by Karen Chance
Then Gessa finished wrestling a tray of hand pies out of the oven and took a taste. And rolled her eyes at us. She tapped a cabinet with the handle of a wooden spoon, and I opened it to find—
“Okay, yeah.”
“What is that?” Reiðarr demanded, because he was apparently now a chef.
“Ambrosia,” I told him, sprinkling a liberal dose over the eggy mix on his spoon.
He tried another tiny taste, looking dubious, and then his eyes widened and he ate the whole spoonful. He grabbed the jar before I could dose my own eggs. “What is this?”
“I told you: ambrosia. Or smoked paprika, if you’re looking for it in the grocery store.”
He looked like he was making a mental note.
Ring, ring, ring.
“All right, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” Marlowe snapped. “Is that clear enough for you?”
“I don’t know.” I ate some eggs. Those were damned fine eggs. I shared a look of triumph with my co-chefs.
“What do you mean, you don’t know? What more do you want?”
I licked my fingers. “Normally, an apology comes with a little more than that. Like an acknowledgment of guilt. What, exactly, are you sorry for?”
There was a sudden silence on the other end of the line.
“Bang, bang?” I prompted.
And got an outraged noise in return. “You can’t still be upset about that!”
“Still?” I felt my blood pressure rise. “You shot me! All of a day ago!”
“I clipped you all of a day ago,” he corrected nastily. “To slow you down. And you should be grateful—”
“Grateful?”
“I had a perfect shot, and that gorilla you were with never even heard me. I could have killed you—”
“So I should be thanking you?”
“Apologizing for wasting my time, perhaps—”
Click.
I was going to tell Louis-Cesare about that gorilla comment.
I swore to God.
“Turn off,” Gessa advised, looking at the phone.
“If I do, he’ll be here in person—”
Ring, ring, ri—
“Let me spell it out for you,” I snapped at Marlowe. “I am done. Finished. Out of patience, time, and interest in anything to do with you—”
“This isn’t about me! This is about the weapons—”
“What weapons?”
“What weapons?”
It was approaching screech territory. I pulled the phone away to save my hearing, and saw Sven wince. I took the party into the hall, because it wasn’t fair for everyone to have eardrum damage.
“You know damned well what weapons!” Marlowe was yelling. “They couldn’t have used all of the ones they took from Radu on the consul, not with a single man carrying them! Which means the rest are still floating around out there, along with who knows how many others!”
“And?”
“And?”
“And what do you expect me to do about it? I have fifty other things—”
“Not now. This is priority one!”
“Not for me.” I made it final. “You’re the one with the resources for a job like that. One more person isn’t going to help you play hide-and-seek across the city, and I have—”
Marlowe cut me off. “I want to know what you know—everything. Every tiny detail. We’re dealing with a ticking time bomb—”
“Why a time bomb?” I asked, and immediately regretted it.
Because I’d forgotten and put the phone back to my ear.
“Because that bitch isn’t talking!” Marlowe yelled, at front-row-at-a-death-metal-concert decibels. “Even Mircea can’t get anything out of her, and whoever was working with her is still at large, leaving us with two very ugly scenarios!”
“Such as?”
“Such as I can’t talk about this over a phone! There’s no telling who’s listening—”
“Everyone, if you keep screaming.”
“—and there’s certain terms I don’t need showing up in a file somewhere!”
But then he told me anyway.
“Such as number one: she was working with loyal confederates, who are even now tracking down the rest of those damned weapons, and smuggling them . . . somewhere we don’t need them to be. Giving her partisans a war-changing advantage should we ever invade!”
“Should? I thought that was the plan.”
“Until last night! But until we find those weapons, it’s suicide to even attempt it. No one is willing to send their people in there as things stand!”
“Okay,” I agreed. “That’s bad.”
“And number two isn’t any better. If her associates aren’t loyal, then they are sitting on a trove of . . . power . . . like nothing we’ve ever seen. Those fights have been going on for decades! They involved thousands of . . . people . . . especially after Geminus began enlarging and promoting them. There’s no telling how much . . . power . . . they currently have—”
“You think they’re going to sell it.”
“Of course I think they’re going to bloody sell it! And while I have people watching the black market, what if they don’t go there? What if they decide that, instead of selling it off in dribs and drabs, and taking a chance on getting caught every time, they just make one big sell? To our enemies who will fucking use it to fucking end us?”
I hated to admit it, but the asshole had a point.
“All right,” I said. “But I still don’t know what you want me to do. I’ve been on this for less than a week and I haven’t even been looking for weapons. I’ve been trying to help Olga—”
“Save it. I can’t talk like this. I’m coming down there.”
Damn it, I knew it!
“I have things to do,” I said. “I can’t just wait around the house all day—”
“Like hell you can’t. I’m leaving now. If you’re not there when I arrive, so help me God—”
“What? You’ll shoot me again?”
“No.” It was vicious. “I’ll make you wish I had!”
Click.
Goddamn, I hated that vampire.
