Chapter Ninety-Nine: Who’s Pulling the Strings?

I was really hoping not to die again. At least I got to watch how it all played out.

Try as I might, I could not force my eyes over to see the audience members in the theater. I eventually gave up so that I could pay attention to the rest of the movie.

“We can just get in there and knock over all of the casks, right?” Antoine suggested though I assumed he was just saying that in character.

Chris shook his head. “That would be like hitting a beehive with a baseball bat. Some of these creeps are actually safer locked away in those pods. We start busting them, who knows what kind of fight we’ll have on our hands. I struggled enough against just one of them.”

“We could get the serum from the dangerous ones,” Kimberly suggested meekly. “We could make them swap bodies.”

“Chris is right,” Grace said. “A fight ends in us getting killed.”

“So, start suggesting a plan that won’t get us killed, darling. I would really like to not get killed,” Jack Goforth said. “Or possessed. I would really like to not get possessed. Dammit, how am I going to explain Riley to HR?”

They couldn’t just knock over all of the casks, but not just because it would lead to a fight. Something Grace could not say on-screen was that she needed witnesses. Her “Get the Truth Out” trope required her to expose the truth of the mystery in order to beat the storyline. She wasn’t going to be able to get the story printed in a newspaper or magazine as we had thought might be possible. They needed to reveal the mystery to the Society itself. Can’t have witnesses if you knock them out of their casks and turn them into blind cavefish.

I had an idea. I wondered if I would be able to communicate it through my Flashback Revelation trope.

As soon as I thought about it, a list of lines I had spoken on-screen in front of Grace appeared before me engraved on brass plates.

At that moment, I realized firsthand how little I talked to my teammates on-screen. That was something I would have to change.

Luckily, as I lay dying, I had said something useful. I didn’t know how to activate it, but Carousel seemed to understand what I wanted.

The screen cut back to me lying on a couch dying as Grace and the others gathered around to hear what had happened to me. I sure looked rough. No wonder I died as soon as I was out of Grit.

“There’s an aquarium room… with colorful fish,” I struggled to say.

I had been talking about the secret passage to the laboratory. The flashback cut off there, presumably because the audience had already heard the rest of that dialogue.

That was all I had to say. I just hoped that Grace understood what I was trying to tell her.

As I watched her smile, it looked like she did.

“Here’s what we do,” she said.

I wasn’t certain what happened after that, but the next scene showed Grace walking into a packed ballroom as Society members looked to Cristobal for assurances about the now missing Mr. Evergreen.

She had gone with just Jack Goforth. He looked nervous. Grace didn’t. She was ready for the show. It was interesting to see that the woman who spent so much time feeding people, bowling, and reading pulpy paperback novels could look so confident in a den of sorcerers.

“Everyone,” Grace said. “I know who the killer is.”

That was direct.

“I know who did it, why, and how. I can prove it.”

Mr. Oakheart, one of the senior members below the Three, said, “Well, come out with it. Who did it?”

“The murderer,” she said, “Was none other than Mr. Red Rock!”

The crowd started to gasp at the revelation. Some couldn’t believe the accusation.

“But he wasn’t working on his own behest. He did it on someone else’s orders,” she said, looking directly at Cristobal and Mrs. Midnight.

Cristobal picked up on this immediately.

“What?” he said. “Why would I do such a thing?”

“Because Ms. Monarch was about to expose information about Mr. Midnight’s supposed murder and you could not let that happen.”

“Are you accusing him of killing my husband?” Mrs. Midnight asked in a rage. “He loved my husband like his own flesh and blood.”

“Yes, Cristobal was a great friend to Mr. Midnight, but you,” she said, lifting a finger toward Cristobal, “Were a terrible friend to him.”

The party guests gasped again. Emotionally reacting to revelations was the only thing most of the Society members got to do in this story, and they took the job seriously.

A look of rage overtook Cristobal’s face and electricity started to spark from his fingers. Grace was in danger.

