He vanished without a trace. He didn’t even leave footprints behind. Of course, he had never really been there to begin with, had he? I looked around, made sure that no one was in sight, and cast the spell to detect the presence of magical forces.
Nothing. The Knight, or his projection, was truly gone.
I stared at the darkening winter sky for a moment.
“Hell,” I muttered.
What was it going to be this time?
I turned, trudged back to the front door, went inside, and pulled off my boots and started peeling off my layers.
Russell came down the stairs, James’s M-99 tucked at his side.
“Who was that?” said Russell. “I mean, who was that really?”
“Someone really dangerous,” I said. “I suppose you listened to the entire thing.”
He didn’t bother to deny it. “I couldn’t hear most of it. The snow absorbs the sound.”
“I’ll tell you,” I said, “but you can’t tell anyone.”
Russell nodded. “I can keep secrets.”
“He’s a lord of the Shadowlands,” I said. “He can’t leave his demesne, so that was just a projection. I sort of stumbled into his demesne last year, and he only let me leave in exchange for a future favor.”
“Oh,” said Russell. I got out of my coat and hung it up. I swear the thing sometimes felt bigger than I was. “Then he was here to collect his favor?”
“No,” I said, looking at the envelope in my hand. Part of me wanted to open it. Another part of me wanted to burn it without opening it again.
“If he didn’t want his favor, what was all that about?” said Russell.
I didn’t know, but I was afraid I was going to find out good and hard.
Chapter 3: Mr. Cane
James and Lucy came home from the hospital, and by mutual consent, Russell and I told them nothing of the Knight’s visit.
It wasn’t like I wanted to keep secrets from the Marneys. They were good people. They had looked after Russell while I was training with Morvilind’s retainers. James always listened to me, and Lucy had tried to find me a husband for years, at least until she had found out the truth about me. Because they had found the truth during the Archon attack, when Morvilind had slaughtered those two Archons in front of their house, and they hadn’t done anything with the information, hadn’t turned me over to Homeland Security or the Inquisition or anything like that.
I trusted them as much as I trusted anyone.
But when it came down to it, I didn’t trust anyone very much.
For one thing, James and Lucy revered the Elves. They had been raised that way. They still thought Morvilind stern but fair, and while they were frightened of him (anyone with a working brain was frightened of him) they respected him. There were some things that I could never, ever tell them, like the fact that my first boyfriend had been a Rebel cell leader. Admittedly, once I realized what Nicholas Connor really was, I had ruined his plans and escaped, but that wasn’t the kind of thing I would tell the Marneys.
Second, and more importantly…what they didn’t know couldn’t be tortured out of them. Or used against me in any conceivable way. I shuddered to think of them falling into the hands of someone like Sergei Rogomil. I had shot Rogomil in the head, but there was a good chance Nicholas was still alive. Or some of my less savory business associates like Mr. Rojo in Los Angeles or the computer expert Niles Ringer might try to exploit them.
The less the Marneys knew about me, the less danger they were in, and too many people already knew who I was and what I could do. Riordan and the Shadow Hunters knew, though they hadn’t betrayed me with the information. Armand Boccand knew some of the truth, though he was in hiding from the Inquisition and was unlikely to cause trouble. Now the Knight of Grayhold knew, and that couldn’t be good. Hiding from someone as powerful as he was would be impossible.
He had helped me. Why? At least, he had claimed he would help. Maybe those envelopes contained something dangerous.
I brooded on those thoughts all through dinner. Fortunately, Russell did most of the talking, but then again, he did like to talk.
Because of my fears for the Marneys’ safety, after dinner, I packed up and drove to my apartment near the medical college. I had an apartment on the ground floor of an old building with a gravel parking lot. I mostly used the apartment for storage and training. The living room was full of exercise equipment and computers, and the bedroom was packed with various tools I used in my jobs for Morvilind, with just enough room to get to the bed.
I dropped the gray envelopes on the computer desk and stared at them.
