Skulduggery 8: Building a Criminal Empire

by Logan Jacobs

  My heart froze inside my chest for just a second, and when it started to beat again, I felt my skin flush with the sudden rush of blood. I kept myself perfectly still and waited for the elves to keep talking, and luckily for me, their heads were all so far up their own asses-- or up the dancers’ skirts-- that they didn’t notice the redheaded pixie right behind them.

  “Ugh, doesn’t that elf have anything better to do?” one of the elves asked. “By the Ancients, he’s a fucking night elf general. You’d think he had more interesting things to do than look for one fucking human thief.”

  “But that would mean he couldn’t be a fucking stick-in-the-mud anymore,” another elf laughed. “I still can’t believe he actually showed up at his own party last night. I thought for sure we wouldn’t have to see him there.”

  “At least he didn’t stay too long and ruin a perfectly good evening,” the first elf said. “I’m just shocked he didn’t try to recruit us all for the war that he always thinks is just on the horizon.”

  “That’s just because he’s a fucking idiot,” another elf snickered. “He’s so stuck in the past that he can’t see how perfect everything is now.”

  “Eh, that’s his loss,” a different elf added. “And that just means there’s more wine and women for us to enjoy!”

  “Play something faster,” the first elf called to the musicians in the corner of the room. “I want to really see these dancers move.”

  I started to move back toward the heavily perfumed day elf that I had my eyes on to begin with, but on my way, I stopped by a thick-leaved plant along one of the walls. I tipped my head back like I was taking the wine like a shot, but instead, I poured the liquid backward into the plant itself.

  I was shocked that it didn’t just immediately curl up and die.

  As I moved forward again, I set my empty glass down on the tray and grabbed another one from the servant, and then I carefully started to sway like I had downed one too many drinks. I took my time over to the perfumed day elf’s table, and as I sauntered over to join him, I watched him and noticed that he seemed to lean over and whisper to his friends every time he wanted a drink, instead of just paying for it himself.

  He was perfect.

  I came around the front of the elven tables and strode right through the middle of the dancers, like I was too drunk to realize that I had interrupted their performance. One of the dancers pushed me out of her way, and I used the movement to stumble over to the day elf’s table.

  As soon as I reached it, I pretended to trip, dropped my elven wine glass to the floor, and landed on the couch right between the perfumed fucker and one of his elven friends. I looked up with wide eyes and pressed my hands to my mouth.

  “Oh, I’m s-so sorry!” I stammered. “I think I’ve had just a little too much to… oh, I’m really very sorry.”

  “Oh, a pretty pixie like you doesn’t need to apologize,” the day elf said as he put his arm around me. “You didn’t hurt yourself when you fell, did you?”

  I shook my head and tried not to claw my own skin off at the feeling of the elf’s arm around me.

  “Well, good, because I’d hate to see a pretty little thing like you get hurt,” the day elf said. “Have you had a little too much to drink, sweet thing?”

  “I-I think so,” I whispered loudly. “But shh… don’t tell anyone.”

  “Oh, don’t worry,” the perfumed elf said as he patted my shoulder. “Your little secret is safe with me.”

  “Thank you,” I said with a smile. “You smell very nice, you know?”

  “Well, isn’t that sweet?” The day elf grinned. “I think I’d like to just put you into my pocket and carry you around, you know that? And if you’re very lucky, maybe I will.”

  “Okay, but first, I’ve just gotta--” I forced myself to hiccup. “You know, lay down for a few minutes, and then-- ooh, maybe I’ll see you somewhere else later? Know any good parties happening tonight?”

  “Of course, I do, you pretty little pixie,” the day elf said. “There’s a large gathering of us at Pompey’s Casino later, and you really ought to come along.”

  “But I don’t--” I leaned forward and tried not to gag on the stench of his perfume. “I don’t think I have enough money to get into a place like that. Do you think you could… you know… maybe--”

  “Oh, I don’t have enough money for a place like that, either,” the day elf whispered into my ear. “But I know how to sneak in the back, and for a pretty little thing like you, I think the guards may be willing to look the other way.”

