“Where are their offices?”
“LeperCon.”
“Ooh, street cred,” I said with a fake sound of approval. LeperCon was the nickname for one of the more run-down city areas, a mishmash of buildings and streets translocated from Boston’s old Combat Zone. “LeperCon” was wordplay on its Irish heritage. I was more familiar with the area than Brand would suspect; I’ve had reasons to visit it on my own.
I said, “Let’s go check them out.”
Twenty minutes later, I remanded Matthias into Queenie’s care and set out with Brand.
I dressed for the outing in a fancy shirt I’d found in the ruins of Sun Estate, on one of my semiannual forays onto its haunted grounds. Between the shirt and a pair of black slacks, I wouldn’t embarrass myself in a business setting.
Brand was in his work clothes, a high-end mix of tactical apparel. He shopped for them on a website that also sold guns and crossbows. The loose black shirt had many pockets—holster pockets, pockets for ammo, hidden pockets up the sleeve designed for handcuff keys or pepper spray or small knives. He covered it with a custom-made chest rig lined with knives.
As we walked to the subway, Brand lapsed into his vigilant bodyguard mode. I mirrored it to a point—I paid attention to our immediate vicinity, oncoming alleys and doorway openings, open windows, rooflines.
Brand took that state of awareness to depths I couldn’t even imagine. He didn’t just assess the danger level of approaching pedestrians, he assumed they were a threat and mapped out how they’d attack, how hard they’d hit, the spots he’d be most vulnerable, his best chance to counter. Every time we turned a corner, he planned new escape routes. He was very, very good at what he did.
When the subway terminal was in sight, he fractionally relaxed. He said, “I talked with Lord Keaton, Amy Beige, and Fiddler Blue. Addam isn’t into anything dirty that Keaton knows of. Fiddler doesn’t know the family well but suggested we arrange a meeting at the Enclave later. Amy Beige called me an asshole and hung up. I think she’s still sore about the wyvern.”
“Why the Enclave?”
Brand’s eyes swung to a roof, down the side of an adjoining building, across a sewer grate. “There’s a regatta. The Moral Certainties are hosting it.”
“Maybe we can get an audience with Addam Saint Nicholas’s family there. I’ll put in a request with Lady Justice’s people. It’s been a while since we went to the beach.”
“Aren’t you going to feel a little self-conscious in a bathing suit?” he asked.
“Stop making fun of my weight,” I said. “And while you’re at it, pay better attention. Matthias is following us.”
Brand gave me a perfectly blank look. I loved catching details before he did. I said, “He’s got on that purple t-shirt that Queenie gave him. He’s two streets back. By the pretzel vendor.”
“Are you being smug? Is that a smug look?”
“Of course not,” I said.
“Do you feel smug because you just spotted Matthias by the pretzel vendor?”
“Not at all.”
“Because he’s been following us since we were half a block away from Half House. He went out the second-story bathroom window and down the drainpipe. He’s let us keep a two-block lead except when he ran into Starbucks to get an iced coffee. You noticed none of this.”
When I wisely said nothing, Brand glared at me. “Rune. He’s going to get himself killed, following us around. It’s fucking bad enough we have to feed him, do we need to be responsible for funeral expenses, too?”
I sighed. “Do you want me to go grab him?”
A slow, dangerous smile spread across Brand’s pressed lips. “I’ve got a better idea.”
My phone buzzed. I pulled it out and saw it was from an unlisted private number. “Hello?” I answered.
“Isn’t it time for us to meet yet?” someone asked anxiously.
“Excuse me?”
“It’s not, is it? I’ll leave the motor running, though.”
The caller hung up. I stared at the phone, unsure what to make of it.
The aboveground entrance for New Atlantis’s main subway hub was a building translocated from Spain. The Canfranc Station had been built in the early 1920s, ambitiously linking France and Spain along the side of the Pyrenees. Three stories tall, seven hundred and ninety feet long, over three hundred and sixty-five windows.
