Page 130 of The Dark Mirror

Ducos leaned on the hood of the car. From what she could tell, her seatbelt had broken a rib in the rollover. I had escaped with a bruised cheekbone and some cuts from the glass, while Arcturus had four bullets in his chest and a fifth in his shoulder. With the alysoplasm in him, I doubted his body would be able to force them out, as it usually could.

‘You could have killed us,’ Ducos said to Cordier. ‘Then again, your morals seem to have evaporated. Albéric worked with us both for years, and you betrayed him to the Vigiles.’

Albéric had been another member of Mannequin. Cordier had sold him out to Scion, too.

‘Don’t talk to me about morals,’ Cordier said hoarsely. ‘I needed money. It wasn’t personal.’

‘That makes it fine, then,’ I said.

‘Give it a few years out here, Paige. You’ll realise there’s no bottom to the cesspit of humanity.’

‘I doubt she’ll need a few.’ Ducos braced her ribs. ‘How did you find us?’

‘I could see Paige in the Alps before the tracker failed, and Harald Lauring had told me where Domino had its headquarters, so I … guessed that was where she was going,’ Cordier said. ‘Sooner or later, she had to come out. I told them I’d get her back.’

‘Who?’

‘Tinman.’

Ducos nodded. Her instinct had been right. ‘When did you get involved with them?’

‘I was never not involved.’ Cordier took a shallow breath. ‘I’ll try to keep it short. After my parents’ divorce, I stayed with my father in Roberval. My mother took my sister to Istanbul. I was fourteen at the time, and my sister was eight. Two years later, I was told that my sister and mother had been killed in a car accident. Their deaths led me to train as a paramedic.’

If she was hoping to tug my heartstrings, she was going to be here for a while.

‘I joined an ambulance service in New York City. Four years later, I was approached by the Atlantic Intelligence Bureau,’ she said. ‘The recruiter said there was reason to believe my mother and sister were alive in the Republic of Scion, and promised me the means to find them if I worked for him. I quit my job and signed up without question.’

Now the link made sense.

‘The recruiter wanted me to go undercover inside a European espionage network called the Domino Programme, so I could siphon their intelligence about Scion off to Tinman. We’re called cuckoos,’ Cordier said. ‘You ever see what a cuckoo does with its eggs?’

‘The cuckoo is a brood parasite,’ Arcturus said in an undertone. ‘It leaves its eggs in other birds’ nests. The host bird may never realise that the chick it is rearing is an imposter.’

‘Smartandhandsome. Got yourself a real catch there, Paige,’ Cordier said. I stiffened. ‘Yes. I was a cuckoo among the warblers. There are others.’

Ducos clenched her jaw. ‘How much have you told them, Eléonore?’

‘I told them everything.’

‘Do they know the secret behind Scion?’

‘They know there is one. When I reported what I saw in Paris, they knew they were on to something good. A man … who didn’t look human. A woman who could possess anyone. They couldn’t let Domino keep two rare gems like that. America must always prevail.’

‘That’s why they came after Paige. They want to know what they’re dealing with.’ Ducos said it more to herself than to any of us. ‘Go on. How did they manage to plant you in Domino?’

‘A recruiter at Yerebatan is a cuckoo. He pretended to headhunt me, presenting me as a woman named Aysel Ekren, whose identity I stole.’ Cordier looked at me. ‘See, Paige – we’re not so different. You voyants speak to the dead; we spies borrow their names.’

‘Fuck you,’ I said.

‘You were sweeter when you had amnesia.’

It took all my restraint not to throttle her.

‘I found documents pertaining to my sister at Yerebatan. Operation Stiletto – a successful first attempt to plant deep-cover agents in Scion,’ she said. ‘My mother and Alice were selected. Alice was always precocious – highly perceptive and intelligent, even when she was eight. Domino gave her a new identity and faked her death in Istanbul.’

‘Alice.’ I paused. ‘Do you mean Scarlett Burnish?’

‘Yes,’ she said, sweat beading on her forehead again. ‘Even if we’d been separated for years, Alice was my sister. I couldn’t abandon her, knowing she never had a choice. She was a child when Domino put her in Scion. A fuckingchild, Isaure. You criticise Tinman for its tactics, but she was ten years old. Don’t you dare mention morals again.’

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