Call of the Wilde

by Jenn Stark

  We finished up the conversation a few minutes later, as a nurse came in and quietly advised Grimm that I needed to have my various vitals checked. The deputy chief left me his card, and his glower hung in the artificial air of the hospital room long after he’d departed. I sat in my bed for a while, staring out the window, then moved to the door. Checking myself out of the hospital wouldn’t be a problem, but I wasn’t the only one within these walls I worried about.

  Still, I took the time to dress in my own clothes before venturing out. Ma-Singh had done me the kindness of bringing me a spare set, but as I pulled them on, I frowned. Jeans, T-shirt, socks, tennis shoes. Soft zipped hoodie. They said that clothes spoke louder than words, but if so, I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the message mine were sending, besides “unemployed gamer.”

  To my surprise, I found Brody outside Nikki’s room. “Where were you when I was getting interviewed by Deputy Downer?” I asked him.

  He didn’t give my appearance a second glance, focusing instead on my face. “Knew he was in there, figured you could handle it. He ask you anything interesting?”

  “No. He did mention another drone assault, though. A similar machine dropped a bomb or something while it was flying over a meth house. Owner of the drone said it was a mistake. Then he disappeared. Case was dropped in the absence of charges, and because the house was abandoned, and because: meth lab.”

  “Not a lot of sympathy for their loss?”

  “Apparently not.” I shifted. “Grimm seems pretty sure Soo’s people are doing something illegal.”

  Brody snorted. “That makes two of us. But there’s nothing they can make stick. They’ve been trying for years.”

  Trying and failing, because of Soo’s skill at deflection, I knew without him telling me. I had skills, but not that kind of skills. I’d never needed them.

  Putting that problem out of my mind, I nodded to the door. “How’s she doing?”

  “She’s doing fine,” came the voice from the other side of the wall. “Come in and talk to me, both of you, before I burst a blood vessel trying to hear you.”

  Brody rolled his eyes but held the door open obligingly, and we entered the brightly lit private hospital room.

  The overbearing aroma of flowers almost leveled us.

  “Ha! I love the look on people’s faces when they come in here,” Nikki crowed. “Isn’t it great?” She encompassed the flowers with a huge benevolent sweep of her hand, then jabbed her finger at a stack of small white cards in front of her. “I’m currently regifting these to patients who can handle flowers in their rooms, because my ass is out of here in the next few hours, according to the docs. But I gotta say, they did cheer me up.”

  “But who…” Despite myself, I wandered over to the nearest basket, a profusion of pink daisies in a garish yellow basket. The name on the card read simply: Candy.

  “Carnies, mostly, people on the Strip. Word must’ve gotten out and fast, because these things started showing up before nightfall. This morning I got a dozen more.”

  “Dixie?” I asked, not meeting Brody’s eyes.

  “Yep. She came in herself, actually, crack of dawn. I’m surprised the nurses let her in, but she always could charm the lips off a pig. She left me those.” Another point, this one seeming to convey more than an idle reference, and I took in a profusion of hydrangeas, all bright blues and yellows and pinks and whites and…something else entirely, tucked in between the blossoms. “I’m sending those down to the Children’s Ward. They’re just happy-making.”

  “They are that,” I said, pivoting in front of the flowers and turning back to Nikki. I spied the cell phone on her bed. “You been keeping busy?”

  “Oh, the usual,” Nikki shrugged. “Sleeping mostly. Nothing like a hospital to help you get caught up on beauty rest.” She tapped her strapped knee. “This is a pain in the ass. They won’t let me move with it. Had to call a nurse, the whole nine yards.”

  Her eyes met mine, then shifted hard to left. She needed me to move. I did, wandering over to look at another bright spray of pink, this time roses. The card read simply, “James.”

  “You sure you don’t want to stay in here and see if you can beat some sort of floral record?” Brody asked, looking around with a faintly stunned look on his face.

