“Ah, Sir Edgar Allan Kipling, I believe. Miss Singer’s dexterous familiar. So good of you to join us. Did you find anything interesting in my storeroom?”
Sebastian choked, but Sir Kipling merely began to lick one paw, looking supremely unconcerned.
“I swear, I had nothing to do with—” Sebastian began, but sputtered to a stop at Anton’s upraised hand.
“While I would be fascinated to discover how, exactly, this precocious creature works his magic—surveillance cameras are not much help, as you might imagine—now is not the time.” Anton’s gaze switched back to the cat on his desk, who was now busy grooming one shoulder. “I presume there is a reason you find it necessary to sit upon my stack of client contracts? If you would be so kind as to get to the point, I would be most grateful.”
Sebastian’s jaw might as well have fallen off and rolled away across the floor, he was so flabbergasted. He had never—never—seen Anton act sincerely polite to any living thing. The man was always either coolly professional, or scathingly insulting. It was almost as if he genuinely liked Sir Kipling, as preposterous as that sounded—or else he just knew he couldn’t out-snark a cat.
Apparently, Anton’s approach worked, because Sir Kipling stopped licking himself and patted a blank notepad of paper in front of him while giving Sebastian an expectant look. Sebastian didn’t immediately notice, since his brain was still trying to reassemble itself after the shock of seeing Anton being nice. It was like catching a glimpse of a unicorn—or a chupacabra, in Anton’s case.
An impatient huff from Sir Kipling brought him round, and he hurriedly grabbed a pen from the holder on the desk and scribbled an alphabet across the sheet of paper.
With exaggerated care—as if to ensure the simple humans would understand—Sir Kipling spelled out a sentence.
SAW LAWMAN TAKE LILY.
Anton gave the cat a long, searching look. Finally he sighed. “That answers that question, I suppose. But regardless of who was last seen with Miss Singer, there is no evidence whatsoever that Mr. LeFay was involved. I cannot—”
With a hiss, Sir Kipling cut the man off, then gave a warning growl in his throat, his ears turned back in displeasure. Again, he pawed at the letters, moving faster this time.
LEFAY ONLY LOGICAL OPTION.
“Perhaps, but I am a businessman and my clients trust that their private information will remain private. Not to mention the LeFay family is both powerful and dangerous.”
Sir Kipling’s yellow eyes narrowed, and he hissed again.
I AM DANGEROUS.
If it weren’t for the deadly seriousness of the situation, Sebastian might have laughed. It wasn’t every day he got to see a common house cat threaten a full-grown man and owner of a criminal enterprise. Not that Sebastian doubted Sir Kipling’s claim—he’d watched Sir Kipling maul men and beasts much scarier than a mundane criminal. But Anton hadn’t.
The expression on Anton’s face did not change; he simply held Sir Kipling’s stare without flinching. When it became obvious the man would not reply, Sir Kipling’s paw moved, slowly and deliberately, forcing the art dealer to forfeit his staring contest and look down at the letters.
COWARD.
Anton’s nostrils flared, and Sebastian recognized the art dealer’s body language—that utter stillness of a predator gathering himself for a fight. While Sebastian would have loved to watch Sir Kipling teach Anton a lesson, he wasn’t thrilled about the prospect of being caught in the crossfire. It would be just his luck if the cat came away unscathed while he ended up getting punched, shot, scratched, or otherwise abused. It was time to think fast and talk faster.
“What I’m sure Kip is trying to say is that John Faust is on the run and in disgrace, so no one would blame you if you helped us track him down. Everyone knows you have standards. Just think of this as implementing quality control.”
With exaggerated slowness, Anton shifted his gaze to Sebastian and looked at him as if he were an annoying child who had just interrupted the adults’ conversation. “No one asked you, Blackwell, and if you are fond of your tongue in its whole and unsevered state, I suggest you keep your opinions to yourself.”
