by M. J. Scott
I paused, not sure how to take the question. Was he disappointed? Or surprised? Or neither? “I don’t spend a lot of time here,” I said, trying to sound as though I didn’t care what he thought.
I put the bottle of whiskey I’d bought downstairs—part of our act—down on my dresser. My rooms were small but not tiny. Over time I’d convinced—well, paid—the Figgs to allow me to have two of the chambers converted into one. I had enough room for a decent bed, a table and chairs, a desk, and a wardrobe with some floor space in between. It was all I needed for now. One day I’d buy a house and have all the rooms I wanted.
One day.
But not today. No, today, I wondered what Guy saw.
He moved from the door, still looking around him. “It seems like you. Nice.”
I relaxed slightly. Though maybe I should be insulted . . . what exactly had he been expecting? “Thank you.” I didn’t spend much money on rent, but I had splurged a little on the rugs and my bedding. Not too much—even with wards as strong as I could make them, it was foolish to have anything too valuable in a place like the Swallow.
Reggie had pushed me toward deep pinks and blues and reds, insisting jewel tones suited me best. I liked my very female little cave, but for once, standing here with Guy, made me feel somehow uncomfortable. He seemed too austere in his gray and white. Too big. Too male.
Looking away from him, I pushed the bags, which had been delivered while we were making our way here, against the wall, then moved around the room, checking my wards. I could tell Fen had been in here, but there were no echoes of anyone else.
Guy looked around one more time and then sat by the table. “Now what?”
His hands rested on his knees. I tried not to look at the snarling faces, but they drew the eye. They’d had an interesting effect downstairs when he’d put them flat on the bar and demanded whiskey.
Fen’s face from across the room had been a picture of dismay and confusion. I had the feeling that he and I would be having a long heart-to-heart lecture sometime very soon.
But I couldn’t think about Fen. Instead I fastened the buttons at the neckline of my dress and sat primly on the nearest chair trying to think.
I’d dragged Guy through the Swallow, flirting outrageously, and he’d played along, even planting another mind-melting kiss on my mouth in the middle of the room, to the rowdy applause of the patrons. Then he’d topped his act by being suitably brutish and snarly at the bar. The very image of a lust-addled, angry warrior. No point blowing all that hard work now.
“You mean we should start jumping up and down on the bed to convince everyone we’re busy making wildly passionate love?” I tried not to look at the bed and picture just that. “No need, I’ve always had aural shields around my room.”
Though right now I was regretting that fact a little. Some bouncing on the bed with Guy might have been fun.
Focus on the job, Holly girl.
“What they make up in their own heads will convince them more than anything we could do.” I thought fast for alternatives. If Guy had chosen drunk as his cover, I would’ve been perfectly happy holing up in my room for the night and letting him drink as much as he wanted. But he hadn’t and now he seemed wide awake, watching me as I prowled around, feeling restless.
I wasn’t sure that staying here with him under such circumstances was a good idea. The bed seemed to loom large with him in the room, and that really was a bad, bad idea. But with Guy full of whiskey and obviously spoiling for a fight, this wasn’t the time to take him out into the Night World. No, he needed just a little time to get used to what he’d done tonight.
And I needed a little time to think.
I looked down at his hands, where the snarling faces looked somewhat swollen, the edges reddened. They had to hurt like hell.
That, at least, I could do something about. I had no real talent for healing, but Fen did. Enough to soothe minor bumps and scrapes and cuts anyway. He should be able to do something to ease Guy’s hands. And, hopefully, the cut on my arm, which had started throbbing again.
I poured whiskey into a glass and passed it to him. “Drink this. I’ll be back in a moment.”
His eyes turned suspicious. “Where are you going?”
“Just drink it.”
It took more than a moment for me to convince Fen to come back upstairs, but it was still no longer than five minutes or so before I let us back into my room.
Guy sat by the table, his glass still full. Or maybe that was refilled. The level in the bottle seemed to have dropped a little farther. I had to hand it to him. He definitely seemed to have a head for liquor.
