by Kat Ross
“He’s very old.”
“So am I.” Balthazar signaled the elderly waiter and ordered a stroopwafel for dessert. He had no clue what it was, but he liked the sound of it. “Lucas?”
“Nothing more for me, my lord. Sugar rots your teeth.”
Lucas didn’t even drink spirits. He subsisted mainly on weak tea and digestive biscuits.
“That’ll be all, thank you,” Balthazar said in Flemish.
The waiter flicked the ash from his cigarette, took the menu, and shuffled away.
Balthazar looked at Lucas. “How about you? Find out anything interesting?”
Lucas had managed Balthazar’s assets for years. He had a knack for making sense of the paperwork generated by extreme wealth. Of course, Bekker was in a whole other league, but even he couldn’t keep it all out of the public record, and Lucas knew where to look.
“A few things, but I’ll need to do more research.”
“Tell me the essentials.”
Lucas folded his napkin in a precise square. “Bekker owns numerous properties in Belgium, but only two are set aside for his personal use. A townhouse on the Rue des Pierres near the stock exchange, and an estate in the Ardennes, about eighty miles south of here.”
“Watch the townhouse, figure out his patterns. The Ardennes is a possibility, but we need to know what the security is like.”
“I’ll start tomorrow.” Lucas paused. “And Nazari? I don’t think we finished that conversation and frankly, my lord, it’s the most pressing concern at the moment.”
Balthazar leaned back in his chair. “What can I say? He’s nearly as paranoid as Bekker. He’s only survived all this time by avoiding other necromancers. Since Ainsley gave him that scar, Nazari’s been squirreled away somewhere in the Hejaz. The Picatrix Club was the first time I’d seen him in centuries.” Balthazar swirled the dregs of his wine. “Bekker claims he’s alone and it’s probably true.”
“I don’t care for probably.”
“There’s no choice. We have to do it before he talks to Bekker again. For all I know, Nazari was in Rome kissing the Pope’s ring when I claimed he was hatching a plot with Ainsley.” Balthazar sighed. “Nazari is clever, but he’s a coward. He preys exclusively on children, did you know that?”
Lucas wordlessly shook his head and started refolding the napkin.
“Yes. That’s the sort of man we’re dealing with. But he’s not very good with a sword. It’s how Ainsley managed to take half his nose. So he’ll likely just make a dash for it when he realizes what’s going on.”
Lucas’s dark eyes flicked up from the napkin. “Then we can’t let him realize.”
“No. Oh look, it’s my stroopwafel.”
The waiter set a plate of something round and patterned and oozing melted caramel on the table. Lucas eyed it with mild horror.
“Sure you won’t try some?” Balthazar took a bite. His teeth instantly glued together and the rest of the meal was conducted in silence.
Lucas paid the check, leaving a generous tip, and they caught a cab back to the Metropole. Balthazar opened the door to their adjoining suites and paused. The rooms had been tossed with ruthless efficiency. Clothing lay in trampled heaps on the floor. Drawers were yanked from the dresser and the mattress teetered half off the bed in a puddle of sheets. The linings of three steamer trunks had been slit open and left in tatters. His shaving kit was strewn across the floor, the mirror cracked. Even his new purchases had been brutally violated.
Balthazar stepped inside and picked up a crumpled glove. “I expected more from the maid service at this hotel,” he said, “considering the prices they charge.”
Lucas shot him a bleak look. “Perhaps you should complain to management, my lord.”
Balthazar surveyed the damage as Lucas hauled a chair to the window and groped along the top of the lintel.
“Found it,” he muttered, pocketing a small key.
Balthazar spotted his silk top hat, which had rolled to rest next to an ottoman. He placed it gently on the dresser and they set off for the Brussels train station. A bribe to the luggage room attendant bought them ten minutes of privacy. Lucas bent down and unlocked a large trunk.
“I’ll take the rapier and garrotte,” Balthazar said, peering down at the contents. “That stiletto, as well.”
Thankfully, he’d taken the precaution of leaving the ouroboros in the trunk when they first arrived. It would undoubtedly have set off Bekker’s ring and Balthazar shuddered inwardly at the thought of it falling into his possession.
