He avoided looking at me and glanced at Nadya instead, as if pleading for her to make me stop.
Just what the hell had Rynn said to them?
“Just give her the bottle,” Nadya said. “She won’t shut up otherwise.” He obliged with the same guarded fear, for lack of a better word.
I measured the opening with my finger. Yup, just the right size. “Hey, do you still keep desiccant on you?”
Nadya pulled out the tiny packets from her purse and slid them over. Yukio’s eyes widened.
“That’s not what you think it is,” I said. He didn’t look like he believed me. I rolled my eyes and emptied the packets into the bottle, shaking them around so they coated the glass. Powdered desiccants, the universal enemy of parchment-rotting dampness everywhere. Even a thin coating would keep any moisture at bay. “Now gimme the scroll.” Nadya glared over her champagne glass, studying my bottle. It must have passed scrutiny, because she reached inside her jacket and forked it over. I rubbed the remaining packet of desiccant over my gloves and rerolled the scroll before sliding it into my makeshift scroll chamber.
“See? Ancient scroll in a bottle,” I said, holding it up. “If you have a buyer, tell them it’s added value. They can actually see the scroll. Just don’t stick it in direct sunlight.”
Nadya took it and rolled it over in her hands before handing it back. “Not bad,” she said. “If you don’t mind clients thinking you live in a trailer.”
I would have said something, but I caught sight of Rynn on the other side of the bar near the entrance. He was facing away and hadn’t seen me yet. I slid off my barstool. Thank God he wasn’t dead, or maimed, or—I froze.
Shit.
Rynn was with someone. A blond Japanese woman I’d seen hanging around on numerous visits here. Marie wasn’t torturing him; he was with a client. That’s why he wasn’t answering his phone.
I slid back into my chair and stared down at the glowing bar as fast as I could. Partly because I didn’t want to watch, but mostly because my face was turning bright red and I didn’t want Rynn to see that I’d seen him. OK, so maybe I was a little jealous. Rynn didn’t need to know that. It’d definitely give him the wrong idea.
When I glanced back up though, Rynn was watching me. He nodded and held up two fingers. Well, so much for subtlety.
“Found Rynn. He’ll be over in two minutes,” I said to Nadya.
“About fucking time,” she said. She twisted in her seat to scan the floor and started waving as soon as she spotted him.
I grabbed her arm. “What the hell are you doing?”
“What does it look like? Speeding him up,” she said.
“Quit that, he’s with a client.”
Nadya twisted again to stare and reassess Rynn and the blond woman. An evil smile spread across her face. “Maybe we should go say hi. Evaluate your competition.”
“Stop it.”
She shrugged. “I’m just saying, I bet he’d like talking to you more. There? See, he’s coming over!” And sure enough, Rynn was heading our way, and the blonde he’d left behind was glaring daggers at me. Well, good for her. She could get in line with everyone else who wanted me to drop off the face of the planet.
“Shit.”
“What’s the matter? You like him, he likes you—”
“The problem is I almost got him killed twice this week. I don’t need to be fucking up his work too.”
“Hmmmm, I could think of worse things for you to fu—”
“Nadya!” I would have added more, but Rynn had reached us and stepped behind the bar. My ears burned, which meant they were as bright red as my face.
“You can thank me later,” Nadya whispered.
Rynn leaned across the bar towards me; his face guarded, he picked up my makeshift scroll bottle-case and held it up by the top to inspect it. “Please tell me you aren’t fencing stolen goods at my bar.”
“OK. I’m not fencing stolen goods at your bar,” I said.
He lifted an eyebrow and glanced at the vase resting beside my beer. I couldn’t blame him. I wouldn’t believe me either.
“Relax, I’m not selling it. Here. And I didn’t actually steal it this time. Nuroshi did.”
“And somewhere, somehow, deep in the workings of your mind, that makes it OK?” he said.
“If I find something someone else stole, it isn’t stealing. It’s finding.” I took the bottle from Rynn and slid it into my bag. “And why the hell aren’t you giving Nadya a hard time? It’s her scroll.”