“What’s he doing here?” Guy asked.
“Fen can heal, a little. He’s going to take a look at your hands.”
Fen, for once, wisely kept his mouth shut as Guy’s brows drew down, making the scar that slashed one of them stand out more strongly. “My hands are fine.”
I rolled my eyes. “Your hands have to be hurting. If Simon was here, you’d let him heal them, wouldn’t you?”
Guy jerked his head at Fen. “He isn’t Simon.”
“No, but he’s as close as you’re going to get for tonight. Don’t be difficult. You’ll be more use to me with both your hands in good working order.” I pointed at the bed. “Come over here and sit down where the light is better and let Fen help you.”
For a moment I thought he was going to argue some more, but instead he got up, lifted the whiskey bottle in one hand, and moved to the bed. His steps were slow but steady, though I got the feeling he was concentrating hard to make sure they were.
He dropped down onto the bed and held out his free hand.
“Do your worst.”
I shot a look at Fen, making sure he wasn’t going to rise to the bait. He returned a “you owe me” gaze of his own before he moved to where Guy was on the bed.
“Can you bring a candle over please, Holly?” Fen said in a casual tone as he inspected Guy’s hand. He turned to me, his brows lifted as if to ask what the hell was going on. I frowned at him and fetched a candle.
Guy didn’t seem to be paying any attention to what we were doing. He gazed into the fire, still taking mouthfuls of whiskey from the bottle, his expression fixed in impassive lines.
“Sleep?” I mouthed at Fen, and he nodded fractionally before he bent back over Guy’s hand. A shiver of magic swept through the air, and Guy flicked his gaze back to us, the lines in his face easing.
“Other hand,” Fen said in a calm tone, and Guy switched the bottle over.
This time the pulse of magic was stronger. It continued in a wave, like the beat of a heart, and I was relieved to see Guy’s eyes begin to drift shut. The pulse continued and suddenly Fen leaned forward, easing the bottle free of Guy’s hand as the bigger man fell gently backward onto my bed.
“Will that do?” Fen asked, passing me the whiskey bottle.
“How long will he be out?” I stared down at Guy. It didn’t look like the most comfortable position to sleep in, with his legs dangling down to the floor.
“How much did he have to drink?”
“Half a bottle, maybe.”
“Well, then I’d say you’re safe until morning.” Fen’s eyes glinted—half amused, half frustrated—as he spoke. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”
I shook my head. “Not yet. Help me move him.”
Manhandling six-foot-plus of solidly built knight was no easy feat, even for two of us, but we managed to drag him farther up the bed and roll him onto his side. I draped the counterpane over Guy.
“Where are you going to sleep?” Fen asked.
“The floor will do. I have spare blankets. But I’m not going to sleep just yet.”
“Oh?”
I looked at Guy again, his face peaceful in sleep, the first time it had looked that way all day. Fen’s magic and the sleep would hopefully give him some ease. And it had given me the time and space I needed to do what I had to do.
“Yes,�
�� I said. “I’m going out.”
Chapter Eleven
HOLLY
Guilt lingered in the pit of my stomach as I hurried away from the Swallow. Guy wouldn’t be happy if he woke to find me gone, so I just had to hope that Fen was right and that I had hours before that happened.
Fen had worked his magic on my arm—healing the cut I’d made with Mama’s mirror—before he’d reluctantly let me go. I knew I couldn’t hold off telling him at least part of the story too much longer. Fen’s patience would last only so long and then he would do some snooping of his own to find out what I was up to. I didn’t want him blundering into Cormen’s path or, for that matter, the path of whoever might be setting Beast Kind to mess with Templars.
I took a hackney to the edges of Sorrow’s Hill, then slipped out of the carriage and paid the driver. Once the cab had clattered out of sight, I found an out-of-sight place to trigger the invisibility charm in my purse. This time of night, Sorrow’s Hill was no safe place. I wanted to move unseen through the streets.
