“I never learned what Father’s business was with the man he took us to visit,” Mallory continued. “It could have been anything—money, information, influence. He definitely seemed like the upper crust of the criminal element in Atlanta. Their security systems and guards all looked professional and top notch, and the location was some sort of exclusive restaurant or nightclub. I could probably break in and make a copy of the man’s client files, but it would be risky, and I would need at least a week to scope the place out and prepare, if not longer.”
Sebastian shook his head. “No go. We don’t have that kind of time. It may seem obvious, but why don’t we just go find him and ask him? He’d recognize you, right? You could just make up some excuse about needing to talk to him on behalf of ‘Mr. Blackwood’ and set up a meeting that way.”
The downward tilt of Mallory’s mouth made her opinion of his plan pretty obvious, but Sebastian persisted.
“No really, it could work. You be the bodyguard, and I’ll be, I dunno, Mr. Blackwood’s lawyer or someth—no, wait, I know! I’ll be Blackwood Jr.! Cool, huh? I can pretend that I’m on an errand for my father, and once we meet with this guy, we can try to get him to use my ‘father’s’ full name. If we can’t bluff our way through, we can always just blackmail him, right? Threaten to expose him to the FBI or something?”
Whoever had said enthusiasm was contagious had obviously never met Mallory. Her frown only deepened the longer he spoke, and she remained quiet after he stopped talking and awaited her response.
“Come on, Mallory. We need that name, and we need it yesterday. Going in strong is the best way to do it on short notice. Confidence is how you sell a bluff, and believe me, I can bluff with the best of them.” He gave her a lopsided grin that he only half felt. His usual mask of cocky gusto resisted him when he tried to pull it on, feeling like a pair of stiff gloves a half size too small. Weariness infused his very being—he was so tired of pretending, of putting on a face. But if he had to do it to save Lily, he wasn’t about to let lack of enthusiasm get in his way. He’d be whoever he needed to be, do whatever he needed to do, no matter what.
“I don’t like it. Rushing in is dangerous. We have no guarantee it’ll work, and I got the impression last time that he was the kind of man who was very efficient at making ‘problems’ disappear.”
“Of course it’s dangerous! Everything related to your miserable excuse for a father is a complete clusterf—” Sebastian bit off the curse, surprised at the bitterness in his own voice. Pausing, he took a deep breath, then continued. “I know you don’t like Lily. I get it. She can be a pompous pain in the butt sometimes. But if we don’t act fast, she might...might not make it.” Sebastian swallowed with difficulty, heart sinking at the stone-cold mask that had dropped over Mallory’s face when he mentioned Lily. He covered his distress with a shrug. “I guess I’m not exactly paying you enough to risk your life. That’s fair. If you’re that worried, then just tell me where this guy is and I’ll go in myself. If I don’t make it, you’re off the hook. If I manage to get the name, you can take it from there and finish the job.”
For a long moment Mallory just stared at him, expression unreadable. Sebastian dropped his gaze, not wanting Mallory to see the fear in his own eyes. He stroked Sir Kipling simply to give his hands something to do while he waited for Mallory to cut him loose. Before he’d met Lily he’d always preferred working alone anyway, so it shouldn’t bother him to do it again now. At least if he were alone he couldn’t mess up anyone else’s life but his own.
A sudden stab of claws digging into his flesh made Sebastian yelp as he jumped up and tried unsuccessfully to dump Sir Kipling off his lap. “Ow, ow, ow! What’s wrong with you, cat? Leggo of my leg!”
After a few more seconds—clearly wanting to make sure his point had gotten across—Sir Kipling retracted his claws and dropped to the floor, where he skittered away and took up a sphinx-like stance next to the door, safely out of Sebastian’s reach. He stared up with baleful eyes, as if he’d heard Sebastian’s fatalistic thoughts and had no intention of letting the stupid human forget his stalwart presence.
Sebastian glared at the cat, too stubborn to admit he was in the wrong, but too honest with himself to completely dismiss the feline’s condemning stare. He was so distracted by it that he missed Mallory’s words when she broke the tense silence.
