“Yeah, it would. Burton just took him in for questioning. In the end, he couldn’t charge Ollie with anything other than being inconveniently absent for forty-eight hours.”
“How’d Ollie explain that one?”
“House-sitting for a friend who was out of the country. Ollie was extra helpful and gave him the name and number of said friend, Humphrey Collington, for verification.”
“Let me guess, one of Ollie’s aliases.”
“His favorite. And since the police had completed their lab work in Ollie’s office, he was free to open his shop.” I put the cookies on the break room table, the official permission and invitation in office kitchens everywhere to “eat these.”
I chuckled. “Remember when I said that if Ollie hadn’t been kidnapped, he’d be giving tours of the monster murder scene at twenty bucks a pop?”
“He’s not.”
“He is. Assured me that while he agreed that it was disgusting, he was just trying to make up for lost revenue.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Apparently money—at least for Ollie—is the best therapy of all.”
“Did you tell him we had his rug?”
“Yeah, he doesn’t want it back.”
“Good choice.”
“Not really. He’s having another one made just like it.”
There was an awkward silence as I knew what I wanted to ask, but not how to bring it up.
“Vivienne doesn’t know anything about the ghoul,” Ian said simply. “Either what it is or where it went, other than it was probably Tia’s second in command, her boots on the ground, so to speak. Our interrogators haven’t managed to get any good leads from Charles Fitzpatrick. Either he’s good at being questioned, or he simply doesn’t know anything. The boss thinks, and I agree, that he was only told what he needed to know. The rest of the organization has gone to ground. No sign of them. Vivienne thinks that since she carried off and killed the grendel, and that she runs the group that destroyed all the others, Tiamat will be back. She’ll want revenge and not just from her sister.”
I’d learned that the boss had badly wounded Tia out over the Hudson River, and to make it back to Times Square in time, she’d been forced to let her escape. Glad didn’t even begin to describe how I’d felt about that decision.
“The boss told me that if there’s anything her sister has, it’s time,” Ian was saying. “So we shouldn’t expect immediate retaliation.”
After Ian had agreed to stay behind with the ghoul in exchange for my and Yasha’s freedom, he’d tried shooting the creature, only to have his silver bullets bounce right off. He fell back on the only other weapon he had.
Rolf’s sword. The family heirloom.
Ian had never used swords before coming to work at SPI. But he’d gotten plenty of training since then. Since we fought some old-fashioned monsters, like Rolf said, sometimes Old World weapons worked best. The creature had closed distance, and Ian had waited until the last instant to strike.
Rolf’s sword had cut into the thing like hot butter. If it’d been any other night than New Year’s Eve, all of Midtown Manhattan would have heard its screams.
The creature vanished, disappeared, ran back to whatever dimension it’d come from with its either figurative or literal tail between its legs.
Turned out that Rolf Haagen’s family heirloom was one of those swords that had a name.
Gram.
His ancestor had quite a name, too.
Sigurd.
Lars Anderssen confirmed the bloodline. Dang.
I didn’t know whether to be really impressed that I knew the descendant of a legendary hero of Norse not-mythology, or to be really worried for the safety and continued well-being of the Norse gods.
“Gram can kill dragons, right?”
Ian nodded. “The boss said she knew the moment Rolf brought it into the complex. Apparently that was one of the things Lars Anderssen was talking to her about when they first arrived. Letting her know it was here, and that he wouldn’t have allowed Rolf to bring it except that it’d proven to be effective against grendels.”
“And mystery ghouls.”
“Thankfully.”
“That makes two times you’ve hurt him bad,” I said quietly.
Ian shrugged. “I’ll just look over my shoulder more often.”
Ian’s tone was casual, but I knew he had to be more worried than he let on. The creature had been hungry for revenge after the first time. Now, vengeance had probably become its new life goal, if the thing even qualified as living.
“You can look over your shoulder,” I told him. “But I’ve got your back.”
His smile was warm. “Thanks, partner.”
Impulsively, I reached down and took his hand. He didn’t say anything else and neither did I. We also hadn’t said anything about the New Year’s Eve kiss, and that was fine with me, at least for now. Yeah, after my heart rate had returned to normal, I’d been a little embarrassed; okay, a lot embarrassed. I was sure it’d come up when the time was right—or the most awkward. I told myself that what had happened had happened, and there was no taking it back, not that I wanted to. It’d also been extremely nice, and I wouldn’t be opposed to it happening again—under circumstances that didn’t involve multiple near-death experiences.
We both tensed at the sound of heavy boot steps running toward the break room.
Calvin stuck his head around the corner. “We got a call.”
Ian stood. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do. I wasn’t a commando.
Calvin grinned and jerked his head at Ian, but spoke to me. “My man here says you’re ready for some on-the-job training.”
I froze. “On the job?”
Ian smiled. “Training.”
“We got report of a problem up at the Cloisters. Think I heard Roy say something about gargoyles. Fortunately, the museum’s closed today, so we don’t have to worry too much about being quiet.”
I smiled, slow and probably dangerous looking. Ian didn’t look like he minded.
I grabbed a handful of cookies. “Let’s go.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Lisa Shearin is the national bestselling author of the Raine Benares novels, a series of six comedic fantasy adventures. Lisa is a voracious collector of fountain pens both vintage and modern. She lives in North Carolina—the land of barbeque and sweet tea—with her husband, two spoiled-rotten retired racing greyhounds, and a Jack Russell terrier who rules them all.
For more information about Lisa and her books, visit her at lisashearin.com.
The Grendel Affair: A SPI Files Novel Page 30
