by M. R. Forbes
Upscale hotel room security meant a magnetically locked deadbolt and either a card or fingerprint based access mechanism. The whole thing ran on electricity, with a battery-powered failover buried inside the wall. It was unbeatable against conventional attacks; the doors couldn't be brute-forced without a battering ram, and if the fingerprint security had been used only the finger or a remote signal from security could open it up. The downside was that it was all electronic. And while the wall offered enough shielding that a hand-held E.M.P. couldn't bring it down, it still required delivery from one power source or another.
In other words, wires.
Wires could be cut.
The glasses were black market, finely-tuned for infrared, and they could pick up even the small amount of voltage that was moving to the lock, giving me a clear path of the electrical signals. The wires were bundled tight, and hitting the wrong one would put the whole thing on lockdown and send an alarm signal back to base. This would have been a tough job for a lot of people, but I had a lot of practice cutting tiny wires from a packed group. It wasn't much different than repairing muscle and nerves.
I had to pause for a minute and stay on the phone, as a couple came wandering past. They were in their fifties, dressed for an evening at the theatre or a fancy restaurant. They hung all over one another, laughing loudly and making drunk asses of themselves. They probably didn't even notice me standing there.
Once they were gone, I put the phone away, turned, and powered up the laser scalpel. It dug into the wall without issue, through the E.M.P. shielding to the wires behind. It took only a couple of minute flicks of the wrist to sever each of the connecting wires. There was no sound to indicate the door was open, but when I took the handle and gently pushed, it moved without a fight.
I slipped inside and eased it back closed. My heart was racing and my body coursing with adrenaline in an even mix of fear and excitement. I looked around with the glasses still on, checking for bodies inside the blackness of the room. It was supposed to be empty, but there was someone in the bed. Shit.
I stood motionless, waiting to see if they would cry out, ask who was there, invite me to join them, or anything else to indicate they were awake. I heard a soft gurgle, followed by another. Sleeping.
My part of the job was to steal a necklace, a blue diamond. I didn't know what was important about it, and didn't care. All I knew was that House Blue wanted it, and they had offered to pay Miss Daaé and an accomplice quite well to retrieve it and take care of the thief. The diamond was in the room somewhere.
The thief was on the roof.
We'd known he would be there, because Blue knew who he was. Not another House, but a former employee who thought he would be safe outside the reach of the magical fields. A man who knew enough to be stupid, but not enough to keep himself alive. He'd be on the phone, trying to make deals. He'd gotten himself a raw one.
He was Danelle's problem.
I gave my eyes a minute to adjust to the dim light that was filtering in past the heavy drapes, and then crept slowly towards the bed. It would have made sense that the diamond would be in the safe, but I discounted that as soon as I had been able to see the person on the bed.
A woman. Young, naked. The clothes laying next to the bed suggested a prostitute.
The diamond was hanging from her neck.
He had probably bought her so he could bring her up and do her with the rock around her neck... a double-fuck, you could call it. I needed to get it away from her, without her raising a fuss. The easy part had gotten a little more complicated.
I stood right next to her, considering. My eyes wandered to the nightstand, where a half-empty bottle of Jack Daniels was resting. Drunk? Maybe it wouldn't be so bad.
I didn't just lean over her to undo the clasp. Instead, I shrugged off the suit jacket and went around to the other side of the bed. I laid down next to her and waited for her to move.
She didn't.
I turned on my side and draped my arm over her, putting my hand on her breast and again waiting for a reaction.
Nothing.
I put my face against the back of her head, and nuzzled her neck. She gasped and squirmed slightly, but she didn't cry out in fear or say anything, and a moment later the light snoring resumed.
Satisfied, I took my hands off her and ran them down her neck until I found the clasp for the necklace. I opened it without a problem, and then carefully extracted it from her. I half-expected her to wake up once the weight of the diamond was off her chest, but she just shifted slightly and continued sleeping off the Jack. I let myself smile as I got away from the bed, grabbed my jacket, and pocketed the rock.
She was still asleep when I closed the door and walked calmly to the main hotel elevator. You didn't need a card or a print to get down, only to go up.
I met Danelle half an hour later. She opened the rear door of the van and hopped in, closing it and sighing. "I hope you had an easier time than I did."
I was sitting in the passenger seat, and I turned to look at her. She wasn't injured, but she had blood on her cheek and stains on her arm.
"What happened?"
"They didn't tell me the asshole knew how to fight. He turned on me when I put the knife to his throat, managed to knock me back. I had to stab him in the neck, and he bled all over me. A fucking mess."
"You killed him?" I hadn't killed anyone yet. I knew one day I would have to, but I wasn't looking forward to it. It was enough of an adjustment just to hear Dannie talk about it so casually.
"Yeah. Did you get the rock?"
I held it up so that it caught some of the light from the street. "Piece of cake. He left it on a whore, and the whore drunk on his bed."
She laughed. "Grab my phone from the dash, will you? Let's call this in."
The phone was the only thing in the glove compartment. I passed it back, and she dialed the number. I heard a slight click. It was the only indication anyone had picked up.