“Yet you’re the one holding it.”
I closed my eyes. “OK, let’s can the philosophical discussion of my day job—we’ve got more important things to worry about,” I said, and gave him the abbreviated version of our run-in with Marie. I hoped Rynn would be impressed with all the new information.
“You said you wouldn’t be getting into any trouble,” he said, glaring, and not bothering one bit to hide he was pissed at me.
“I said I didn’t plan on getting into any trouble. Marie shouldn’t have been there at all.”
One side of Rynn’s mouth twitched up. He grabbed my jacket collar and turned it down faster than I could block. Nadya winced at the sight of the bruises, and I scrambled to pull the collar back up. “Not cool,” I said.
Rynn didn’t say anything, just inclined his head in a disapproving manner. I think that was worse. We’d have to have a discussion about boundaries.
Nadya came to my defense. “Rynn, none of it made any sense. Alix says Marie hasn’t been a vampire more than a year, but I could have sworn she was older than three hundred.”
I shook my head. “There’s no way she’s three hundred.” I took a swig of my Corona; it was now or never. “I knew her when she was alive.”
I only caught the looks Rynn and Nadya gave me out of the corner of my eye. Any other situation and it would have been priceless.
Nadya set her face. “No, you’re mistaken—it’s not possible she could be that strong and that young—”
“Let’s pretend you’re right and I’m mistaken—which, for the record, I’m not. For one, she’s nowhere near sensitive enough to light. If she was as old as she is strong, she should have gone up in flames as soon as the flashlight hit her. She didn’t.”
Nadya pursed her lips. She wasn’t giving up that easily. “But she was a hell of a lot more damaged than she should have been for a year-old vampire.”
I nodded. “You’re right. The whole thing makes no sense, and I don’t know enough about vampires to know why.”
“Do you know anyone who would know?” Rynn asked.
I frowned. “Nuroshi probably did, but anyone else?” I shook my head and placed my almost empty Corona on the bar.
Rynn grabbed it and pulled it out of my reach before I could have the last sip. “I find that hard to believe,” he said.
I glared. Damn it, he wasn’t even trying to play the charming host.
“Well, let’s put it this way. No one I’m on speaking terms with. You piss a few people off in the archaeological world and all of a sudden you’re persona non grata on just about everyone’s list, including the people already on the fringe. Unless one of you knows a vampire willing to chat with me—” I stopped talking and pulled Charles the vampire’s cell phone out of my bag. It was still active.
Alexander picked up on the fifth ring, and I transferred it to speakerphone.
“What do you want?” came his clipped voice. I got the distinct impression he’d been holding the phone for the last five rings deciding whether or not to answer.
“Hi there, nice to hear your friendly voice again. I’m doing OK. How’s that tunnel in Bali treating you?”
“Owl,” Rynn said, warning in his voice, “that is not what I had in mind.” He reached for the cell.
“Just a sec, Alexander,” I said, muting the cell and stopping Rynn from hanging up for me. “Relax, they’re trapped in the tunnel and they’re staying there until this Sabine/Marie mess is over.”
“Stop worrying. I’ll keep it short. You wanted someone who’d know about vampires? Well, who better than a two-hundred-year-old vampire? Besides, serves you right for stealing my beer.”
Rynn rolled his eyes and made a derisive noise but otherwise didn’t interfere. I unmuted the phone.
“Sorry about that, Alexander. Look, I ran into Sabine—”
“Is she dead?” he said, not bothering to cover the hope in his voice.
I frowned. “Ummm, I’m flattered you think I could kill a vampire—”
Alexander tsked. “I doubt you could kill a dead gerbil. I’m referring to your companion, the blond mercenary.”
My mercenary companion—hunh. That meant Alexander had to have spoken to Charles in order to know about Rynn. I pushed back my gut response and went the diplomatic route. “No, Sabine’s not dead. She’s also not an old vampire like you. In fact, there’s no way in hell she’s over a year old.”