They didn’t do anything dangerous.
I sighed, sat at the desk, and spent the rest of the night checking on various Internet-related things. Using the Internet was dangerous in my line of work. Homeland Security and the Inquisition kept close tabs on the Internet, and if anyone posted or wrote anything even remotely critical of the High Queen or the Elves, the door got kicked down, and people got arrested.
But the Internet and social media were too useful to ignore entirely, and not having a social media profile at all was also grounds for investigation by Homeland Security. So, I had a carefully curated profile for “Nadia Moran” with a picture of me looking pensive in a park, a profile that claimed I worked as a web designer and that contained no other information. I also had a bunch of other fake profiles that I maintained for when I needed to lie about my identity and wanted to present verification of my claims. When updating those, I used a variety of techniques to scramble my location, making it look as if I was posting from Los Angeles or New York or wherever.
As I worked, I brooded, thinking about the Knight, Morvilind, and Russell, about the future, about what would happen if Morvilind did cure Russell’s frostfever and no longer needed me. I thought about all the many ways I could die alone. I thought about calling up Riordan and asking him to spend the night with me. I wondered what it would be like to get drunk. I had never done gotten drunk because I needed to keep my head clear, but sometimes I got so depressed that I wondered if drinking until I passed out would take the edge off.
Yeah. Maybe coming alone to my dark, silent apartment hadn’t been the best idea.
Eventually, I fell asleep and woke up the next morning in a sluggish mood.
I decided to shake it off with some exercise. Russell calls me a fitness nut and he’s right, but given my line of work, it’s a good idea to be as fit as possible. And, if I’m honest with myself, there was some vanity involved. I had been frightened by the Knight’s arrival, but part of me had been pleased that he had flirted with me. I liked the hungry look that flickered across Riordan’s face when I met him for dinner while wearing a tight dress.
Of course, I couldn’t enjoy that unless I stayed alive, and staying in shape helped me stay alive. Chicken and the egg, I guess.
It was too damn cold to run outside, a condition that regrettably lasts in Wisconsin from late October to early April. Fortunately, I had a treadmill in the living room, and I started out with a five-kilometer run. Once that was done, I toweled off and switched to strength exercises – pushups and planks and burpees and barbells. I could never lift as much as someone like Riordan, but I could deadlift more than my own weight, which pleased me to no end.
Lord Morvilind’s summons came towards the end of my workout, just as I had finished a set of burpees and was trying to catch my breath.
At least it came at the end. Once it had arrived while I was lifting a pair of dumbbells, and I had almost dropped the stupid things on my head.
When Morvilind wanted me to come to him, he made sure I knew it good and hard.
The summons exploded through my head as if a railway spike had been driven through my temples, and I let out a choked scream, staggered to the left, and grabbed the safety rail of my treadmill to keep from falling over. Waves of pain rolled through me, my stomach clenching with nausea, my veins burning like ribbons of molten metal in my flesh. For an awful
moment, the agony persisted, and then drained away bit by bit.
I let out a ragged breath, blinking sweat and tears from my eyes. My limbs had a rubbery feeling of exhaustion from the exercise, and my heart rate and breathing were already elevated. Between that and the lingering effects of the summons, I did not feel at all well, but I forced myself to my desk, picked up one of my phones, and tapped out a text message to Rusk, Morvilind’s butler, telling him that I was on my way. If I did not, Morvilind would simply repeat the summons every hour until I responded.
Rusk texted me back, telling me to attend to Lord Morvilind by ten AM. That gave me seventy minutes to get there.
I showered off and dressed in haste, fear fluttering inside of my head. Morvilind hadn’t given me a major task for a while, not since that business with Armand Boccand last year. There had been two minor jobs since then, both of which had been easy and had taken less than two days to finish. When you’re a thief with magical abilities, dealing with conventional security measures is easy so long as you’re careful. I had stolen a few other things on those jobs, and the money had kept me solvent since then.
