she didn’t much care for.
“I believe the Old Dread sees into the Middle Dread’s thoughts,” Emile’s father told her gravely. “He will know and come after the Middle if he kills Seekers himself, because the old man is just and would not tolerate such evil acts. But if the Middle gets others to do the deeds for him, perhaps the Old Dread doesn’t know.”
“Stop!” his wife hissed, reaching to cover his mouth, like a small child shushing a larger one.
He held her away and went on, “So he does not kill them himself. He gets them to kill each other instead.”
“Be quiet!” His wife was frantic. “He will know.”
“How will he know?” Monsieur Pernet asked her, raising his voice. “He doesn’t see into my mind.”
In a low, terrified undertone, she said, “He will hear from someone what we’ve done—”
“We’ve lost our athame. We’ve lost our son. We’re not Seekers anymore. He doesn’t care about us.”
“We agreed we would say nothing,” she pleaded in a whisper.
“I will tell her what we know,” Monsieur Pernet said. His wife was struggling in his grasp, but he continued to hold her patiently, like a lion holding an unruly cub. More gently he said, “If we cannot tell a good Seeker the truth, we serve no purpose at all.”
Madame Pernet turned her head away, and Catherine suspected the woman would have cried if she’d had the energy for it.
“He can’t kill Seekers himself, or the Old Dread will know what he’s done. So he gets Seekers to kill each other for him,” Catherine repeated.
In a way, this was what Briac had been trying to tell her on the Tube. For a long while she sat still, thinking through the ramifications of this new information. How stupid and naive she’d been! All this time, she’d thought only that the Middle was a terrible Dread, failing to keep Seekers honest. But this made much, much more sense. The Middle was the one causing Seekers to do terrible things. That was why so very many terrible things had been done. She asked, “How does he get them to kill each other?” But she realized she already knew. “He…he promises them the athames of other houses?”
“Sometimes, yes,” the man told her. “And other times he encourages them to take revenge on another family for past wrongs done.”
“How did you learn this about him?” she asked.
“The Middle hides his tracks well. Most Seekers who have been his victims have suspected nothing of his greater plan,” he said. “But the Middle does not hide his tracks perfectly. A friend, in my training days, he confided to me that he’d made a pact with the Middle Dread. He made me swear an oath that I would never tell another person. But this agreement with the Middle—my friend said it would secure an athame for his family, an athame belonging to another house. If you come from a family that is desperate enough to get their hands on an athame, you might be willing to make such a pact.”
“And did he get an athame?”
The man slowly shook his head. “I never saw him again. He disappeared, but not, I think, before killing someone else.” The man paused, and Catherine perceived how long the man had been holding his silence, how strange it was for him to speak now but what relief it brought. In a moment, he continued, “You see, the next year, on the estate, another friend of mine had become obsessed with taking revenge against the first friend’s family. Enemies had been made.”
“But why?” Catherine asked. “Why does he want us dead?”
The man shrugged, a heavy, exhausted motion. “He is his own creature, with his own plans. That is how you must think of him. One of his plans—maybe his only plan—is to get rid of Seekers.”
“And you think that’s what happened to Emile?” she asked him. “The Middle Dread convinced someone to come after him for his athame?”
After a moment’s careful thought, Emile’s father answered, “I believe someone came to Emile and made him doubt. Someone close to him”—Monsieur Pernet knew it had been Emile’s cousin Anthony, Catherine understood all at once, but he hadn’t shared that unpleasant truth with his wife—“offered to show him things about Seekers that he wouldn’t learn on the estate, things that were more true than what his instructors were teaching him. This person convinced Emile to come away with him. And then, yes, he killed Emile for his athame.”
But why did Anthony need my