They threw Leroy, Charlotte, and Philip in a small, windowless room in the center of one of the compound's buildings. Philip sat in one of the chairs, defeat written all over his face. Charlotte leaned up against the wall, crossing her arms over her chest. Leroy paced back and forth.
"We've got to figure out some way out of this," Charlotte said.
"And how do you propose we do that? We already blew our one chance to escape, now that they know what Philip can do. I've got nothing," Leroy said, running his hands through his hair.
"I'm pleased to hear that you've given up," Anne Boleyn said as she opened the door and strode right in. "It might make you more agreeable than the last time we welcomed you here."
"You and I have very different definitions of the word 'welcome.'"
She glared rather pointedly at him. "If you want this girl to get out of here alive, I'm going to need you to cooperate."
"I don't know what it is you want me to do."
"Think you idiot. You are linked to that sword for some reason—so find it. When you have an answer, then we can talk about letting your friend go." She slammed the door behind her as she turned to leave.
"What was that about?" He scoffed, "How am I supposed to find the stupid thing? They've been looking for thousands of years and couldn't do it."
Charlotte bit her lip, trying not to make eye contact with him.
"What's with the look? Do you know how I can find it?"
She tilted her head to the side and crossed her arms over her chest. "Even if I did, I wouldn't tell you."
"Why not? It's our only way of getting you out of this alive."
"You've seemed to have a death wish ever since you showed up here—it's like you have no sense of self-preservation whatsoever. You're making it too easy for them to kill you."
"I came here with the intention of getting you out safely. If that means I make a deal with them...so be it."
"I'm not letting you give up. We'll figure a way out of this—for all of us." She grabbed onto his arms and squeezed a little, hoping to imbue him with a little confidence.
"What do you want from me, Char? You want me to live through this just because you ask? What am I supposed to do after that? I'll still have to watch you die." He took her hands in his and stared into her eyes. "Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, maybe not even fifty years from now. But it'll happen someday because you're human and I'm a Grim and I can't do anything about it. I don't want to watch you die. I've lost too many people in my life. I'd rather die now than have to watch helplessly while another loved one gets ripped away from me."
Charlotte tried to ignore the way her stomach flipped when he'd said loved one, reminding herself that he might not mean it the way she hoped.
"Please, Leroy, I don't want to spend the rest of my life thinking I could have prevented this—"
"Good, then you know exactly how I feel." He squeezed her hands tighter, "Please, just tell me what you know about finding the sword."
Just then the door burst open again and Anne Boleyn kept a tight grip on her smart phone. "Now then, Charlotte. I'm getting verytired of you. You know more than you're letting on and it's time you shared with the rest of us. I'll give you two options. First: you will tell him how to find the sword, and I will let you go in peace once the ritual is over and Leroy Whitten is dead."
"And the second option?"
She narrowed her eyes in a way that made Charlotte quiver a little despite trying to keep up a brave face. "The second option is that I kill your friend, and then I kill you."
"What friend?"
"I'm so glad you asked, dear." She unlocked the phone before turning the screen for Charlotte could see. The image she gleefully showed her was of Tameka studying in what appeared to be a near-empty library. At the bottom of the screen was a newspaper with the day's date. Charlotte's breath caught in her throat. "If you don't want to cooperate, that's fine. But then I'll be forced to kill your friend. I'll make sure she knows it's because of you, and I'll make you watch before I have them kill you too. I urge you to reconsider my generous offer."
Charlotte sighed, tears slipping out of the corner of her eyes. She looked at Leroy in apology. She couldn't let them hurt Tameka—not even for him. When they made eye contact, he nodded, encouraging her. She took a deep breath, trembling as she said, "Arthur Pendragon was the first Grim. He hid the sword somewhere. I don't know how you can find it, but you're the only one who can find it because you're his son. My father suspected there was some kind of blood link between the Pendragons and the sword."
Leroy's eyebrows furrowed. "That's ridiculous. I... I'm not the son of some ancient king."