A knot of frustration twisted in Sebastian’s stomach, and he gritted his teeth, trying to figure out how to convince Anton to help without getting a bullet for his troubles. He shifted in his chair, and something poked him in the leg through his jeans pocket. Digging a hand in to investigate, he found the offending object and pulled it out. A jolt ran through him as he stared at the silver cufflink and remembered Mrs. Singer’s words. The delay with Jamie’s stowaway antics and then Sir Kipling’s cat-burglar shenanigans had driven it clean from his mind.
With hope and excitement and impatience all coursing through his veins at once, he laid the cufflink on the desk where Anton could see it. “If you won’t listen to me, listen to your little Frito. She knew you would help then, and she knows you’ll help now.”
There was a breathless moment of quiet in which Anton’s eyes never left the cufflink. It was always hard to tell with Anton, but Sebastian thought he saw the man’s face tighten, which made the fine lines around his eyes and mouth deepen so that he looked closer to his real age. Finally, the art dealer raised his eyes. They flicked back and forth between Sebastian and Sir Kipling, then settled on Sebastian.
“I will tell you now what I told her then. I cannot help you.”
“But—”
Anton raised a hand, cutting off Sebastian’s protest and Sir Kipling’s hiss of displeasure. “I cannot and will not break my client’s confidentiality,” he said, reaching out and pulling Sir Kipling’s alphabet paper and pen toward him as he spoke. “I highly doubt Mr. LeFay has anything to do with Miss Singer’s disappearance and I suggest you take your wild theories elsewhere. You are wasting my valuable time.”
Sebastian’s temper rose with each word the man uttered. He was about to jump from his chair and do something violent, but stopped himself when Anton raised the pad of paper and held it facing them. Below the alphabet Sebastian had scribbled out were the words “plausible deniability.” As Sebastian stared at the paper, brows drawn down in confusion, Anton reached under the desk. For a moment Sebastian thought the man was about to draw a gun on him, just as the art dealer had done multiple times in the past. But the hand came back up holding a simple burner phone. Completely ignoring his guests, Anton dialed a number and all three of them sat in silence as it rang.
“I have a job for you,” Anton said when a barely discernible voice answered on the other end. He paused a moment, listening to a question, then said, “No, the client will come to you, and they will be arranging payment themselves. Where should they meet you?” Anton took up his pen again and wrote something down, then said a polite goodbye and hung up. With an abrupt motion he pushed back his chair and stood before tearing the top sheet of paper from his pad and holding it out to Sebastian. The angles of his face were sharp and hard like chiseled marble as he spoke. “You are an incessant blight upon my equanimity. I have a mind to shoot you now and be done with it, but this desk is an antique and it would be a crime to mar it with bloodstains. Now begone, before I change my mind.”
Still unsure what was going on, but knowing when to bow out of a situation, Sebastian grabbed the paper and headed for the door.
“See that you use the back entrance,” Anton called after him. “And Sir Kipling,” he added as the gray feline prepared to make an exit, “I have clients who would pay a great deal to make use of your particular...talents. If you ever find yourself bored with your current situation, you know where to find me.”
Sir Kipling didn’t deign to respond, simply stood and jumped down off the desk to follow Sebastian out into the hall.
Despite his burning curiosity, Sebastian didn’t dare look at the paper until he was out the back door and standing safely in the alley behind the building that housed Atlas Galleries. Looking down, he saw that below his alphabet and plausible deniability was written a time,
an address, and the words Save her. Or else.
“A pox on pig-headed criminals and their stupid schemes,” Sebastian muttered. “Come on, Kip, let’s get out of here. The stench of snobbery is too much for my delicate disposition.” Stuffing the paper into his jacket pocket, Sebastian strode off down the alley as Sir Kipling trotted ahead. He had no idea who the person was that Anton had called, if they could be trusted, or if they could even help him. All he knew was that Anton was refusing to help directly—deniable plausibility and all that—so he had no choice but to go meet this mysterious stranger and hope they knew something about Mr. Fancypants. Maybe they were a bounty hunter or something and could track wizards. At the very least, if they contracted with Anton they probably wouldn’t hurt a client the art dealer sent to them.
