THE ALARM WENT OFF AT SIX A.M., SIGNALING THE end of night and the absence of magic. My back and sides had decided to develop an ache overnight. I rolled off the couch, feeling every knot and snarl in my muscles, pulled on my sweats, and padded downstairs to the gym. Forty minutes later I felt much better. I still didn't know where Curran and I stood, but for now it couldn't be helped. I still had people to kill and a Doomsday Device to find.
I made the trip to the guard desk. "Any messages for me?"
Curtis, an older dark-haired werewolf, offered me two scraps of paper. "There is also a message from the Beast Lord, Consort. It's in your private box. You can access it from your quarters by dialing 1000."
He called but didn't talk to me. Chicken. "When did he call?"
"Twelve minutes past midnight."
"Why didn't you wake me up?"
Curtis looked uncomfortable. "He instructed us that you shouldn't be disturbed."
Should I be pissed off because he didn't want to talk to me or touched because he'd thought about letting me rest? I wasn't sure.
I glanced at the top scrap of paper. The message stated that the trackers had found Julie's scent on the outskirts of the city. At least she hadn't been kidnapped.
The second message had a number and a name. Roman.
I took my scraps of paper, headed upstairs, and dialed 1000. Curran's voice filled the room. "Hey. It's me."
I landed in the chair. Hearing him was like coming home in a downpour and finding the lights on and the house warm. I was in so deep, I couldn't even see the surface anymore.
"They said you're asleep. I'm glad you're home safe. I'm stuck in some hellhole in the Southside. Leslie's been running all over the city. No rhyme or reason to it. We'll catch up to her eventually. She can't run forever."
And when they did, there would be a bloodbath.
"I thought about what you said. Fair enough. I do things this way because it usually works and I've done them this way for a long time. But I wouldn't want it done to me." Ha! I'd won one.
"But we agreed that we wouldn't do the not-talking thing and you hung up on me twice. If our agreement changed, I didn't get the memo."
He had me there.
"Anyway, I'm getting pretty sick of chasing the render around, so I'm going to catch her tomorrow and come home. I want to know if we're cool. I'll try to call you at work when I get done. Bye, baby."
I played the message again. It didn't say anything different.
He wanted to know if we were cool. That made two of us.
I dialed the number on the message from Roman, whoever he was. A familiar male voice answered. "Hello?"
Ha! The volhv. "Morning."
"You should give the staff back to me. I can come to your office and pick it up. I promise, no tricks even. Nobody will die."
"You got that right."
"Are you going to be a hardass about this?" he asked.
"I'll trade you the staff for Adam Kamen."
"No."
"Those are my terms."
He heaved a dramatic sigh. "We could do this like civilized people. But no, now I'll have to go to your office and unleash plagues on things, and set things on fire, and condemn things. Nobody wants that. Just give me the staff and we'll call it even. I am trying not to be a bad guy here."
As soon as the magic wave hit, I'd have to reinforce the wards, just in case. I'd taken him down, but it was mostly luck and surprise. This time he would be ready.
"An hour with Kamen, and you can have your stick back."
"Chyort poberi, you are a stubborn woman."
"You're a pagan. Saying `Devil take you' is a Christian curse. How does this work exactly?"
"That's a funny thing about Christianity; when the dead God's priests came to Europe, they made all the old gods into devils. So technically when I am saying Chyort, I'm appealing to the Black One. Anyway, I'll see what I can do." "Wait. When you snagged Adam from his workshop, did you take the thing he built with you?"
Roman paused. "Hypothetically, if we had taken such a thing, it would no longer exist. It would be as if it had never been built. An urban legend."
"So is it? A legend?" If they had gotten hold of the device, they would've destroyed it by now.
"Not so much."
He hung up. Starting the day with a philosophical debate with a priest of the Embodiment of All Evil. It could only go downhill from here.
I took a shower, got dressed, got a sandwich, and went down the stairs, eating it on the way. No shapeshifters assaulted me and tried to take my food. No wolf alphas sprung any surprise attacks. Nobody even offered me a bouquet of headless roses. The lack of drama was downright disheartening.
Outside, the sunrise split the horizon, sudden and bright, like a gush of blood from a knife wound. Both of my vehicles were idling in the yard. The boy wonder had started my car for me and now waited by his Jeep. He wore a dark hooded sweatshirt and beat-up jeans. If you didn't see his face and didn't pay attention to the broad shoulders, you'd think he was just a kid, fifteen, maybe sixteen. Knowing Derek, he did it on purpose. The younger he appeared, the less his potential opponents would think of him. Except he was filling out. Another year at this rate, and he'd have to update his wardrobe.
"Thanks for starting the car."
He grinned, a quick flash of teeth.
"Where is the bane of my existence?"
"He knows the time. I'm not his nanny."
"What did you think of him?"
"Not much. He's a spoiled baby." He shrugged. "You give boudas a young male and they fall over themselves to pamper him."
A side door opened and Ascanio emerged, followed by a familiar plump woman. She looked to be in her early fifties, with graying hair rolled into a bun, and a kind face, like a young grandmother. You half expected her to start handing out school lunches and tell you to play nice with the other kids.