Charlotte shrugged. "You were destined to become a Grim before you were even born. Agbenyaga told me so. Why else do you think that is?"
Anne Boleyn and Thomas looked at him with their mouths gaping open. Boleyn recovered herself enough to prod, "Well, Leroy, any ideas?"
"How am I supposed to know? I never even met the guy. It could be anywhere."
"A little incentive might help you figure it out," Thomas said, grabbing Charlotte and wrapping his arm around her throat. He pulled a small dagger from his pocket, pressing the point against her jugular. "Tell me where the sword is, or she dies."
Leroy's eyes widened, and she could see his breath start coming faster. "Let her go, Thomas. This isn't going to help me think."
"I'm going to give you ten seconds before I slit her throat."
The outraged look on Leroy's face turned impassive as he squeezed his eyes closed in thought.
"Ten...nine...eight..."
"Shut up! I'm trying to think."
"Seven...six...five..."
"Leroy, it's okay. Don't tell him—get out of here and get Tameka somewhere safe." Charlotte said as she felt Thomas dig the point of the knife a little harder against her skin.
"Four...three...two..."
"New York!" Leroy shouted, a little out of breath. "It's in New York. Off the north shore of Long Island."
"Why would it be there?" Boleyn asked, her eyebrows furrowed together.
"It's where my mother is buried. It's only a guess, but it's the only hunch I've got," he said, his voice cracking with desperation.
"Let go of her, Thomas. We have arrangements to make," Anne Boleyn said triumphantly as she strode out the door.
Thomas let go of Charlotte, hurling her across the room toward Leroy. Then he slammed the door behind him, the slam echoing in the small room.
"Well this has been a great success," Philip said, kicking his feet out in front of him from where he'd been sitting in the corner for the entire exchange like he'd already resigned himself to his ridiculous fate.
"I hate this dumb sword," Leroy muttered in agreement, sitting down against the wall.
"The dumb sword that can kill us all," Philip grumbled, pulling his knees up to his chest as he wrapped his arms around his legs. "Yeah, me too."
"You don't have to stay. You've risked enough for me already. I appreciate it, but you shouldn't die because of me."
After a pause of hesitation, Philip dragged his eyes up to meet his. Charlotte could see tears welling up in his eyes. He sighed as one of the tears spilled across his cheek, "Someone has to make sure they keep up their end of the bargain about Charlotte. Since you'll be super dead and all."
Leroy smiled a small, grateful smile. "Thanks, Philip. That...that means a lot."
Philip grumbled something like "You're welcome" and then they fell into silence, waiting for someone to come collect them.
***
No one arrived until the next morning. Philip had lined up some of the chairs and slept on them, while Leroy made a pillow out of his leather jacket and slept on the floor, Charlotte tucked under his arm, laying her head on his chest like she used to do.
"Wake up!" Thomas shouted, throwing the door open with a clang and flicking the lights on and off. "Today's the day Leroy Whitten finally dies!"
Leroy flipped him off with a grimace as all three of them got to their feet, groggy and achy. They were ushered out to a big black escalade. There were a few of Anne Boleyn's Grim guards flanking the car and two sitting in the driver and passenger seats. Philip, Charlotte, and Leroy were pushed into the backseat, where they saw two more guards in the back row.
Before the door was shut on them, Anne Boleyn stood in the open doorway, placing one hand on the door jamb across from her to create a barrier.
"Thomas, George, and I will be going ahead, and we'll wait for you. Human modes of transportation are too damn tedious for me. Don't get any ideas of escaping. Charlotte, we've still got someone tailing your little student friend. And Leroy, I won't hesitate to let Thomas kill Charlotte in whatever gruesome way he wants if you leave." She looked at Philip and added, "Well, you can leave. In all honesty, I don't know why you're still here."
Leroy muttered, "God I hate her," under his breath as she slammed the car door and one of the guards started the engine and headed out the gate.