As much as possible I kept to the alleys and lesser-used lanes. It meant negotiating my way over rubbish and rubble that was messy and stank of dead things and piss and decay, but it was better than blundering into the path of a Beast or Blood Lord out searching for some fun.
Though it seemed that the Lady was smiling on me and the Beasts and Blood were keeping mostly indoors. Which only increased the nerves turning my stomach to acid. When even Night Worlders were nervous to be out on the streets, things were indeed getting bad.
When I neared Cormen’s house, where the houses tended toward rows of terraced town houses, I left the streets altogether, climbing up to the rooftops where I felt much safer though no less nervous.
Soon enough I was perched near the chimney of the town house next to my father’s, studying the wards. I hadn’t in the past paid much attention to the wards here. This wasn’t the house my mother and I had shared with Cormen, and the few times I’d come here to answer Cormen’s demands, I had been more interested in getting out as fast as possible rather than how I might one day get in.
From my vantage point, the wards looked simple enough. Another demonstration of Cormen’s arrogance that he would consider basic defenses all he needed, as if it were unthinkable that anyone could want to move against him. But then again, as far as I knew, he spent most of his time in Summerdale, only venturing into the City in search of entertainment from time to time. Perhaps he just didn’t think it was worth his while to expend effort on more elaborate wards when he rarely slept here.
Or maybe he increased the power of the wards when he was actually in the house. I traced the lines of the wards again, hoping that my luck was holding and that indeed my father was not at home tonight. I suppressed the part of me that wondered whether my mother and Reggie might be inside the house. Cormen was arrogant, but I had no doubt he would not be so foolish as to stash his hostages here in the first place I was likely to look.
And if he had, the wards would be much, much, stronger.
Still, I had to bite my lip for a moment, blinking back the sudden sting of salt as my faint hope was extinguished.
Concentrate. There was no time for falling apart.
I narrowed my focus back to the wards, reading the lines of them, deciphering what they might do. I thought I had the lay of them now, but still, I lingered, double-checking and considering my options.
Overly cautious perhaps, but these wards were tinged with traces of Cormen’s magic. If he had set any clever traps, they were far more likely to catch me than anybody else’s tricks and pitfalls might.
The ward lines spoke of protection and alarms but, try as I might, I couldn’t see anything more subtle woven into them. There was the usual knot of anchor points near the doors at the rear and front of the building—places where recognition spells were built into the wards so that those who were most often in and out of the house did not have to bother with taking down the wards to enter or leave and where temporary gaps could be opened to admit visitors—and it was those that I would be targeting.
If my father wasn’t at home, I doubted there would be many staff inside. Maybe a housekeeper to keep the place ready at a moment’s notice, but otherwise Cormen generally traveled with his retinue of retainers and servants and guards. He wouldn’t waste money paying for human servants here in the City if he didn’t have to.
No lights showed through the drawn blinds or curtains in the windows that I could see, so I would take my chances that if anyone was within, they would be safely asleep.
I slipped down from the rooftop and into the yard behind the town house. Even invisible as I was, the rear door, out of sight of the street, was the safest choice. I found the anchor point easily enough. I hovered my hand nearer to the ward, getting a closer read on the tangle of magics. Then snatched it back, as another thought occurred to me.
Maybe I didn’t need to take down the wards. Maybe they could be coaxed to let me in. After all, if they’d been keyed to let members of Cormen’s Family in, as would be usual, perhaps I could pass. But how to test my theory?
The answer sprang to mind fairly quickly and, sighing, I pulled out my cutthroat. I was getting sick of the sight of my own blood. At least, for this, I only needed a few drops. A quick nick from the razor and I flicked a drop toward the ward.
It faded a little but not completely. So perhaps my theory was correct. Though, maybe, I was taking the wrong approach. The wards couldn’t taste the blood of anybody who entered after all, and I had another more easily accessible talisman of my connection to my father.