  “But what if they’re not?” I asked as I tried to make my green eyes look as big and innocent as possible.

  “Then you can sneak in the back, too,” the day elf said with a smile. “The guard at the back door is a good friend of mine, so just tell him that you’re there to see Flavius… Lord Flavius, actually.”

  “You must be a very important person, Lord Flavius,” I said and intentionally slurred a few of my words.

  “That’s what happens when you’re in a position like mine,” he laughed.

  “You mean, um, that you can-- you know, do anything you want, even if you don’t have any money?” I asked and then held my breath.

  “Well, sometimes, anyway,” the day elf laughed again.

  “Then maybe I’ll see you there,” I said as I twirled his pale hair around my finger.

  “I certainly hope so,” Lord Flavius said and grabbed my hand. “I’ll be quite crushed if you don’t show up.”

  “Well, we couldn’t have that, could we?” I bit my lip.

  I breathed a little sigh of relief when Flavius let go of my hand. For a second, I’d thought that I might have to fight him for it, but I was glad that he’d simply let me go instead. As soon as I was free, I stumbled through a little fake-drunk curtsey, and then I moved as quickly as I could toward the curtained exit.

  Once I was on the other side of the curtain, I just kept moving and hoped that no one would call me back. I had just taken a big risk in showing him my face before I had really learned anything about him, but I’d felt good about my target, and I had wanted to get as much information from him as I could-- plus, I’d wanted to get it as fast as possible.

  As I walked back over toward the bar, I ran through the checklist of what I had just learned. One, the elf was a fucking lord, so that meant he had connections and power. Two, he seemed pretty damn broke, since he hadn’t bought himself a drink or a lap dance, and he had even bragged about the fact that he didn’t have enough money to get into some fancy casino party. And three, he sure as shit didn’t seem to have a hell of a lot of morals to worry about.

  I felt pretty good about my target, but I would see what Wade thought about it. If he felt like it was a good option, then we would take that route, but if he didn’t, we’d just move on and find something better. That was one thing about Wade that I could always depend on-- he always knew a good plan when he saw it, and he always knew how to make a good plan even better.

  When I reached the bar, I floated around it at first to try to see if I could hear anything else interesting, but I knew that I didn’t want to stick around too long, just in case Lord Flavius decided to leave the VIP booth and saw me still here. It was one thing if I showed up completely sober at Pompey’s Casino later, since I could explain how I had just wanted to find a way to meet him, but if he saw me here before I talked to Wade, I wasn’t sure how the day elf would react.

  Instead, I just moved around to the back of the bar, where I would be hidden from most of the room and where I would just wait for Dar to show up. And as it turned out, I didn’t have to wait long. I saw Dar before he saw me, and when he had almost reached the bar, I slipped down from my seat and waved him over.

  “How’d it go?” Dar hissed.

  “Good, I think,” I said. “I found a really good lead. What about you?”

  “Maybe, but I think he might be too smart to really be useful,” the halfling replied. “We can tell Wade about both o
f them and see what he thinks.”

  “In that case, we better get out of here before my lead sees me still here,” I said. “Come on, I’ll explain on the way.”

  After we left the casino, we exchanged information, and even though Dar’s mark sounded decent, I still felt like mine was better. After all, Lord Flavius had the title but no money, and he obviously enjoyed the finer, and more expensive, things in life, so he would probably be eager for any chance at a real income. Still, either way, we would wait until we talked to Wade and found out what he thought about everything.

  It was fully nighttime now, but the lamps all along the streets made things bright, so it didn’t really matter that the sky overhead was dark. Personally, I preferred the dark, but that was probably just because professional thieves tended to like the dark more, anyway.

  “So what do you think?” Dar asked. “Should we go back to the apartment or the warehouse first?”