"Did your mother tell you anything about the sword?" Philip asked quietly, looking out the window as they drove out the tall gates.
"Not the sword specifically. She used to tell me stories about the Knights of the Round Table when I was a kid. But they were just stories. I doubt she even knew my dad was that Arthur—if it's even true."
"Is it weird that I cannot imagine what you were like as a child?" Charlotte said, looking at the grizzled man Leroy was, unable to unravel the years in her mind to a time when he might have been young and hopeful.
"I'm sure he was just as insufferable back then," Philip said, elbowing Charlotte, eliciting a small smile.
"I'm beginning to regret introducing you," Leroy said, still looking out the window instead of at them.
When they got to the airport, they boarded a small, private plane that appeared to have been chartered specifically for this trip. The three of them sat on an alcove couch built into the side of the plane. Charlotte curled into Leroy's side and feigned sleep so that she could snuggle into his neck without needing to give an explanation. She breathed in the comforting smell of him, trying to commit it to memory. She wanted to remember the exact combination of cigarettes and soap, the whiskey scent prevalent again, but faint. She didn't want to forget the feeling of his warm arm wrapped around her shoulder. There wasn't much hope she'd get to experience either of them again after that day.
The vision Romeo had given her the previous morning came back to her and she knew she couldn't tell him how she felt—not now. He cared about her, but that didn't mean that he was in love with her. She didn't want one of her last memories of him to be professing her feelings to have him reject them. And what if he didn't reject them? Was it better to find out that he did love her right before he was executed? It was just all around better for her to avoid the subject.
She tried to push all those thoughts from her head—especially Leroy's impending death. She wanted nothing more than to enjoy the last few hours she had left with the crazy, dysfunctional, sexy man she loved with without depressing herself with reality. She fell asleep to him playing with the tips of her hair, breathing in the smell of him.
***
"Philip," Leroy whispered, trying not to wake Charlotte, "I can't apologize enough for dragging you into this. I know that by helping me you're risking your own life and your dad's too. I may not like him, but I am still sorry. I don't know if there's any way to repay you, but..."
"Leroy, stop apologizing. It's not like you and...and I'm trying not to think about why you want to make amends, alright?"
"Yeah, sure." He paused a few moments before asking, "Did you mean what you said back there? About...about watching out for Charlotte?"
"Of course, I did. I know what she means to you. If you die—and I'm still praying for a miracle—I won't let it be for nothing." Philip looked out the window just as Leroy thought he saw a tear run down his cheek.
Leroy looked out the window too, feeling a strange sense of calm. He'd resigned himself to his fate. The last thing keeping him from complete acceptance was whether Anne Boleyn and her cronies would keep up her end of the bargain to let Charlotte go. But he trusted Philip to take care of all that. Philip was nothing if not thorough. He grabbed a napkin from the table and scribbled all of his bank account information and the fake names associated with each account. He wrote out instructions for how the money was to be distributed—an astronomy scholarship set up in his son's memory, money given to help orphans and the arts in his daughter's, and more than enough for Charlotte and Philip to live off if they wanted. He handed his napkin-will-and-testament over to Philip, "Can you take care of this for me?"
Philip nodded and pocketed the napkin.
They landed hours later and climbed down the steps of the plane into another waiting rental SUV. The closer they got to his grandfather's old house, the more Leroy felt Charlotte curling closer to him. He appreciated it, even if the only reason she did was to comfort him about the whole impending-death thing.
The mansion was as huge and as beautiful as ever, but the years of neglect had taken their toll—the paint was faded and weathered. The grounds, too, were overgrown—he hadn't set foot on the property since he'd collected his grandfather. He didn't have any reason to—he had no connection to the property; he just couldn't stand for someone else to own his mother's final resting place.
"What is this place?" Charlotte asked as they walked through the dusty entrance hall.
"It belonged to my grandfather. My mother grew up here. This is where she met my dad. I think maybe he hid the sword somewhere on the property."
