“And he would have finished it.” Anton stopped then, turning to face me with a stern, almost parental expression on his sharp features. “I must make something clear, something that perhaps I should have emphasized when I hired you. Isai would kill you, Mother Renard. In cold blood or hot blood, he would kill you, and he would not lose a wink of sleep over it.”
“Yes, I get that n—”
“Flint is a leannan sidhe, and it is not unheard of for their lovers to die by accident because the sidhe lost himself in pleasure and didn’t care to notice. That list I gave you, those boxes full of files. Anyone on that list could, and would, kill you, given the opportunity and the slightest motivation.”
A chill ran over my skin, and I shivered. I’d been the sole guardian of my village for three years, but now that I stopped to consider it, I’d never faced a threat of the level Anton described. I’d taken care of creatures hunting humans for food out of instinct, haunting a human out of hate. But no one had come after me personally. My death had never been a powerful person’s goal.
In that moment, I felt weak, vulnerable.
I hated that feeling.
Anger rose to my defense. I jutted my chin out at the vampire, holding my temper like a shield. “Why are you trying to scare me? I thought you wanted me on this case?”
The skin between his eyebrows pinched. “I am not trying to scare you. I want to prepare you. If you are to be of any use to me, then you must understand you are not in Dresden anymore. What you have taken on is not one of your witch’s duties, not a parenting club, or a healer’s oath. You are not exterminating a minor monster.” He took a step closer, and I fell back a step before I could stop myself. “Someone stole from me, Mother Renard. A person willing to risk the consequences of such a theft would not think twice about ending your life. Make no mistake, you may well die before you see the next full moon.”
And on that cheerful note, he continued down the stairs, neat as you please. It wasn’t until that moment, that moment when I could have used a word of reassurance, of support, that I noticed Peasblossom’s absence.
Oh, dear Goddess, no.
My heart shot into my throat. Slowly, so as not to draw the vampire’s attention, I rolled my shoulder, wriggling my body to feel for the pixie, make sure she wasn’t clinging to me and had just moved out of her usual position. Nothing.
“So tell me about security,” I said a little too loudly, trying very hard not to think about what the nosy pixie could get into in the super-secretive vampire’s super-secret headquarters. I had to keep talking, keep him occupied until she came back, and pray he didn’t notice her absence. “What sort of—”
I choked on the end of the sentence, halting so fast on the stairs that I nearly pitched forward and fell the rest of the way. Cold sweat dampened my temples as I stared in horror at the next landing.
The first five steps were fine, perfectly normal. But below that, dark water filled the stairwell, licking the walls as the churning surface betrayed movement. I caught a flash of something gray and huge moving under the water before the creature sank deeper.
Anton stepped into the water without hesitation, not even pausing as I grabbed the railing in a death grip and clung for dear life.
“Illusions play a large part,” he said.
He continued to descend into the water—past the water. A tiny part of my brain noted his disregard, and I realized the water, and the monster within, were illusions. The rest of my brain controlled my body and refused to let go of the railing, lest the tiny, reasonable part hurled us into a watery, toothy death.
“Mother Renard, I hate to rush you, but if you don’t mind…?”
I closed my eyes, took three, seven, thirteen deep breaths, then charged down the stairs.
And collided with the vampire.
The impact of running into the preternaturally strong undead was akin to colliding with that bar in the center of a large double doorway, the one where the two doors met to lock. Not that I spoke from experience…
He arched an eyebrow at me as I regained my balance and tried to ignore the heat in my face. “Would you like me to hold your hand?”
I cleared my throat, too embarrassed to consider if he was serious or cracking a joke. “That won’t be necessary. You were saying something about illusions?”