* * *
—
I found the little troll in the boys’ room. The door was open since it was early afternoon, and the guys were off on adventures. But the bed skirt on Aiden’s bed was hiked up, to give a view of the door, and ruffling slightly.
Like somebody was breathing under there.
I sat the tray on the table the boys used for coloring and puzzle doing, got down on my hands and knees, and lifted up the skirt a little more. And found what I’d expected: two violet eyes, glowing faintly in the dark, a small hunched body, and a smock covered with bacon jam. For a moment, we just looked at each other.
I debated trying to fish him out, decided that probably wasn’t likely to go well, and brought the platter down instead. I put it on the braided rag rug beside the bed and started looking through the sandwiches on offer. There were two more BLTs, fat and happy looking; a couple of egg salad, thick and spicy, with a generous sifting of paprika; a couple chicken salad topped with lettuce, tomatoes and red onion slices; and no fewer than four PBJs. Because you can never have too many PBJs.
And just in case that wasn’t sufficient, Gessa had stuck a handful of turnovers around the sides like parsley only not, because trolls don’t get the point of garnishes you can’t eat. Their idea of how to improve a plate of food is to add more food, which is a hard point to argue with. Particularly when they’re still warm from the oven and dripping with glaze.
“Smells good,” I said idly, my own mouth watering a little, because the cinnamon-apple and sweet cherry scents were busy battling it out for dominance.
I pushed the mounded tray a little closer to the bed, started munching on a turnover, and att
empted to look harmless.
I guess I succeeded, because, after less than a minute, a small, thin arm snaked out and grabbed a cherry pie.
It jerked it back under the bed, too far for me to see anything, but I could hear smacking going on.
I listened to him inhale a few more turnovers and a couple sandwiches, and then pulled over the paper and crayons that the boys use to design knights and fighter jets and knights piloting fighter jets.
Violet eyes peered out at me curiously.
I flipped back the rug to get a work space, and fed the kid another sandwich. He took it from my hand this time. He appeared to like the meat ones best, but he ate them all. Yes, ten full-sized sandwiches—or twelve, if you counted the two he’d had as an appetizer—along with half a dozen small fruit pies.
Trolls had to have a stomach that extended into another dimension; it was the only explanation.
“Fish, tracks, door,” I said clearly, and picked up a blue crayon.
I drew a fish.
He ate egg salad at it.
I drew train tracks, and even got the perspective right.
Nothing.
I drew a door, complete with a damned good version of a doorknob, if I do say so myself.
Nada.
I finally sat back and ate a pie.
This was starting to look like a waste of time—well, other than for feeding up the kid. Healing took food, and trolls weren’t like humans; soup wasn’t going to put flesh back on those bones. Cherry pie, however, appeared to be a hit. I watched as the rest of the pies and the platter they sat on were slowly pulled under the bedclothes.
I finished off my own snack, and contemplated my artwork. This was starting to look like a dead end. But like the stuff with Efridis, I just couldn’t let it go.
The kid didn’t know much English, and those weren’t survival terms that you’d prioritize: “food,” “water,” “bathroom,” “bed,” “medicine,” “help.” They looked more like words he’d deliberately tried to pick up, maybe even asked people about, despite the fact that doing so might earn him a beating. But he’d learned them anyway, possibly at different times, so as not to arouse suspicion, and then spoken them on what he thought was his deathbed.
Damn it, they meant something!
I just didn’t know what.
Like I didn’t know why Dorina had felt it necessary to send me another memory. I’d thought the point was the bones, and the fact that people were literally being killed for a potion ingredient. True, one time was vamp bones and the other fey, but the method was similar. Find a vulnerable community, people no one would miss, and exploit the hell out of them.
So what was I overlooking?
I reclined back against the trundle and rubbed my eyes. Come on, Dory. You’re better than this.
And, normally, I was. Normally, it didn’t take somebody hitting me over the head with a clue-by-four for me to figure out what I was dealing with. Normally, the problem was how to stop it, not how to find it, but this . . . I wasn’t getting this.
I’m tired, I thought at Dorina. Why don’t you just tell me?
Nothing.
Damn it, I know you can hear me!
Like she could probably hear Mircea last night. Because he didn’t get it: Dorina didn’t go to sleep anymore. At least, not like she once had. Every mind had to have rest, so there were times she wasn’t aware of what was happening, just like me. But there was no way to tell when those were anymore.
And she’d been aware enough to attack Efridis when she saw her, hadn’t she?
So she knew what Mircea was planning.
There was a mirror across from the bed—just a little thing, hung at kid height. One of Claire’s vain attempts to teach good hygiene to a couple boys who were happier splashing about in the mud. I doubted it was used much, but it was there and in my line of sight when I was sitting down. I caught my reflection in the glass, and swallowed.
Staring too long into a mirror is always a freaky experience, and that’s when you know no one is staring back. I didn’t know it now, and for the first time, I tried to get a glimpse of my other side. But the black eyes were the same, with no additional life experience that I could see. And so was the too-pale skin, the cap of dark hair, still slightly damp from the shower, and the teeth biting a lower lip in indecision. Damn it!
