The darkness in Carlos's eyes raked me as he shook his head. "It can't be stopped without dismantling the artifact."
"What happens if the ghost gets to the organ first?"
"Then he'll execute his plan."
I dragged my feet up onto the seat in front of me and huddled like a struck child.
"We'll have to destroy it," Mara said.
Carlos chuckled, the sound of bones rattling. "As if it were that simple. It must be done with great control. You and I together, witch, would not be sufficient."
"How many more would you need?" she asked.
Carlos thought aloud. "We require mages adept at unweaving the strands of death. Of necromancers, we'd need only one more—but there are no more nearby. Witches' strength runs in the wrong direction. One could hold it, but we'd need a dozen to break it."
My brain wasn't entirely frozen, however cold I felt. "How many vampires would it take?"
Carlos and Mara both stared at me.
"What?" Mara asked.
"How many vampires?" I repeated, my mind filled with a shape of information but not the information, itself. "They must have some powers over death, since they're the undead," I reasoned.
Carlos frowned. "I wouldn't have thought…"
"Why not?" Mara responded. She turned and stared at Carlos. "Would it work?"
"After the spirit is released… it might."
I laid my head on my knees, drained and battered by ideas conversely helpful and unwelcome. Wygan's voice echoed through my mind, saying that his «gift» would keep me alive, and I gave a bitter laugh.
We parted ways to plan and prepare. I chose to drink and sleep and make my preparations in the morning.
By Wednesday evening, my choices had dwindled down to what to wear for my meeting with Edward. I ended up in a slinky dress and heels and felt I was a bit overdressed for my own funeral. I'd discovered that my evening jacket wouldn't cover the holster, but the pistol would do me no good against vampires. I missed it, though. I felt less my own master than Sergeyev—whatever his real name—must have felt.
Cameron was waiting outside my office building. His eyes widened and he gave me an appreciative smile. "You look terrific."
My voice came out cold. "This is not a date, Cameron. I feel like a tethered goat."
He followed me up the stairs. "Are you nervous?"
"Why?"
"You just seem upset or something. You look funny, too."
"You just said I looked nice."
"I mean, you look… hard. Armored, maybe."
I threw myself into my desk chair. "Lovely." I felt anything but. "OK, here's the deal. I said there was something new we had to discuss."
"Yeah. What's up?"
"Things have changed."
"You're dumping my case, aren't you?"
"Would I be dressed like this if I was? No. I admit I wanted to, but it's no longer an option. And it's ethically repugnant."
He started to get up from the client chair. "But you don't want to work for me anymore. I understand."
I snapped, "No, you don't. We have something in common. We both had no idea what vampires were really like when we made our contracts. I've had some of that reality thrust upon me in unpleasant ways. But I am not becoming like you. I still have to live in a human world, by human rules. What you are and what you must do to survive are things I cannot stretch my mind over without going crazy."
He whispered, "That's what I felt," and sat down again.
"I know. That's why I'm not quitting. Besides having a contract, I'm as screwed as you are, and I need your help as much as you need mine."
I told him about Wygan and the Grey thread. He stared at me in shock.
"It's all my fault."
I rolled my eyes. "Everyone wants to take credit. It's my own fault. It can't be undone—or I don't think it can—but that doesn't mean it can't be dealt with. But that's for later. For now, we fix your problem and maybe some of mine, but it's dangerous."
The plan was simple enough, but I half expected Cameron's head to bulge under the speed and density of the information I poured into him. He goggled at me at first, frowning, asking questions. At the end, he just shook his head and looked dazed.
"That's… seriously wack."
"Best I can come up with. If I've accounted for all the factors, if I can persuade him it's to his advantage, we may all survive."
"What if he won't help? What if he doesn't see it as you do?"
"Then we run and hope we beat the blast. Which is why you will not be in that room tonight. Find a place to lurk where you can watch the front door."
"What am I supposed to be watching for?"
