Page 32 of Skulk of Foxes
She leaned in slightly. ‘You also pointed to a snotty kid and said that it’d be a good thing when Rubus used the sphere because the apocalypse would mean that kid would no longer exist.’
‘Yeah,’ I said quietly. ‘I did say that.’
‘I’m not a fool, Mads. I know you were trying to get me to see the light and to realise that getting home to Mag Mell isn’t worth what will happen here as a result. You like pretending that you’re evil but you’re not.’ She looked away. ‘It took me a while to appreciate that. You’re pretty bitchy on the surface.’
I raised my eyebrows. ‘Pretty bitchy? Puh-lease. You can do better than that.’
She twitched awkwardly. ‘Alright. You’reverybitchy.’
It seemed it was my lot in life to give Lunaria pointers. She was lucky she knew me. ‘My teeth are brighter than your future,’ I told her.
Lunaria blinked but she didn’t say anything. I tried again. ‘The expression on your face suggests you’re as baffled as Adam was on Mother’s Day.’
Still nothing. I ploughed ahead. ‘You’re—’
‘I’ve seen wounds that are better dressed than you,’ Lunaria interrupted. She pointed to a nearby bush. ‘Go apologise to that plant for all the oxygen you’re stealing from it,’ she said sternly.
My smile stretched from ear to ear. I felt like a proud mother watching her daughter graduate from university. Not with honours, mind – she wasn’tthatimpressive – but she’d done her best.
I heard a few whispers behind me from the crowd of bogles – and Morgan. It was time to stop messing around. ‘Why are you here, Lunaria? Did Rubus send you?’
She swallowed, as if suddenly nervous. ‘He doesn’t know I’m here. I came for me, not for him.’
She twisted a strand of hair in her fingers then nodded, apparently coming to a decision. ‘And I sent the CCTV footage to the police for you, not him. I haven’t watched it, but you killed Charrie the bogle to save the sphere from getting back to Rubus, didn’t you? The lesser of two evils. And I know you deliberately tried to get yourself sent to prison so that the sphere would be safe. That’s why you shot that gun. I thought I’d help you out and give the police what they needed to lock you up.’
So that was how they got hold of that first edited video. Lunaria was cannier than I’d realised. ‘You gave the police evidence that implicated me in a murder?’ I questioned with a half smile. ‘You truly are a good friend.’ I meant it, too.
‘It’s not that I wanted you in jail!’ she burst out. ‘But I was there. I saw what Rubus was doing. He won’t stop at anything. I tried to talk to him about not using the sphere because of the damage it might cause and he just didn’t care. He’s a hero – but if he continues down this path, he’s going to end up hurting himself as well as everyone else.’
Hurting everyone? Is that what we were calling the oncoming apocalypse? And I’d thought calling me ‘pretty bitchy’ was an understatement. Still, it did seem that Lunaria was starting to see the light. Either that or she was being negative about his plans because Rubus had gone all gooey-eyed over Julie. Hell hath no fury like a scorned faery.
‘I didn’t actually kill Charrie,’ I said. ‘He was working with me, not against me. It’s … complicated.’
‘Is that why you’re here and not in prison?’
‘Kind of,’ I admitted. I wrinkled my nose. ‘You know we can’t actually trust you, right? You can tag along but we can’t divulge any secrets. For all we know, you’re still in love with Rubus and on his side.’
Lunaria stared at me. ‘Of course I’m still in love with Rubus. Of course I’m still on his side. That’s why I can’t let him use the sphere. I can’t have the man I adore being responsible for ending the world! Imagine how he’d feel afterwards when he came to his senses!’
I wasn’t convinced that Rubus had any senses to come to but Lunaria was being entirely earnest. She wanted to save him from himself; only that way could she truly prove her love to him. I sighed. As motives went, I’d heard worse but I didn’t think it was going to work out well for her in the end.
A strange light appeared in her eyes. Up until now, I’d always taken Lunaria to be remarkably dippy and far too naïve but she’d possessed a rational core. Now, however, there was a fervent air about her that was giving me pause. When things were so bad that the likes of me was getting worried about the state of someone’s mind, it was almost definitely time to run for the hills.
‘Talk to him, Mads,’ she said. ‘Talk to Rubus. He’ll listen to you.’
‘If he listened to me, then none of us would even be here right now. Rubus doesn’t listen to anyone.’ I grabbed her hands and squeezed them, attempting to bring her back down to reality. ‘We have to stop him, Looney. We have to do whatever it takes to stop what he’s doing.That’show we help him.’
‘How?’ she whispered. ‘How do we stop him though?’ Her fingers tightened round mine. ‘He’s a hero, Mads. A real hero. He only wants to save us all. In return we have to save him. If people die, it’ll hurt him so badly.’
I was starting to get seriously irked. ‘Lunaria, people have already died. And they’ve died because of him.Hekilled Viburna. In the most cold-blooded fashion possible. And he’s done the same to others. Finn’s brother met the same fate at Rubus’s hands.’
Her eyes filled with tears and her bottom lip trembled.
‘Stay with us,’ I urged. ‘If you can’t stop Rubus when you’re with him, then you can join us and help us to stop him.’
‘No,’ she said, ‘I’m not here to stay with you, I’m here to help you. I don’t want to know where the sphere is or what you’re doing. Rubus is going crazy. You mentioned Viburna. Ever since she died, he’s been stalking around like a madman. He broke Amellus’s arm because he took too long to fetch his breakfast. He chopped off Citrona’s pinky when he thought she was yawning. He’s sent faeries out across the city to find you all. There’s a group in front of the Metropolitan Bar, another searching for Artemesia, and a few dozen who are making their way here. I only managed to get in front of them because these crazy fireball things started coming from the sky. It won’t be long before they’re here. Rubus is going to tear this city apart to find that sphere.’ She licked her lips. ‘And everyone’s afraid of him enough to help him to do it. The more people he hurts, the more he’s going to hurt himself.’
I breathed deeply. Lunaria’s words filled me with foreboding. ‘How did you know I’d be here?’ I asked. ‘Why did you come here and not go somewhere else?’