The subway itself was a throwback to the earliest days of underground systems. They were literally trains, albeit powered by sigils that moved the linked cars without noise and pollution. New Atlantis Transit was a joint venture between the Magician and the Chariot, part of a city contract worth close to nine digits.
We bought tokens and moved to the platform for the northwest line, which would drop us off in the heart of LeperCon. Brand waited until we were boarded before he excused himself with an evil chuckle.
I people-watched. It was that weird stretch of travel time that existed between the morning and afternoon rush hours. Robes and shorts, suits and hemp sacks, messenger bags, briefcases. There was a group of beggars loitering by the emergency exit. They had the dead, waxy skin of the Bone Hollows, Death’s court.
The conductor made a public address over the intercom system, sternly reminding passengers that windows were to remain closed at all times. Fifteen seconds later, Brand came back to the seat with Matthias in tow. Matthias’s hair was windblown and sticking up in all directions. He looked like he was about to cry.
Brand shoved the young scion into the seat and said to me, “Play good cop.”
I slid across the facing seats so that I was next to Matthias. Brand dropped into my abandoned spot and began to clean one of his blades. I said, “Off the top of my head? Purple is a bad color for stealth.”
“I’m supposed to say I’m sorry,” Matthias whispered.
“Sorry for what?” I asked, wanting to be clear.
“For disrespecting you,” he said.
“As nice as it would be to live with someone who showed me respect, that’s not the point.”
Brand stopped fake-buffing the knife and gave me a level look.
I said, “It’s not me you shouldn’t disrespect, it’s my orders. Our orders. You’re not trained to follow us into the kind of places we go. If this is going to work, Matthias, you’ve got to understand that. That shit you pulled this afternoon at the Tower’s? And following us on an assignment? This can’t happen again.”
“I . . .” He flushed. “I needed a bathroom. At the Tower’s. I didn’t think you’d mind. And today, I was just, I was curious. You’re . . . I was just curious. You’ve been . . . nice to me. I was just curious.”
“If you want to say thank you, let me be the first to suggest baked goods. Maybe a nice muffin basket. But don’t follow us on a job. After everything you’ve lost, you don’t need the aggravation, Matthias, trust me.”
“Everything I’ve lost,” he repeated. He smiled at his lap. I couldn’t tell what type of a smile it was, either, other than it being far more complicated than any teenager’s smile ought to.
I’d been catching glimpses of emotion that derailed most of my hunches about Matthias. I was starting to think that, rather than being important to the Lovers, Matthias had been somehow damaged by them.
Since I didn’t have any better ideas, and I was nosy, I decided to fish. “I forgot to tell you. I asked Lord Tower to find out about your family. Did you live with your parents or grandmother before the raid?”
His eyes widened, and his skin went ash gray. “I was. No. No, I was . . . kept by an uncle. Until the arrangements were made. I didn’t—I haven’t—I haven’t seen my parents in years.” White wrinkles pinched the sides of his eyes and mouth. He cleared his throat and said, “Did you ask Lord Tower to find my uncle?”
“What do you mean by arrangements, Matthias?”
“What?”
“You just said you lived with your uncle while arrangements were being made.”
The stammer redoubled.
“M-marriage. That was. What. M-my grandmother, Elena, that was w-what she was going to do with me. M-marry me off to someone. Please. Please, you don’t need to find my family, or tell them about me. They don’t need to know where I am.”
“I only asked the Tower to find out about them. He wouldn’t make contact without asking me first.”
I exchanged a confused look with Brand as we all settled into an uneasy silence.
Brand pulled out his smartphone. I replayed recent events in my head. Ten minutes shy of our stop, Brand slid over and angled his phone screen at me. I took it, hit a button, and promptly shut down the web browser. I’d never been very good with technology. I tried to find my way back to the screen. A message popped up asking me if I wanted to begin a factory reset.
“For fuck’s sake,” Brand said. “It’s like watching Gilligan try to make a radio out of coconuts. Give me that.” He snatched the phone back and tapped some keys.
He’d surfed to the website for Moral Confidence, LLC. The “Contact Us” page had photos of the principal investors. I let my eyes slide unhappily over Geoffrey’s bookish smile. Brand put two fingers on the screen and zoomed in on the picture of Addam. A handsome man.