Probably.
***
Sebastian had expected the address to lead to some abandoned building in the slums, or perhaps a busy location in one of Atlanta’s tourist centers. Instead—to his confusion and consternation—it led to the North Druid Hills area by the Atlanta VA Medical Center. He wasn’t familiar with the medical complex itself, but he knew it backed up to Emory University and that Peachtree Creek flowed through the area. When he arrived at the address and found himself in the parking lot of some random college association, he began to worry that the whole meet was some elaborate setup. It was a nondescript red brick building surrounded by a double row of parking spaces and the same generic shrubbery found at every corporate office across America.
Driving his aunt’s old Buick to the farthest corner of the parking lot, he turned it, then backed up under the trees. Once in place, he shut off the engine and took a moment to simply look around, wondering what in the world Anton had sent him into and how long he would have to wait to find out. He checked the dashboard clock and felt the tension coil tighter inside him.
Six hours and fourteen minutes.
It felt like a lifetime since that awful moment on his knees in front of the Hilprecht Museum, feeling as empty and defeated as he’d ever been. What had he actually accomplished in the past six hours? Hardly anything.
Sir Kipling’s dubious meow broke the silence, and Sebastian took a deep breath, forcing himself to focus. “Yeah, tell me about it. I don’t know what Anton is playing at, but I’m starting to get tired of it.” Craning his neck, he peered at the woods behind him and tried to remember which of Atlanta’s many urban parks they belonged to.
When he turned back around, he nearly yelped in surprise. A figure had appeared several paces in front of the car. Their face was obscured by a baggy hood and they looked nothing like what Sebastian had expected. They had a short, slim build and wore the same kind of loose, nondescript clothes Sebastian himself favored. It was a gray February day, so a lumpy hoodie didn’t stand out, even as it conveniently hid the wearer’s identity, not to mention providing concealment for all manner of weapons. Sebastian couldn’t even tell if the person was a man or a woman—or even a teenager—based on their diminutive stature and the backpack they wore.
“Geez, how long have they been standing there, Kip? Didn’t think you ought to warn me or anything?”
The nonplussed “murf” the cat offered made clear his utter lack of concern, as if he had rather enjoyed watching Sebastian jump like a nervous rabbit.
“Whatever. Just keep an eye out in case this is some sort of decoy and there’s a gang of thugs waiting to jump me, okay? As amusing as I’m sure it’d be to watch someone beat the tar out of me, I can’t help Lily if I’m in the hospital, alright?”
Sir Kipling’s non-committal reply didn’t exactly inspire confidence, but Sebastian knew it was all he was going to get. Taking a deep breath, he opened the car door and stepped out onto the cold asphalt. He sensed rather than saw Sir Kipling slip out of the door behind him and under the car, slinking off to wherever he had decided to keep watch. Though Sebastian trusted the cat implicitly and didn’t doubt the feline’s courage, he missed Pip. She might have been a tad mischievous, but at least they knew how to work together—plus he could understand what she said. He’d always been able to rely on the little pixie, and going into a questionable situation without her left him feeling blind and crippled.
There was nothing for it, though, so Sebastian took a step forward and leaned a hip on the hood of the car, one hand in his leather jacket pocket, the other hanging casually at his side. His stance gave him freedom of movement, plus something to put at his back. As an added bonus, the person in front of him wouldn’t know if the hand in his pocket was holding a weapon or not, which gave him a bit of leverage in this odd standoff.
The two of them remained frozen there without a word for several moments. It could have been Sebastian’s imagination, but he thought the other person had stiffened when he’d gotten out of the car, as if he hadn’t been what they’d expected either. The motionless way in which they were now holding themselves made it look like they were considering what to do next, so he remained silent and waited for them to make the first move. The delay chafed at him, and his heart thumped with an unceasing urgency that seemed to whisper hurry, no time, hurry, no time, with every beat.
He forced himself to ignore it.