He was silent for a long moment. “That is impossible—”
“It is possible, because I knew her when she was alive. Last September, to be exact. You either think I’m really stupid or you’re hiding something.”
More silence. Then, in a measured and clipped voice, “Who is she?”
My turn to tsk. “You know I don’t work like that. You tell me something, I tell you something. Now, I’ll give you her real name, hell, I’ll even tell you her last known home address and toss in some bank account info, but you have to tell me something first.”
“What?”
“How did she do it? How did she get so powerful in less than a year, and why doesn’t sunlight torch her?”
I recognized just about every nasty term in French I knew and a handful I didn’t. “I cannot tell you that—”
I hung up.
Rynn was watching me, now thoughtful instead of angry. I had no idea what had warranted the change, but I’d take it. I nodded at my beer, and he passed it back. I pointed the bottom of the Corona at Charles’s cell phone.
“Watch. He’ll call back as soon as he’s done throwing a tantrum,” I said.
“For someone who hates vampires, you’re building up quite the repertoire,” Rynn said finally.
“No, I’m using a resource.” I pointed the open end of my now empty beer at Rynn and almost dropped it on the bar. Maybe it was time to cut myself off . . . after the next one. I’d had one hell of a rough day. “Of course, if he has the chance, he’ll try to kill me and torture my cat. Again. But I’d be stupid not to use him for information while he can’t track me down. What’s so funny?”
Rynn took the empty bottle from my hand and replaced it with a new, cold Corona. “You referred to the vampire as ‘him.’ Twice,” he said.
“So?”
He shrugged. “Just that I never thought I’d hear you referring to supernatural monsters as ‘people’ instead of ‘things.’ ”
“They’re still things.”
“Your subconscious doesn’t refer to things as ‘he’ and ‘she.’ ”
I frowned. “I think I preferred it when you were scowling at me for getting into trouble.”
Rynn snickered, and the phone vibrated across the counter. “Fine. Prove me wrong. Stop baiting the vampire,” he said.
I made a face and answered, “Pest control. What kind of vermin would you like exterminated today?”
Rynn scowled.
“Owl—” Alexander said.
“Oh hi, Alexander, how are you? Spill or I’m hanging up.”
I heard him draw a sharp breath. “I will keep this short so as not to waste our time. I cannot tell you anything concerning how Sabine acquired her strength.”
“Well fine, I won’t tell you anything about Sabine either. We’re square, and this conversation is over.”
“You are the most infuriating—” I swore I heard Alexander kick one of his vampires. I had to admit, after a year of running from the Paris boys, part of me was really enjoying this.
“What I am willing to discuss with you is certain vampire laws that necessitate our compliance.”
I snorted. “I know enough about vampire laws to know none of you bother following any rules, unless it’s ‘Don’t get caught.’ ”
Alexander sighed. “While that is often true, there are a handful that are taken more seriously than others. A few are punishable by death—if one is, as you say, caught.”
“All right, I’m listening. Shoot. If it’s actually useful, I’ll give you what I know.”
Something grated; I think Alexander was grinding his teeth. “There are three laws that we may not break. The first is to not kill another vampire. The second, and more serious, is that it is forbidden to feed off another vampire.”
I rolled that over in my head. A little too slowly for my liking. OK, maybe I should cut back on the Coronas. “The killing vampires makes sense—though considering you guys multiply like cockroaches, my guess is it only counts if the other guy is bigger than you. What’s with the no cannibalism?”
“I do not know for certain, for I have little to no interest in such occult practices. However, I remember one saying to me many years ago it was because the blood of another vampire is poisonous.”
“How?”
“I do not know, though madness was loosely hinted at.”