When they’d finished arming themselves to the teeth, Lucas locked the trunk and they departed the train station.
“Where are we going?” he asked.
“It’s called the Maison des Chats,” Balzathar replied. “On the Boulevard du Nord.”
“Will there be actual cats?”
“I don’t know. I hope not.”
“I’m a touch allergic,” Lucas said apologetically.
“You never mentioned it.” He glanced over. “As in sneezing? Christ. That could present a problem.”
“Itchy eyes, mainly.”
Balthazar was silent for several blocks. “Let’s hope there aren’t cats then.”
9
They watched from the shadows of a shuttered shopping arcade on the corner.
There weren’t many residential buildings on the boulevard and the Maison des Chats made a splash. It was five stories tall but narrow. The upper four floors each had a stone balcony and columns with half-naked Grecian statues supporting the next tier, like a wedding cake. A green spire thrust heavenward from the gabled roof.
“Hier ist in den Kater en de Kat,” Lucas murmured, puzzling out the motto carved on the façade. “Here is the hangover and the cat? It makes no sense.”
“Kater is also a tomcat in Dutch,” Balthazar replied. “An apt metaphor for a hangover, but I think the architect intended it in the original sense. Here is the cat and the cat.”
“It still doesn’t really make sense.”
“Can’t you see the two cats? Look up, those ledges above the cherub.”
Lucas squinted. “Ah.”
The Maison des Chats was a mere two blocks from the Metropole Hotel. It had to be a coincidence. They’d arrived a day after Nazari.
At five past ten, a black landau pulled up in front of the house. A short, slight man stepped out and hurried inside, glancing over his shoulder. The lights on the third and fourth floors went on.
“Do you think he has live-in staff?” Lucas wondered.
“I doubt it,” Balthazar replied. “The place is a rental and he wouldn’t trust strangers.”
The lights stayed on for an hour or so. Then, one by one, the windows darkened. They waited several more hours, taking turns walking around to stave off boredom. At four o’clock in the morning, that time when the body sinks to its lowest ebb, Lucas and Balthazar skirted around to the Rue Neuve, where an alley led back to the center of the block. It was lined with rubbish bins. The last one sat near a side door to the Maison des Chats.
Lucas peered in the window. “Kitchen,” he whispered. He produced a paper-thin blade and, with great finesse, popped the latch on the window and eased the sash up. The faint scraping sound was inevitable, but if Nazari was two floors up, he’d never hear it.
They stood still for a long minute, listening. The house remained quiet.
“In we go,” Balthazar murmured.
He entered first, followed by Lucas. The kitchen was small, with a strong smell of meat. Not rotten. Fresh. Balthazar could make out a doorway just ahead. A shadow detached from the wall and his hand automatically went to the hilt of the rapier, but he didn’t draw. Lucas sniffled wetly as it rubbed against his leg.
“They like me,” he whispered. “I don’t know why.”
More cats drifted over, tails aloft. At least, being cats, they didn’t seem to care that two strange men had just broken into the house. One was purring loudly.
“Stay down h
ere,” Balthazar mouthed. “Do not follow.”
Lucas nodded with streaming eyes.
Balthazar slid his shoes off, eased the rapier out, crept into the hall and then up the staircase, moving so lightly he practically levitated. The interior of the house was pitch black. His main fear was stepping on a cat so he moved with extreme caution, groping along each tread of the staircase. He couldn’t remember if Nazari had a fetish for cats. Who else would rent such a place? Or were they the security system?
He kept waiting for an explosive sneeze from behind, but thankfully, none came. Maybe Lucas had stuck his face out the open window.
When he reached the third floor, Balthazar found the room where the last light had gone out, at the front of the house on the left. A small window facing the street provided faint illumination. The door was stout wood, but he had broad shoulders. Balthazar drew a bracing breath and retreated a few steps, judging the precise angle he’d need to send the door slamming wide. One… Two… Thr—
Wood splintered and he felt his heart stop. He blew backwards, the carpet rushing to meet him. A high-pitched whine rang in his ears, the wavering note of a struck crystal glass. Smoke drifted lazily from a charred hole in the door. Balthazar blinked seven times in quick succession. Flurries of tics marauded across his face like a troop of marching ants.