  “Not a chance.” Nikki cackled, but she shot me another studied look. I drifted back to the hydrangeas. “In fact, I get any more of these, I’ll just start immediately forwarding them. It’s well past time for me to get rolling.”

  I nodded, and after a few more meaningless interchanges Brody and I stepped from the room again. He exhaled loudly, clearly happy to be back in fresh air. I, on the other hand, now felt slightly sick.

  “I need you to put a tail on Nikki, find out if she gets followed,” I said.

  “Followed?” Brody frowned down at me. “Why? You make more sense as a target.”

  “Not in this case.” I gestured to a corridor, and Brody’s scowl deepened, but he willingly tagged along as I turned down one nearly empty hallway, then another. When we’d made the third turn, I stopped.

  “I think we’ve got a bigger problem with Dixie than we realized,” I said.

  That took him by surprise. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean those flowers that Dixie left Nikki? They were bugged. Eyes and ears. You could see the camera peeking out from between the blue and white hydrangeas.”

  He stared at me. “You’re kidding.”

  “Not even slightly. And Nikki knows but couldn’t say anything. Which means we need to get her out of there stat.” We moved out of the elevator and into the main lobby of the hospital as the pocket of my hoodie buzzed. I frowned down at the soft, familiar garment as I fished for my phone.

  “You think I should change my look?” I asked Brody distractedly. His phone rang as well as I swiped on my device.

  He glanced up from his screen for a split second, then dropped his gaze again. “You have a look?”

  Chapter Seven

  Ma-Singh was waiting for me personally in the back of the armored limo that eased up to the hospital, and listened without speaking as I outlined what I’d seen in Nikki’s hospital room. When I finished, he paused a moment longer, allowing me to take one breath, then two.

  “Your life is in danger, Madame Wilde. That is our primary concern at the moment.”

  “That may be your primary concern, but it isn’t mine. Mine is making sure the local Connected community doesn’t get disappeared on our watch, and figuring out why Dixie feels the need to monitor Nikki.”

  Ma-Singh didn’t look happy, but he nodded. “Wait here,” he said, and he turned toward the driver. “Circle the lot. I’ll be back in five minutes.”

  I sat back in the limo as Ma-Singh exited, the vehicle practically sighing with relief as he levered his thick form out of the backseat and strode quickly toward the hospital doors. The Mongolian general had been one of Soo’s most trusted assets, and I’d quickly come to depend on him as well. He was big, he was intense, and he had that whole Papa Bear thing going on. I trusted him with my life, and with a thousand other lives beyond. So had Soo.

  I pondered that. How well did Ma-Singh know the full depths of Soo’s operations? Up to this point, I hadn’t wanted to get too close to the inner workings of the Sword empire, but Grimm’s questions had struck a nerve. Why was Interpol interested in me? And who had taken a potshot at me the morning that Fred and Ginger from France were in town, chumming up to local authorities?

  The ride around the parking lot didn’t provide any answers, but it was air-conditioned. Given that it was 110 degrees in the shade outside, I’d take it.

  We cruised up to the hotel lobby again as the general emerged, and he once again demonstrated remarkable grace in sliding into the backseat of the limo. Almost before he’d closed the door, the vehicle took off.

  “Nikki is preparing to be discharged this afternoon, and will rendezvous with us at the estate
as soon as she completes some necessary errands. I have assigned three guards to distribute the flowers to the rooms and locations she designated. The hydrangea bouquet will go to the Children’s Ward, per your instructions. It will be turned in such a way that the camera will face a nonpublic space, but not otherwise harmed.”

  “Good.” I nodded. “She made a big deal out of reallocating those bouquets, so that shouldn’t cause any suspicion. Do we have any idea yet what she might have disclosed—anything harmful?”

  “Nikki Dawes, for all her flamboyant appearance, is remarkably circumspect. If she did release information, I suspect it was done so in an attempt to draw out her observers. We’ll know more when we see her.”

  He shifted his gaze to me. “The problem of the Connected community is less straightforward. We have no official standing with the community. Our members are not psychic, in the main.”

