Page 27 of Roses and Murder
“I couldn’t tell you why they didn’t run. Black Paranoia first cropped up when my grandmother ran this place. I’ve only beenalive since we had the cure, but I’ve been told untreated, it’s worse than death. The Barons all hate each other, even if they are related, but they all have access to the cure.”
“That should make him easier to find, though, right?” I asked.
“Harder to stop if he can give us disease,” Neco pointed out.
“If you take the cure as soon as you know you’ve been exposed, you don’t have to deal with the badness of figuring out you have it.”
“How’s he getting around?” Beck asked. “Demon Pox sets people in a panic because there’s no cure. This should, too, because you have to kiss Barons’ arses and hope you have something they need or admit Guttertown has skilled healers. Trevils would have heard about it and pass that to Neco and Lance.”
“You’re trained to protect the girls. They have their own training,” the Madame said. “Some things, you can’t see until their clothes come off and some of these savages have the means to take daily baths and choose to do it once every fortnight. The smell might not tip anyone off.”
“It tipped Lance off,” Neco said.
Beck had to be in on Ollie’s plot because he usually was. I was honestly shocked Ollie hadn’t gotten some Ronan-level vengeance from the Madame, or my mother for that matter, for all the nights we ended up in the cells.
“Do you really need to know how Lance got that information or would you rather use it to catch the Ghoul?” Beck asked.
“I work better withallthe information. Knowing how Lance obtained that information would help me figure out what to do with it.”
Tough shit. I was keeping the fact that Basselt was Theran to a ‘need to know’ basis and Neco and I weren’t friends anymore. Still, I had to give him something.
“You and Lance are smart in different ways,” the Madame said. “You can’t think you’re the only person helping him.”
The Madame gave me a sly wink. That woman and her spies. She didn’t even have one in my tavern and she’d figured it out. Beck and his mom were close, but he didn’t tell her everything. Especially not secrets that weren’t his to tell. No, that woman figured out my cook was Theran and hunting the Ghoul for me all on her own.
“Have your little birds heard anything about the Ghoul?” I asked.
“I’d tell you if I did, especially since your mothers’ lives are on the line. They are mostly placed in the houses of people I want to keep an eye on and there are a few in the palace. The Barons don’t know who the Ghoul is, but they don’t think he’s one of them. They don’t think one of them is capable of the things he’s doing. I asked as soon as I found out Caitrin’s life depended on catching him. I just hadn’t had a chance to talk to you.”
I let out a breath. That meant Neco was safe for now. They hadn’t given him a name to pin the Ghoul’s crimes on him. He still needed to hold off just in case it did end up being someone related to the Barons because they still could.
I thought finding out the Ghoul was sick would be a gotcha moment, but it just complicated everything.
Lance had some serious explaining to do, but if I pressed it, he was going to fuck up my nose again. The Madame set it so it was straight, but if it got broken again, it was going to hurt like fuck and might end up permanently crooked.
I was going to get it out of him, I just needed to figure out how to talk to Lance again. Especially since it felt like someone knifed me in the gut when they all disappeared into the bath house and I knew what they were doing in there. I should have been with them.
I felt stupid I let it go on this long and I’d feel even dumber if I told him. I just needed to find a way because it was needed.
Lance had originally wanted to talk to Athan and Tarja, but the Madame gave us the information we needed. She told us theonly disease in Nestran that attacked the body and the mind was Black Paranoia and it did different things to different people.
The Madame said it mostly amplified things and lowered any barriers that might tell someone something was wrong. If someone thought their spouse was cheating before they got it, they became obsessed with that and took it too far. If they thought someone was swindling them, it started out with them just trying to prove it and ended in violence.
She told us if someone was fantasizing about murder, but wasn’t acting on it, Black Paranoia would eventually push them to it without treatment. The Madame also said even though they kept treatment to themselves, the Barons took it very seriously because someone with Black Paranoia would attack one of them. They usually locked themselves in their castles until it died out.
We were about to walk to Ollie’s farm to borrow horses again when we found Trevils waiting outside the tavern. He tipped his hat to Lance.
“If you’re going to be working with me, I’d rather talk where the food and drink is better.”
“I can do that. I have something you might not have figured out yet.”
I knew damned well Trevils didn’t know that becauseIhadn’t figured it out. I hadn’t been to all the crime scenes, but I’d gotten a lot from the ones I’d seen. Anything I’d missed, Trevils would have figured out. The Madame was right. Sometimes you couldn’t tell until someone got naked. You certainly couldn’t tell when they weren’t even in the room.
This was going to drive me insane.
“Good because he’s going to strike tonight,” Trevils said.
Damn. And I didn’t know who he was or what I was going to do with him when I found him if he ended up being Baron. If the Ghoul was a Baron and hiding that he had Black Paranoia, they’d just treat him and send him to Guttertown to kill.