"Done deal," she said. A deep voice mumbled something. "Got it." She hung up. "He said we can toss the diamond, it's a fake."
"What?"
"Don't look at me like that, I didn't know."
I took the blue diamond and brought it really close to my face. "I risked my life for a fake?"
She came forward to the driver seat. A set of keys appeared in her hand, and she got us moving. "Get used to shit that doesn't make any sense. That's how the Houses work. Teaching someone a lesson for stealing a fake diamond is worth it to them, even if that means a ghost gets screwed. We got our money, which means your treatment is paid for next month. Better yet, you aren't a virgin anymore. Welcome to the profession." She turned her head and smiled at me. "It's time to celebrate."
We went back to our place so she could shower and change, and then we headed out, spending the next three hours in a dive downtown. It was the kind of place that only the most brazen or stupid would hang out at into the early morning. The kind of place where I had been jumped almost a year ago to the day. I almost wished I could find those assholes, to give them a little taste of what I'd learned in the months that had followed. Firearms training, martial arts, and magic. Fucking death magic. Necromancy. It scared the shit out of me, and I pissed myself the first time I brought a dead thing back to life, but damn I wanted to see their faces when I touched one of them, drained the life from the body, and brought them back under my control. I wanted to see them piss themselves.
I explained all that to Dannie on the ride home, stammering and slurring every word of it in a drunken daze of excitement. I felt more alive than I had since before the biopsy. I felt like I was in control, that my future was my own, and that I could do right by Karen and Molly by earning enough to provide something for them.
By the time Dannie opened the door to our small house, all of the drink and the excitement and the adrenaline had gotten to me. She was half holding me up, drunk enough herself, and leading me to my bedroom across from hers. When we got there, I started thanking he
r for everything she'd done for me, and telling her how she'd saved my life. I cried while I told her how I would have died without her, and how I loved her for being there for me. Even more, I was aroused for the first time in months, despite the drink. So I kissed her. Then she kissed me back. Our hands found parts of each other above our clothes, and then our hands found each other's clothes to remove them, and an indelible and unfortunate memory was made.
CHAPTER FORTY
Chowdah.
"You don't get it, do you, Baldie? There is no fucking way in hell that is going to happen."
"Come on, Amos. This is for Dannie."
Amos wiped his brow. "You're making me regret I told you anything about it."
It was nine o'clock, the morning after. I'd only gotten about three hours of sleep after Jin had helped me with the meds, and had woken up with her head resting on my chest, and her breath tickling my skin. I'd sat and stared at the wilting chunks of black and purple hair before gently shaking her awake. There was something about her that was scaring me, and moving into a dangerous place in my mind.
The good news was that I felt a lot better.
A cold shower and a change of clothes from my shitty suitcase had refreshed my spirits, and helped me focus on moving forward, not looking back.
"He's the only one who might know who this Tarakona asshole is." It was the third or fourth time we had circled back around in the argument. Each time, the fight got a little more intense. "What the fuck are you so afraid of?"
We had traded the stolen Impala for another rental car, courtesy of Amos. It was a big Cadillac, the newest, fanciest model that could be rented, the car of the fat ghost's dreams. He had picked it up while we were asleep, somehow getting his bulk down the stairs and out the door without making a sound. He'd explained the math that had allowed him to do the switch alone when we had gotten underway, leaving the gated community and heading north. It was impressive.
Now we were standing behind the car, in a parking lot across from a Walmart. The weather was still shit, leaving us cast in a gloomy gray.
"You think because I worked for Mr. Black, that means I shouldn't be afraid of him? Just the fucking opposite. Eighteen years, I never met him face to face. Talked to him on the phone twice. Got my orders from his negotiator sometimes, but most times from fixers."
"He trusted you with Dannie. That has to count for something."
"Means he'd kill me quick instead of slow... maybe. I want to get even for Dannie too, but pulling Black into this shit, that's a bad idea."
Jin put her hand on my better shoulder. "Just forget it, Baron. We'll find another way."
I couldn't believe it. The man who had grabbed a werewolf by the head and shoved a gun into its throat was afraid to make a phone call? I reached over and unlatched the trunk, swinging it open and pushing the remaining ice from Dannie's face.
"Look at her."
Amos looked at me.
"Fucking look at her, Amos. Tell Dannie you're too afraid to call in some favors and find out where Black is. Tell her that its better that you die, and that I die, and that the guy who's recruiting ferals to his cause gets what he wants. Forget about House Red, and just think about that. Tell her you could have done something to stop it, but you were too much of a baby."
His eyes moved reluctantly to her face, pale and peaceful, save for the hole in her forehead. "Fuck you, Conor. You don't know you can stop him. He's got at least three of those monsters, and you have what? The corpse of a woman with no legs?"
"And a pair of balls, which is more than you've got right now. We're going to die anyway if we do nothing, we might as well double-down."
He slammed the trunk closed, the anger fading from his face. "I never should have answered the phone. I'll be right back. I'm gonna go get more ice."
