by Karen Chance
“And your business would be?”
“I find rarities for discerning purchasers, matching specialized items with buyers able to appreciate them. I know the inventories of all the major auction houses, as well as quite a few of the small ones.”
“But not all. I mean, there have to be hundreds in this country alone—”
“My dear young lady,” he said severely, “no small house would handle a prize like that. Naudiz is one of a set of runes rumored to have been carved by Odin himself. It would be worth… Well, in essence, it is priceless. If it came up for sale, it would cause a stir around the world. It would be as if the Hope Diamond came up for auction in the world of jewelry.”
I munched a bread stick and thought about it. “No, it would be as if the Hope Diamond was stolen, and then someone had to figure out a way to sell it. A minor jewel would be no problem; you could unload it anywhere. But the Hope freaking Diamond?”
“Well, one could always cut down a diamond,” he said, starting on a supersized gelato. “Not that it would be necessary in the case of such a famous stone. A discreet sale to a private collector would be more likely, if the thief wasn’t a total novice. But it is a poor analogy since a magical object cannot be divided in such a way.”
“So how would he do it? If someone wanted to fence it?”
He quirked an eyebrow. “One doesn’t ‘fence’ an item of that quality.”
“Then what does one do, hypothetically speaking?”
He shrugged. “Arrange a private sale, as I said, or a small auction, by invitation only, for a select company. The latter would be slightly more risky, but would also probably result in a greater return.”
I accepted a glass of wine from the bottle the waiter had brought Olga, and sipped at it as I thought it over. “Say he’s a novice. First-time thief. He wants the maximum return, so he needs to arrange a small, private auction. Who could do that for him?”
“Any number of people. There are many unscrupulous types in our business, I am afraid. And quite a few others who could be persuaded into error by such a commission.”
“But how do I narrow it down?”
“Do you know what auction houses the individual has dealt with in the past?”
“None, as far as I know.”
“Does he have any contacts in this world, people who might have been able to provide him with suggestions?”
“I don’t know.” The Blarestri, Claire’s group of Light Fey, didn’t venture into our world that much, but there was no law against it. The guard could have been here, either officially or not, any number of times, and there was no way to know who he’d met.
“Hm.” He thought about it while Olga dug into a party-sized platter of antipasto. She pushed it at me, and I figured what the hell? I’d finished another glass of wine and enough prosciutto to kill an average person by the time he nodded. “If you can’t narrow it down on his end, the only thing you can do is to narrow it down on ours.”
“Meaning?”
“There is a good deal of fraud, in the case of some unscrupulous auctioneers, and it is often buyer beware. But no one would even attempt to sell something like this without providing cast- iron proof of its legitimacy. A valuation would need to be performed, to convince the potential buyers that it was, indeed, what the auctioneer said it was.”
“And who would do this valuation?”
“It would have to be an unquestionable authority, probably fey since the item is so, of proven discretion and sterling record.”
“Do you know anybody like that?”
“Oh, yes.” His spoon rang on the side of his glass and he sat back with a sigh. “Assuming you can find the little tick.”
The heavy old slab of wood and metal, a relic of a twenties-era speakeasy, groaned as I pushed it open. “SHUT THE DOOR!” The usual chorus greeted me as I slipped inside and turned to shove the door closed behind me.
With the daylight firmly shut out, the stairwell was dim enough that I had to be careful of my footing heading down. The bouncer at the bottom, a large water troll, raised a clammy hand in greeting as I entered the large cellar. It was a lot easier to see here, and not just because of the lanterns scattered about.
Graffiti scrolled down the wall, golden lines rippling as they passed over the spaces between bricks. Some near the ceiling were written in black and stayed in place, as static as if they were drawn with paint instead of magic. But the rest flowed down the walls and onto the cracked cement floor, constantly uncurling and rewriting themselves as the odds changed.
It had odds on everything from dog racing and jai alai, to table tennis and golf. Not that the fey needed a sport to bet on. A couple of dwarves at the bar were raptly watching a pint to see which bead of condensation would hit the bar first. The bartender, who was also the owner, scowled at them, preferring bets to be made with him instead of one another. But at least the winner bought another round.
One of the few constants about the fey was their love for games of chance. They opened betting parlors before they did grocery stores, and they’d put money on anything. And despite its fairly mean decor, Fin’s was one of the best places in Brooklyn to put down a bet.
“What do you mean, you don’t know?” I asked, frowning at Fin. “You know everybody.”
“In Brooklyn I know everybody,” he corrected, hopping down from his perch on a milk crate to get me a drink. Fin was a Skogstroll, which was Norwegian for forest troll, although to my knowledge he’d never been out of Brooklyn in his life. But he still had the nose—only a foot long because he was still young—and he had to stand on a box to be able to see over the bar.
He clambered back up and slid me another longneck. “The guy you want works out of Chinatown. Manhattan’s vamp territory—you know that.”
“So what’s a fey doing there?”
Fin shrugged. “He’s Chinese?”