Charlotte slipped her hand into his and he turned to look at her. He squeezed her hand and did his best to smile.
"Leroy..." she started, and his spirits raised despite his efforts to squash them down. The way she was looking at him, he could almost convince himself that she loved him.
"Come on, then. We don't want to wait around all day," Thomas said, walking down the hall from the back of the house.
"You don't have to be such a dick," Philip snapped at Thomas. "He's coopering in his own murder. The least you can do is let him say goodbye."
"I didn't get to say goodbye—why should he?"
They trekked outside, no one knowing where to start the search. Anne Boleyn and Thomas looked to Leroy. He shrugged, his eyes instinctively flicking to the tree at the edge of the property and the tombstone he'd had installed there.
He knew it was crazy, but he thought he saw his mother standing next to her grave. He took a step toward her, only to find that the figure turned and ran from him. She headed toward the ocean lapping at the edge of the property. Leroy followed, his heart beating hard in his chest. The ghost disappeared into the waves.
He took a deep breath and tried not to think about the fact that he was going to have to go into the ocean—something he had managed to avoid for over a century. It was bad enough he'd died out there once—he wasn't thrilled about dying there again.
Charlotte squeezed his hand and he felt a small wave of calm wash over him. He heard her whisper to Philip as they hurried down the white sands of the beach. "Do you think this'll work? Do you think they'll actually kill him?"
"I have no idea. I hope not. I'm not too optimistic, though."
Leroy wondered whether they thought he couldn't hear them or if they thought he'd just slipped into some kind of catatonic state and wouldn't care.
"Shut up," Thomas shouted at them, trailing along behind them with Anne Boleyn wobbling alongside him, struggling to get through the grass in her high heels.
Leroy was actually grateful. The closer he got to dying for the final time, the more his resigned calm wore off. He had died enough times to know that it always hurt.
They reached the edge of the water. Leroy gulped, his veins starting to pound as he grew more nervous. Each step he took toward the beach, a strange ringing rose in his ears as he felt himself being tugged toward something.
Leroy let go of Charlotte's hand and walked past the others, compelled forward. The faint humming noise continued in the back of his head as he moved toward the water. The tide moved out of his way with each step, receding farther and farther away from the coast. He walked out into the waves for over ten minutes, the water never returning to engulf him—as though he repelled it. Each step forward made the music inside his head grow stronger.
With one final step, the waves washed back, revealing a sword hilt stuck in a large chunk of ocean rock bed.
Despite being submerged underwater for who knew how long, the silver hilt still gleamed as though it'd just been polished. Looking at it made the humming in his head reach a fever pitch, and it gave him a headache. Something about it made his veins feel itchy with apprehension.
The party circled around the sword. Anne Boleyn's face broke out in a smile as she stepped forward. She gestured for Leroy to step toward her as she took Thomas' dagger. Instead of his neck, as he'd been expecting, she grabbed his wrist and cut a deep line. Blood poured out, dripping down over the sword.
At first nothing happened, Leroy's blood rolling down his arm onto the shiny metal, making him even woozier than he already was.
But then the sword started to glow, and his blood coagulated into a thin line. The diamond inlaid in the hilt started to pull the blood inside, turning the bright red of a ruby. Anne Boleyn let go of him, pushing him back as she wrapped a hand around the sword to pull it out. It wouldn't budge. She forced everyone in her staff to take a turn trying to draw out the sword. Her expression grew darker and darker as each person failed to pull it out.
Leroy couldn't help laughing despite the headache, holding his hand over the cut in his arm to stem the bleeding.
George groaned, looking over at his sister with a defiance Leroy was sure he'd be punished for later. "It's Excalibur, for God's sake, didn't you have a plan B?"
"To be fair," Charlotte said from behind them, "Excalibur was not the sword Arthur pulled from the stone. It was given to him by the Lady of the Lake and..." when George glared at her, she mumbled "sorry" and stepped back.