“Have you learned anything else about Addam’s family?” I asked. Then I pointed at Matthias. “Don’t pay attention. Don’t remember anything we say. Don’t talk to anyone about what you don’t remember.”
Brand said, “Big court. Small immediate family. Lady Justice only has four surviving children—the rest died in the war. Oldest is Christian. Addam is next. Then comes Ella and Quinn. Not much info on the two youngest, but I did learn something about Christian. There was an Eyes Only memo in the folder the Tower gave you. He’s been ill.”
“Really?” Scions didn’t get sick. They were swimming in sigils and healing magic; they had ways to eliminate almost any illness or injury.
“Hospitalized, even,” Brand said. “I didn’t get the sense that it’s a big fucking deal—it’s not like they’re flying healers in from across the world. But still.”
“Still. The heir scion is in the hospital. Addam, next in line, is missing. Do you know if Addam and his siblings are close?”
“Not sure, but there are a bunch of press clippings about Addam and his brothers volunteering at public concerts. Free concerts. Like, for the dirty masses. Some of the press clippings even made it sound like Addam wasn’t full of shit.”
“Lord Tower seems fond of him,” I said absently.
“So? I could go my entire fucking life without that seal of approval,” Brand said.
There wasn’t time to say more. The train whistled as we slid into LeperCon.
Unlike most major cities, New Atlantis was not designed to evolve.
It wasn’t built on the assumption that it’d go through development cycles—that today’s run-down streets would become tomorrow’s coffee shops and art galleries. Rundown streets were built into the city’s design; and luxury towers would always be luxury towers.
LeperCon had been pulled from the worst of Boston’s old Combat Zone. It was now a good place to find cheap apartments, ethnic grocers, and reliable blue-collar drug dealers. The land under the translocated buildings had once been a bog, and the smell persisted, giving the three-street neighborhood a strange whiff of car fumes, crumbling cement, and old weeds. I knew the area well, but I hid my familiarity from Brand. It wasn’t something he needed to know.
Addam’s office sat on a slow intersection, kitty-corner to a gas station and bodega. Their building was protected with embarrassingly strong wards. I pictured a team of Moral Certainty magic-users scuttling into the neighborhood in advance of Addam’s arrival, making it scion-proof by sticking plugs in electrical outlets and a gate at the top of the cellar stairs.
An anxious female voice buzzed us into the building, giving us directions to the second floor. To get there, we passed through what I grudgingly admitted was a beautiful old foyer—soaring ceiling, exotic wall murals.
The woman with the anxious voice met us at the doorway to Addam’s offices. Lilly Rose was plucked straight out of Technicolor 1950s. Sweet and blonde and hand-wringingly upset. My presence knocked her off-balance—if a person had heard of me, it usually did—and I decided to keep her that way.
“I’ve been asked to look into the whereabouts of Lord Addam Saint Nicholas,” I said. “Are his business partners on the premises?”
“Yes, they are; they’re in a meeting with a client right now. I’m so happy that—”
“Do not disturb them. We’ll speak with them later. For now, I’ll need to see Lord Saint Nicholas’s personal space. Immediately.”
“His office? I should let the others know that—”
“I’d rather you not speak to anyone until you and I talk,” I said ominously. “According to my records, Lord Saint Nicholas was last seen in your presence.”
Her mouth worked for a moment, as if it wanted to start having three conversations at once. Brand sighed, shoved past me, and put a weightless hand on Lilly Rose’s arm.
“Hello, Lilly. My name is Brand, and that back there is Matthias. We’re helping Lord Sun try to find Addam.”
When Brand used Lord Sun, it was for one of two reasons. Either he wanted to remind the person we’re speaking to that, as the last of the Sun Throne, I was technically in charge. Or he was irritated because I was acting like I was.
“Really, I’m so glad,” she said sincerely. “I’m sorry if I seem flustered. No one else seems to be taking it seriously. Addam has—well, that is, he’s done things like this before. Taken spontaneous trips. He’s even done it without telling me. I don’t know why I’m so sure that this time is different, but it is, and no one will do anything. What if he’s hurt?”
