Fate's Edge te-3

by Ilona Andrews

  “Plenty of scumbags out there.” Kaldar started the car. A plan had formed in his head.

  “Yes, we never seem to have a shortage of those.”

  “We need someone on the inside to figure out how this whole Yonker dog and pony show works.”

  “You want to pull off a Night and Day scam and use the boys for the Night team, don’t you?”

  The way she picked up his train of thought was uncanny. The two kids were the perfect age to blend in with the runaways.

  “They can handle it.”

  “And if they can’t?”

  “Those kids have been through more than most adults. I ran cons at their age. Don’t tell me you didn’t.”

  “You and I had no choice,” she told him.

  “I will ask them. I won’t order.”

  “Right, what fourteen-year-old would turn that adventure down?”

  He understood exactly where that worry was coming from. Audrey felt used by her family. It had left scars, and she was trying to make sure the boys weren’t exploited. She didn’t realize both kids had been in combat training for the past four or five years. She didn’t know that Jack killed game on a regular basis, and George could sever a body in half with a burst of his flash. To her, they were children, and she looked at them through the prism of her own experience.

  “Don’t underestimate them,” Kaldar said. “George looks fragile, but he is well trained. Gaston put them through their paces, and George can hold his own. The kid is brilliant. He is truly, all jokes aside, brilliant. He’s an Edger, and the bluebloods never let him forget it. Things other children of his social status take for granted are out of his reach.”

  “It’s not enough to be good,” Audrey said. “He has to be the best. But George doesn’t worry me. Jack does.”

  Kaldar shrugged. “Jack is a teenager with a chip on his shoulder. I was one, you were one, I’m sure everyone has been there at one time or another. Once he snaps out of his ‘the world is against me’ rut, he’s a resourceful, smart kid. And unlike most changelings, he’s pretty sharp when it comes to figuring out what drives other people. He likes to pretend he understands less than he does.”

  “Why?”

  “He’s a cat,” Kaldar said. “It’s in his nature, I suppose. Don’t worry. He will hold his own.”

  “You seem awfully sure of that. George said you barely know the two of them.”

  “I know William,” Kaldar said. “He’s married to my cousin, Cerise, who is more like my baby sister. If her life and happiness were at stake, William would burn the world just to see her smile. Jack is a changeling like William. He would move the earth and the moon to protect his brother.

  “So you’re using one child to manipulate another.” Audrey shook her head. “Do you have any conscience at all?”

  “No. I didn’t ask them to come with me. They want this, and they’re old enough to understand the risks.”

  Audrey looked away from him and through the window. He studied her profile out of the corner of his eye. Pouting? No, calculating.

  “If you and I are the day, I’ll need to go shopping,” she said. “It won’t be cheap. Do we have to grift for the money?”

  Their minds ran like two trains on parallel tracks. Kaldar had never come across anyone like her. He didn’t have to explain himself, or justify anything, or convince her that his scheme would work. She just snapped his ideas out of thin air and ran with them. Even when he worked a con with his family, he still had to sell them on it, taking them through the plan bit by bit, but then most of his family excelled at killing or magic, often both. He excelled at burglary, grift, and making money by any means necessary. It wasn’t that they didn’t love him or trust him, but none of them understood him. Audrey did. He wanted to sit her down and ask questions until he knew everything there was to know about her, down to the most minute detail. But the moment he did that, she would run like a deer. That was what he would do in her place.

  And she was so damn pretty. He rifled through adjectives: “sexy,” “hot,” “desirable,” none of them was right enough. Delectable. Delicious. No, she was a woman, not a pastry. He ran out of words and gave up. He wanted her. He needed her like a man in a room full of smoke needed a breath of fresh air. He wanted to peel off her clothes and kiss those lovely breasts and . . .

  “Earth to Kaldar?”

  “Yes, love?”

  “Do we have to grift for the money? And don’t call me ‘love.’”

  “Why spend our own if we don’t have to?” He was dying to see her work. This was his chance. He looked at her and tested the waters. “Is that a problem, love?”

  Audrey turned to him, a sly little spark hiding in her eyes. “The only man who gets to call me ‘love’ would be waking up next to me after a very, very fun night.”