“Here’s what happened,” Grace said. As she did, whatever malicious intent might have been directed at her was superseded by her trope of the same name. Anytime Cristobal looked like he might attack her, the scene cut to a flashback. He could not kill her off-screen. She was safe as long as she explained the mystery.

“That’s right,” Grace said, “The man standing with us today is none other than Mr. Midnight!”

More gasps.

“Mr. and Mrs. Midnight always did live in Cristobal’s shadow, didn’t they?” Grace asked, directing her attention toward the party guests.

The screen cut away to flashbacks of Cristobal receiving adoring adulation while the Midnights went ignored in the background.

“You had considered leaving, but how could you? Your power relied on having a large following, and if you left, who would follow? No one, not if it meant leaving Cristobal. He was perfect in so many ways. They loved him, and he was powerful. Leaving wasn’t an option.”

The image changed. Now it showed Mr. and Mrs. Midnight arguing with each other inaudibly.

“That changed when you had an idea, to use the Draught of New Life, the Decanter Vitae itself, against its creator. You brewed yourself into one of the casks downstairs and had your accomplices, Mrs. Midnight and Mr. Red Rock, help you. In fact, you’re down there right now, aren’t you? I don’t know how they got Cristobal to drink your serum. Perhaps we will never know, but it is interesting that right before Mr. Midnight went missing, Mrs. Midnight had taken to drinking port wine, a much stouter drink than before. Perhaps it was stout enough to hide the taste of the mind-controlling serum?”

I hadn’t heard about that part, but as Grace spoke, the scene she described came to life on the screen. Mrs. Midnight took Cristobal to bed and playfully force-fed him a thick red drink. Grace must have guessed right.

“It must be difficult, retaining control over such a powerful sorcerer,” she continued. “That’s why you have been so tired lately, right? It isn’t because the Third is dead, it’s because Cristobal, the real Cristobal, has been fighting you.”

The image changed to show Cristobal/Mr. Midnight staring in the mirror as they fought for control.

“Cristobal couldn’t ever really stop you. Doing so would destroy his precious body. Unlike us, he’s very protective over his.”

The camera cut back to the ballroom.

“But wait,” Mr. Oakheart, one of the Society members cried out, “You said Red Rock killed Ms. Monarch. That isn’t possible. He was right here with us when she died. We saw him.”

Some of the other members nodded their heads and voiced their agreement.

“I’m getting to that part,” Grace said. “That was the real impressive feat. When Ms. Monarch told you she had information related to Mr. Midnight’s death, you had to move to action. The truth is, she likely didn’t know the implication of what she had seen. In fact, we may never know what it was, but if I were to offer a guess,” Grace paused for a moment to think, “She said that she spoke to Mr. Midnight before his death, but when was that, exactly? No one is clear on the date he actually died. Did she see something she shouldn’t have? Maybe she saw Mr. Midnight after the point at which he was supposedly dead. Whatever the case, as a loyal member, she tried her best to get this information back to Cristobal himself.”

Again, Grace was right on the money. A scene showed Ms. Monarch and Mr. Midnight talking to each other about something casually. A flash forward later showed her watching as Mr. Midnight helped someone carry a large metal cask into the Aquarium Room. When she went to get a closer look, both he and his helper were gone, and the room was empty. They had closed the secret door. She looked confused.

“As soon as she talked to you at the party, you realized that she wasn’t going to give up. Maybe you thought that she would start to doubt herself, but she never did. You had to kill her before she talked. But how could you do that with such short notice?”

Suddenly, the screen showed a panning shot of the cask room. In the shot, the magical seal was visible like blue electricity.

“The cask room is basically a fortress to anyone but Cristobal. No one could get in or out because of the seal. Magic couldn’t get through the seal, even magic from a powerful sorcerer. None of the people in their casks could get out to commit the murder, even you, Mr. Midnight. Even if they could get out of their casks, they certainly couldn’t get back in. But you got around it somehow. You killed her. It was a locked room mystery. I had no idea what to think of it at first.”