"Me. Once Edward comes in, I expect to be finished with him one way or another in less than an hour. If I don't come out the front door within two, I want you to come looking for me. Do you understand?"
"Yeah. I get to be the Seventh Cavalry."
"That's the plan."
"Well, I'm not thrilled with it…"
"Nor am I, but face-to-face is the only way."
"What if he just—you know?"
"Punches my card? He could, but it's a fair bet he'll hear me out. That room will be full of his enemies, watching and waiting for a chance to take him out. Edward is not stupid. I'll be there under protection, a defenseless daylighter begging a favor. Killing me in front of that audience would be like firing on Fort Sumter. You, on the other hand, he might be able to get away with, if he's still pissed enough to try it."
Cameron didn't look happy, but he agreed to it. We left my office and strolled down the streets until we were half a block from the After Dark. The only sign was a small brass plaque next to iron gates and an iron-railed circular staircase leading down. Cameron squeezed my shoulder for encouragement, not thinking. My knees buckled as the black corners of the Grey folded over me in acid-trip lights.
He jerked his hand away, contrite and apologizing. I caught my breath and told him to get going. I walked down the stairs alone.
My heels rang a hollow clacking on the white marble stairs. The soles of my shoes slid on the cool stone. The foot of the stairs opened into a small marble foyer. It was like a very expensive crypt. A glossy pair of black-enameled doors faced me. I tapped on one of them.
The door swung back, silent as a 1910 movie. A dark man in an equally dark suit looked me over and beckoned me in. As the door closed behind me, he glanced at a list.
I was quivering as the surface of reality rolled beneath my feet. I kept my voice low. "Harper Blaine."
He nodded and held out a hand to take my jacket. He raised an eyebrow when I refused.
"I don't want to catch cold."
One corner of his mouth turned up, but you couldn't call it a smile. He led me through another set of doors, into the club proper, and pointed to a table.
"Your patron awaits." His voice was crushed glass. His mouth made another jump; then he turned and left me standing on a curve of red carpet. Glances tore me. Quick movement pulled my attention around to Alice, sidling to intercept me. I stepped into the room before she got close. Her glower cut a swath of cold down my back.
I presented an outward cool as I crossed the room, but a sick sense of impending doom writhed in the pit of my stomach. Every figure wore an outline of glowing threads, and shadows crept or stretched everywhere. Pushing back against the tidal swell of Grey was hard. I picked out faces I recognized in the crowd, illuminated by their strange lights. I didn't spot Wygan among them, but I almost stopped and stared when I saw Gwen cringing against a small table in a wash of faded green. She looked more miserable than I felt. I shook myself and completed the long walk to Carlos.
I slid into the seat that faced the door and breathed a moment's relief. Carlos and I sat almost side by side, and I could feel the weight of his darkness press over me.
"Is he here yet?" I asked.
"Not yet."
"Point him out to me when he makes his grand entrance."
"You'
ll know."
I tried to compose my thoughts, but they were fluttering moths in the lamplight. "What do you think of our chances?" I asked.
"Edward's no fool when it comes to his demesne."
I started to speak again and Carlos flicked his fingers in a warning signal that stroked a cold fire across my cheek.
"Himself," he muttered.
I looked from the corner of my eye toward the door.
He wasn't big like Carlos; he was slight, but his slenderness lent an illusion of height, and the fiery threads around him leapt upward, flaming in every color, tangling like sensual snakes in every other thread they touched. Sarah's James Bond description was apt: thick, dark hair over pale skin and sharp eyes, and a visible cruel streak wide as a door. Most every head in the room turned his way, even if only for a moment, acknowledging the presence of the lord of the city. I didn't allow my own head to turn, nor did Carlos.
Edward moved out of the doorway, breaking the tableau. He cir-cled the room at a stroll, clockwise. Carlos gave a low, cynical chuckle as he watched.
"Doesn't much like this situation, does he?" I observed.