Leroy reached for her hand and gave it a small squeeze. A genuine smile broke tugged up the side of his mouth as he said, "Always the nerd."
"Get the sword, Leroy," Anne Boleyn hissed at him, popping the small bubble of happiness as he dropped Charlotte's hand.
"Funny isn't it?" Leroy said, crossing his arms, "That you need my help this much. Do you think you'll be able to manage killing me with it once I take it out or will you need my help with that too?"
Her face had turned a deep shade of purple. "Just get the fucking sword. Then we'll talk about what else I might need from you."
"You said I'd get to kill him," Thomas hissed at Anne Boleyn.
"Things change Thomas. It appears that we need him alive."
Thomas' face turned an irate shade of purple and he looked like he would stab his boss with the sword if he could.
The smug expression disappeared from Leroy's face and he stepped forward, the humming in his head turning to a distracting, ancient chanting. He wrapped both hands around the hilt as the sword started to glow so bright it hurt his eyes. He started to pull.
The sword moved just an inch.
The ghost of his mother appeared in front of him again. "It's your destiny," she whispered with a smile. "Take it."
The sword came free without any more effort, the weight of it making Leroy stumble back into the sand of the ocean floor.
The second it was loose, the water that had been held at bay came flooding back, sweeping everyone up and dragging them under the waves. The cold of the Atlantic ripped through him as he struggled to get to the surface. Panic rose inside him as the water filled his lungs—a feeling he'd never forgotten and had hoped to never feel again.
The ocean dumped them all back on the shore. Leroy threw up the water, his back spasming as he dropped the sword beside him. Once he managed to catch his breath, he looked up to find massive confusion as everyone tried to get their bearings. Frantic, Leroy looked for Charlotte and Philip, who'd washed up a few yards to his right. He hurried toward them.
Leroy tried to pinpoint Thomas in all the confusion, but he'd seemed to have shadow-travelled away. But in surveying the beach, he saw Anne Boleyn stumbling toward the sword. She tried to pick it up, pushing sand out of the way to reach her hands all the way under it, but it wouldn't budge. He made accidental eye contact with her and she screeched, "You!What did you do?!"
"C'mon, let's get out of here," Leroy said, gripping one of Philip's forearms and gesturing for Charlotte to grab the other. Before she could, Philip flew backward like he'd been shot. Leroy hadn't heard any guns go off, but he was surprised to see that Philip was bleeding out of his hip like he had in fact taken gunfire. Leroy looked around, trying to figure out where the shot had come from.
But when he turned around, he saw that the enraged queen had both her hands pointed out toward him and they were glowing. She narrowed her eyes at him and he started to shiver all over. Water started filling his lungs. He started to choke on it, unable to get it all out. He started to turn blue as a thin layer of ice broke out over his skin.
He couldn't even get any words out to beg her to stop.
Relief flooded over him when he could breathe again, and he stopped shivering as he started to thaw out. Anne Boleyn lay motionless in the sand, crumpled, her neck broken. George, too, was incapacitated in the sand beside her. Philip was nowhere to be seen and Leroy let out a sigh of relief. They might all just get out of it after all.
Charlotte rushed over and grabbed Leroy's hands, brushing the last flecks of ice from his arms. She looked up into his eyes with that look on her face that made him weak in the knees. "In case I don't get another chance to say it, I wanted to tell you that I—"
But Leroy never got to find out what the end of that sentence held for him. In the blink of an eye Thomas reappeared behind her, one arm wrapped around Philip's broken neck, siphoning a golden energy from him. With the other hand, he plunged his dagger into Charlotte's heart. Blood started gushing from the wound as he pulled the dagger out and swiped it across Leroy's neck.
Leroy gasped as he struggled to maintain consciousness as the air ripped into his throat. He did his best to catch Charlotte as they fell forward into the sand.
"If you won't die today," Thomas whispered as the edge of Leroy's vision went black, "then at least she will."