"He'll do it," Jin said while he walked away. "But he isn't going to be happy about it."
"I don't give a shit if he's happy. I need to talk to Black, get his side of the story. If what you said about Black and Red is true, there's no way Tarakona hits her and he's twiddling his thumbs on the sidelines."
Of course, that didn't mean he hadn't helped him do it. Jin didn't know what the status of their relationship was at the time of her aunt's death. Mrs. Red had insisted that Black wasn't responsible, which led me to believe it couldn't have been that bad.
"You can't be sure he'll help us."
"No, but I don't think anyone else will."
Amos came back fifteen minutes later, cradling two huge bags of ice in his arms. I opened the trunk for him and he put them in, making sure not to look at Danelle when he did.
"I know a guy, fixer calls himself Larry. Works for Black. Lives in Boston." He swung the trunk closed and walked around to the driver's side without making eye contact.
We joined him in the car. Jin sat in the back with one of the rifles across her lap, while I took shotgun with another between my legs. None of us felt safe, even in the rented car. It was doubtful they knew who Amos was. It wasn't impossible.
"You think he'll hook you up with Black?" I asked.
"No fucking way. Not without a little persuasion."
We pulled out of the lot. It was a three hour drive to Boston from here, back on I-95. Back past Connecticut.
"What kind of persuasion are we talking about? Money?"
Amos looked over at me. "Pain."
We drove in silence for five or six minutes, and then Amos started yapping about all sorts of nothing. The trees on the side of the road, the drivers around him who did all sorts of stupid things and were generally complete incompetent assholes, the storefronts and the kind of people that went to each kind of business. What was a front, what wasn't a front, and finally just general, racist laden overviews of the different towns we blew past once we were on I-95.
More than once I was tempted to shut him up, and I kept glancing back at Jin to see how she was reacting to his bullshit. She was unaffected. Now that she knew why he was so pissed, she took all of his venom in stride, letting him spew it and work off his emotions in his own way.
Maybe there was something to be said for a House without a wizard at its head. When you couldn't depend on nuclear magic to bring people in line, you needed to be a bit more understanding and diplomatic, a better mix of strong and vulnerable, commanding and open.
I couldn't help but wonder if it was intentional. She'd been trained to take over a House. Was she authentic, or was all of her outward personality an act, a masterful performance intended to perfectly manipulate? I wish I could say I knew.
If it was an act, was I falling for it?
Was I falling for her?
Shit.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Six of one, a half-dozen...
We made it to Boston without trouble, riding through the city around one in the afternoon. The clouds had given way to an hour of sun, and then fought back against the brightness and carried out their revenge with intermittent downpours and a stiff wind. It was nasty weather.
A good day for nasty business.
Amos made it clear that the fixer wouldn't be cooperative. He also made it clear he was pretty sure Black was going to kill him for what he was about to do. He questioned his own sanity a few times, and went through with it anyway.
"Larry lives up there," he said, pointing up from the windshield of the Caddy to the top of an older apartment building. "Eighth floor walkup. Eight fucking flights of stairs. Pain in the ass, always going so high. My knees can't take much more of this shit."
"How do you know he's up there?"
"He's a fixer. Usually works at night. Means he'll be home catching some z's."
He pulled the car into a spot a few blocks away. We grabbed whatever we could conceal, and put the rest in the trunk. Then he went over the plan while we walked back to the building.
"Walk around to the alley and wait there. He'll come out his window, try to get away from me down the fire escape. Stay hidden, jump him when he gets to the gro
und floor." He held his arms out wide. "Or I could just off him, and you could suck him back and make him make the call?"
I shook my head. "It'll take too much time and energy. The best corpses are at least a week old."
"Suit yourself. Like I said, he'll come down. You grab him. Watch your ass though, asshole's an illusionist."
"How am I going to know it's really him coming down the fire escape?"
"Shoot him in the leg or something. If it bleeds, it's him."
We went to the front of the building. Amos vanished inside. Jin and I moved to the alley, and waited together behind a trash bin.
"I've been spending too much time crouched behind these things the last couple of days."
Jin laughed. "I would think ghosts spend a lot of time in dark alleys."
"Not really. Thugs and ferals hang out in alleys. Ghosts plan, prepare."
"Then I would say that what we're about to do is more like being a thug."
"Then I would agree. I guess the setting is apropos."
"How is your stomach?"
I shifted my hand and touched the wound beneath the shirt. It was still tender as anything, but as long as it didn't get infected I would survive. I still couldn't be sure if the shot had been good. I wouldn't know that until it wore off.
"As good as I could hope for."
She put her hand on mine. "I'm glad I could help."
I didn't react. I didn't say anything. I kept my eyes on the fire escape.
The window exploded outward in a rain of glass.
It was followed by a thin guy in a black bathrobe and slippers, who swung out and onto the fire escape.
"There's our guy." Jin started to stand. I put my hand on her shoulder.
"Hang on, let him get a little closer."
He looked back while he descended the iron steps, not making a sound in the soft slippers. He was halfway down when Amos' head appeared in the window.