  “I disagree. I’ve seen our members fight.”

  “That’s not the same thing.”

  “It’s exactly the same thing, but I get your point. We don’t have a stable full of card readers who can mingle among the Connecteds here. Nikki could, and will. I could, but I’m not all that friendly with the locals.”

  “There is also the matter of your safety.”

  “I’m not worried about that with the carnies. They don’t have that kind of firepower. They sure as hell wouldn’t be working on the Strip if they had drone-strike capability and missile launchers.” I shook my head. “I’m liking Gamon for that.”

  “Ordinarily, I would agree with you,” Ma-Singh said. We’d pulled out of the parking lot, and were now driving at speed toward Lake Las Vegas. “But as I believe Nikki informed you, we located Gamon while you were traveling. She was in critical condition, suffering from significant burns over three-quarters of her body.”

  Three-quarters? Yikes. “What happened to her?”

  “Nobody is saying for certain. Per your instructions, once we located her, she was presented with the opportunity for accelerated healing in Dr. Sells’s clinic. She took it.”

  I winced. Nothing said more about Gamon’s physical state than the fact that she was willing to let me help fix it. “What’s Sells saying?”

  “We’ve not yet received an update.”

  “Well, follow up on it. Gamon needs more than Sells, if what you’re saying is true. She needs the Magician.”

  Ma-Singh hesitated. “Why would the Council assist with her recovery? She’s been their avowed enemy for decades.”

  “Leverage.” I tapped my chin, considering the angles. “Which is why I want to keep our hands in her healing too. I can’t maintain any sort of attack on outside enemies if I’m constantly watching my back with her. Mercault was bad enough.”

  Ma-Singh snorted. “He, at least, is no longer an issue. We’ve been monitoring his activity twenty-four seven as you instructed. He’s returned to his headquarters in France and is focusing solely on his drug trade—slavishly so.”

  “He’s afraid we’re about to pull the plug on it,” I said. “He’s probably right.”

  “Is that wise?”

  Though he was merely echoing my own concern, I looked at Ma-Singh with some surprise. He stared steadily back. Steadiness came standard with Mongolian generals, it seemed. “What do you mean, is that wise? We stopped one tentacle of the technoceutical trade, not even the worst one. Of course we need to keep hacking away at it.”

  Ma-Singh spread his hands. “The technoceutical trade has occupied the minds and military of some of the most powerful Connected and non-Connected kingpins for the past fifty years. With the notable exception of the human trafficking aspect, it has proven to be a worthwhile distraction and viable moneymaking proposition for them.”

  “So you’re saying that we should let them continue exploiting half the world to bake the other half, because it keeps everyone out of our hair?”

  Ma-Singh shook his head. “I’m saying you need to reframe the question. Your efforts to stop the trade entirely are doomed to failure. There will always be a need for it. To attempt to stop the flow would be the equivalent of bailing the ocean. You’ll exhaust the House of Swords’ resources, and get no closer to the safety you seek for the youngest Connecteds. Other avenues will open up. Imagine if technoceuticals didn’t exist, and those craving magic had to resort to the old ways. What were those old ways?”

  “Same thing.” I made a face. “Sacrificing children.”

  He nodded. “Conversely, imagine a world where true technoceuticals do exist—not in their current quasi-organic form, but in a form that was fully technological in nature. The money continues to flow, the users continue to grow dependent on the results they receive, but…”

  He didn’t have to finish the sentence. I turned to look out the window, ignoring the vibrating phone in my hoodie pocket, signaling an incoming text. Ma-Singh let me sulk for another minute, until I finally spoke again. “How deep in are we?”

  He didn’t hesitate. “Deep. Madame Soo, like you, generally eschewed the creation of drugs in any form, but she also understood the reality of the trade. She made her money protecting the couriers—or eliminating them, if the situation required it. There are only a few labs still in her ownership, those dedicated to exactly this sort of technological-only drug, but they haven’t proved as profitable as expected. Progress is slow. But they allow us to demonstrate our commitment to the trade, and we cannot afford to appear weak, Madame Wilde. There are too many players—Connected or otherwise—who would seek to gain should we falter. We do not want to invite such minor conflict when there appears to be a true war on the horizon.”

