PS: Oh yes, and please have your incubus let the girl go. I’ve grown rather attached to my assistant. Selfish and obtuse in that way you Americans seem so fond of—very much like one of those characters on your horrid reality TV shows. But, she has her uses.
It was signed Alexander in flourishing script and, as promised, a number was included below.
I shook my head and gave the note to Rynn.
The worst part was it made sense. Rynn had said as much about the vampires. They might be cockroaches of the supernatural world, but they were also one of the most vulnerable to humans—if they found out. It was logical that Alexander and the rest of the vampires really didn’t want anyone knowing they existed, as much as they enjoyed eating and enslaving people.
Minor thug versus career criminal. Goddamn it, I was actually buying it.
Meanwhile, we still had Bindi to deal with. Rynn was waiting for me to throw in my two cents.
“Well, we sure as hell can’t trust her,” I said. Despite the fact that she was a vampire, she was bat shit crazy and a serial killer. But on her own? Cowering in front of Rynn? As much as I’d like to see her suffer for killing innocent people, it didn’t seem very sporting to let Rynn hurt her.
Besides, it would just give Alexander another excuse for his vendetta against me.
Against my better judgment, I was certain, I nodded.
Rynn jerked his head at Bindi. “Get lost. And if I see you again—” He left the threat open.
Bindi glared at both of us in turn as she gave her neck one last rub. I wasn’t going to have Rynn kill her, but like hell was I going to feel bad about a few bruises. Serial killer.
She pulled her pink hood down and readjusted her sunglasses before taking off at a jog for the shaded forest trails. “Later losers,” she called out over her shoulder at us just before disappearing under the trees.
Rynn shook his head. “Later losers? Why is it the gutter trash are always the ones who do well as vampires?”
That I couldn’t agree with more. “Probably has something to do with the bottom feeder supernatural part of the ecosystem they inhabit.” I nodded toward the parking lot. Time to get out of here before whoever had tried to set us up figured out we had Jebe’s journal.
“You’re considering it, aren’t you?” Rynn said, waving Alexander’s note. “Don’t answer that. I can tell.”
“At this point, I’m willing to take just about any help we can get.”
Rynn didn’t disagree. “I think I know just the place. Somewhere not even the elves’ best spies could listen in. ”
7
THE PARIS BOYS
1:00 p.m. The Cambie, Vancouver East Side
We ditched the jeep in a downtown parking garage. Rynn hadn’t found any bugs or tracking devices, but we couldn’t be certain one hadn’t been placed since someone had tracked us to UBC. I’d skimmed through Jebe’s journal in the jeep, but I wouldn’t have a chance to take a much more thorough look and crack at a better translation until later.
From the garage it was a short hike down the street, our heads down and sweatshirt hoods pulled up, until we reached a bar that doubled as a backpackers’ hostel. Right in the downtown core of Vancouver.
“A little odd location for a dive bar,” I said as I pushed open the beaten metal and wood door. Vancouver has a certain expensive veneer to it . . . and a strange dichotomy. A forested, picturesque city built for outdoorsy hikers who couldn’t actually afford to live here. The hiking pathways and park trails that wound through most of the city had an abandoned feel to them, even on a Sunday afternoon. Don’t get me wrong—it’s very pretty, a lot like Seattle. If you like the abandoned zombie apocalypse feel.
Except for this part of town. As we’d entered the waterfront district, the people packed the sidewalks—younger and less polished-looking than everyone else in the city. And as for this place? The Cambie was the ugly duck hanging out with the swans, but rather than trying to fit in, it had accepted its status in the world as a dive bar and embraced it.
It wasn’t like there was sawdust strewn over the floor or drunks from the night before passed out under the lip of the bar, but the old wood floorboards, picnic tables, and booths hadn’t been refinished in decades, and the scent of almost a century worth of spilled beer had permeated them. As I followed Rynn inside, the scent of stale beer hit me—but, pleasantly and surprisingly, not the scent of urine.
Lucky for us, 1:00 p.m. on a Sunday was slow. Besides a few backpackers who’d managed to crawl out of bed to nurse their Saturday night hangovers, there was no one here.
Even so, I pulled my hood down further over my face and slouched over as we headed for the bar. I glanced over at the open garage-style windows, open to the street outside because of the warm weather. “Are you sure no one will find us here?” I said to Rynn. We still had no idea who had tried to sabotage us at the university.
He shook his head. “Not even the elven spy networks. They hate this kind of place. Even if they know we’re here they won’t do much.”
“Why do they hate bars?”
“Not bars, this kind of bar. Old, historied, human. Besides, it was built at the turn of the century from the old-growth forests. It takes centuries for the feeling it gives elves to fade. Even if they wanted to, they won’t come in. We’re safe for now.”
I shook my head—not just at him but at the beer selection. Corona was not on the menu, so I settled for a lager on tap. We took our drinks and slid into one of the many empty booths in the back, as far away from the windows as we could get.
“All right, so spill. Who do you think tried to sabotage us?”
Rynn had refused to tell me on the way over. “The elves,” he said now.
“What? Why?” My paranoia was rubbing off on Rynn. “That makes no sense. They’re the ones who hired me to get the armor.”