She waved at us. "Kate!"
Oh crap.
I cleared my throat. "Aunt B, good morning."
Aunt B hurried over, Ascanio in tow. "I have to go to the city. So I thought, why don't I just catch a lift with you? We can catch up and chat." I'd rather give a lift to a rabid tiger. "Of course."
"Wonderful." Aunt B hopped into my passenger seat.
Derek hesitated for a long moment. He plainly didn't want to leave me alone with Aunt B, but the Jeep could only seat two. He made a follow motion to Ascanio, and without waiting he turned slowly and went to his own vehicle.
We drove out of the Keep's yard and headed toward the city.
"I heard about your run-in with the wolves," Aunt B said.
Thank you, George. "It wasn't much of a run-in."
"Not the way I heard it. Well handled, dear. Well handled. Jennifer isn't a bad sort, but she is young. She has been an alpha for barely two years. She's still establishing her place, and of course losing a loved one, especially so young, it can mess with your head. She'll come around."
That would be the day. "You have a lot of faith in her common sense."
Aunt B smiled. "Oh no, dear. I have a lot of faith in Daniel. He fought hard for his spot at the top. He won't let anything jeopardize that, not even her. Speaking of sweet young things, how is my boy fitting in?"
Like a square peg into a round hole. "We're working on it."
"It's so rare, you know, for the boudas to make it through puberty without loupism. That was the problem with my first two boys. They were just like Ascanio: handsome, funny, charming ..."
Undisciplined, spoiled, cocky ...
"He has so much potential. I haven't seen such good half-form at such a young age in years. Almost as good as my Raphael."
Oh wow. She really liked him, if she was comparing him to her son. "So why give him to me?"
Aunt B sighed. "He hasn't grown up in the Pack. His mouth gets away from him. He pushes things too far, sometimes in public. I'd hate to kill him. I'd do it, of course, but it would break my heart."
There you go, that was Aunt B for you. Please hold the wheel, while I jump out of this moving vehicle and run for my life.
"And his mother is such a nice girl, too. It would devastate her. Of all the places he could be, he's safest with you. You're much too softhearted to murder children."
I stared at her.
"Mind the road, dear." I swerved to avoid a fallen tree. "What's his story? If I have to take care of him, I might as well know the whole thing."
"It's all very, very sad. Martina, his mother, met his father while she lived in the Midwest. Not a lot of boudas out that way, so when she found him, she didn't look too closely at the quality of his character. And he seemed like a good enough sort, a proper bouda, on the passive side, but our men sometimes go that way. They had their fun, she conceived. She was thrilled. He was not."
"Didn't want to be a father?"
Aunt B rocked her head from side to side. "Not exactly. Turns out to be that he was on his `pilgrimage.' He grew up in a religious community out in the boonies led by some prophet, and they sent him out to see how the `heathens' live. He wasn't supposed to be getting his jollies on and seek carnal pleasures." She raised her eyebrows at "carnal."
"So what happened?"
"He stayed with her. Martina thought they were a family. She gave birth. It was a hard birth. The hospital had sedated her--they were afraid she might snap from the pain. When she woke up in the hospital bed, the baby and the father were gone. He'd left her a note. He was going to raise the baby in the `proper' way. The baby was an innocent, but she was unclean, because they'd sinned and had intercourse without the blessing of the prophet, so she couldn't come. Martina barely got to hold the boy. A dim memory, that's all he left her. She can't tell the story without breaking into tears."
I would've found him. I would've found him and killed him and took my baby back. "Did she chase him?"
Aunt B nodded. "She did. But she was weak and he was very good at covering his tracks. She floated about for a few years like a broken ship without a rudder until she came here and we took her in. She is a good person. Just had to get her head on straight. She swore off having children, and we can't afford to do that, not with our numbers."
"What happened to Ascanio?"
"His father brought him back to his sect." Aunt B grimaced. "The way the boy tells it, it was one of those sects where the prophet starts receiving messages from some celestial flimflam god, who tells him to sleep with all the women. Especially the younger prettier ones. This prophet wasn't that keen on Ascanio's father returning."
"Eliminating the competition," I guessed.
"That's right. Most young men didn't come back after the pilgrimage--why would you? You'd have to take a wife eventually, and how can you do that knowing she leaves every night to go sleep with this prophet? But Ascanio's father was too stupid to think for himself. When Ascanio was about seven or eight, he died. A hunting accident." "Aha. I'll buy that for a dollar." What kind of a hunting accident would it have to be to kill a damn bouda? Were they hunting an elephant and it fell on him?
"The boy was sort of collectively raised," Aunt B continued. "The sect mostly consisted of women, the only men being the prophet, a few old-timers too creaky to leave, and the prophet's progeny. They spoiled him rotten, but eventually he grew up. You've seen the way he looks. He got to sowing some wild oats. The prophet started getting messages that Ascanio was unclean real quick. Except by that point, Ascanio was strong enough that the prophet was worried about confronting him directly. Ascanio's daddy had written the whole sordid account of his sin in a confession, so the prophet found the mother's name, looked her up, and called us. `Come and get him before something bad happens.' So we came and got him. He is ours now. He has a good heart. He just doesn't know the rules and doesn't have an awful lot of sense in that pretty head of his."