  Fun night. Oh yes.

  “Guess what?” She leaned closer. “You will never be that man.”

  Kaldar laughed. “If I wanted to, you would be waking up next to me, lying with my arm around you every morning. You would wiggle closer to me in bed just so I could pet your butt.”

  “My goodness, you think you’re God’s gift to women, don’t you? You poor, deluded man.”

  He hit her with his best smile. Her eyes widened. She took a deep breath. “Oh no, not that seductive face. I’m overcome with the need to take off these awful clothes. What is happening? I do not understand. Oooh. Ahhh.” She touched her wrist to her forehead. “Somebody help me. I’m being drenched with my own fluids.”

  Evil woman.

  “See now, you shouldn’t have done that,” Kaldar said.

  She gave him an innocent look.

  “You’ve made yourself into a challenge. Now I’ll have to seduce you out of principle.”

  “You can try. Not that you’ll get anywhere. If you were in love, that would be one thing, but we both know this is pride talking.” Audrey patted his forearm. “It’s all right. I won’t tell anybody about your shameful failure. I’ll keep it completely confidential.” She pretended to lock her lips and throw away the key.

  “I’ll remind you of this when you’re collapsing on my sheets, all happy and out of breath.” He leaned closer. “I’m picturing it in my head. Mmm, you look lovely.”

  “Whatever fantasies help you get through the day,” Audrey said.

  “So kind of you.”

  “I’m all about being charitable when it doesn’t cost me anything.”

  Charity? For me?

  Before this was all over, either they would be lovers or they’d kill each other. Right now, he had no idea which it would be.

  * * *

  AUDREY stared out the window. The car suffered from a desperate lack of space, especially when it came to the front. Specifically, the front seats. Specifically, Kaldar in the front seat, who was sitting entirely too close.

  And Kaldar was getting hotter by the minute. When they’d first met, he was handsome, then hot, and now he had moved into the irresistible category. When he’d leaned toward her and said her name in that bedroom voice, every nerve in her body came to attention. She actually got the shivers. If he’d leaned in and kissed her, she would’ve kissed him right back, then she would’ve slapped him again, just so he wouldn’t get any ideas. She liked looking at him. She liked the sound of his voice. She liked when he paid attention to her. They were in the Broken, which meant that Kaldar’s increasing hotness couldn’t be magic, and that left only one explanation: she was falling for him.

  Audrey glanced at him. He turned to her right when she looked and gave her his evil grin. Wow. She was in so much trouble. Audrey rolled her eyes and looked back through her window.

  If they were strapped for cash, they could just sit Kaldar on a street corner with an empty coffee can and a phone book to read. They’d make decent money until the cops chased them off because crowds of women were obstructing traffic. It wasn’t just his looks. Looks alone she could resist. It was the wicked glint in his eyes. He was a smart, sly bastar
d, quick on his feet and equipped with a silver tongue. He could run circles around the best professionals she knew.

  Audrey hid a sigh. Before her grandmother died, she had given Audrey only one piece of advice: never fall in love with a conman. Conmen couldn’t stop grifting. It was like a drug, an addiction, like her lock picking. And born con artists like Kaldar grifted for the hell of it. Everything was a game to them, and pretty soon the game became not just “can I take this poor sucker’s money” but “can I fool my wife into thinking I’m where I’m supposed to be.” Eventually the game would turn into “can I keep my ball and chain from knowing about all of my women on the side,” and you would end up with your heart crushed into dust. She’d seen her father do it, she’d seen Alex do it when he was still sober, and she’d seen other conmen do it. They lied, oh how they lied.

  Kaldar was too talented, too clever, and too full of pride not to play the game. She didn’t even know the real him. He showed her what he thought she wanted to see. And he would expect her to be okay with all of it because she knew the score from the start. All the girls in the business knew it. Marry a mobster, take collect calls from prison. Marry a gambler, hide your paycheck. Marry a conman, nurse a broken heart. You made your bed, and you had to lie in it.