“Wait a sec, what did you say?” he asked, pulling his eyes away from Sir Kipling.
“I said you hired me for a job, and I’m going to do it.”
The words took a moment to sink in, and Sebastian’s brow creased. Before he could comment, however, Mallory snapped her laptop closed and stood.
“I have a reputation to uphold. If my client gets killed, word will get around. Now, get some sleep. We have a lot of planning to do and sleep deprivation leads to stupid decisions that get people killed. Your training starts in the morning.”
Despite the lead weights pulling on his eyelids at the mere mention of sleep, Sebastian’s emotions still rebelled. “I’m fine. Let’s keep going. Maybe we can—”
“Shut up.” Mallory’s cutting tone put a stop to Sebastian’s protest, and she fixed him with a glare as she continued. “Anybody can see you’re running on fumes. Stop acting like an idiot and go to sleep. We can’t track down our target tonight, and I doubt either of us will survive tomorrow without sleep. If my father wanted Lily dead, he wouldn’t have had her kidnapped. He isn’t one to waste resources. Now go to bed or I’ll put you to sleep myself.”
Sebastian squeezed his fingers into tight fists and closed his eyes, fighting the lurking terror that gripped him at the thought of all the horrible things that could be happening to Lily with each passing second. He swayed suddenly, and his eyes popped open as a wave of exhaustion swept through him.
“Okay...okay. We’ll call it a night. But, um, where will you sleep?”
As if deaf to his question, Mallory grabbed her computer and backpack and stalked from the room, pausing only to close the door behind her. Sir Kipling, who had casually shifted just enough so that the door whisked safely past him when it closed, gave a lazy yawn and jumped back up on the bed, where he made a beeline for Sebastian’s pillow.
“Well, that’s just dandy,” Sebastian muttered, then gave a huge yawn himself. The weight of everything that had happened in the last twenty-four hours suddenly hit him like a ton of bricks dropped from a jumbo jet. He turned to collapse onto the bed, but stopped himself at the last moment and eased down onto his back instead to spare his sore ribs. He didn’t have the energy to take off his clothes, and definitely didn’t have the energy to fight Sir Kipling for the pillow, so he just sprawled across the mattress, getting the tangled covers only half over him before he gave up and went limp. He fell into a fitful doze plagued by half-formed fears that lurked in the shadows and kept some primal part of his brain awake and on edge.
Sometime later—perhaps minutes, perhaps hours—he became groggily aware of a warm weight that depressed the mattress by his head, then draped itself across his neck and upper chest, well away from his bruised ribs. A gentle vibration infused him and chased away the shadows plaguing his mind. For the first time since Lily had disappeared, his body began to relax.
You are safe. I will keep watch.
Too drowsy to wonder where this new voice in his head came from, Sebastian simply believed it and let go, finally drifting off into a deep and dreamless sleep.
***
A furious hissing jerked him out of the warm darkness, and he rolled away from the sound on pure instinct before he could even get his eyes open. In a hail of tinkles and clinks, a mass of cold somethings cascaded down onto the bed where he’d just been lying. That flash of information was all he registered before his momentum took him off the bed and he hit the floor on his good side. The fall drove all the air out of his lungs in one great whoosh. He fought to breathe as he rolled onto his hands and knees, sleep-encrusted eyes blinking against the light streaming in from the d
oorway.
“Not bad, but the cat helped you. You won’t always have him around to warn you when you’re about to get murdered in your sleep. Now get up. We have work to do.” The bucket-holding, Mallory-shaped silhouette turned and left the bedroom, shutting the door behind her and plunging them back into darkness.
Sebastian groaned, a long, low sound that summed up all the rants and curses running through his head he didn’t have the energy to voice. He thought about crawling back into bed, but then remembered the pile of ice that had recently taken up residence there. That was enough to draw a litany of curses from his lips, and he wobbled to his feet. His stiff and battered body protested with a vengeance. After grabbing the trash can from the bathroom, he hurriedly swept all the ice off his bed, then dumped the lot of it into the bathtub to melt, all the while furiously plotting a suitable act of revenge. Of course, he would never be stupid enough to actually go through with anything that involved suddenly waking Mallory up from sleep. She probably slept with a clutch of throwing knives under her pillow.