So the only male role model Ascanio had ever had was a lecherous, murdering con man. Great. That explained a few things.
Aunt B stared into my eyes. "You will take care of my boy, won't you, Kate? I'd consider it a personal favor."
"I'll do what I can," I told her. "But I can't pull him out of the fire if he jumps into it after being warned."
"I don't ask for miracles," Aunt B said. "Just things within reason."
It would take a miracle to keep Ascanio in line. But now didn't seem like a good time to mention it.
AUNT B WANTED TO BE LET OUT HALF A MILE FROM my office, at some bakery. When we got in, Andrea was already there, sitting at her desk. The loyal hound took a running start and hit me in the chest. I could've used Grendel's company last night. But Andrea still needed him more than I did.
"Did you sleep here?" I asked.
She raised her chin. "Of course not."
Yep, she slept in the office. Sometimes being by yourself in an empty apartment, with nothing but your own craziness for company, was far worse than weathering a night in the office in an uncomfortable bed. At least in the office you could pretend you were still at work and keep busy. I'd been there.
Derek stuck his head into the fridge. "There is nothing to eat."
"Did you not eat before we left?"
Derek gave me a long-suffering look. "Yes, I did. But by lunch we'll need food, and we can't afford to keep running out of the building for munchies." He was right. We had three shapeshifters to feed, and every time one of us left the office, we became a target. "Fine." I opened the safe and handed him three hundred dollars. "There is a grocery down the street. Get something that will keep well."
"I'll go with him," Andrea said. "I need to walk the fur-face anyway."
They left, and I watched Ascanio bar the door behind them.
The box containing the evidence from Adam's house wasn't at my desk. If Andrea spent the night, she probably took it upstairs. I ran up the steps. There it was, spread out all over the floor into neat little piles: Polaroids on one side, Andrea's and my notes on the other, little baggie with dead ants in the middle. I sat on the floor. There had to be something here we could use. Something we were missing. So far all I had to work with were theories and suppositions. The volhvs had probably kidnapped Adam; Roman pretty much confirmed it. But unless he was lying, the device was still out there, somewhere. The Red Guard didn't have the device either, otherwise the Guardsmen wouldn't have hired us to look for it. Adam couldn't have moved the device by himself. It weighed a ton. That left the Lighthouse Keepers. They must've wanted both Adam and the device, but the volhvs snatched Adam from under their noses, so they took the device instead. And used some sort of vehicle to move it out of Sibley, leaving the trail of screwed-up magic. And I would know what that vehicle looked like if only Ghastek condescended to let me in on it. Ugh.
If the Keepers had Adam's gadget, nothing good would come from it. Of all the opponents I had to face, fanatics were the worst. Most people could be bribed, threatened, intimidated. None of the usual methods of persuasion applied to fanatics. They did things that defied logic.
And we still didn't know what the hell the device actually did. I sifted through the evidence. Adam had kept a journal, but it was missing, along with all his other notes.
Twenty minutes later I was no closer to solving anything. I picked up pieces of paper at random, marked in Andrea's neat, precise hand. LIST OF CLOTHES. LIST OF COOKING UTENSILS. LIST OF GROCERIES. She cataloged the entire house. I scanned the grocery list. Not like I had anything better to do. Cheese, milk, bananas, chocolate, protein shakes ...
Wait a bloody minute.
Sugar, dried apricots ...
I stared at the list. I'd seen this list of ingredients before. I'd watched them being put into a blender one by one: bananas, sugar, protein shake, chocolate, milk. It was a nauseating mix Saiman used to drink when he was about to change shape and expected to burn through a lot of calories in a hurry.
I double-checked the list. Saiman was Atlanta's premier expert on all things magic. He dealt in sensitive information, owned a part of an illegal martial arts tournament, and had fewer morals than the Norse gods he had descended from. He was a complete and utter egoist, focused solely on gratifying his own wants, and any dealings with him came with a giant price tag. A few months ago his egoism had finally gotten him into trouble. He maneuvered me into playing his escort for the evening and then displayed me for Curran's benefit to avenge a blow to his pride. Curran didn't take it well. In fact, I was amazed Saiman was still among the living.
Saiman also changed shape. Any human body type, any gender. Once he'd turned into a woman, seduced a pagan priest, stolen his magic acorn, and then hired the Mercenary Guild to keep him safe while the priest's friends and relations turned themselves inside out trying to kill him. The priest he'd seduced happened to be a volhv. And I was the idiot merc sent to guard him. He was the reason why I had to go to Evdokia instead of the volhvs and got my childhood smashed to pieces.
If Saiman was involved, he could've impersonated anyone. He could've been one of the guards or he could've pretended to be Adam Kamen himself. But why? What the hell did he want? Saiman was loaded. Maybe he was one of the investors ...
A faint metal clang announced the bar being removed from the door. That was some fast grocery shopping.
"Hi there!" Ascanio's voice had the unmistakable overtone of a young guy trying to be smooth.
"Who are you and where is Kate?" Julie's voice asked.