaru couldn't handle. The apiarist, a cheerful Dakota man whose small talk stuck to the weather and the freeways, loaded the back with crates of honey and wax marked with sanctified seals, then took a stack of bills from Tabitha-Ruth and wished them safe travels. Theo took the first six hours of the return trip, running on pure nerves and waiting for the cloudless skies to erupt, but the weather stayed clear until Tabitha-Ruth forced him to pull over. "Let me take the last leg," she said, taking his hand and giving it a quick squeeze.
Theo was asleep in the passenger seat within a mile, and when he next awoke, he was in Westingtown.
Westing Paper Products owned a warehouse situated on the intersection of three ley lines, and Theo was quite sure that wasn't a coincidence. The main workroom was a featureless affair, stainless steel fittings in the style of a morgue, but magic, like science, thrived in uncluttered environments. Theo sculpted the beeswax with steady hands and a keen eye for detail, hope and power flowing equally through his veins. He felt good, and for once, he didn't suspect it was setting him up for a fall.
Tabitha-Ruth, who'd insisted on helping, turned out to be a little better at carving the fine channels. "It reminds me of that summer at camp," she said. "Those horrible striped candles. I suppose I've got Westing's ritual and those blackouts to thank for selling any of them."
"They certainly worked as advertised, at least." God forbid they hadn't; if one of Angela's bombs had been mistimed -- well, that wasn't something to talk about, was it? Angela'd found her way. They all had. "Good reading lights. I would have been in trouble that semester without them."
"You were never going to be in trouble. One of these days, you're going to have to learn that you're not an idiot for losing one game of chess. Maybe when this thing saves my life?"
"And we can both breathe again. Maybe. Who's going to do the animation and the handover, anyway? I assume WPP has someone on staff."
"Our contract expert, yes. A world-class ritualist and theurgist, I'm told, who's arranged the non-human parts of the sacrifice. I've faxed over all the papers and gotten the plan approved, so now all we have to do is the arts and crafts." Tabitha-Ruth glanced into the empty chest chamber of the wax effigy with a slight flinch; Theo couldn't blame her. The volume of blood they'd need wouldn't be trivial, and she'd need a rather radical haircut. "I've been told," she began again, "that I shouldn't be present for the ritual. Too much of a risk. That makes sense, but I have no idea what to do with myself in the meantime, besides sit and wait to drop dead if anything goes wrong. I know you've got work to get back to in Madison, but would you stay with me until this is over?"
"Stay with you? Why do you think you have to ask? I'm at your service. I'll take you out to dinner, to the movies, whatever you want."
"I haven't had a day out at the movies in forever. But the least I can do is pay."
Westingtown wasn't much for fine dining, but when the night of the ritual came, Theo and Tabitha-Ruth found a cozy downtown German restaurant. (Theo had vetoed Greek for variety's sake, Tabitha-Ruth had vetoed Italian because everyone at Harvard Law lived in some Italian restaurant or another, and neither of them were in the mood for Hoo's or for small talk with Gracie Wexler.) Theo wore the best suit jacket in his closet; Tabitha-Ruth wore a sheath dress with bolero jacket, the better to hide the mark on her arm from the blood draw. (They'd used a syringe, of course.) A filling meal, and they were off to the movies, to see a rock-concert documentary, something loud and brash and distracting. It was a calming thing, to listen to loud music in a half-full auditorium and think about nothing else.
They were gambling, of course. Theo was gambling much more than he should have with someone else's life, especially someone he'd grown as fond of as Tabitha-Ruth Wexler. He'd done his reading on the fae, though, and he had to trust his knowledge. The homunculus would pass as human for a few days, long enough for the contract to be fulfilled -- and that was if the Spring Court arbiter didn't give in and eat it first. When the Spring Court asked for human sacrifices, they didn't last long. With luck, the fae would never even know they'd been cheated, and even if they did, Theo was banking on the Westing contract being too dull for them to bother with. The Fair Folk were eternal, but their interest waned. Samuel Westing had been a madman to run down the clock as far as he had, but it wasn't a completely foolish strategy. You never wanted to bank on fae boredom, but if someone else already had... well, you had to play the cards you were dealt, didn't you?
On the way out of the movie, Tabitha-Ruth looked down at her slim silver watch. "It's over, I think," she said. "He was supposed to start at sundown -- the ritualist, I mean -- and here I am, alive. No lurking dread. No cold wind on my face."
"You're sure? You're feeling all right, you promise?"
"I think so, but I wouldn't mind company for the rest of the night. And a drink, maybe. My hotel's just a few blocks down the street. Care to make sure I don't fall down dead on the sidewalk?"
Tabitha-Ruth Wexler failed to fall down dead on the three blocks back to the Westingtown Hilton, and no cold wind picked up to chase them into the hotel bar. Two glasses of wine and one mug of strong coffee each later, they entered the elevator, together, alive. Some years-long vise around Theo's heart was loosening at last, and from the laughter in Tabitha-Ruth's voice, he could tell he wasn't alone.
Nobody was dying tonight, but why not stay close and make sure?