The Immortal Crown

CHAPTER 23

Tessa Defines the Truth

Tessa deliberated for a long time on what to do. In the days following her meeting with Danique, she best coped by putting off meeting with Daphne. Tessa went about her normal life, returning to a somewhat regular schedule at school and spending time with the Marches and Darius after class. She also still entertained contact with the YCC and promised to attend future meetings, just in case that turned out to be a connection she wanted to further.

Tessa was finally able to make her decision the day she found out Justin was back in the country. Cynthia told her moments before the news channels all broke the story, and Tessa soon discovered she also had a message from him. Based on the time, he must’ve sent it pretty soon after crossing the Gemman border. There wasn’t much to it, but something about the gesture moved Tessa: Back in civilization. I’ll never make a joke about Panama again. See you soon, sweetie.

He hadn’t had to send her anything. Even if his and the others’ arrival wasn’t a public spectacle, he’d know that Cynthia would pass along whatever he sent to her. Yet, he’d still written to Tessa personally, and she knew why. To him, she was family, and this showed it in a way that all the student visas and fancy schools never could have. The indecision that had been knotting inside Tessa eased, and she finally knew what to do about the volatile information she’d learned that night. Resolved, she called Leo who looked surprised—and a little wary—to hear from her when his face appeared.

“You aren’t coming to see me with another reporter, are you?” he asked.

“Nope. I need to know if you know anything about a . . .” Tessa paused to lift up the tiny microphone she’d worn recently. “. . . a model RXM73200-XS microphone.”

“Not specifically,” he said. “But I know a little about them and their type. What do you need?”

“I need to know how to erase what’s on it—in a way that won’t actually show I erased it. And so that the data can’t be recovered.”

Leo raised an eyebrow at that. “You aren’t in some kind of trouble, are you?”

“No . . . I’m just having ethical qualms about some stuff I’ve recorded for Daphne.” It actually wasn’t that far from the truth and also appealed to Leo’s paranoid nature.

“Well,” he said, “lucky for you, you can do it at home. Go find Cynthia’s radiant warmer.”

“Her what?”

“You use it to keep food warm at parties. I guarantee someone like her owns one. It uses a kind of low-level radiation that’ll wipe that microphone’s storage unit clean, if you get it close enough.”

He explained it in further detail, and when Tessa ended the call, she found that he was right and Cynthia did indeed own such a device. Tessa followed the directions he’d given and then tried to transfer the microphone’s data to her ego, as she and Daphne had done in the past. Nothing happened. Satisfied, Tessa then made another call.

Daphne arrived an hour later, in high heels and red lipstick, giving her usual eye roll when Rufus checked her for her own surveillance. “It’s about time,” she told Tessa, once he’d finished and went off to another part of the house. “Where have you been these last couple days?”

“Busy,” said Tessa, sitting down at the kitchen table. “With schoolwork and stuff.”

“I’m your schoolwork,” snapped Daphne. “Now tell me what happened at your last meeting.”

Tessa took deep breath. “A lot lately. I may have met with some sort of religious leader—some priestess or something—that has ties to Dr. Cassidy and, by extension, the Citizens Party.”

If Daphne’s eyes had gotten any wider, they might have been in danger of popping out. “You did what?”

Tessa launched forward with a retelling of the story, edited of course. Many important parts remained, like how she’d convinced Dr. Cassidy she was having dreams about his religion and how he’d referred her on to Danique.

“Danique didn’t outright say anything too incriminating or admit to her full involvement, but the guy who was with her just before I got there called her Damaris. I did a search on those two names and found a reference to a Damaris Chu, who goes by the alias Danique, who’s been investigated by SCI a few times for religious suspicions but was never found guilty of anything. Of course, the exact details from the servitor’s office weren’t public record, so it’s hard to know what exactly they looked into her for, but I’m sure we can—”

“I’ll be the judge of all this,” said Daphne, who was practically salivating. “Where’s the mic? Let me hear this myself.”

Tessa shifted uncomfortably. “Well, that’s the problem. I went to upload it, and I got an error. There’s nothing recorded. It’s like the microphone wasn’t working that night.”

The idea was so ludicrous, it was clear Daphne couldn’t take it seriously enough to panic. “Of course it was working! We’d just tested it. It was on when you left me. Even if you turned it off—you didn’t, did you?—there’d be something there.”

Without another word, Tessa handed over the microphone and watched as Daphne repeated the attempt to pull its data. Her condescension turned to disbelief and then to outrage. “This is impossible! We tested it. I’ll take this back and see if one of the tech guys can do anything. Shit.” Daphne slouched back in the chair, arms crossed in anger. “It figures. We finally get something, and this happens! Tell me again what you heard. Everything.”

Tessa complied, again leaving out the same key parts—like how along with looking up Damaris Chu, she’d found a similar report about Demetrius Devereaux on the stream, one that linked him to unspecified religious investigations that had never been conclusive. Daphne couldn’t know about him. Tessa had realized the reporter was thorough enough to do a similar search and draw the conclusion that he too was tied into some underground religion—and that by Geraki’s words, Justin had some involvement that didn’t sound like normal servitor behavior. Tessa didn’t know if it was innocent. She knew Justin had met with Geraki a number of times over the last few months, but she’d always assumed it was SCI business. It might very well still be—or it might not. Geraki had made a comment about Justin “believing,” and although that was impossible for Tessa to imagine, she couldn’t take the chance of that insinuation falling into the hands of someone like Daphne. Tessa would protect Justin, as he had protected her so many times, by erasing the recording. If there’d been a way to just pull out the parts that incriminated him, Tessa would’ve done that, but some tech person at North Prime might have uncovered that there’d been an alteration.