"You never know what Edward thinks until the knife is in," he warned, rising to his feet.
Edward made his way to us at last, pausing within a spreading pool of cold. Carlos glowered at him. Edward flicked a glance over the big-ger vampire as if brushing away a fly.
Carlos stepped aside. "Edward."
The other grudged a tiny nod. "Carlos. Still with us."
"Eternally."
Edward gave a small sound of amused disgust. "Always angry. Such a waste, always living in the past."
"The past and the future are all now, to me."
"As ever."
Carlos spread ripples of fury. His lip curled, showing a glittering, sharp fang.
Edward locked his gaze with Carlos's. A withering, icy electricity raised the hair on my arms. "There will be another time."
Carlos stepped back, then turned on his heel and walked away without looking back. I hoped he would stay close.
Edward slipped into the vacated chair. He looked me over with a glance much warmer than the one he had turned on Carlos. It was as if he had thrown a switch. The combination of eroticism and revulsion I felt was unsettling.
"Ah, the detective. A friend of my unfortunate mistake."
"An employee of Cameron's," I corrected him. "I came to see if I can help you with a problem and repair Cameron's situation at the same time."
An anonymous server presented us with drinks. I had no idea what the little glasses held which gleamed like oil in my sight, and I had no intention of finding out. I let mine sit on the table while Edward picked his up and sipped.
"Help me? I should have wiped the little insect off the face of the earth."
"You missed your chance to kill Cameron and face no consequences quite a while ago. There are more immediate problems now, but I know how you can solve them and the issue of Cameron all at once."
One of his eyebrows rose, and he glanced at me over the rim of the glass. I smiled away the sudden thrill of sick sweat and went on.
"Quite a few of your people seem to have axes to grind with you. One tried to persuade me to take you out, but I'm not suicidal or stupid. Your community wouldn't benefit and neither would my client. There is an outside threat to all of you, not just you, me, or Cameron. If you dispose of the threat, you save the community, resolidify your leadership position, and undermine your detractors. You also have the opportunity to force your enemies either to support you or so openly defy you that you can dispose of them without fear of reprisal."
He sat back, giving me a piercing look. "You hint at something, but you say nothing. You want me to be majestic, and yet it is you who've stirred up the muck for flinging. I gave you Cameron, but you continued to sniff and dig into my affairs. You expect me to be grateful? I could rip you open and have done with it all, right now."
Ice gripped my insides, but I pushed it back. "You could. But would it be wise in front of this audience, just to quell your own discomfort? Would it be wise to kill a creature as weak as me, who comes to you under the protection of someone they all respect and fear even more than you?" I flicked a finger at the roomful of vampires. "How could they trust you then? I've been told you're no fool, but it would be foolish to kill me under those circumstances. And when I have the solutions to your problems, as well."
"You speak of a crisis upon me, but I see none beyond your annoying pricking."
"Carlos is the only one of your people who could recognize the problem, and I imagine he stopped looking out for your interests after Seville."
He raised a cool eyebrow, though I saw the momentary flicker of his corona.
I smiled a little.
He laid the weight of his gaze on mine and tried to push me. The ache in my chest distracted me enough to wrench my line of sight aside just as he spoke. "Tell me what you know and how you came to know it."
I slipped into a shooter's concentration no wider than a bullet hole at twenty yards. I could not afford to miss this mark, nor slide under his control. "I'll tell you and give you the solution, but only for a price."
Edward ground his teeth. "You defy me? You bargain with me?" Surprise and outrage broke his pressure against me.
