“What did you do?” I asked. “I can’t remember anything. You were standing right there, looking at something, and then… I don’t know what happened. I can’t focus on it. Did you throw water at me?”
Preceptor Bellmore shook her head. “The water was my doing. I had to stop Dr. Krieger from digging into your memories, and cold water seems to be the only thing to snap him out of it. Well, short of smacking him on the back of the head with a blunt object and knocking him clean out,” she replied, with a wry smile. “You forgetting everything that happened is exactly how the curse works.”
Now that’s freaking creepy.
“Not to be rude, but can one of you tell me what the heck is going on? I’m coming up empty here.”
“Someone in the coven, likely one of Katherine’s spies, managed to break into my office while I was sleeping and put a mind-control curse on me,” Krieger explained. “It’s the kind of spell that’s used to create spies out of normally loyal insiders—the perfect cover. You see, I didn’t know it had been put on me until Bellmore found me wandering the halls one evening. The cursed individual is unaware that they’ve been cursed.”
Bellmore nodded. “Whenever he goes to sleep, the curse is activated, and he sleepwalks. That’s what he was doing when I found him. The curse makes him seek out people of interest—people the curser has told him to reach out to, from a list whispered when the spell was first put in place. He then places his hand on their forehead, the way he just did with you, which immobilizes them. After the person is frozen, the spell sinks into their mind and forces them to tell him the truthful answer to any question he might have.”
“I am then able to erase the memory of the incident, thus gaining all their secrets without them even knowing they have been spilled,” Krieger added reluctantly. “Now, given that the whole thing involves many complex spells, all mixed together in the body of one curse, it is incredibly taxing on my person. Indeed, it would’ve taken an exceptionally skilled magical to conjure a curse like that and set it loose within me. Few possess the stamina for spell-work of that magnitude.”
I know of one. I’m just not going to think about it. Nope.
I frowned at Krieger. “Wait… does that mean you’ve been trying not to sleep all this time?”
“Yes, exactly. I’ve been trying my hardest to stay awake.”
“But that’s days, Dr. Krieger!”
“Yes, indeed it is.”
Bellmore smiled tightly. “I’ve been babysitting him, so to speak, to stop him from falling asleep. When it hasn’t quite worked, I’ve also been here to subdue him every time he’s fallen under the spell.”
“Does that mean you’ve been awake for days, too?”
She nodded. Well, that explains the massive dark circles under your eyes. I could pack for six months with bags like those. I wasn’t being unkind; she just looked completely exhausted. I’d thought the same thing back at Dennehy’s, though now it made a lot more sense.
“Can’t you restrain him?”
Bellmore shook her head. “We’ve tried everything, believe me. Staying awake for days on end is the last resort in a long line of ideas. Whenever I tied him down, he simply broke out with his magic. You see the burns on his arms?”
“Yeah.”
“Krieger is a Fire Elemental. He kept burning the restraints off, to the point where I’ve gone through four pairs of Atomic Cuffs, all melted now.” She sighed, sitting down on the edge of the nearest bed.
“Wait, what? He can burn through Atomic Cuffs?”
She nodded. “There’s something in that curse that allows him to do it. It’s insanely powerful—terrifyingly so.” She glanced at Krieger with sad eyes. “I’ve been trying my damnedest to break the curse, but nothing has worked so far. You’d think the lack of sleep would kill him, but this spell is keeping him strong, no matter what. I, on the other hand, can only do so much in a state like this. Even with eight hours of sleep, I haven’t been able to do a single thing to break it.”
I looked at the two weary souls, wondering how they’d been left on their own like this. “What does Alton think about all of this?”
Now, I understood why he’d been keeping Krieger’s illness on the down-low, since no one else in the coven knew about this weird turn of events. Not a single soul had mentioned insomnia, or their foreheads being grabbed, or a crazy-strong curse that nobody could break. This was clearly need-to-know, and I’d just walked in at the wrong time. Still, I was pretty peeved at Alton for keeping a secret like this, though all my mind could say to that was, hypocrite. Right now, I was the reigning queen of secrets.
A stilted silence settled between us.
“Let me guess, Alton doesn’t want the rest of the coven to know, so he’s leaving you to figure it out?” I asked.