But as I stood under the hot water of the shower, I had a sinking feeling that Morvilind wanted me for something serious.
I toweled off, shivering. My apartment’s heater could only do so much to combat the chill of a Wisconsin winter. I dressed in a hurry, donning thermal underwear, black jeans, a black t-shirt, and a big thick gray sweater that hung to mid-thigh. I pulled on my heavy, puffy coat, made sure I had a gun in the coat’s pocket, found a stocking cap, gloves, and a scarf, and headed out the back and into the cold.
I got the Vaquero started on the third try, and backed the car into traffic. It was past rush hour, and it was cold enough that people were staying inside. That was just as well because it would take me longer than I liked to reach Morvilind’s mansion in Shorewood. The Archon attack last year had torn up a lot of Milwaukee’s freeways, and the cold weather had slowed down the efforts to rebuild them.
My phone rang. I glanced at the number, smiled, and some of my tension eased.
I hit the speaker button. “Hey, Riordan.”
“Nadia,” said Riordan. He had a deep, quiet voice, which seemed appropriate for a legally sanctioned assassin. He was a member of the Family, the group of assassins informally known as the Shadow Hunters. As a Shadow Hunter, he bore a Shadowmorph, a symbiotic creature from the Shadowlands that granted him enhanced speed and strength in exchange for the life force of his kills.
And, oh yeah, we had been dating for six months.
I admit I don’t have the best taste in men. My only other serious relationship had been Nicholas Connor, and I’ve mentioned how that ended. After falling for a Rebel leader, dating a dangerous assassin should have been an even worse choice. So far, it hadn’t been. Riordan had helped save Russell and the Marneys from the Archons. He had learned information about me, things that could get me killed, but he hadn’t used them against me.
“Calling me up to talk dirty?” I said. “Well, it is like negative ten degrees here today. Why don’t you see if you can heat me up?”
Yeah. We’d kissed a few times, but we hadn’t slept together, but by God, we flirted a lot.
“Is that your way of saying that you’re too cheap to pay your heating bill?” said Riordan.
“I am definitely too cheap to pay my heating bill,” I said. Much as I hated the cold, I kept the thermostat low to save money. I was going to be cold anyway, and I could always put on another sweater.
“Are you free tonight?” said Riordan. “I’m going to be in Milwaukee, and I thought you might enjoy visiting a place where the temperature is actually above sixty-five degrees.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Um. About that. My…boss has a job for me.”
There was no way I would mention Morvilind’s name on a phone call. The Inquisition and Homeland Security monitored phones.
“I see,” said Riordan. “Is it a risky job?”
“Probably,” I said. “I don’t know. I’m on my way to talk to him now.”
He was silent for a moment. “I found out something you should know.”
“About the job?” I said. How would he have known about that?
“I’m not sure,” said Riordan. “It may be related, or it may not. You remember when we first met? The little…side trip we took on our way to the goal?”
“Yeah,” I said. He was talking about the Shadowlands, how I had needed to take us there through a rift way.
“Some of my coworkers have access to reports,” said Riordan. “Friends in high places. One of those reports says that something came from that place and arrived in Milwaukee this morning.”
“Something?” I said, frowning. I knew the Inquisition monitored the Warded Ways through the Shadowlands, which gave the Elven nobles warning if something tried to come to Earth.
Though, I thought sourly, the Inquisition hadn’t given us much warning when the Archons had attacked last year.
“Something,” repeated Riordan. “The report didn’t say what. Evidently, it was only a small incursion, and therefore not deemed a serious threat. It could be nothing at all.” His voice hardened. “But if your employer is sending you on another of his harebrained schemes, the warning might be helpful.”
I choked out a laugh. “Yeah.” Morvilind was many things, but harebrained was not one of them. “Thanks for the warning. Um…if you’re going to be in Milwaukee, what time are you arriving?”
“Meet me at five at the Wisconsin Avenue coffee shop,” said Riordan. I knew the place. He had taught me the lightning globe spell there.