  No, thank you. No matter how fast her pulse sped up when he played with her hair, she didn’t want that kind of heartache. Nor did she want to be somebody’s “ball and chain” or “old lady.” If a man thought she cramped his style that much, he could go and find himself someone else. She needed someone straightforward and dependable—but then those guys were boring. Audrey smiled to herself. There was always time to settle down to boring and dependable. Flirting with Kaldar was fun. She might even dip her toes into those waters, but she wouldn’t be taking a swim anytime soon. Unless, of course, she wrapped him around her finger first.

  Now that would be a challenge.

  JACK perched on the wyvern’s back and watched the scrubby forest around them. The little cat he’d rescued in the Broken lay next to him, curled into a tight, furry ball. He wasn’t as skinny now, and Jack had cut and washed most of the green paint off his fur. The little cat still didn’t meow or purr, but he followed Jack around the camp like a baby duck after his mother. Not that Jack minded.

  A little farther off, closer to the wyvern’s hips, Ling the Merciless watched them with alert, suspicious eyes. Kaldar and Audrey were gone, and without Audrey, the raccoon turned into a nervous, listless ninny. Usually if a raccoon was out in daylight, it was sick, desperate, or rabid. This one sat out right under the sunshine and didn’t care. Weirdo.

  Below, George was going through his fencing routine. Lunge, scoot back, lunge, scoot back. Gaston had been gone for most of the day, too. He said he was going to gather information from the locals, but now he was back, writing something down in a notebook.

  The sun baked the wyvern’s back. Jack stretched. Mmmm, warm. Strange creatures, wyverns. The schoolbooks said that they were extremely smart, smarter than dogs, smarter than foxes, but Jack couldn’t see how one would find out how smart a wyvern was. When he wasn’t flying, the wyvern lay still, like a rock. The only time he came to life was when Gaston dumped buckets of food paste into his mouth in the morning.

  Jack stirred. The little cat twitched an ear, opened one yellow eye, and looked at him. Jack raised his finger to his lips, and told him, “Shhh. Stay.” The little cat closed his eyes.

  Jack slid off and padded to the wyvern’s head, silent like a shadow. Smart, right. Let’s just see. He passed the blue shoulder, the long neck, as thick as a century-old tree, the brilliant blue fringe that protruded from the corner of the wyvern’s jaw.

  The heavy eyelids snapped open. Jack froze.

  A huge gold-and-amber eye, as big as a dinner platter, stared at him. The dark pupil shrank, focusing.

  Jack stood very still.

  The colossal head turned, the scaled lip only three feet from Jack. The golden eyes gazed at him, swirling with fiery color.

  Jack breathed in tiny, shallow breaths.

  Don’t blink. Don’t blink . . .

  Two gusts of wind erupted from the wyvern’s nostrils. Jack jumped straight up, bounced off the ground into another jump, and scrambled up the nearest tree.

  In the clearing, Gaston bent over, guffawing like an idiot.

  “It’s not funny!”

  “He knows you’re there, you dimwit. He just chooses not to care.”

  The wyvern lowered his head.

  George straightened and sheathed his rapier. “Kaldar and Audrey are back.”

  Jack climbed down from the tree before anyone asked him any uncomfortable questions. That’s all he needed. Especially since Audrey would be there. Audrey was . . . pretty. Really, really pretty.

  Ten minutes later, when Kaldar and Audrey came up the path, he was sitting on the wyvern again. That way, nobody would think that he was scared. Not that he was. He was just cautious.

  “We have a job,” Kaldar called out. “Come here.”

  Jack slid down the wing and came over to sit by George. It took Kaldar about fifteen minutes to explain about Magdalene and Ed Yonker.

  “I may be overstepping myself,” George said, “but why don’t we just steal the invitation?”

  “It won’t work,” Audrey told him. “First, we don’t know where it is.”

  “Second,” Kaldar continued, “if we steal it, she would let Morell know we have it. We’d walk straight into a trap.”

  “I thought she hated him,” George said.

  “Hate doesn’t mean ‘doesn’t do business,’ ” Kaldar told him.

  “He’s right. It’s a very costly mistake to make,” Audrey said.