“We’ll find him,” Brand assured her. “We’re very good at that. You said you spoke to him the night he disappeared?”
“Yes. Like Lord Sun said, I’m probably the last person who saw him. He was working late and I left before him. He told me he was going to burn the midnight oil, and then go home to a good book.”
“Was that strange?” I asked.
“For him to stay late? Oh, no. Not for the middle of the week, at least.”
“Does Lord Saint Nicholas have an active social life?” Brand asked. “Was it unusual for him to go straight home from work?”
“Again, in the middle of the week, no. Or at least it wouldn’t be strange for him to go straight to his condominium or to the Justice estate. His weekends are more relaxed. He does a lot of charity work with his brothers. He enjoys music and arts festivals.” She held her hands, knotted into a single, squirming fist, to her chin. “Please, be honest with me. Do you think something is wrong?”
“I think he’ll be fine,” Brand told her. “Lilly, was anything different the day—or in the days before—Lord Saint Nicholas disappeared? Was he upset or worried? Did he do anything different from his normal routine?”
We followed that with our other standard questions: What was Addam wearing? Did he have any known medical conditions? What was Addam working on when she’d left him? Was there anyone strange outside the building when she left? Where does he keep his passport? Her answers were negative: nothing strange, out of the ordinary, outside routine.
Brand said, “Have you checked Lord Saint Nicholas’s condo yourself?”
“Oh, yes,” she said. “I went there the morning he didn’t come to work. Then in the evening, and twice yesterday, and again this morning. I even spoke with his building superintendent. They said he never showed up that first evening. They have cameras that monitor that sort of thing.”
“Is Addam the type of person to make enemies?” I asked.
Lilly smiled for the first time. “Not even his exes are enemies.”
After that, she showed us to Addam’s office—without, thankfully, alerting the other business partners.
Addam had a modest corner office, decorated with expensive furniture built with the specific purpose of not looki
ng expensive. Addam had made a fair stab at modesty, I’ll give him that; but the truth was in the ceramic toilet-brush holder, in the expertly warded locks on his desk drawer, and in the not-imitation leather seating arrangement.
As soon as we were alone, we began snooping.
The key to a really thorough search is to take the room apart with your brain first. It’s not just a matter of glancing behind artwork and opening drawers. You need to look for hiding places built into the structure of the building: crawl spaces, vents, loose flooring, and drop ceilings. You need to look in the hollow part of furniture and fixtures, and behind electrical plates—especially if you spot any wear on the screws. You need to look for seeds, bent spoons, ash, and tile discoloration. You have to look in CD cases and battery compartments; in toilet tanks; in the cardboard cylinders of toilet paper.
When half an hour turned up nothing more than a waste of half an hour, I released a psychometry spell from one of my sigils. I’d stored it special just for this trip.
The world flashed in color-negative until the spell settled into a humming balance. Psychometry was a potent, tricky bit of tactile magic. Recent events leave short-term psychic snapshots in our reality. Psychometry allowed me to connect with those snapshots. The spell was potentially overwhelming, even disabling, so Brand had to help, guiding me to various spots he wanted me to examine.
From Addam’s desktop, I felt excitement. A business venture in the works? Something to do with music patronage.
From the marble sink in his private bathroom I got a generalized sense of lust. Addam had stood there and put on cologne while talking on the phone.
From the doorknob, I suffered a vivid, thirty-second scene between Addam and Lilly regarding the death of her kitten, Lady Jiggles. Addam thought he’d buy her another kitten a week or two down the road. Something genetically rare with long hair. Lilly would like that.
From the rug in the center of the room, I got music. Music and dancing. Addam liked to dance as he walked around and read paperwork.
On the sofa I got the idea that he occasionally and discreetly . . . amused himself after everyone went home and he still had a few hours of work remaining. I didn’t get an actual mental playback of the act, just the idea of orgasm as coffee break.
The Last Sun Page 5