“I’m not going to do it,” I told her. “I’m not, okay? That was his idea, not mine!”
Nothing.
“He doesn’t speak for me—he never has!”
More nothing.
So we were back to not talking, huh?
What a shock.
“I’m still not,” I told her, feeling angry and frustrated and destructive—and mad at myself for it. Trashing the kids’ room wasn’t going to help. And neither was anything else.
Mircea could scheme all he wanted; she was going to do what she was going to do.
“Do what you want with your life,” I told her. “You have to live with it. I’m going to live mine—while I still have one!”
I got up and slammed out of the room.
And into another world.
Chapter Fifty-four
Mircea, Venice, 1458
Merda! Mircea grabbed the witch, clapped a hand over her mouth, and spun the two of them back against a wall. And into the shadow of the second story of a house, the kind Venetians liked to push out over the street to gain themselves a little more room.
He thickened the shade around them as much as he could, but his heart was still in his throat as what had to be a hundred vampires rushed past the opening of the alley, just a few feet away. He stayed stock-still, the woman flat against him, her frantic heartbeat sounding like thunder in his ears. And probably in their pursuers’, too, only it was drowned out by real thunder from above.
The last soldier finally passed, but Mircea stayed in place a little longer. Not because of worry that they’d double back, but more because he couldn’t get his body to move. It seemed to like the freezing-cold wall just fine.
But the witch didn’t and started beating on him, so he let her go. Only to find his arm clutched in a surprisingly strong grip. “How the hell are we supposed to get through this?” she hissed. “They’re every—”
Mircea’s hand clapped back over her mouth, winning him a glare worthy of a praetor. He ignored it. Thunder was crashing like ocean waves above them, and echoing off the high, close-packed walls all around. Rain was bucketing down, causing water to cascade off rooflines and shoot out of gutters, crisscrossing the narrow streets with liquid arcs like suspended canals. Meanwhile, the real canals rushed like rivers, adding their roar to the cacophony. But vampire hearing could not be underestimated.
Not aloud, Mircea thought at her, as hard as he could.
She jerked, and stared at him, eyes wide and startled. And Mircea felt welcome relief flood through him. It was easier to communicate mind to mind with his own kind; humans were more problematic, especially magical ones. And God knew nothing else had gone right tonight! But now, at least, they could talk.
Only the witch didn’t seem to agree.
Because he’d no sooner released her again than she started screaming. “Augghhh!”
Stop it! he thought at her frantically.
“Augghhh!”
Shut up! You’re going to get us—ooof. The last was because she’d just elbowed him in the ribs, which hadn’t mattered, and then kicked him in the shin, which had. Mircea’s still-healing bone sent a spear of pain lancing through him, and the witch took the opportunity to scramble away, bouncing off the narrow walls and looking crazed.
Mircea tackled her halfway down the alley, but slipped on some muck, sending them sliding into a wall, and giving her the chance to kick him viciously in the face and run. He felt the little space slur around him, and his eyes go fuzzy for a moment. Dam
n it, they couldn’t afford this!
Then his vision snapped back, allowing him to spot her, silhouetted by a burst of lightning in the middle of a small bridge, and glowing like a beacon.
Merda!
A moment later, the light flicked out, plunging the scene into darkness. But the heavens cracked open again almost immediately, along with a cannon boom of thunder. Showing Mircea a party of the praetor’s guards instead, their shiny breastplates running with lightning and all but glowing against the now-empty bridge.
Because the witch had disappeared.
The light faded and Mircea hugged cobblestones, hoping against hope that his dark hair and clothes would hide him. And he guessed they did. Because the guards’ steps pounded in another direction, and he clambered back to his feet, his mind whirling with fear and confusion.
He limped down the alley to the little bridge, but still saw nothing. Which was impossible; no human moved that fast! And she’d said she was out of power, so what . . . ?
Oh.
That was what.
A rogue pain had caused Mircea to look down at his calf, just as a dimmer scrawl of lightning flared overhead. It was less blinding than illuminating—in more than one way. He retraced his path, stepped off the bridge, and knelt beside the small, rickety structure to peer underneath.
And saw the witch, huddled in the freezing water up to her neck, probably hoping it would muffle her heartbeat, which it hadn’t. And that it would hide her from the guards, which it had. But only because they’d been distracted by the storm—one that couldn’t last much longer.
Mircea slid down the muddy bank, and got on her level.
The witch’s flame-red hair had been part of a glamourie she could no longer maintain, leaving mousy brown locks to straggle dispiritedly around a face that was less alluring at the moment than pinched and pale and freckled. She had brown eyes, too, not unattractive in their own way, but a far cry from the luminous blue she’d been wearing. Not to mention that everything she had on was soaked.
She looked like a drowned rat.
A very frightened one.
For a long moment, Mircea simply knelt there, listening to the skies, which sounded like they’d had some of Horatiu’s infamous garlic torta. He didn’t want to spook the witch more than she already was, but they couldn’t stay here. They couldn’t stay anywhere.