Bellmore shrugged. “He knows I’m capable, and I can understand his reluctance to disclose this. If word of it got out, there’d be mass panic. Nobody would know who’s been compromised, and everyone would become a suspect. Dangerous things happen when people start to become suspicious of one another, especially when some decide to take matters into their own hands. Folks like me would be first on the kill-list.”
“Shapeshifters would be the first targets, huh?”
“Precisely. Alton doesn’t want any more paranoia about spies leaking into the coven. Warning everyone to be extra vigilant is all he’s willing to do, at this point. He’s confident we can find the spy in our midst, and so am I. The trouble is, we need more time, and that time is running out.”
“All of this is why you were acting so weird at Dennehy’s, right?” I asked. “You wanted to keep Krieger’s condition a secret?”
Bellmore nodded. “I wasn’t exactly expecting to see people from the coven there. In fact, that’s why I went to Dennehy’s in the first place, so I wouldn’t run into anyone. Bad timing on both our parts, I guess.” She glanced at me curiously. “I know why I was there, but why were you?”
“We were looking into something for Alton.”
She glanced at me with suspicious eyes, prompting me to change the subject, pronto.
“Have you had any luck tracing the curse back to the culprit?” I asked.
“None.” She propped her head up with her knuckles. “Nobody else in the coven has shown any signs of being cursed, so it’s not like there’s a specific trail or a pattern to follow.”
Krieger cleared his throat. “Anyway, what’s brought you to the infirmary? You don’t appear injured, aside from two very minor contusions on either side of your forehead. My fault, I fear, though they will fade within the hour.”
I almost felt guilty mentioning it. “I wanted to come and talk to you again about removing the Dempsey Suppressor. We’re struggling to come up with any leads on these kids, and I’m convinced that if I just had my full strength, I could do more to trace them.”
Krieger sighed. “I worried that might be the case.”
“So… you can’t do anything?”
“I am deeply sorry, Harley, but it seems rather unlikely that I’ll be able to help with the Suppressor’s removal right now. I’m extremely sleep-deprived, for one, which is not conducive to surgical procedures. And two, Preceptor Belmore is concerned that I may have been permanently compromised. I would not want Katherine knowing more about you than she already does, should the curse ever overtake me and force me to share my intel with its creator.”
I realized that Alton was probably going to have to hire a new physician, if the curse couldn’t be lifted. Krieger had been compromised. And yet, the thought of having to go through all the Suppressor stuff again, with a new physician, worried me. I had hopes for Krieger.
I shuddered at the thought. “How would they do that, if they wanted to?”
“They can summon me at any time and have me recite whatever I’ve learned. I would not even know that I had done it,” he explained.
“I can see why they chose you,” I muttered, feeling on edge. For us, Krieger was an especially dangerous choice for a spy, since he had access to everyone in the coven and knew all of their abilities, thanks to the Readings. Including mine…
Krieger nodded slowly. “Yes, it would appear that whoever did this chose very carefully. I know a great deal, and I have access to everyone’s records. I know their strengths and weaknesses, and what talents they possess. I have been utterly compromised. It is my deepest shame.”
“Hey, you didn’t do this to yourself,” I replied sharply. “This isn’t your fault.”
“No, but I failed to be more vigilant.”
Bellmore sighed. “Dr. Krieger, this isn’t on you. Yes, you’ve been compromised, but you’re taking pretty hefty steps to fight it. You get points for that.” She turned to me, her amber eyes narrowing slightly. “Now, we’re going to need your assurance that you won’t breathe a word of this to anyone. I hardly think I need to tell you why.”
“I’ll keep my mouth shut about Krieger’s curse,” I promised. “The coven is crazy enough right now without adding to everyone’s panic.”
“We’re grateful for that,” she said quietly.
“No problem.” I didn’t want to mention it out loud, but this whole thing made me feel really uneasy, to know that anyone in the coven could be controlled or impersonated. We’d been worried enough about a spy who might be able to Shapeshift. If that person could Shapeshift and had the means to control minds, we were royally screwed. I hated getting downhearted about things, but what else could I do when faced with such a crap-storm of insane hurdles?
“Are you okay?” Bellmore asked.
“Yeah, I was just thinking about something that happened while we were out investigating,” I said, keeping it vague. “I don’t know if Alton mentioned it, but someone attacked us while we were working, and they were impersonating you. We knew it wasn’t you because they were weaker, and their mask slipped for a second, but it’s kind of concerning that they used you like that… whoever they were.”