“If you say so.” His joke failed. The wistfulness faded from his expression, and he almost looked a little sad. “But you did have a certain optimism.”
Years of visions and nightmares had robbed me of that, but I couldn’t say it aloud. “I’m a realist now.”
“Not a cynic?” His grin returned, and I couldn’t help the tug at my own lips.
“Not yet.”
If I’d thought visiting the house of a Covenant witch in the cold Chicago winter irritating, I’d have been wrong. It had nothing on slinking down a dark alley with the wind whipping off Lake Michigan to visit a man the Covenant witch, Natalie, had suggested might have information about the brand. But the wind was the only relief to be found from the stink of old garbage and worse things that inundated the alley. The chill or the stench, I wasn’t sure which was worse.
And I wasn’t even getting paid to deal with this bullshit.
“Here we are.” Claude halted in front of a black door painted in such a flat tone it looked as if it had been done with a spray can.
I bumped elbows with Claude as he knocked and saw what had caught his vampire eyes. A tiny symbol—three lines stacked, evenly spaced, only about an inch long, with an odd swirl beneath them. They appeared to have been scratched into the paint.
“Lovely,” I muttered, and the door swung open.
I backed up a step, and with one hand I reached for the gun I no longer carried, and with the other hand I sought a badge that I’d surrendered. The man filled the doorway, a giant who I suspected would have to bend down simply to walk through the space. But he wasn’t only tall, his shoulders were wide and he had arms bigger than my head. I’d have thought him a giant, if giants had been real. He dwarfed Claude.
“Yeah?” he said through the long black beard, peppered in gray, that covered his face and neck.
“Customers.”
Claude looked as if he would have said more, but the man was no longer listening. After the word customers, he jerked his head at us and turned, letting the door fall from his grip. Claude caught it gracefully, as if he’d expected the man to take off. Thank goodness for vampire reflexes.
Claude shot me a reassuring grin and I frowned. I’d needed to be reassured by him at one point in my life—but no longer.
The alleyway had smelled bad, but the inky dark hallway smelled purely frightening. Not stinky—no. But the scents of the alleyway had at least been identifiable—normal, even. The hallway stank of fire and smoke and pain.
No. That was the memory of the vision talking. The smoke that had triggered the memory, yes, that was here, but not the pain. Not the blinding brightness of the enflamed branding iron. I blinked quickly even as I followed Claude closely, suppressing the urge to grip his jacket to make sure I didn’t get lost, and pushing down the urge to panic.
Claude didn’t seem to have any trouble navigating the hallway, and I silently envied him his vampire sight. We followed the man until the hallway tilted—a ramp leading down into even greater darkness.
My heart jumped into my throat. I didn’t speak, didn’t cry out, but Claude paused to reach back and take my hand in his. A rush of relief ran through me at the touch and, my resolve wavering, I let him hold my hand. But I managed to suppress my desire to grasp at him desperately.
After what felt like hours, the ramp evened out and a small room was revealed. Ventilation fans hovered over what looked like old-fashioned blacksmith fire pits, a curious mix of new and old. The fires weren’t lit. Instead, a single fluorescent bulb glowed uncovered above a large metal desk that seemed to divide the customer area from the fire pits in the back.
I assumed it was a desk. By the height, it was more accurately described as a counter. But when the big man sat behind it and pulled out a yellow, legal-sized notepad and pen, there was no doubt how he used the thing.
“What’re you want’n?” he asked, and I struggled to figure out the accent. Sounded Irish, but was a little off. Maybe he’d lived in the States long enough for it to change a bit. That didn’t sound quite right either. But I was no accent expert.
“Information,” Claude said.
The giant set the pen down on the notebook and leaned back in his oversized chair. Just as large as he’d appeared outside, he looked even more intimidating under the too-white glow of the fluorescent bulb. Thick gray hair stood at haphazard angles on his head, as if we’d woken him up in the middle of the night. Craggy skin covered the rest of his hide and the backs of his hands. Not pockmarked, but uneven and odd. Burned, I thought. I glanced at the fire pit behind him, and was rewarded with a scowl.
“Ain’t got no information for the likes of you.”
“What’s the matter? Don’t like cops?” Claude slapped his badge down on the counter.
