He walked to the front door, opened it. We stepped into a tidy home with 1970s décor, heavy on the oranges and ochres, with tweed furniture and shag carpeting.
The house smelled slightly musty, like a vacation home just opened for the season. Since winter had only just begun to break its hold on Chicago, that might not have been far from the truth.
“It’s dark out,” I whispered now that we were inside, using the agreed-upon code to activate the earbud, but heard only static in response. We must have been too far away for a signal, which meant not only did we not have weapons, but we didn’t have any way of communicating with the House.
Technology, I thought with a curse, really, really hoping Mallory was having better luck with magic.
“This way,” the guard said, and we followed him into a living room. “Stop.”
The guards with guns stood at our backs. The first guard gestured us to spread out our arms. He patted me down, then Morgan, and when he was satisfied, began moving again.
We walked past a kitchen with avocado-toned appliances, into a den with a sunken floor dotted with throw pillows. The house had been updated by someone since the mobsters had used it, but not in the last forty years.
The guard took a passageway to an outbuilding, and when the guards with guns looked at us menacingly, we opted to follow him inside . . . into a very recently updated game room. Bar on one end with a few high-top tables, a pool table in the middle, arcade-style video games along the wall.
Jude Maguire, shirtless and bearing a placket of bandages below his ribs, leaned over the pool table.
I cursed silently. And since I hadn’t injured his ribs, I guessed the Circle had been pissed about our little Streeterville outing.
“Mr. Maguire,” the guard said. “They’re here.”
Jude looked up, glanced at us, then looked down at the table again. He aimed, released, and the balls sailed across the table with a crack of sound.
There were three other men in the room, in addition to the three guards who’d accompanied us. All of them were thick-necked and broad-shouldered, and the air vibrated from the volume of weapons they carried.
One of the other men stepped forward for his turn, and Jude stepped back, held his cue like a pike, crossed one ankle over the other.
“They cause any trouble?” Maguire asked.
“No, sir.”
Sir? Since when was Jude Maguire a “sir”? He was muscle, not leadership. Leadership didn’t put itself in the line of fire, in clear view of the public. And it certainly didn’t get broken ribs after a failed operation. But that hardly mattered now. Nobody in the room argued, and we weren’t exactly in a position to do so.
The second player made his selection, sent a couple of balls spinning ineffectually before giving up the board to Maguire again. He walked around the table, checking angles.
“We’re ready for your demands,” Morgan said into the tense silence.
“Our demands,” Maguire repeated, then pulled back the cue, snapped it forward. The ball ricocheted across the table, hit the bumper, then sailed into the diagonal pocket. He rose, looked us over. “Your former Master borrowed a lot of money from us, asked for a lot of favors. And you don’t want to pay us back.”
“I’m not here to argue about the debt. I’m here to resolve it.”
Maguire handed the cue to the man closest to him, walked toward us. “Are you? Are you in charge? Because what I see here is a man begging for relief. Begging so hard he brought a girl with him.” Maguire stopped a few feet away, crossed his arms, gave me a slow and salacious look. “A girl I didn’t finish the first time around.”
I barely managed not to growl, but didn’t bother to hide the fangs and silvered eyes. “Just for the record, you won’t be finishing me now, either.”
“Just get on with it,” Morgan spat out. “What do you want?”
Slowly, Maguire shifted his gaze back to Morgan. “We’ve already told you what we want, and you apparently sent children to do a man’s job. We wanted King, and we wanted him dead.”
“Why?” Morgan asked.
“Because—that’s all you needed to know to perform your task, which you failed. That means he’s in the wind.”
“I won’t kill for you,” Morgan said.
“That’s pretty obvious.” This time, Maguire slid his gaze to me. “What would you do for her?”
Maguire’s gaze snapped to something beside me, and I pivoted, lifted a hand instinctively to duck the pool stick one of Maguire’s goons was yielding like a club. I wrenched it away from him, shoved the blunt end into his gut, pushed him backward until he bobbled and hit the ground on his ass.
Stick in my hand, wielded like a weapon, I looked back at Maguire. “I don’t need anyone to kill for me.”
He put a hand on his chest in mock apology. “I guess I misspoke. We don’t want him to kill someone for you. He’s already fucked that up. But you, we can use. There are plenty in Chicago who want you alive, and who’d pay a pretty penny to keep you that way.”
“Using me to get King isn’t a very good idea.” Given Maguire’s sudden sneer, we’d guessed his plan accurately.
“Even assuming my grandfather knows where he is, he won’t give him up. He won’t negotiate, even for me.” I wasn’t one hundred percent confident my grandfather would make that choice, but I was pretty certain. He was an honorable man, and believed in duty.