The door creaked open, light flooding the hall, and Nazari crabbed out in a sideways crouch. Sweat rolled down his brow. The scar to the left of his nose resembled a pitted hole from an icepick. He glanced up and down the hall with wide, buggy eyes. His hair was slicked back with pomade that smelled of tea roses and he wore a velvet smoking jacket with shiny lapels.
Balthazar absorbed these details with a head that felt as if it had been swathed in wool and pounded with a hammer.
“I know there’s another one of you,” Nazari yelled in a reedy voice. “Get up here or I’ll cut his fucking head off!”
His accent was hard to place. A little British, a little French, with a hint of Punjabi or Urdu underlying the vowels. But that meant nothing, really. When you were as old as Nazari, cultural identity lost all meaning.
“What the fuck, Balthazar?” Nazari muttered, dragging him by the heels into the room. “What the fuck?”
There were more cats inside. One sniffed Balthazar’s ear, whiskers gently tickling. Nazari gave it an absent-minded pat, the chains linked to his wrist rattling. Then his clammy hand slapped Balthazar’s cheek. “Talk, you motherfucker.”
Talk? He wanted to snarl. I can hardly breathe.
The bedroom was tiny and crammed with porcelain figurines of felines on lace doilies. Nazari had a lantern set up on the floor, with the shutter cracked. It felt like an attic space where you might keep some crazy maiden aunt.
“You’re lucky the door was in the way.” Nazari’s eyes kept darting here and there, his hand fingering the scar. “Ah, shit. Stay here.”
Balthazar managed to turn his head enough to see Nazari perform the same odd crab-walk to the hall, where he grabbed the rapier and scuttled back inside. Hands groped him, unearthing the small arsenal strapped to frozen limbs.
“Sweet Jesus, a garrote,” Nazari whispered brokenly. “What the hell did I ever do to you? Eh?”
A creak came from the direction of the staircase, followed by a soft thump. Balthazar felt a blade press against his throat, probably his own stiletto.
“Crawl in here on your hands and knees or I swear to God…. Do you fucking hear me?”
Balthazar tried to make his index finger move and was rewarded with a feeble twitch. Good, good, good. The heavy wooden door had indeed blocked the worst of it. He might even be able to sit up in a few minutes. Of course, most likely he’d be dead by then.
“What did you tell him, you lying—?” Here Nazari spat something in a guttural language that Balthazar guessed was a variation on motherfucker. “What? I need to know.”
“Told … who?” Balthazar wheezed.
“Who? Who?” Nazari’s voice climbed several octaves. “You know who. You damn well know who. He wouldn’t tell me anything. Only that you did Ainsley and…. What the fuck?”
Something sailed into the room, bouncing off Nazari’s forehead. The cats went running over to it. Lucas’s head popped inside and another missile detonated with a moist splat. Nazari flung out the hand linked to the chains and unleashed a bolt of black lightning at the very same instant Lucas doubled over in a sneezing fit. It sailed past, scorching the wall beyond.
More foul language erupted as Lucas stumbled inside the bedroom. Balthazar saw Nazari’s knife flash down and executed a rigid roll, landing on what felt like a fluffy Persian. It yowled and flew at Nazari’s face, claws extended. A blue streak of cursing followed, but he couldn’t see what was happening. Fur-infested carpet pressed against Balthazar’s lips. He clamped them shut. Everything tingled now, not in a good way, but far better than the buried alive sensation.
Balthazar righted himself in time to see Lucas’s blade whistle past in the equivalent of a drunken roundhouse punch. It missed Nazari’s head but took off the arm with the chains. No more black lightning.
Impressively unfazed by his missing arm, Nazari ran for the window but slipped on whatever Lucas had tossed into the room. His feet shot out from beneath him and he landed hard on his back. Lucas floundered over, red-faced and watery.
“Whatever he’s paying you, I’ll triple it,” Nazari shrieked. “Or maybe it’s not money you want. I don’t care, anything! Just—”
Lucas looked down at him without a trace of pity and hacked his head off.