“Why do the elves do anything? Different factions, a disagreement amongst themselves on policy. Back at the university when we were leaving the museum I picked up on their scent, and it’s faint but layered on the journal. Green, not unlike the forests and trees. It fits with their methods; elves like nothing more than to control the flow of information.” He nodded at the book. “It also explains why they didn’t outright steal Jebe’s journal. Elves can’t steal, not outright—or lie. They use other forms of deception. There is something inside there they don’t want us to find.”
Considering the sparse dossier they’d given me, it wasn’t so far-fetched. “Okay, I get that they want to keep information hidden, but then how do they expect me . . . us,” I corrected, “to find their damn suit?”
“Because human bureaucrats make so much more sense?”
He had a point. I felt Rynn nudge me with something under the table. It was a gray-blue windbreaker he must have brought with him from the jeep. Not a bad idea. Blond girl in black hoodie and cargo jacket walks in; generic gray-blue windbreaker walks out. “My methods are starting to rub off on you.”
“I’ve never had a problem admitting the things you have a talent for. Hiding in plain sight and getting lost in a crowd are two of them. It’s your lack of planning.”
I took off the pink hoodie and slid the windbreaker on. “Like I said, your lack of planning is my thinking on my feet.”
Normally Rynn would have continued to argue against my more laissez-faire methods, but this time he sat back and took a pull of his beer. I could count the times on my hand we’d been out at a bar and Rynn hadn’t been the bartender.
“In this case your thinking on your feet might have been the better set of methods. I can’t believe I didn’t pick up on them from the start.” He took another drink and hazarded a glance outside the large windows. “They know me and my methods too well.”
I frowned. I could also count the times on my hand Rynn hadn’t been a step ahead—of me or the competition.
; He glanced back at me. “I rarely dealt with them one at a time. The elves like to pretend they are a unified mind. They aren’t. There are layers and layers to their dealings with outsiders.”
“No offense, but the elves don’t strike me as the most competent bunch when it comes to dealing with the real world,” I said. That was certainly the impression I’d gotten from Rynn, and the one elf I knew, Carpe, hadn’t exactly challenged that perception. Carpe might be a world-class computer hacker and programmer, but when it came to the real world, well . . .
“Incompetent isn’t the right way to think about it. The elves are individuals, just like you or me. The trick with them is that they always pretend they are one unit, even when they’re trying to stab each other in the back.”
I frowned. What was it Rynn had said about the elves? That they ended up tying up any and all of their regulatory responsibilities in what amounted to parking fines? “So they spend just as much time fighting amongst themselves as the rest of the supernaturals?”
Rynn nodded. “They never break the rules, but they are masters at figuring out how to bend them to their whims. It doesn’t always work out in their favor, but that doesn’t stop them from trying.”
“So what? One of them wants us to find the suit, another one doesn’t?”
Rynn inclined his head. “It’s hard to say. Think of it as a chessboard. It could be someone doesn’t want us to find the suit at all, or that someone else doesn’t want us to know anything about it—and that’s only considering two differing opinions. It could be a third group or individual hopes we stumble into something completely different. Hiding and censoring information using minor rule infractions is the easiest way for them to disrupt the chess pieces while still playing by the rules.”
The more I learned . . . “How did you end up working for them in the first place? I mean, no offense, but you—” I’d been about to say that he hated backdoor espionage almost as much as thieves. “Your code of ethics doesn’t seem to fit.” I didn’t know if that was an incubus thing—not if Artemis was any indication—but it was a Rynn thing.
“Because you don’t figure it out until you’ve been working for them for a few decades. They’re as good at hiding their intentions and lying to your face as they are at disrupting the chess table, all while you’re sitting across from them, watching them do it.”
“Why play chess when you can win by moving the chessboard and distracting the players,” I said. Rynn nodded.
The more I learned about the elves, the more I was starting to wish I’d avoided this job. “Is there any way to know what they’re after?”
Rynn shook his head. “No. They lie about everything with half-truths and wording. The ones in power can’t be trusted. It’s layers and layers of games and manipulations with them; not even the best spies in the supernatural world ever truly figure out what the elves are really up to. Most of the community never sees the duplicity, only a subtly incompetent group of politicians enforcing parking tickets—and even that I think is an intentional device. They know me. They’ll be more careful than usual.”
Wait a minute . . . that was assuming we didn’t have someone on the inside who owed me one hell of a favor. “What if we knew an elf we could ask to snoop around for us?”
“Carpe?” Rynn snorted. “Alix, I think you’ll be surprised how little you’ll get out of him.”
Yeah, we’d see about that. I took out a cell—a burner for this exact purpose—and entered Carpe’s number. “Watch me.” The elf owed me, especially considering he’d almost gotten me killed—twice.
The phone rang twice before Carpe answered. “If you have this number there’s a good chance I don’t want you calling me,” he said.
“Fuck off, Carpe. I’m calling in favors. Multiple favors.”
There was a pause. “What favors?” he said, in a decidedly unfriendly voice.
What favors? That’s what I got for socializing with good-for-nothing World Quest sorcerers. “That favor for coercing me into getting that spell book for you. The one you never paid me for. Doesn’t that go against your elven creed or code of ethics?”