The giant leaned back, crossing his big arms across his chest. “Don’t like fangers.”
Claude went still—too still—like only vampires could. “I don’t much care if you like me,” he said, voice still even, almost amused. “I’ll bet you don’t care either. When it comes down to it, my money spends just as well as the next guy’s.”
The beard moved, revealing yellowed teeth set in a frightening smile. “S’pose it does, at that.”
Claude pulled out my drawing of the brand and set it on the man’s desk. “I need to know everything you know about this symbol.”
The man named a figure that made me gasp.
“You’re ripping me off!” Claude jabbed his finger at the giant.
I gaped; I’d never seen the vampire yell.
“Damn right, I am! That’ll teach ya not to be so cocky.” An evil glint touched his narrowed eyes. “Maybe should charge ya double.”
“Maybe I should kick the piss out of your witch ass.”
“Like to see you try, shrimp.”
“Oaf!”
Their insults grew cruder and more extravagant, and amusement broke slowly onto both of their expressions as my mood darkened. They were friends and he’d let me assume we might be in danger. Not funny.
After Claude suggested something wholly anatomically unlikely, the witch laughed, and the booming sound filled all the corners of the room. He named another price, about half the original one he’d suggested. It was still astronomical by my scale.
Claude grinned, but didn’t hesitate in his reply. “Done.”
“But that’s—”
“It’s fine,” Claude said, shooting me a wink.
Whatever. It was his money. What did I care that it was more than I made in half a year?
“I’ll call you when I have somethin’ for ya, if there’s somethin’ to be found.”
I made an exasperated noise, and Claude glanced at me.
“How do you know you can trust him?” I asked him.
“I’ll be back in two days, whether you’ve called or not. I would like to have it in my possession before the gala,” Claude told the giant, ignoring my question.
“What gala?” I asked.
Finally Claude’s attention shifted to me, but before he could answer the giant spoke.
“There’s a fancy vampire bash this weekend. Goin’ to be borin’ as all get out, but a fanger’ll take any chance to put on a shiny suit, eh?”
Claude shot the giant a glare before turning back to me. “The Chevaliers throw a gala event for the local otherworlder elite every few months.”
“Tryin’ to remind people they think they’re in charge,” the giant grumbled.
Claude waved a hand. “It’s not important, but this brand and my timeline are. Two days.”
“Fine,” the man said. “Two days. But I’m gonna need some specifics from ya, about the metal and such. Can’t make nothin’ worth workin’ powerful magic with that ain’t made right. The metal—it’ll tell us somethin’.”
Claude nodded and set an envelope on the counter, no doubt the down payment for services that by my guess might not ever get done. We turned to go, but the giant’s words followed us down his endless hallway.
“Damn fanger.”
Chapter Five
“I can’t believe you paid a man—probably a criminal—that kind of money. And for what? Probably nothing,” I groused after Claude called Natalie and instructed her to send the details of the brand’s metal composition to the giant—how the witch would determine that, I had no idea. A spell? A home chemistry kit? Claude handed over some of the takeout he had again picked up. “Not to mention that show of insults. I take it you know each other?”
Of course they did, and probably well. And Claude hadn’t bothered to warn me about their weird, macho idea of friendship. I’d been convinced I’d have to run from a fight. Dammit. I needed my sidearm. At least it gave me the illusion of being on even ground.
“Judging people based on looks alone? Beneath you, mon chou, to stereotype. You don’t know for sure he’s a criminal.” The vampire was annoyingly unflappable, and he munched on his orange chicken like he didn’t have a care in the world.
I blinked. “Isn’t he?”
Claude’s grin widened. “Oh, yes. He’s quite the criminal. But that doesn’t mean you should stereotype.”
Ass.
“But minor things, nothing violent. Do you have a better idea than paying off my criminal friend?”
“As a matter of fact, yes. I do have a better idea. We could pull in your partner. A sensitive could probably help a ton. Hell, she could have helped us at that giant’s. She could’ve probably sensed out a dozen reasons for us to have arrested him, or avoided paying him for nothing.”
A flash of pain touched his expression. “Astrid is still recovering from injuries from the Chevalier’s casino ship case.”
I started at that. A month had passed since that case. She had to have been hurt worse than I’d thought. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize she’d been so badly injured.”