“He’s fey,” I repeated, pausing to drain half my drink. It was hot as hell outside, and I’d been running around all day, lugging half a ton of iron. And all I had to show for it was a pounding headache and a couple of blisters. I would have had to take the leather coat today, I thought, eyeing it resentfully.
“Yeah, but luduans left Faerie a long time ago, and most of them settled in China. The Chinese emperors used them in interrogations.”
“I know that,” I said crabbily. The human world has sodium pentothal and lie detectors; the supernatural world uses luduans—when it can find them. But this one had gotten fired from his job, wasn’t at his apartment and hadn’t been seen for two days at any of the places he liked to hang out.
A trio of trolls erupted with stomps and hoots from their primo place in front of the large mirror on one wall. It was currently reflecting the qualifying heats for the insane mage sport of ley-line racing. The World Championships were coming to town, and it was all anyone could think about. Including Fin, who was raking in the bets hand over fist.
I waited while he took some money off a Merrow, who of course was favoring an Irish driver. She wrapped her webbed hand around a pint and moved off, and I leaned over the bar. “I’m getting desperate, Fin. I don’t have time to wait around days or weeks for this guy to show. I’ve checked everywhere, and it’s like he just fell off the face of the earth.”
Fin shrugged. “All I know is he put a couple bets down with me a week ago, but never paid up. So I sent the boys after him.”
The “boys” were a couple of cave trolls, short and squat like the rest of their breed, but with the long arms and huge, shovel- like hands needed for excavating large areas of earth. Those hands were also good for slapping around welchers, so much so that Fin rarely had a problem.
“Did they find him?” I asked.
He scowled. “Not yet. They went by his job, but he wasn’t there.”
“He isn’t going to be. The management fired him after they found out about his gambling debts. I think they were afraid he’d walk off with some of the merchandise.”
Fin paused to serve another customer, with the molasses-type beer trolls prefer. I suppressed a face. You can eat that stuff with a spoon. “You’re talking about that auction house he used to work for,” he finally told me. “He got another job last week—at a gambling den in back of a pharmacy over there.”
I got out a notebook. “What pharmacy?”
He shook his head. “Don’t bother. Didn’t I tell you I sent the boys?”
“No disrespect to the boys, but tell me anyway.”
A spear of light interrupted the cheering going on around a big-screen TV mounted to one grimy wall, washing out the horse race it was showing. “SHUT THE DOOR!” we all yelled, and it quickly slammed closed.
“The owner had some trouble a few months back with mages coming in and cleaning up using spells to cheat,” Fin told me.
“There are charms against that sort of thing.”
“Yeah, but they’re expensive and have to be renewed regularly, and he wasn’t exactly making a killing. So he started keeping a luduan on-site so whenever somebody started a major run, he could have it question them. Make sure it really was a lucky streak.”
“Sounds reasonable.”
“Yeah, it worked pretty good. Until the damn thing stopped coming in. The owner said he didn’t show up for work last night or the one before. And he didn’t call in.”
“Great.” He’d either done a runner, in which case it could take weeks to track him down, or one of his other disgruntled bookies had decided to make the lesson a little more permanent. Either way, I was screwed. “I need to talk to this guy, assuming he’s still alive, and I need to do it today.”
I got back sympathetic eyes and nothing else. And that wasn’t promising. Everybody came to Fin’s, and he kept his tiny ears open. He was my first stop on most jobs that involved the fey, although today he’d been last because I’d already been in Manhattan so I’d checked there first. If Fin didn’t know, nobody did—with one possible exception.
I called Mircea on my way home. “I need a favor.”
“What a coincidence.”
It took me second. “You need me to make that pickup.”
“Yes.”
I looked around and finally found the folder sticking out from under the seat, half hidden by a couple of crumpled fast-food bags and my tennis shoes. So that was where I had left them. I tossed them in back and flipped through the file.
It was another seedy nightclub owner with a smuggling habit, only this one preferred weapons to drugs. Same old, same old. “Okay,” I told him. “I need a luduan. No name—apparently they don’t use them—but supposedly he’s the only one around.” I gave him the particulars, such as they were.
“Very well. I will have inquiries made.”
“I need him by tomorrow at the latest, Mircea.”
“And I need the vampire alive.”
“Yeah, you made that point already. I’ll call when I have him.” I hung up. This shouldn’t take long.
CHAPTER 10
Everything was going great until I cut his head off.
That sort of thing tends to shock someone into silence, but not this time. The body’s arms were flailing around uselessly, the crocodile skin loafers were making scuff marks on the bathroom floor and the detached head was screaming bloody murder. Great.
I stuck a wad of paper towels in its mouth and hurried to the door. Fortunately, it seemed that the DJ’s pounding beat was enough to deafen even vampire ears, because none of the black-clad “bouncers” were rushing to aid their fallen boss. Instead, the short hallway contained only a couple making out and a guy waiting for the bathroom.
“This is for employees,” I told him. “There’s one for customers up front.”
“Yeah, but there’s a line. Can’t you two get a room or something?”
“Sorry.”
He tried to peer through the crack in the door behind me. “I thought I heard a scream.”
“I’m being mean to him.”