He continued his descent without further comment. “Yes. This staircase is the only one that leads to this level, and there is no elevator past the floor above us.” He opened a door and led me out of the stairwell. We stepped into an area the size of my living room. Straight ahead of me was an L-shaped desk. The bottom of the L pointed toward the left-hand wall, and the chair posted there faced a wall with at least six different monitors. The man sitting in the viewing chair scanned the screens in long sweeps, his hands poised at the edge of the keyboard. The pale tone of his flesh and the eerie stillness that consumed him any time he paused made me think vampire, but I didn’t bother using magic to confirm the suspicion. I made a brief mental note that he was sitting in the same chair the last guard with that assignment had died in.
The woman sitting at the desk looked at Anton, meeting his eyes without a hint of hesitation. She was tall, at least six foot six. She had pale blonde hair and blue eyes that reminded me of sunlight reflecting off a frozen lake. There was an analytical quality to her gaze whenever she looked at someone. Valkyrie—I would have bet my last bar of chocolate on it. A second woman stood in front of the door in the far-right corner of the room, only her upper half visible above the desk. Like the Valkyrie, she was stunning. Dark hair and flawless cinnamon skin. She watched me with large, dark eyes, but like the others, remained silent.
I waited for Anton to introduce us, but he paused in front of the desk and looked at me, keeping the room’s other occupants in his peripheral vision.
“This is where the guards were found.” He gestured to the ground behind the desk where tape marked the bodies’ positions.
“Were they human?”
“No. The woman was half-goblin. The two men were fey and werewolf.”
“I assume the variety was intentional?”
“Yes. Varying the guards’ strengths and weaknesses makes it harder to disable them simultaneously.”
I stared down at the body outlines, my heart aching for a moment at the loss of life. “Didn’t work out that way. So the murderer came down those stairs. Someone would have heard them coming. Unless he or she teleported in?”
“Impossible. The wards prevent teleportation to this level.”
“So they had to hide their approach from the senses of a fey and a werewolf. Not a minor invisibility spell then, but something that would keep them from being heard or smelled.” I drew my hand through the air, spreading a thin net of silver energy over the room. “Revelare.”
Purple mist hung in the air, so faint I wouldn’t have noticed if not for the stark white of the walls. I stared harder, ignoring the way the Valkyrie watched me with a little too much interest.
“It’s a holding spell,” I murmured. “A strong one. It’s hard enough to hold one person, but to hold three non-humans…”
“Can you trace it to the person who cast it?” Anton asked.
I shook my head. “There are some spells that can be traced, but usually those are spells created by the caster. This is a generic spell, there’s no way to discern the caster just by what I can see here.”
I pressed out with my magic, feeling for the remains of the broken wards. If I could see how they were broken, I might—
Only there weren’t any.
I frowned and concentrated harder.
“The wards weren’t broken,” I murmured. “They were dropped.”
“Yes. Another reason Isai is so high on the list.”
I remembered my earlier accusation. I’d said it to upset Isai, but now… “Could Flint have seduced Isai into dropping the wards for him?”
Anton considered the question. “It is not impossible. But it is very un
likely. Isai does not enjoy the company of men. Flint could have seduced him against his will, yes, but doing so would have brought negative consequences to Isai that would have made it imprudent.”
“What do you mean?”
“Flint does not seduce by physical force. To be taken against one’s will through violence is traumatizing enough. Flint’s power seduces the mind. By the time he takes a lover, they want him to take them. To use that influence on Isai would violate not just his body, but his mind. Given Isai’s…strong distaste for men, the damage to his mind would be considerable.”
I thought of Helen Miller’s ghost, the empty stare. My pulse skipped a beat and I fought to keep my voice calm. “What if he tried to seduce a woman who liked men, but was happily married and rejected his advances? Would that result in ‘considerable’ mental damage?”
Anton looked at me more closely now, interest in his icy blue eyes. “If she were a strong-willed woman determined to remain loyal to her husband, the damage could range from headaches and vivid flashbacks to severe brain damage. Why?”
I hesitated. The fewer people who knew of Helen’s death and the damage to her mental state, the stronger my position if I needed to bluff. But Anton had hired me. He had a vested interest in helping me find out the truth about what happened to Helen, who’d stolen his precious book. Unless he’d killed her. Unless he’d lied about the mental manipulation, and had killed her to keep his secrets.