  Kaldar turned to his nephew. “Gaston, did you get anything on Yonker?”

  Gaston flipped open his notebook. “Ed’s a local. Born and bred in the Edge. His parents still live about six miles east of here. The Edge here looks like Swiss cheese—you know, the one with holes. Bubbles of the Edge pop up all over in the Weird and in the Broken. The boundary is very thin, and the Edge itself isn’t that wide, but there are a lot of people living here, and there are several powerful merchant families. The families keep the peace.”

  “Makes sense,” Kaldar said. “Conflict is bad for business.”

  “Ed’s not too well liked. The expectation was that when he made it big, he’d hire his buddies, but he brought in outside talent instead. The locals aren’t getting any crumbs of his pie. Magdalene isn’t that well liked, either. She isn’t exactly trustworthy. Here’s an interesting tidbit: Magdalene and Yonker almost had themselves a feud a couple of times, and they were seriously warned that if they started any sort of fighting, the families would squash them. All their fun and games would be over.”

  “So they have to play nice,” Audrey said. “And Magdalene is using us to walk around the rules.”

  “Pretty much. Yonker’s got a compound in the Edge, about twenty acres, fenced in, and guarded like there are state secrets inside. There are a lot of guards, and they’re well trained. That’s where his Wooden Cathedral is.”

  Audrey rolled her eyes.

  “The scam works like this.” Gaston checked his notes again. “He invites wealthy people into his church, flirts with them for a while, and if they’ve got the dough, he invites them to his private retreat, to the Wooden Cathedral. They go in normal, and they come out thinking he’s a prophet. Whatever gadget he’s got in there, it works.”

  Kaldar looked at George.

  George frowned. “Crowd-control devices are illegal except in Gardens of Bliss, and there you have to sign a liability form.”

  “Is a Garden of Bliss as bad as it sounds?” Audrey asked.

  “No, but when I first heard the name, I thought it was a brothel,” Kaldar said. “It’s a last resort for people who are depressed and suicidal. You sign a consent form and splash around in a garden with pretty flowers and ponds of warm water while good feelings are being pumped into you by m
agic.”

  Audrey blinked. “Oh.”

  “It could be a Vilad Lantern,” George said. “Or some sort of emotional emitter. I’d have to see it to say for sure.”

  “Anything more about Ed?” Kaldar glanced at Gaston.

  “Not much. Ed’s greedy, and he likes nice things: expensive cars, good clothes, bling—that’s apparently something to do with flashy jewelry. He likes women too, but all those are collateral vices. Ed ultimately gets off on crowds worshipping his every footstep. He wants to be a big shot. He actually gives money to the San Diego Children’s Center, and he attends the charity dinners and all that.”

  Kaldar and Audrey glanced at each other.

  “Explains the kids,” Audrey said.

  “The Blessed Youth Witness,” Gaston said. “He gets street kids to work for him. They give out flyers, and he gives them a place to stay in his Witness Camp during the summer at his compound. Middle-aged women with money love it.”

  “Do we know where the camp is?” Kaldar asked.

  Gaston shook his head. “No. But we do know he’s got people with rifles and live ammo guarding it. Also, it’s protected by enough defensive spells to hold off an army. It used to be his old family place. The Yonkers were a really strong Edge family a few years back, but now only Ed and his parents are left. The wards on that puppy are a century old.”

  “Nice.” Audrey sighed. “So breaking in and stealing the magical brain-cooking device is out of the question.”

  Kaldar glanced at George. “How complicated are these devices usually?”

  George shrugged. “Well, the inside is complicated, but most of the time they’re designed to look like normal objects. When you want to manipulate someone’s emotions, it’s better that people don’t know they’re being manipulated. They tend to take that sort of thing badly.”

  “So what are we talking about?” Gaston asked. “Like a vase or something?”

  “Not exactly.” George got up. “Usually it’s jewelry. For the emitter to work, I’d need to position it between me and the person I wanted to influence. So let’s say I want to manipulate Kaldar.” He turned to Kaldar. “I could probably have a bracelet emitter and lean on my fist or something, so the bracelet faces him.” George bent his arm so his wrist faced Kaldar.