One quick but scalding shower later, Sebastian felt less like a zombie and more like an extremely sore human being. Sir Kipling provided a helpful running meow-mentary as Sebastian eased himself into some semi-clean clothes excavated from the depths of his chest of drawers. He was beginning to regret his provocative teasing of Mallory the night before, since he didn’t feel up to fighting even a wet noodle, much less Miss Grumpy McGrumperstein herself. But now that he was awake, the incessant urgency of the day before—that tightness in his chest that made his lungs ache and forget to expand—was back in full force, and he knew he couldn’t afford anything but one hundred percent confidence.
Sir Kipling trotted out before him as Sebastian finally left the bedroom. They emerged into his living room lit by enterprising beams of sunshine which snuck in around the untidy curtains across his front-facing windows. The light disoriented him. There were no windows in his bedroom, and based on how he felt he’d assumed it was the butt-crack of dawn. But a glance at the clock on the wall told him it was already noon.
Thirty-one hours since Lily had gone missing.
A moment of irrational panic hit him. What if something had happened to Lily while he’d slept? But Sir Kipling had been acting normal, and surely the cat would have known if Lily...if she...He turned to look for the cat, but froze as his eyes finally adjusted and he took in the room with Mallory sitting at a table in the center. “W-what have you done to my living room?”
“My job.” Mallory’s reply was businesslike, and she didn’t bother looking up from where she was busy sorting through a stack of papers. “I ordered breakfast. Leftovers are in the kitchen.”
Sebastian was starving, but not even his howling stomach could unroot him from the spot as he stared around at what had once been his less-messy-than-usual living room. Gone were his chipped coffee table and old tube TV, and his threadbare but comfy couch was on its side and pushed into a corner. His living room now sported several fold-up chairs and two card tables, one occupied by Mallory’s computer and a small, portable printer, the second covered in piles of weapons and supplies. The stand where his TV had lived was now taken up by a sleek, newer model that sported multiple wires running from the back of it to Mallory’s laptop—it looked like she was using it as a second screen. The walls, which Sebastian had never gotten around to decorating, were now covered with photographs, printouts, maps, and what looked like a set of building blueprints.
“I—you—”
“You insisted this be our base of operations, so deal with it. Besides, that couch smells like dead mouse. If you can afford to hire me, you can afford to get a couch that isn’t going to give us all the plague.”
“It does not smell like dead mouse,” Sebastian protested.
A derogatory meow came from somewhere near his ankles.
“No one asked you, Kip.”
The cat sniffed archly at his dismissal and trotted off toward the kitchen.
“I’d follow him if I were you,” Mallory said, “or you won’t have any breakfast left to eat.”
Grumbling, Sebastian turned and stomped off toward the kitchen. It wasn’t as if any of his old furniture was worth anything—he was pretty sure he’d pulled most of it out of a dumpster when he’d moved in. He was mostly just annoyed that now he had to go to the trouble of replacing things. Maybe Lily could help him redecorate, once she was home safe. The thought perked him up, and he quickened his step.
He arrived in time to save his still-warm bacon and eggs from a certain marauding feline, and instead pointed the ferocious predator toward the sausage-filled take-out box on the floor by a bowl of water. Sir Kipling was inclined to be sulky—apparently sausage was no substitute for bacon—but Sebastian was unmoved, and they both set to scarfing down their food in record time.
Sebastian was just about to leave the kitchen when he noticed Sir Kipling crouched by his water bowl, ears laid back and fur standing on end as he panted in distress. Startled, Sebastian dropped to a knee beside his friend. His hands hovered over the cat, but he was not sure what was wrong or if he should touch the feline.
“Are you okay, Kip? What’s going on? Is it Lily? Is something happening?”