  “Well, Wade should be back pretty soon,” I said, “so it would make sense to go back to the apartment, but I mean, the warehouse is on the way, so we could always just check in and make sure everything’s okay.”

  “I might sleep better if we do,” Dar replied. “I’ve been on edge ever since we saw Tevian at the party.”

  “Yeah, you’re not the only one,” I sighed. “Alright, warehouse it is, and then back to the apartment.”

  We didn’t walk down the middle of the streets like everyone else that we passed, but instead, we stayed as close to the buildings as we could. Every now and then, a wagon or a carriage would roll past and force everyone up onto the sidewalks with us, but otherwise, we had plenty of room around us, so I felt less like we had to watch our backs.

  The streets gradually grew more deserted as we passed from the casino district into the more residential areas, and when we were only two streets away from our whiskey warehouse, I felt the hairs all along the back of my neck prick up.

  “Do you feel that?” I whispered as we continued forward.

  “Feel what?” Dar asked.

  “I’m not sure,” I said.

  At the end of the street, we turned onto the road that had our warehouse at the end of it, and five steps later, I knew exactly why something had felt off.

  Tevian was moving straight toward us from the other end of the street.

  Chapter 11

  As soon as Ava and I came through the portal and out into the Hanging Gardens in the Gold City, I knew something was wrong. I didn’t feel any real sense of panic, but the Rainbow Keys suddenly grew warm inside my pocket, and I got the feeling that we needed to move somewhere fast.

  The warehouse, the Keys chimed. Hurry.

  “We’ve gotta move,” I told Ava. “I think Dar and Penny might be in trouble.”

  The blonde assassin nodded and touched her sleek bow for reassurance, and then after I slipped my hand into hers, we took off through the streets toward our storage warehouse in the city.

  I sure as shit hoped that no one had discovered our warehouse filled with whiskey, but we had taken every precaution, so I didn’t think that was the case. But if that wasn’t the problem, then that might mean something was wrong with Penny or Dar, and that would be even worse.

  I tightened my grip on Ava and hurried forward.

  When we were about to turn the corner onto the road with our warehouse, I felt the Rainbow Keys grow even hotter inside my pocket, so I pulled Ava toward a narrow alley instead of the main street. If we were about to walk right into the middle of some kind of trouble, I at least wanted to do it from a sneakier angle.

  At the end of the alley, I poked my head around the corner and immediately saw what the problem was. Dar and Penny were just down the road, and their gazes were fixed on the figure whose back was directly in front of me.

  I would have recognized that silver and turquoise cloak anywhere.

  As soon as my friends saw me appear behind Tevian, their eyes shifted to look at me, and the night elf spun around to follow their gaze straight toward me.

  I reacted exactly like I had at the party. I stepped out into the street, met Tevian’s gaze, and then just smiled as I willed him to freeze in place. The night elf got his mouth almost halfway open before he completely stopped moving, and Ava hurried forward to wave her hand in front of his face and make sure that he was really frozen.

  “Hurry, inside the warehouse,” I hissed to my friends before they had a chance to react to my sudden appearance.

  We ran down the rest of the street, disappeared inside our warehouse, and then climbed the stairs that led out onto the roof. As much as I was glad that we had escaped Tevian again, I couldn’t help but want to see the confusion on his face when he unfroze and realized that we had all disappeared.

  The Opalstone necklace was warm against my chest, so I figured that we still had a few seconds before the night elf became fully conscious again. The four of us hurried across the roof and then dropped to our stomachs once we reached the edge.

  “Penny, I’m sorry about this, but you better stay down,” I said. “Your hair is a little too bright, and I’m afraid he might see it.”

  “Ugh, fine,” the redhead replied and dropped her head down below the edge of the roof.

  Ava pulled up the hood of her cloak to cover her blonde hair, and Dar and I just barely poked our heads above the roof’s edge. It was just high enough to see Tevian still half-twisted around and frozen on the street below, and I had to force myself to stay quiet, when all I wanted to do was laugh at what was about to go through the night elf’s mind.