“Okay,” I said. “You…don’t have to get involved in this, if you don’t want. I know it’s a painful subject for you…”
“Exercise is a painful subject for me, but I do it anyway,” said Riordan.
“Oh, you want to exercise with me, is that it?” I said. “What kind of exercise did you have in mind?”
“I could think of a few things,” said Riordan. “And you don’t know if you have a situation yet. For all we know your employer could want you to fetch him some coffee.”
I snorted. That was unlikely, and we both knew it. If Morvilind ever wanted me to bring him coffee, it would be coffee locked in a bank vault somewhere and guarded by armed mercenaries and magical spells and mind-twisting horrors conjured up from the Shadowlands.
“Yeah,” I said. “Maybe. Look, Riordan…” I wanted to say something, to let him know how much I appreciated that I could rely on him. He didn’t have to help me, and I wouldn’t have blamed him if he hadn’t, but I couldn’t find the words to tell him that. “I…will be really glad to see you. See you at five.”
“Drive carefully,” said Riordan.
“I always drive carefully,” I said.
“You’re usually a better liar than that,” said Riordan.
I laughed, and he ended the call.
The conversation made me feel a little better, but I still worried about what Morvilind intended.
Well, there was nothing to do but find out what he wanted.
After about forty minutes of careful driving, I arrived at last at Morvilind’s estate and made my way up the long driveway, which had been plowed far better than the city streets. Snow covered the grounds, and beyond the mansion, I saw the vast gray expanse of Lake Michigan. It was cold enough that the surface of the lake had frozen over, which didn’t always happen in winter.
I brought the Vaquero to a stop in front of Morvilind’s mansion. The house was big enough to contain the Marneys’ entire city block. It had been built in the classical Elven style of Morvilind’s homeworld, which meant it looked like a combination of Roman and Imperial Chinese architecture. Hieroglyphics that looked vaguely Celtic but were, in fact, Elven adorned the walls in intricate, dizzying designs. I could read some of the hieroglyphs and knew that they marked the location of powerful wards Morvilind could activate if his mansion came under attack. Though after seeing him crush t
hose Archons, it was hard to imagine anyone stupid enough to challenge Morvilind to his face.
I got out and took a deep breath, the cold helping to focus my thoughts. I always had to be on my guard here. Morvilind did not tolerate incompetence or stupidity, and he was not hesitant about making his displeasure known by inflicting pain. He also did not approve of my tendency to make smart remarks when frightened, which was a problem because I was always frightened here. That said, while I was in danger from Morvilind, I never thought I would be in danger from anyone else on the grounds of his estate. He was simply too powerful.
When the man in the dark suit stepped from behind one of the snow-covered hedges and strolled towards me, I was caught completely off guard.
Reflex took over. I spun to face the man, one hand going into my pocket to grasp the handle of my revolver while I held my other hand ready to work a spell. Memories flashed through my head, all of them bad. The anthrophages liked to take the form of dark-suited men when they came to Earth. Riordan had taught me a spell to shield my psychic trail from them, and the anthrophages had not been able to find me since, but perhaps they had tracked me down.
Then I had a good look at the man in the black suit, and some of my alarm turned to confusion.
He wasn’t an anthrophage. In human form, the anthrophages always looked creepy, as if they couldn’t quite conceal their predatory nature. This man looked about thirty or so, and he had cheerful brown eyes and close-cut curly brown hair. There was a friendly smile on his face, and I had the feeling that he wanted to talk to me about Jesus or the Book of Mormon or something. He looked exactly like those nice young men from the Marneys’ church that Lucy had kept trying to convince me to date.
The thought of an evangelist knocking on Kaethran Morvilind’s door was so absurd I almost laughed.
The man stopped a dozen yards away, his head tilted to the side.
“Good evening!” he announced, his voice both deep and cheerful. “I am very pleased to see you.”
“Right,” I said. Maybe he was mentally ill.
Cloak Games: Shatter Stone Page 4