Cut to Grace growing a sly smile. “But then I figured it out.”

“You see,” she explained, “The murderer was Mr. Red Rock as I claimed earlier. But how could that be possible? He was in the ballroom when Ms. Monarch’s host showed her being murdered. He couldn’t be in two places at once. Besides, wasn’t a ‘Mr. Evergreen’ the person she accused?

“The answer is that Mr. Red Rock was not in the ballroom at the time of the murder, but he was here for something that looked like one. The murder we saw wasn’t real. It was a performance.”

A flashback to the scene right before the murder took place. Cristobal was being led back to his bed at the side of the ballroom.

“You couldn’t kill her, not with Cristobal’s adoring fans watching your every move. But you did know a sorcerer’s meditation that would allow you to take control of a body. Everyone knows that it was that very meditation that the Decanter Vitae was modeled to imitate. You and Cristobal worked on it together, as I am sure you remember.”

The screen flashed back to the conversation Grace had with the former engineer who had explained how the Draught of New Life worked. I had been there for that conversation, but I wasn’t in the shot.

“You couldn’t control someone in the cask room, it was protected, but you could take over one of the puppets in the ballroom. So, you did. You lay there right in front of all of us and used your magic to steal control of Ms. Monarch’s host body.

“No one knew that when the woman wearing the Ms. Monarch mask started screaming bloody murder that it was really you, having severed control from the real Ms. Monarch. You made her body act out being murdered in loud, excruciating detail.”

The scene she described played out as she described.

“After you were done, you surrendered control of the host body, letting her go limp. Then, you declared she had been killed and sent your old friend Mr. Red Rock down into the cask room under the guise of checking on the victim. Of course, we would all consent to that. He had no problem getting in through the magic seal because we allowed it. Then, he ran to the cask containing the real Ms. Monarch and killed her with a knife, but that is where he made his most crucial mistake.”

The scene changed to show Red Rock pulling the real body of Ms. Monarch out of her broken cask and viciously brandishing a knife at her.

“He attacked her with a knife. She had defensive wounds on her hands from where she tried in vain to protect herself and her throat was slit from ear to ear.”

The scene showed it all in gory detail.

“I saw the wounds myself,” Grace said.

Cristobal didn’t respond. I could see on his face that he realized they had messed up.

“But that made no sense,” Grace continued, “I watched Ms. Monarch get murdered, supposedly. She was stabbed in the chest repeatedly. I saw her reacting to it. We all did. How is it that Ms. Monarch’s host reacted to being stabbed in the chest when she herself did not get stabbed there?”

“She’s right,” someone in the crowd of Society members cried out, “Ms. Monarch’s host looked like she was stabbed over and over!”

Now the crowd started to agree with Grace. They were very concerned.

“Your murder plan really was brilliant, Mr. Midnight, but Mr. Red Rock failed in the execution. He has always been a screwup. The real Cristobal knew that. But you kept him around because he was loyal to you, right, Mr. Midnight? It’s strange. Many of Cristobal’s lovers have noticed how cold he has become to them recently. It was all some of them could talk about.”

In fact, Mrs. Cloudburst had mentioned something similar.

“This is a lie!” Cristobal/Mr. Midnight screamed. “Many of you saw Mr. Evergreen in the cask room. Tell the truth.”

Many had seen someone in a Mr. Evergreen mask and verbally attested to it in a jumble of confusion. The crowd looked to Grace to combat that.

“That wasn’t the killer you saw,” Grace said. “That was one of the spare hosts possessed by Red Rock and dressed in the Mr. Evergreen mask. This Evergreen mask,” she said, pulling the mask from her purse. She must have gone back and taken it from where I had stashed it. “Don’t you think it strange that no one saw him pass through the seal? He couldn’t. We hadn’t consented.”

The crowd was incensed by the revelation of the mask.