“I’ll go on record with any of this,” Tessa told Daphne. “Whatever you need me to swear to—I mean, so long as it was something that happened.”

Daphne grimaced. “I’d rather you didn’t. I’d rather we had the recording, but if this doesn’t pan out, then a teenage testimony will have to do. Not nearly as credible.”

“Well, then,” said Tessa, feeling pleased to succeed in her ruse and to see that Daphne was actually pursuing facts instead of speculation, “I’ll keep going with everything else—the YCC and all that. Maybe it’ll give us leads. And it will look good for citizenship—if I decided to go after it.”

“Of course you will,” said Daphne dismissively. She stood up, microphone clutched in her hand. “I’ll take this to the guys downtown and see what we can salvage.” She glanced around, noting the mostly empty house. “I heard the news today. Call me when your guy gets back. Especially call me if he brings Lucian Darling around so I can finally get an interview. I was annoyed at first when he left the country, but the delay might have been for the best, in light of all this other stuff that’s been uncovered. This internship panned out . . . just not how I expected.”

“Delay . . .” Tessa frowned as she processed Daphne’s words. “Delay in getting an interview with Lucian? Were you expecting one?” Daphne had hinted as much before.

Daphne grinned. “Of course. What’s the point of having a well- connected intern if I can’t make use of it?”

Tessa followed her to the door, trying to piece meaning together with the timeline she knew. Something didn’t feel right, but she couldn’t put her finger on it yet. “You didn’t know I was connected— that Justin was connected—to Lucian until the Arcadian trip was announced.” There it was. Tessa put it together. “No, you did. Didn’t you? You knew all about me before you approached me at school. You knew all about my family and Justin being friends with Lucian.”

“So? What if I did? I wouldn’t be much of a reporter if I didn’t research the person I was approaching for a once in a lifetime internship, now would I?”

“But you said . . . what about all that stuff about wanting to see a girl like me rise above my background?” exclaimed Tessa.

“That’s true too,” said Daphne, who was clearly having trouble understanding why Tessa was so upset. “There are lots of pieces to this.”

“But Lucian’s the biggest one, isn’t he? Did you even want an intern? Or were you just looking for a connection to him?”

Daphne turned and leaned against the front door. “Look, I’ve been chasing this lead with Darling, Cassidy, and the whole idea of religious involvement in the CP for months without getting anywhere. Someone like me couldn’t get an interview with either of them—at least not through normal channels. So, I started looking into abnormal ones. Any connection—or one-off connection—that might get me an in to talk to the senator. I went with his friends, his friends’ friends, his friends’ family . . . and then through a stroke of luck, I found his friend’s ward needed a mentor in journalism. It was a long shot, but it was the best opportunity I’d had in a while. So I went with it.” Daphne sighed in frustration when she saw Tessa was still upset. “If it makes you feel better, you actually have been a million times more useful than I ever expected. When I found out Lucian was leaving, I thought my chances of talking to him were leaving too. But this work we’ve done . . . well, it’s been kind of amazing. You’ve got a real knack for this stuff, kid.”

“Not anymore,” said Tessa, surprised to feel herself on the verge of tears. “I’m done with all of it! I’m especially done with you. I’m not going to be a part of any more games.”

“Uncovering religious motivations in one of the country’s political party’s isn’t a game,” insisted Daphne. “And you backing out of that just because your feelings are hurt is childish. What does it matter if my intentions with you changed, when we’ve gotten so close to uncovering the truth?”

“Because the intentions and methods you use matter,” said Tessa calmly. “I got so caught up, I lost sight of that. And now you’re nowhere near uncovering the truth because you’ve got a dead microphone, and I’m not going to go on the record about what I saw.”

Daphne’s smugness vanished. “Tessa! You can’t do that. If they can’t recover this microphone—”

“Then I guess you’re out of luck.” Tessa turned and raised her voice. “Rufus?” The stocky bodyguard appeared within moments.

“Daphne and I are done for the day. Please make sure she gets out okay.”

Rufus looked as though he wanted nothing more in the world to do than just that and swiftly opened the door, giving Daphne a pointed look. “Tessa—” she tried again, but Tessa wasn’t paying attention anymore.

She walked away, leaving it for Rufus to sort out. All the while, Tessa’s heart threatened to beat out of her chest. Had she ended things soon enough? Was it possible Leo was wrong, and the microphone might be salvageable? No, Tessa felt confident in his advice, if nothing else. He wouldn’t have given her a household remedy if it wasn’t foolproof. The question now was if Daphne could do any damage based simply on what Tessa had told her. When Tessa had invited Daphne over, selling out Lucian hadn’t seemed like such a big deal. Tessa liked him well enough, but she had no real personal stake in his career, and the people did have a right to know who they were electing. But now, knowing the full extent of Daphne’s machinations, Tessa realized the reporter likely wouldn’t have stopped there. Tessa could only hope that in refusing to help anymore, she’d protected Justin and his secrets.

Of course, that still meant Tessa herself had to reconcile the idea of Justin—who spoke out against religion both professionally and personally—being involved with it at a very deep and covert level. And yet . . . did it really change anything between them? Tessa herself clung to loose religious ideas, and he’d always said hers were harmless and she shouldn’t feel bad about holding onto them. If Justin wanted his own, she could accept that.

But as the day progressed and she waited for news of his return, one question continued to burn in her mind: if Justin wasn’t sharing his beliefs with her and the rest of the family, did that mean they weren’t so harmless?