I couldn’t get the image of Helen’s ghost out of my mind. I kept seeing those empty eyes, flickering with brief moments of frustration, pain, then going blank again. I could hear that skin-crawling moan. What if the vampire had killed her? Anton stepped closer. I looked up, still thinking of Helen, still seeing Helen. And in that moment of distraction, I forgot the cardinal rule of dealing with vampires.
I fell into Anton’s gaze the way one might fall out an open window. I looked into his eyes, and I could see frost, smell it as if a winter breeze blew here in this small, underground room. My world narrowed down to that scent and those cold blue eyes. Tiny specks of red in his irises flared, burning to life like dry leaves kissed by flame.
“You work for me, Mother Renard.” Anton leaned a little closer, his eyes swallowing more of my world. The cold blue vanished under hot red, left me gazing into a glowing crimson stare. “You will not withhold information from me. Tell me why you asked about the damage Flint can do with his power. Whose mind did he damage?”
“Helen…Miller’s.” My voice sounded dull, and too far away. “Her ghost is mute, unresponsive. Someone…destroyed her mind.”
Anton’s nostrils flared. “Why did you keep this from me?”
“I don’t trust you.”
My mouth refused to obey my commands to close, to remain shut.
“Tell me everything you know about her death,” he said. “Everything you know about Helen Miller.”
His voice pulled me deeper under his thrall. Power stabbed at my thoughts, probing for the information like a thief caressing a jewel case, selecting the most promising trinkets. I curled my hands into fists and tried to think of something else, anything that would break the trance. My vision blurred and I swayed, pain throbbing in the back of my eyes.
Peasblossom chose that moment to fall through the air and land with a thud on the vampire’s head.
Chapter 7
Anton snarled and snatched up Peasblossom before she could make a sound, curled fingers raking her off his head then closing around her in an iron grip. The trance broke as soon as he looked away from me, and I staggered, my stomach rolling from the abrupt release.
A high-pitched squeal of fear from Peasblossom sent a rush of panic over me, pouring adrenaline into my veins, and I threw out a hand. “You’ll crush her wings!”
The vampire’s stare drilled into me, and I dug my nails into my palms to keep from looking into his eyes again out of morbid curiosity. It had been foolish to forget how dangerous he was, to assume he wasn’t a threat because he’d hired me. I’d let my guard down. Fool me once…
“Where did you come from?” The edge in Anton’s voice belied the calm of his expression.
“The ceiling!” Peasblossom grunted. “This stuff made my wings stick together so I couldn’t fly.”
Relief weakened my knees. Peasblossom sounded normal, if a little winded. I checked her wings to make sure the delicate limbs hadn’t torn, and noticed something odd.
A sticky blue substance covered the pixie. It looked sort of like that Silly String small children went wild with before they were old enough to appreciate how hard it was to clean up. Thin strands of it covered her from wing to toe. Anton held her by the back of her dress with two fingers, trying to avoid getting any more of the blue gunk on him than necessary. I almost giggled at the sight of the residue clinging to his long hair where she’d landed on him, pulled into strings still attached to the pixie. Then I noticed his grip also put his finger on Peasblossom’s wings. He could rip them off with a flick of his hand if he wanted to. Tension strangled the urge to laugh, and I swallowed hard.
“Thank you for helping, Peasblossom,” I said with forced brightness. “Anything to help solve this case faster.”
Anton looked up at the ceiling. I followed his gaze, my eyebrows rising at the trail of blue goop that moved from the door all the way across the ceiling to just above his head.
I thought I saw the Valkyrie smirk out of the corner of my eye, but her expression took on complete neutrality when Anton glared at her.
“She has a security badge,” the woman pointed out, gesturing at the tiny badge Peasblossom wore. “You said the witch was bringing her familiar.”