  Something in his voice made my stomach tighten. “Are we starting to see signs of those other players?”

  Again, no hesitation. “We are. Madame Soo ruled the trade routes with an iron fist. The past several weeks, there has been unsanctioned movement, which we have not acted against. If we act now, we can easily say we were waiting to see who were our friends and who, our enemies. But that window is rapidly closing.”

  “When you say act…”

  For the first time, Ma-Singh didn’t answer so quickly. I lifted my hand with a give-it-to-me gesture. “I’m a big girl, Ma-Singh.”

  “We take back control of the routes and refuse passage to those who did not follow the protocols, for the same period of time that they abused our good graces. If they balk, we remove them from the trade entirely.”

  “You mean kill them.”

  “Death could result, yes. On both sides, as with any conflict.”

  I closed my eyes, but I couldn’t hide from the truth. My negligence in following Soo’s harsh protocols had opened up my own people to attack. To reclaim our position, those attacks would need to be answered.

  “Fine,” I said. “Clean it up, but make it fast. Rather than a time delay, demand a payoff now. Set the price—make it high enough that honor is restored, but not so high that it’s rejected out of hand. They want to play, they’ll pay. Money is something these people value less than time, I’m thinking.” And I needed that money to continue the rescue and recovery efforts of the children the trade so callously harmed.

  “Yes,” Ma-Singh nodded, apparently satisfied.

  My phone buzzed again, and I yanked it out as the limo made the final turn into the long drive up to Soo’s palatial lake house mansion. Well, my palatial lake house mansion, I supposed, scowling down at my clothes. I was a kingpin in a society built on appearances, and here I was in scuffed Chucks and denim. Setting that thought aside for the moment, I focused on the phone, and Brody’s increasingly terse texts to call him. Before I could, the phone buzzed again in my hand. Sweet Christmas, he was a pain in the ass.

  I snapped it to my ear. “What?”

  “Where the hell have you been?” Brody sounded way more worried than he needed to be.

  “In an armored limo driving home, Brody. Where’d you think I was?”

  “There’s been
another round of new arrivals at the casinos. Three different locations from the first. Bellagio, Aria, Encore.”

  “Same guys?”

  “At least one of them, but maybe not all.” Brody sounded disgusted. “Big guys, tall, expensive suits, tough to pin down their ethnicity. Money to burn.”

  “How’d they pop on your radar?”

  “Nothing on them in facial recognition software, and we should have something—would have something, ordinarily. They got the most expensive rooms in each facility, made demands that only regulars know how to make. Vegas lives on its whales. Someone would know these guys…and we don’t.”

  I got out of the limo, the phone still jammed to my ear. “Send me their pics, and I’ll see if Simon can run them through whatever passes as computers for the Council. The fact that these people were in and out and back—that’s not good. Are they casing the casinos?”

  “They haven’t done anything but lose money at cards, and lose big. Real money—it’s been checked. If they’re planning a heist, they’re losing their shirts in the process. Or they’re printing the bills in some warehouse close by. We’re collecting the cash as it comes in.”

  “Could just be a bunch of weirdoes. This is Vegas.”

  “It is that. Sending you the pics. You turn anything up, let me know.”

  He rang off, and I nodded to Ma-Singh to precede me into the house. It was starting to feel like coming home, and I shook my head at the idea. The stone-and-wood lake house sprawled out in a wide, low profile, taking advantage of the lakeside topography to feature multiple stone patios arrayed with fountains and reflection pools. Nikki had claimed her room almost immediately at the center of the mansion, but I hadn’t done more than crash in one of the several existing bedrooms. I preferred my old digs at the Palazzo, frankly, which I’d generally used when coming into town on a job for the Arcana Council.