  As soon as a group of halflings came into view from the other end of the street, I released my hold over Tevian, so none of the halflings would notice anything strange about the night elf in the middle of the street.

  “I fucking knew it!” Tevian shouted at the empty air. “You sneaky little--”

  But then he stopped, as he suddenly realized that I wasn’t standing right in front of him anymore. Tevian pivoted around again to face Dar and Penny, but when he saw that they weren’t there anymore, either, he just twirled back and forth, like we would all just reappear the next time he turned around.

  “They were just fucking there…” Tevian trailed off, but then he spotted the halflings at the end of the road. “You lot! Come here!”

  The halflings all glanced at each other, but they couldn’t refuse an elven general, so they walked over to him.

  “Can we help you, sir?” one of the braver halflings asked.

  “Did you see them?” Tevian shouted. “Did you see those fucking bastards?”

  “We didn’t see anybody,” one of the halflings replied. “We just turned onto this street, and you’re the only one we’ve seen.”

  “You didn’t see some human step out of the shadows?” Tevian demanded. “You didn’t see a halfling and a red-haired pixie bitch down at the other end of the street?”

  “No, sir,” the halflings all said together.

  “Then get fucking lost,” Tevian said and then sniffed the air.

  As the halflings all hurried away from him as fast as their bare feet could take them. Tevian just kept sniffing the air, and I knew he must smell the magic that I had used. But there was no way for him to tell exactly where it had come from, and since he couldn’t see us in our hiding spot up on the roof, the scent of my magic only managed to infuriate him.

  “They were right fucking there,” Tevian snarled to no one. “I swear by the Ancients they were, but-- no, that’s absolutely impossible.”

  I glanced at my friends, but we kept our mouths shut. I didn’t think that the night elf would be able to hear us all the way up here, but I didn’t want to put that theory to the test if I didn’t have to.

  “Pull yourself together, Tevian,” the night elf grumbled on the street below. “He cannot use fucking magic. He’s a common thief, and a human one at that.”

  Penny clapped her hand over her mouth to keep from laughing, and I felt myself smile at the night elf’s confusion.


  “Fuck!” Tevian shouted and then kicked the metal pole of the closest street lamp. “Fucking Wade!”

  He stalked down the rest of the street, but it took him several minutes to get to the end of it. Every time he passed a half-open window or a narrow alley, he peered inside to look for us, but every time, he found only disappointment.

  When he had finally turned around the corner and disappeared from view, I scooted away from the edge of the roof and laughed.

  “Do you think he feels like he’s losing his mind yet?” I grinned.

  “It certainly seems that way,” Ava said. “The more he believes that it’s impossible for you to use magic, the more confused he’ll get every time that you do use it.”

  “So what happened?” I asked my friends. “How did Tevian find you?”

  “Oh, he didn’t,” Dar said. “We were just coming to check on things here before we headed back to the apartment, and he was walking down the road.”

  “He must have been on the prowl for something,” Ava said.

  “Yeah, and I think it was Wade,” Penny said.

  “Why?” I asked. “Did he say something before Ava and I showed up?”

  “No, he never got a chance,” Dar replied. “We just saw him, and we all sort of froze-- I mean, not literally, obviously, but--”

  “And then you showed up,” Penny interrupted. “And right on time, too.”

  “The Keys gave me a little word of advice,” I said with a shrug. “I’m just glad we got here before anything happened. Especially since it gave me another chance to fuck with Tevian.”

  “So why do you think Tevian was on the prowl for Wade?” Ava asked.

  “Oh, that’s just because I heard some elves earlier tonight say that Tevian has been asking around about a human thief named Wade,” the redheaded pixie replied. “No one knew anything, but Tevian definitely thinks he saw you.”

  “And now he’ll think he saw me twice,” I snickered.

  We caught each other up on what we’d done that day, and after both Penny and Dar had told me about the possible elves they’d found to act as our frontman, I looked at the redhead with a nod.