Silence. And another pause. “That was a matter of life and death,” he said, his voice still carrying that formal and distant tone.
Oh for crying out loud. “So is this, you Lord of the Rings reject. Mine if I don’t deliver.”
There was a drawn-out sigh on Carpe’s end. “The dragon isn’t going to kill you if you can’t retrieve—whatever it is you’re after this time.”
“Maybe, maybe not. But he will kill me if I don’t put in the effort. So start spilling on what you think you know about my job. And while you’re at it, you can tell me what the hell is going on with all of your bureaucratic elven Grand Poobahs.”
“Look,” Carpe said, raising his voice to cut me off. “I sympathize with you, Alix, really, but I had to get you to steal that book because the world was at stake. Don’t you care about saving the world?”
The condescending tone in his voice made me just about throw the phone. Who the hell did Carpe think he was?
“Told you so,” Rynn mouthed at me before taking another sip of his beer.
I settled for glaring at him instead of throwing the phone. I put the receiver back to my ear. “No. Frankly I don’t care about saving the world, I care about my own skin.”
Carpe snorted. “Okay, I know you’re selfish, but even you and your friends need somewhere to live.”
Who the hell was the person I was talking to, and what had he done with Carpe? “Maybe I think the world could deal with a little reshuffling.”
There was another pause. For a second I thought Carpe might have hung up, then he responded. “Good thing I made you get me that book then.” His voice was cold, as if we barely knew each other. I think that pissed me off more than the refusal to even entertain my favor.
“Why, you—” I stopped myself. Whatever was going on with Carpe, yelling at him wasn’t going to get me anywhere.
I lowered my own voice. “You know what, Carpe? We didn’t have to stick around and help you. We could have stolen a jeep, a boat, had Rynn call in a few favors. I helped you because you were supposed to be my friend. I figured if you had gone to all those lengths, it had to be important—so important that as your friend I didn’t even consider leaving you on your own, because as my friend, I assumed you’d do the same thing.”
“You punched me in the face and threatened to shoot me!”
“Yeah, because you fucking deserved it!” People were looking again.
“See you in World Quest, Owl,” Carpe said, no trace of my gaming buddy of the last two years in there at all. I heard the line disconnect as he hung up on me.
“I don’t want to say I told you so,” Rynn started as I sat there staring at the burner.
I downed a large portion of my beer. “No kidding.” I am a fucking lousy judge of character. . . .
Rynn sighed. “I hate to say it, but it might not be entirely him. I don’t like him better than the others, but he didn’t strike me as a political climber. Chances are good whichever elf or elves are involved know of your connection. Since you have the journal now, it might be that they’ve upped the stakes, or maybe they thought of it and cornered him earlier.”
So much for loyal friends. I swear to God, if you can’t get to know a person’s soul raiding dungeons in World Quest, where the hell can you?
“I just expected more from Carpe,” I said, glancing back up at Rynn. “Does that make me an idiot?”
Rynn had known me long enough not to toss me empty platitudes. “No,” he said, considering his words carefully. “It means you don’t know elves.”
Maybe Rynn was right. Maybe the elves were putting the squeeze on Carpe, or had something on him. Maybe I’d do the same thing in his case.
I didn’t think I would, though. Not even if push came
to shove. There are just some things that aren’t worth it. Or maybe I just don’t have a hell of a lot left to lose. . . . Funny thing about having the carpet yanked out from under you. You start to reevaluate your priorities in life.
Maybe I’d start my own smear campaign at the Dead Orc . . . tell everyone Carpe had a couple resurrection scrolls lying around for the taking . . . he was a powerful sorcerer, it might take an army of newbies to defeat him, but where there was the empty promise of treasure and a litany of new players, there was a way.
“Well, now what?” Rynn asked, breaking my musings over ways to mete out righteous vengeance on Carpe.
I sighed and took out the card Bindi had delivered to me. Despite not having any trace of pheromones on it that Rynn could detect, I still gave an involuntary shiver as I opened it and placed it between us on the table. “Well, since I’m getting desperate . . .” I waited for a nod from Rynn before I typed Alexander’s number into my burner and hit the Call button.
The phone barely made the second ring before someone answered.
“Why, hello, my little bird. Fancy hearing from you, to what do I owe this pleasure?” Alexander said in his thick French accent.
Rynn rolled his eyes.
“Cut the crap, Alexander. I’m not in the mood—but you probably knew that, otherwise you wouldn’t have sent Bindi to come find us.”
“My, my,” Alexander tsked. “Someone certainly has you in a fury. I’m going to wager a guess your problems are of the . . . long-eared variety?”
I snorted but exchanged a glance with Rynn. Like I was giving him anything that good information-wise in an opening shot. “How the hell did you know we were in town, Alexander?”
He feigned a sigh. “Can’t I keep tabs on my favorite birds?”
“No. You can’t. You’re a vampire. ‘Bird’ is just a euphemism for fried chicken. You’ve wanted to kill me for almost two years, Alexander. I fail to see what’s changed.”
Owl and the Electric Samurai Page 15