The cat didn’t respond, and flinched away when Sebastian reached out to stroke him. But before Sebastian could do anything else, the cat stopped panting, shook himself almost like a dog, and slunk off around the corner looking like he was headed toward the bedroom.
Sebastian wanted desperately to follow and figure out what was going on, but knew animals didn’t interact well when they were sick. He had to trust that Sir Kipling would let him know if something was wrong—or at least wrong enough that the cat needed help. He would check on the furball in a little bit. In the meantime, he had things to do.
Shaking his head, Sebastian rose and threw away the takeout containers from breakfast, then headed back into the living room. He took the empty folding chair and flipped it around, then sat on it backwards, resting his forearms across the top to give himself some support. Mallory raised an eyebrow at him, and he raised one right back. She didn’t need to know that he wasn’t trying to look cool, or rebellious, or whatever else she thought of him—his ribs just hurt less in this position.
Mallory abstained from commenting as she rose and handed him a stack of papers, then sat back down and consulted her computer. Sebastian wondered if she’d printed things out for him specifically so he wouldn’t have reason to touch her precious mundane tech. She needn’t have worried. Nothing ever broke unless he was the one actively using it, and even then everything worked fine half the time.
“Alright, listen up,” Mallory said. “I let you sleep in because your body needed it, but that means we’re short on time. Pay attention, because I’m only going to go over this once, and if you screw things up, you’re on your own. You’re not paying me enough to risk my life saving your bacon.”
Sebastian opened his mouth to make a joke about bacon, then closed it again at Mallory’s withering look. Ducking his head, he shuffled through the papers Mallory had given him as she began her briefing on the location of their target. It was thorough, succinct, and chock full of vital information like probable guard numbers, security system specs, and escape routes. Sebastian did his best to commit the most important parts to memory, but he wasn’t truly engaged until she mentioned the name of their mark.
“Wait, did you say Jacopo Romano? As in the Romano?”
“I am only aware of one, at least in Atlanta,” Mallory said, brow furrowing. “What do you know of him?”
“Only that Anton hates his guts. I think he’s some sort of rival. I heard Anton go on about him once, and from what I could tell, he works for some pretty bad dudes up north. New York I think.”
Mallory pursed her lips. “It was a New York investment firm that purchased the property he is using, so perhaps there is a connection. Is he a wizard?”
“Nope, don’t think so. Anton hates him, but more lik
e one professional to another. The Anton Silvester I know and love saves his most snooty ‘I’m using politeness to mask my utter disdain’ exclusively for wizards, and I haven’t heard him talk about Romano like that.”
It might have just been his imagination, but Sebastian could have sworn he saw Mallory’s lips twitch upward. Maybe she had a soft spot for Anton too.
“Well, that’s something. If he’s in charge, he’s unlikely to have any wizards in his direct employ—in my experience any wizards mercenary enough to hire out their magic to criminals prefer to do it freelance. They don’t like being ordered around.” Her mouth betrayed the barest sneer before her blank mask slid back into place and she was all business again. “So, if you know who Romano is, would he recognize you?”
“Oh, heck no,” Sebastian said and shook his head. “His type is way above my paygrade. He may know Mr. Fancypants better than we thought, though—”
“Who?”
“Oh, uh, it’s just something I call your dad, because he thinks he’s so fancy, right? I have this thing with nicknames...” Recognizing the look of utter non-amusement on Mallory’s face, Sebastian trailed off, coughed, and got back to the point. “What I was saying was, if this Romano guy is a player in the magical underworld, he probably knows John Faust better than just that one meeting you all had, right? What if he knows John Faust doesn’t have a son? Or at least, not a son he...er...”
A muscle twitched in Mallory’s cheek, and Sebastian gulped, mentally berating himself for bringing up the topic of Mallory’s half-siblings. But whatever she thought about it, she hid it as she looked back at her computer screen and spoke again. “Whether we can fool him or not, he’ll be intrigued enough to want to know what we’re up to. We only need to get him alone in his office for a few minutes to get the information we need. Whether he gives it willingly or not doesn’t matter.”
Love, Lies, and Hocus Pocus Identity Page 13