With an abruptness that startled him, the figure in front of him stepped forward. Sebastian tensed, thinking for a moment they were lunging at him. But the person simply strode by, voicing a low, “Follow me,” from under their hood as they passed on their way toward the woods. He hesitated for only a moment, then whirled and followed, hoping it wasn’t a ploy to lure him off somewhere private where they could jump him. At least Sir Kipling would be nearby, ready with his claws if the need arose.
The figure left the parking lot and began weaving through the trees, deftly slipping between winter-bare twigs and the reaching underbrush as they forged deeper into the woodland surrounding the parking lot. Sebastian followed with somewhat less grace. Leaf litter crunched underfoot as he tried to keep up with his contact without making too much noise. If his mysterious guide was making any noise, Sebastian couldn’t hear it above the rustle and crunch of his own passage—he was much better at sneaking around Atlanta’s alleyways than at playing the woodsman. Plus his sore ribs and general stiffness made it difficult to move gracefully. He considered using the silence effect on his Ring of Cacophony, a manual spell built into the ring that the wearer could activate by turning the movable band in the middle. But it didn’t really matter if he made noise, and he didn’t want to reveal his capabilities to the random stranger he was following. At least not yet.
After a few minutes, he heard the trickle of water and knew they must be near Peachtree Creek. This far southeast it would be the southern fork of the creek, which ran the width of Atlanta, flowing from east to west to join the north fork before finally spilling into the Chattahoochee River that cut through the far western edge of Atlanta’s perimeter.
Finally, the two of them broke out of the woods and onto a bare path that looked like a hiking trail. Since the woodland was part of a preserve attached to the Emory University campus, Sebastian wasn’t surprised to find the path, and he followed his contact down it, their footsteps whisper quiet against the packed earth. They drew closer to the gurgle of water, and then Sebastian heard a louder noise, as though they were approaching a small waterfall. Around a bend in the path, he spotted a curious sight: an old circular tower built from uneven granite stones, abandoned and graffitied. Behind it, a low dam cut across the creek.
With a casual glance back and forth, the person he was following checked that no one else was nearby, then slipped through the tower’s low stone doorway. Sebastian steeled himself and followed. Inside, the floor was leaf- and debris-strewn dirt, bare of anything but a circular stone plinth in the center. Odd symbols and phrases in what looked like Latin were spray painted across the uneven stone walls, adding an eerie atmosphere to the old tower.
The figure circled the plinth until it was between them, then they halted, their head angled away so that the h
ood still obscured their face. Stealthy as ever, Sir Kipling suddenly appeared at Sebastian’s heel, then hopped up on the circular platform and went to the far edge, where he greeted the stranger with the incessant meow of a feline demanding attention, his tail upraised and waving lazily in friendliness. Sebastian was about to call the cat back with a stern warning, but the figure reached up to their hood, hesitated, then pulled it back. It fell, revealing a hard face with sharp cheekbones, eyes the color of burnt umber, and inky black hair pulled back in a tight ponytail.
“Trista?” Sebastian said, his exclamation echoing loudly in the empty tower. He took a step back, his body thrumming with a surge of adrenaline at the unpleasant memories her appearance provoked. Among other things, she had once beaten him soundly in a hand-to-hand fight, and he wasn’t eager to repeat the experience.
She didn’t reply, simply eyed him with that same emotionless face he remembered from their time in England. Questions spun through his head. How had she gotten here? What was she doing working for Anton? Did she still hold any allegiance to her father? But there was really only one question that mattered. His expression hardened, and his fists clenched as he asked it.
“Where’s Lily?”
A flicker of surprise crossed Trista’s face. “I was about to ask you the same thing,” she said, her voice low and flat and her eyes calculating as they flicked between him and Sir Kipling. The cat had sat down and was now staring back at her with characteristically feline nonchalance.
“Yeah right, don’t play dumb. You once helped your scumball father kidnap your own uncle and torture him,” Sebastian snapped. “So, between the two of us, I’d say you’re the less trustworthy one. Don’t pretend you don’t know what’s going on.”
Love, Lies, and Hocus Pocus Identity Page 6