He took in my black leather jeans, bustier and cropped jacket—chosen for ease of cleanup—and a slow grin spread over his face. “I wouldn’t mind if you were mean to me.”
“You know, I really think you would.”
I ducked back inside to find the body’s hands feeling around the floor, trying to locate its missing piece. That was a no-no, as freshly severed vampire parts could often reattach. I picked the head up by its spiky black hair and tossed it in the sink.
My knife, a ten- inch bowie, had fallen to the floor in the tussle. I took my time cleaning it, giving the vamp a moment to adjust to the new state of affairs. I’d finished and tucked the head back in my duffel bag by the time he managed to spit out the towels.
“You cut off my head!” Shock and outrage warred in his pale blue eyes.
We both regarded his remains, which were still twitching. They were undeniably headless, but also strangely lacking in gore. Vampire hearts don’t pump unless the vamp is trying to appear human, so there’s nothing to cause any inconvenient spurting. I had a few drops on my jacket, but they weren’t too noticeable against the leather. Most of the rest had pooled beneath the body, leaving it looking oddly pristine.
I glanced back at the sink and found the head glaring at me. It looked like outrage had won. “You crazy bitch! You can’t just walk into my club and—”
“The name’s Dory.”
“—try this shit on! Do you have any idea who I am?”
“Of course.”
“Because when I—” Thin eyelashes fluttered in confusion. “What?”
I dragged the file out of my duffel. “It never ceases to amaze me how many people think I kill for fun.”
“Don’t you?”
“Well, not just for fun.” I bent the file’s front cover back, showing him the photo that had been paper-clipped to the inside.
His eyes crossed as they focused on the image of his own narrow face, overgrown nose and sulky expression. “This is a hit?”
“If it was, you’d be dead by now.”
“What the hell do you call this?”
“Temporarily inconvenienced. A fifth-level master can live for up to a week without a head.”
“And how do you know that’s what I am?” he asked haughtily. He’d probably been telling people he was third or something. There are rare vampires who can hide their true levels, appearing stronger or weaker than they actually are. But this joker wasn’t one of them.
“Because it’s in the report,” I told him patiently. “Not to mention that a senior master wouldn’t be glaring at me while he bled out. He’d—”
The body’s left leg abruptly jackknifed, dumping me on the floor and allowing it to get a hand around my throat. So I stuck a knife under the breastbone, pinning it to the stained linoleum. Instead of pulling my weapon back out and trying to stick it into me, the hands fell away to flap against the floor, like fish out of water.
He was so fifth-level.
I flipped open the folder. “Raymond Lu. Born in 1622, the result of a beachside union between a randy Dutch sailor and the slowest Indonesian woman in her village.”
“It was a love match!”
“Sure.” I moved back a little to keep the creeping bloodstain off my boots. “You earned a tenuous living thereafter as part of the most inept band of pirates ever to sail the seas, and only became a vamp because you robbed the wrong guy.”
The head said something, but it was indecipherable because it had slipped down the side of the bowl and ended up with its nose in the drain. I fished it out and wedged it snugly beside the faucet. It thanked me by trying to take a bite out of my thumb.
“These days, you pose as a respectable Chinese businessman despite the fact that you aren’t respectable, you aren’t Chinese and your ‘business’ consists of running errands for the undead version of the Hong Kong mafia.”
“It’s a living.”
“Not for long. You’ve been a very bad boy, Raymond. The Senate would like a word.”
&nbs
p; “Wait. You’re working for the Senate?” He looked almost relieved. Since the Vampire Senate usually made vamps quake in their designer shoes, that was a little strange.
“I’m freelancing,” I informed him.
“But you’re a dhampir!”
“Like you said, it’s a living.”
“God! I thought… Never mind.”
I unzipped the roomy main compartment of the duffel. “We’re going to go see the senator in charge of fey affairs. He has some questions about that illegal portal you’ve been running to Faerie.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Sure you do. People walk in and out of here all the time, and some of them leave carrying nasty fey weapons. You cough up the location to the portal, we blow it up and everybody lives happily ever after.”
“I still won’t have a head!”
“There are people who can fix that—assuming you have all the requisite parts. I’ll leave the body here; I’m sure your boys will take good care of it. And as long as you come through, you and it will be happily reunited in a couple of—”
A handsome young Asian guy burst through the door energetically enough to send the lock flying. He was in the black jeans, boots and muscle shirt of a bouncer, the latter untucked to hide the gun at his back. He started to say something, then stopped, gaping. His eyes flicked from the body on the floor to the head in the sink, then back to the body. His mouth dropped open.
“Don’t just stand there!” Raymond spluttered. “Kill her!”
The vamp jumped at the sound of a voice coming from the gory head, but his eyes obediently made the rounds again, looking for a target. And passed over me without so much as a pause. He saw me, but assumed I was human, which put me in the same threat category as the paper towel dispenser.
I gave a little wave. “Dhampir,” I added helpfully.
He blinked and finally focused on my face. He took in the delicate bone structure I inherited from my human mother, the dimples I received from the iffier side of the gene pool and my unimpressive height. “You are not!” He sounded almost offended.
“No, really.”