I centered my stare back on his and kept my voice low. "I came to help you, so you would help me. This room is filled with your enemies. If you harm me—a defenseless daylighter under Carlos's protection— they will have a cause against you to rally around, a match to the powder of their hatred and fear. They will attack you on every side. If you survive, your cat's-paws and your assistants and supporters at TPM will vanish. You'll lose your ability to control your empire in the daylight world and in the nightside as well. That's the real key to your power. That's why they came here tonight. That's why they helped me and then kept the mud stirred up. They want your head. I can't stop Alice and her cronies, but if you listen to my proposition and let me leave alive and unharmed, anyone who hasn't already made up their mind will have no reason to join her against you, and the rest will back you for their own good. Carlos cannot fight you, but he won't help Alice if you give him no cause. So, are you angry enough to cut your own throat while you cut mine, or do you want to listen a moment longer?"
Edward put his drink down and propped his elbows on the table. He rested his chin on his upraised hands and stared at me. The smolder level went up and so did the albedo of the Grey, thickening to snow-light cut with brilliant neon. Silence hung.
"For a woman, you have the most amazing pair of balls." He stretched one hand toward me and glided the back of his fingers down my arm.
A jolt of something that was not pure revulsion shot through my belly. It fought with the urge to gag, but my disgust was still stronger than his casual manipulations. I twitched my arm away from him and leaned back into my chair. "I'm not on the menu, Edward."
He withdrew his hand and re-propped his chin. "I'm intrigued. So speak your piece. I promise you no harm. Tonight, at least."
I nodded and began. "There is a sort of necromantic battery sitting on top of a nexus of the magic power grid—whatever you choose to call it—in this city, diverting and storing energy. It's become overloaded and unstable as nitroglycerin. Its previous masters are all dead, and it's come back into the possession of its ghost. He's a powerful and vengeful spirit and I know he can't be trusted. He won't be kind in his use of this power, or careful."
"Carlos told you of this?" The temperature around us dropped and the air thickened.
I barked a derisive laugh, though doing so hurt. "I found it myself. I only asked him to identify it. He wants nothing to do with it," I fudged. "But it has to be dismantled—and soon—by others with power, or it will collapse. The sudden release of this power on the creatures of the nightside would be like dumping an unrestrained overload of the Hanford reactor into Seattle's power grid in one blast."
Edward's face was stone. "And we would
all burn like Hiroshima." He sat back. "I see. My world has shaken. I sit in the heart of my own domain, yet surrounded by enemies, threatened from within and without and nowhere to run. And I must help you and Carlos or I shall be lord of a blasted domain—if I survive at all."
"That's how I see it. You'll have to quell this bunch tonight with minimum damage. But I don't think you'll find that difficult if you get the right people on your side early. Once you neutralize the threat of the artifact, you're a hero. After that, the few enemies who remain will be anxious to either kiss the ring or fade into the woodwork. Then you mop up as you see fit."
Edward looked down, as if the plan lay on the table, then raised his eyes again. "I mend part of the rift between myself and Carlos and, of course, I solidify my position as a wise and just ruler by returning my protege to the fold—which also repays my debt to you, I suppose."
"It is the sort of gesture that would make you damn near unassailable."
He sighed and sat back in his seat, stretching his legs out. He folded his hands in his lap. Then he chuckled. "I don't know how much of this circumstance you brought to bear and how much you merely took advantage of, but I bow to you. You're a better tutor than Machiavelli."
I sat silent.
"Very well." He shot a glance to the side and I turned my head to see Alice, blazing fury and glaring ice at me. "If I retain my head next week, I will assign Cameron a mentor until he is capable of looking after himself to that mentor's satisfaction. Now, tell me what you require to lay this ghost and his infernal device."
I felt Alice's frozen heat edging closer as Edward listened to what I knew of the organ. Then he turned and speared her with a look.
"Alice, fetch Carlos here."
Boiling cold fury, she stalked off and returned with the necromancer. Edward brushed her aside and turned his attention on Carlos. "Tell me of this artifact."
Carlos remained standing, unresponsive. A cold wall shimmered between them.
Edward glared back a moment. Then he shrugged and sighed, the wall shattering. "Carlos, I have agreed to do this thing, and I humbly request your help. Please. Tell me what you know."
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