The cats fled.
Balthazar lay back on the carpet. He drew a long, slow breath. Exhaled. In the corner of his eye, he saw Lucas leaning on the sword, waiting for the revenant. When it smashed through the floorboards a minute later, his sword took the head with a single clean stroke.
An arm went around Balthazar’s shoulders, helping him to sit.
“Brandy,” Balthazar croaked.
Lucas propped him like a mannequin against the foot of the bed and wandered off, returning a few minutes later with a cut glass decanter. He unstoppered it and took a whiff. “Armagnac,” he said.
“Perfect.”
Balthazar drooled a little but managed to get some down. It swiftly revived him.
“He hit me straight through the door,” he told Lucas, wiggling his toes in the socks. They were still a bit numb. “I didn’t make a damned sound coming up. He was expecting us.”
Lucas took out a handkerchief and blew his nose. “Constantin?”
Balthazar shook his head. “It was Bekker. Otherwise Nazari would have fled. He must have been under orders to wait and there’s only one man who could give such an order and have it obeyed.”
Lucas considered this. “I think we should leave Brussels,” he said decisively.
“No,” Balthazar snarled. “I’ll keep my promise.”
“But—”
“If he wanted us dead, he would have done it at the warehouse. It was some kind of test.” He pushed to his feet with a groan and waded through the detritus of smashed figurines. Nazari’s head was wrapped in a sheet and stuffed into a pillowcase embroidered with daisies.
“What is that anyway?” Balthazar asked, eyeing the pink globs on the floor.
“Hamburger. Icebox is full of it.”
He laughed. “La Maison des Chats. One to remember.”
“It is, my lord.”
“If you’d been in the hall with me, we’d both be dead, you know. Probably tortured first.”
Lucas sniffled. “The cats saved us. I told you they liked me.”
Bekker was waiting at the warehouse in the Quartier des Quais. A flicker of surprise crossed his face when Balthazar appeared and dropped the pillowcase at his feet.
“Here you go,” Balthazar said with a razor-edged smile.
Bekker flicked a finger and the giant necromancer named Lars shook out the contents. They all pondered Nazari’s head for a moment. He looked
like he’d still be cursing them if he had the breath.
“I nearly died tonight,” Balthazar said, “because someone told him I was coming. The list of possible candidates is very short.”
Bekker gave him a frosty look. “Come, Balthazar. You offered no proof Nazari was plotting against me. I have no proof he wasn’t either. And frankly, I don’t much care. It seemed more useful to see which of you turned up. That man is of value to me. The other….” He shrugged. “I’ll admit, I expected it to be Nazari since he had forewarning. So you’ve surprised me. Now why don’t you go back to your hotel and change? You look a fright.”
His men laughed. Balthazar wished he could beat the smug half-smile from Bekker’s face. Sudden rage flooded him. For once, he could think of no cutting retort – or at least, not one that wouldn’t get him killed. He spun on his heel and strode for the door.
“There’s a reception tomorrow night for the Dutch ambassador,” Bekker called after him. “You can come as my guest. I’ll make a few introductions.”
“Sounds smashing,” Balthazar replied without turning.
Lucas waited anxiously outside. He’d wanted to come, but Balthazar wouldn’t let him. Just in case.
“We’re in,” Balthazar said, his tone curt.
“What did the bastard say?”
Balthazar recounted Bekker’s words, his temper cooling as they hurried through the streets. The sun was coming up. “He didn’t deny it. He’s always operated that way. Pitting his followers against each other. Testing their loyalty. Carving out the weak spots.”
“You’ll have to stay on your toes, my lord.”
“I was born on my toes.”
“Sure you want to go through with this? I won’t hold it against you.”
Balthazar sighed. “No, you wouldn’t. But I couldn’t stand myself if I walked away now. He’s thrown down the gauntlet. And he’s got to have a weakness. Everyone does.”
Lucas nodded. “I’ll get a few hours rest and start researching his properties in greater depth.”
Balthazar thought of the mess waiting back at their suite and sighed. “If you weren’t covered in blood and cat hair, I’d stop for a stroopwafel on the way. The cafes will be opening soon.”