“But Mr. Red Rock screwed up again and lost control of his host. The man overpowered him and fought to the death to sever Red Rock’s control. He even managed to crawl upstairs and tell me what happened to him. After all, willpower is often the strongest magic. If you need more proof, go look in the Gentlemen’s Parlor. His body is still there broken from the struggle.”

Cristobal seethed with rage. He shot lightning from his fingertips into the air.

“None of this proves anything. This is just a story. I am Cristobal. You can’t prove otherwise.”

He started to move toward Grace.

“Grace,” Jack Goforth said, reaching for her arm, “I’m noticing a fatal flaw in your plan here, babe.”

He started to pull Grace away from Cristobal toward the exit, but before he could make any progress, Cristobal flew into the air, his hair blowing in the wind, and blocked the exit with a storm of neon blue electricity.

“You aren’t going anywhere,” Cristobal said.

“Come on, Chris, any minute now,” Grace said under her breath.

Chris ran down a hallway with Antoine and Kimberly. They made a sharp turn into the Aquarium Room.

Cristobal lifted his hand out toward Grace. Lightning started crackling from his fingers.

“You aren’t leaving until everyone knows that I am innocent. Tell them it was all a lie!” Cristobal screamed. “Mr. Midnight was my dearest friend. I loved the man. Of course, I could simply deny you all the power of the Decanter Vitae if you are not loyal.”

He reached out a hand toward Mr. Oakheart, who had been a prominent voice among the Society members. With great effort, he strained his hand and a thin, glowing thread appeared above Oakheart’s head and was instantly broken. Mr. Oakheart’s host dropped like a puppet with its strings cut.

He turned his hand to Grace and started to strain. “You do not deserve eternal life if you would use it to spite me, who gave it to you!”

If this continued, Mr. Midnight would realize that Grace was not a puppet and we might still be in trouble.

Chris climbed up to the top of the Aquarium and brandished a large flask. He unscrewed the lid and turned it over. A greenish liquid poured out of the flask into the Aquarium and started to dissipate into the water.

“You have a strong will,” Cristobal said, “I wouldn’t have exp–“

Suddenly, Cristobal’s body fell limp. He leaned over. His arms fell down.

The scene flashed back to Grace explaining the plan.

“Go down into the cask room while we still have consent,” she said. “Find the casks of as many powerful sorcerers as you can. Focus on those that are completely opaque. Mr. Midnight couldn’t risk having his body seen. It would be one of the newer ones too.”

“Then what?” Chris said.

“Give them a new host,” Grace said.

Over a dozen Society members fell limp just like Cristobal. Chris had not skimped.

The screen showed those colorful fish in the tank that Mrs. Cloudburst and I had looked at. Some of them did not swim rhythmically or gracefully. Some were downright panicking.

Chris had just turned those fish into puppets. Mr. Midnight probably didn’t find his new host as suitable.

The needle on the Plot Cycle hit The End, as the conclusion of the movie started to play out.

The truth had been exposed. Not just who killed the victim or how, but the fact that Cristobal was not Cristobal. That was also a mystery that needed to be exposed to the Society.

The movie wasn’t over yet. It had a short denouement. Our part was finished though.

As members started crowding in toward Cristobal’s body, he started to stand upright. At least, he tried.

He was struggling to regain control of his limbs. Eventually, with enough help and encouragement from his flocks of adoring men and women, he found himself able to walk and embrace those around him.

Mrs. Midnight was nowhere to be seen. It was probably best she get as far away as possible.

“My people!” he cried out tearfully. They cheered for him.

They really did love that man.

“It’s funny,” one of the partygoers said in a hushed tone, “I always thought Ms. Emerald was a bit of a ditz.”

There was no fight. There was no race out of the building. Grace had solved the mystery without getting our identities revealed. We got a happy ending (if you don’t count my tragic death). The movie ended as Cristobal embraced Grace for having freed him. They chatted inaudibly as the camera faded to black.

As the credits started to roll, I woke up on a couch in the room I had died in. I could hear the party still going on the other side of the mansion.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep