Fear Her Wrath II: Crucible of Glass

Chapter 15

Spending eight hours staring at the clock in in-school suspension confirmed my theory that I would need to space out my visits to Simon's trial just so I didn't die of boredom before the jury reached its inevitable verdict. Ellie, who was always looking out for me, offered to falsify the school attendance records so the powers that be wouldn't know I was skipping class, but I turned her down. Even if I didn't end up in ISS, missing a whole week's worth of class would tank my grades in a way I couldn't afford. So, I did exactly what Ellie told me not to do: I followed the trial on social media. Just as she predicted, it made me feel sick.

But I kept looking.

My only escape was the hunting the Nihilist. Now that we had a motive, it was just a matter of narrowing down the list of subjects. It was incredibly tedious work. Tracking down over a hundred people who were all homeless a year ago is a serious pain in the butt. The ones we could find were scattered all over the slums of Marbrose City—usually with only the faintest trace in the city archives. Some of them had disappeared completely. So, Ellie and I made a spreadsheet, and started ticking boxes. "Lives alone." "Anarchist sympathies." "Knowledge of chemistry." But I didn't feel like we were getting much closer to our elusive quarry.

Just to feel like I was actually doing something useful, I passed on a list of places I thought the Nihilist would hit next to Detective Laurence Sloane, the cop in the Fen Corrigan seemed to trust the most. He was skeptical, within an hour Ellie was showing me an email sent out by the Marbrose Police Department assigning members of the bomb squad to the Joplin Heights fire station and the downtown offices of the Marbrose City fire marshal. I didn't really care whether any member of Marbrose City's upstanding fire services was burnt to a crisp, but frustrating the Nihilist—letting them know that I'd got into their head—was the best way I could think to back them into a corner, and maybe make them overplay their hand.

"Is your staff still broken?" asked Ellie at lunch on Thursday.

"Yeah," I said, not taking my eyes off my laptop screen. "The hinge that it folds on snapped, and I think that ruined the wiring inside. I can't get it to turn on anymore."

"Have you thought about getting it fixed?"

I frowned. Ellie was starting to sound like my dad. "Margaret, have you started your project for Biology yet?" As if I didn't have enough people nagging me about my lack of personal responsibility when it came to anything I didn't actually want to do.

"It's not like I can just take it to an electronics repair shop," I said, as though that were a perfectly reasonable explanation and not a lame excuse. "They'd totally recognize it as Nightwrath's staff."

"What about that name Simon gave you? Emery Rubinstein?"

I drummed my fingers irritably on the lunch table. Ellie really had a knack for pinning me to the wall. I decided to be honest. She'd get the truth out of me one way or another.

"It would feel like... replacing him," I said slowly. "I don't... I mean, I just... not until I have to."

Ellie fixed her eyes on me.

"Maggs, we're like, this close to unmasking the Nihilist. You just need to be ready, y'know? You're not gonna have time to do this at the last minute."

"I know," I said. "It's just..."

I gave a long, defeated sigh. As usual, Ellie was right. I couldn't let my feelings for Simon get in the way of protecting the Fen.

"Fine. I'll go see Emery after school tomorrow. Uh, where did Simon—?"

"Marbrose Catholic Orphan Asylum," said Ellie promptly. "And visiting hours end at 6 o'clock, so don't drag your feet, vigilante."

Apparently besides being my image consultant and social media manager, Ellie was now my social secretary. I was a little annoyed, but only because she was so good at what she did. With my visit to Emery all settled, we both went back to working our way down the long list of potential suspects. Ellie was smiling to herself the way she always did when she got her way. I was idly wondering whether I could make it to Merceron to visit Simon that afternoon when Ellie gave a small gasp and suddenly stopped typing.

"Did you find him?" I asked.

"Um, no," said Ellie, looking more frazzled than I had seen her in a while. "I was, uh... multitasking. Darn. Um, Maggs, I think you'll wanna be at the trial this afternoon. Yeah. Definitely. Get going. Shoo."

I crossed my arms suspiciously.

"Why?"

Now it was Ellie's turn to squirm, which was a nice bit of revenge.

"It's, just... trust me, okay? I'll make sure your teachers don't mark you absent. Trust me. This is important. Go."

She practically packed my bag for me and sent me off scurrying towards the old basement boiler room, which was my go-to location for slipping out of Sefton Polytechnic in an emergency. I checked my phone on the subway ride downtown, but I didn't see anything in the local news that would explain why Ellie thought it was so urgent for me to be at the trial that afternoon. I hoped it didn't have anything to do with Psychosis. If he pulled something, I wasn't ready.

The gallery was less crowded than on the first day, so I was able to find a seat at the front despite arriving a little after 1 o'clock. Jesmond, Simon's lawyer, was just finishing with one of the witnesses from the fire at the Redding Credit Cooperative. I gave a small wave to Simon, who glanced at me before looking back down at his feet. It was about all I could expect from him at this point.

The witness—an elderly Hmong woman who spoke through an interpreter—hobbled down from the stand and left by a side door. There was some satisfied murmuring among the press; I suppose her testimony had been pretty damning. I took another look around the courtroom, trying to figure out why Ellie had thought this was important enough to skip school for. I noticed the sallow girl with dark hair that had been there on the opening day of the trial sitting two rows back. I still couldn't quite place her, although the fact that she was also here made me doubt my theory that she was a fellow student at Sefton. She was still staring at Simon, like she felt deeply for him and what he was going through. I wondered for a moment whether there was some family resemblance, but... no, that wasn't right either. I resolved to grab her on the way out and ask her if she knew Simon—if I got the chance.

Assistant DA Comstock stood up from the prosecution bench and shuffled his papers. I figured he was probably about to call another witness, but I wasn't really paying attention. I was just planning what I would do if Psychosis decided to try something when Comstock pulled the rug out from under my universe in just nine words.

"The prosecution calls Benedict Vang to the witness stand."