“I’m getting ready to hang up—”
Alexander tsked. “So impatient. Even though I had little interest, I always wondered, ‘If the blood is poisonous, why make it a law punishable by death?’ ”
That clicked. In a warped vampire kind of logic, it even made sense. If feeding off other vampires made younger, weaker vampires stronger, it’d be in the upper cockroaches’ interest to keep the younger ones from doing it. Hell, the madness thing might even be true; Marie was sure as hell well enough off the deep end to qualify. “Has there been a mass disappearance of vampires lately?” I asked, keeping the excitement out of my voice.
“I am afraid there are none I am aware of. I can tell you though that the Contingency takes missing vampires very seriously. This Sabine would need to be very careful to drain vampires and leave no witnesses. Very tricky, very careful.”
“Or just toss a few vampires into a river during daylight,” I said.
“Ah, yet that would result in some missing. We do keep track of our own.”
“Like overlords in a pyramid scheme?” I said.
Well, it was better than anything I had, but something still bothered me. Curiosity got the better of me. “Wait, you mentioned one more rule. What is it?”
“Ahhh, did I? It is simply that you must acquire permission from the Contingency before making any vampire. Population control, as it were.”
That clicked, and all the pieces slid into place. “You think Sabine is making her own vampires and feeding off them until they die?”
“An interesting academic question. If one needed to break one law, it reasons that it would be easier to break all three and leave no witnesses.”
I ran that against what I knew of Marie when she’d been human. It still wasn’t the smoking gun I wanted, but nothing about this entire job had been easy. “All right, Alexander. You’ve kept up your end.” I glanced over at Rynn and Nadya for their approval. Both nodded, even if Rynn did it begrudgingly. “Sabine’s name—or the one she was using before she turned vampire—is Marie Bouchard. I hired her to work the second case you gave me—the volcano over in Finland.”
“You’re somehow responsible for this?” Alexander hissed.
So much for friendly repartee. “Let me finish. If you bothered using your memory, you’d recall I needed help with new import licenses out of Iceland. Your exact response, and I quote, was ‘What the hell do you think I pay you for?’ ” I even added in a French accent. “It was either risk getting caught smuggling my cargo into France, or find a good forger. I put out the word I needed someone, and Marie found me.
She was a restoration artist in the archaeological museum, one of those people who do reproductions for tourists. She had a knack for documents and swore she could get past French customs, so I brought her on—What?” I said as Alexander snorted.
“I fail to see how this does anything but ‘dig your own grave.’ ”
I rolled my eyes. I’d never thought about it much before, but Alexander had a bad habit of using colloquial American phrases, not always accurately. It annoyed me when I was working for him, and it annoyed me now. Goddamn it, for something that lived over a hundred years, vampires sure picked the strangest hobbies.
“No background? No reference?” Alexander asked, conveying his contempt. I wasn’t about to add that it wasn’t until later—much later—that I’d found out she’d basically stolen the job posting off someone else. Considering my contacts had been in pretty low places, that said plenty about the kind of person Marie had been stealing from. Instead I offered, “I was under the gun, Alexander—your fault. You wanted the goods yesterday, and I didn’t have time to check. She said she could forge the customs documents to get your items clear, and she did.”
I glanced up at Nadya and winced. She couldn’t entirely hide the mixture of surprise and hurt. Guilt hit me. Nadya was my best friend and the only business partner I’d ever trusted. I’d never told her about Marie. I’d been too embarrassed.
I’d started taking supernatural-leaning jobs from Alexander at a low point in my life; I’d been freshly blacklisted from archaeology departments and universities everywhere. Needless to say, no one had wanted to hire me for anything other than trinkets and museum B&E’s, and that hadn’t paid enough to keep me under the radar. Hiding is expensive in the digital age. Anyone worth their weight as an antiquities thief veers wide of any jobs that even smell of the supernatural, and at the start, at least, I’d had every intention of doing the same . . . but I’d needed cash, and the hostess part-time lifestyle Nadya had in Tokyo wasn’t for me. I’d swallowed my pride—and every ounce of good sense—and that’s how I’d ended up working for Alexander.
I’ve been in over my head ever since. It wasn’t worth it.
Owl and the Japanese Circus Page 20