Anton’s jaw clenched as he raised Peasblossom to eye level. “You were to remain with your witch. That blue substance means you tried to enter one of the vents. What. Were. You. Doing?”
“I was helping.” Peasblossom squirmed, then seemed to realize, as I had, the dangerous position her wings were in. She went still. “I was checking to see…if someone my size could get in.” She nodded, a little too fast. “Yeah. You bigjobs are always thinking everyone has to be your size, but what if it was someone my size?” She scowled and picked at the blue stuff on one arm. “I could have made it in through that vent, but this stuff smells funny. Still, that doesn’t mean someone who really wanted your stupid treasure wouldn’t have pressed on.”
“Had you made it more than three feet into the vents over the corridor, this substance”— he rubbed a little of the blue webbing between his fingers—“would have caught fire. Despite the alarms, help would not have arrived in time to save you from becoming a pile of ashes.”
“Oh.” Peasblossom seemed to give that a lot of thought. At least two seconds. “I don’t think anyone came in that way.”
Neither of the two remaining guards said a word, or even moved a muscle, but Peasblossom’s announcement seemed to further amuse the Valkyrie. At least, I thought the twitch of her mouth was amusement. Or she saw an impending death. A little creepy how that always seemed to perk up a Valkyrie.
“Do not think I invited you into my place of business on a whim,” Anton said, trying to catch my eye. “It is not a decision I made lightly.”
I’d intended to stare between his eyes, or maybe at his nose, but he seemed agitated, so to be on the safe side, I gave up all pretense of pride and stared at the floor. “I understand.”
“No, I don’t think you do.” He flexed his hand, and Peasblossom shrieked. “Tell me what you were doing in the vents.”
“All right!” Peasblossom wailed. “Fine!” She crossed her arms, settling into a firm sulk. “I spit on Isai.”
Anton blinked. I closed my eyes and rubbed the bridge of my nose.
“You…spit on him?” Anton asked.
“Yes. He tried to hurt Shade. He can’t do that!”
“So…you spit on him.”
Peasblossom giggled, oblivious to her precarious situation. “A couple times. Got him in his stupid beard, too.”
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“You could check into that if you wanted to,” I pointed out.
A thin line appeared between Anton’s brows as he glanced back and forth between us. “I don’t believe I’ll call in the analysts to comb through a wizard’s beard for...pixie saliva, just yet.”
I didn’t breathe easy until he held Peasblossom out, letting me accept her into my cupped hands. Peasblossom hugged me as soon as she was close enough to my shoulder, getting plenty of sticky blue residue on my black shirt.
“I want more honey for this,” she mumbled.
“A great big pot, as soon as we get home,” I whispered. Louder, I said, “We know it would take a powerful magic user to get through Isai’s wards. There’s no trace of them left, so either Isai took them down himself, on his own initiative, or because someone else blackmailed or bribed him to do it, or someone more powerful than Isai obliterated them.”
“Obliterating them would be a next-to-impossible task,” Anton mused. “A magic ward as complicated as Isai’s is much like a network of spider webs. It is one thing to break through them—that is difficult enough—but I do not believe whoever did it would have taken the time and painstaking care to clean up and erase all signs of the broken wards. Even if someone were strong enough, it would be a waste of power.”
“What about the other traps, the ones they would need to pass after getting past the ward?” I asked. “Helen Miller built them for you, so I assume they aren’t magic?”
Anton gestured for me to follow him to the door beside the long desk. The new vantage point granted me my first unrestricted view of the guard stationed at the door—and the thick serpentine tail that formed her lower half.
I’d already thought her beautiful, but the tail gave her an exotic edge that made her stunning. She wore a chainmail shirt that moved with her and was so fine I wouldn’t have known it was chainmail if its movement hadn’t betrayed its weight. I studied her tail, admiring the emerald green of her scales, the patches where they bled to gold. One section of her tail seemed duller. I frowned, trying to look at it more closely without being too obvious.
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