With a grim smile, I drew my pendant from beneath my shirt. True, it wasn’t a Family ring but it was set with the same stones as a ring would be and the magic that made it impossible for me to take off was woven by Cormen’s own hand. The Fae used similar protections on Family rings to ensure that they couldn’t be lost or stolen.
Maybe my father’s little choke chain might come in useful for once.
Tentatively, I stretched the key toward the ward, ready to pull back and flee if I was wrong and the wards reacted. I needn’t have worried. The key glimmered once as it touched the shimmering ward, and then the ward peeled back from the door like smoke.
I yanked my lock picks from my hair and made quick work of the lock. The door opened silently and I slipped inside, easing it shut behind me. I paused a moment, stretching my senses, but heard nothing but silence.
I didn’t want to waste time doing a sweep of the house; instead, I headed straight for the stairs and my father’s second-floor study.
I wasn’t sure exactly what I was looking for . . . but Cormen was up to something and any hint at all as to what that might be would be welcome. As would anything that might tell me where he was hiding himself. He’d put the geas on me to get me to find out what Simon’s secret was and maybe I wouldn’t be able to avoid doing what he wanted, but I was sure as seven hells going to try and make life difficult for him in whatever way I could. If he was up to something and I knew what, then I had a bargaining chip. Something to use against him.
Something to get my family back.
The study was dark, the curtains neatly drawn, cutting out the light of the moon and the gaslights in the street below. My eyes adjusted slowly until I could make out the outlines of the desk and furniture dotted around the room, but it wasn’t going to be enough. I tugged a tiny glow charm from the pouch at my waist and pinched the nick on my finger, hoping to squeeze a little more blood out of it.
Glows don’t take much energy and luckily this one warmed to life without me having to do any more damage to my fingertips. The light was enough to see the detail I needed and I set about working the room over. Donning gloves, I checked the less obvious places first, sliding my hands over the shelves and into cupboards, feeling for papers or hints of protection wards. I gained little for my troubles other than a sheen of the lemon-scented furniture polish on the thin leather covering my fingertips.
I moved o
nto the safe. It was only a small one with a straightforward combination lock. It took me a few minutes of listening and twirling to crack the required combination. I opened the door cautiously, wondering if there would be any nasty surprises inside, but there weren’t. There was a buzz of a ward around the inner chamber. I recognized the feel of it. It would only be activated if I removed the contents of the safe. Otherwise, I was safe.
I peered into the safe. Empty save for a midsized leather pouch. Wriggling my fingers, I reached for the pouch, touching its surface with practiced ease. Small hard lumps rolled under my fingers.
Gems, if I wasn’t mistaken. It was a moment’s work to undo the ties and confirm my impression. The pouch held a small fortune in diamonds and sapphires, glinting rainbowed silver and deep inky blue at me in the thin glow light.
A small whistle escaped my lips. Gems were worth a lot of money in the City. Small, more portable than gold, plus prized for their use in charms.
So, what was Cormen doing with enough diamonds to fund a small army?
My stomach turned suddenly cold.
Fuck. Maybe he was doing exactly that?
Or maybe I was leaping to conclusions. I tied the gems back up carefully and locked the safe. I wasn’t here to steal from Cormen. Tempting though the gems were, I didn’t want him to have any reason to come looking for a thief.
But the gems had piqued my interest and set my intuition humming. So I crossed the room to the big desk where Cormen conducted his affairs, such as they were, whilst in town and commenced my search again.
Sitting in Cormen’s chair made my spine creep. Maybe his scent was soaked into the leather or maybe it was just my imagination, but I could smell him for a moment and had to catch myself as I jerked around, expecting to see him standing behind me.
But the room was still empty and I took three deep breaths to slow my racing heart and turned my attention back to the job at hand.
There was a thick stack of heavy cards on a small metal tray to my left. I lifted the glow and flipped through the cards. Invitations. To parties. To the opera at the Gilt. To other theater halls.
