I shook my head at the peculiarities of the British breakfast palate as I dressed myself in the same clothes I’d worn yesterday. There was a streak on the blouse that I suspected had come from my midnight emptying of the stomach at the Russian diplomat’s apartment. I took a breath as I remembered that scene. Part of me didn’t want breakfast anymore.
Whatever they’d done to the Russian, it hadn’t been quick or pretty. I wouldn’t have wanted to go that way, that was for sure. The fact that the commissioner was there for a murder was probably not a good sign. The fact that they’d had the foreign minister himself out there?
Yeah. It was a mess, all right.
“Good morning!” Marjorie singsonged as I stepped into the kitchen, already dressed and as ready for my day as I was going to get without a five-gallon drum of coffee. “I’ve got some tea ready, dear, and breakfast will be done shortly.” She was frying eggs at the stove, one of the older models with the coiled electrical burner. It glowed red like a brand, and I could feel the very subtle heat across the room. That was all Gavrikov, that sense of fire. I caught her humming something as she worked, and I noticed there were at least half a dozen eggs in the skillet.
“Morning,” I replied, turning my attention to the bacon that was already on the table. It wasn’t the glory that was American bacon, but it was pretty good, I reflected as I snatched a piece up and started to nibble on it. The pot of beans looked to be nearing finished on the stove as well, and I heard the toaster ding and throw up a couple slices.
Marjorie spun as she worked, going from breakfast item to breakfast item in a frenetic dance of activity. She hummed the entire time, and I got the feeling that she’d been bereft of company for so long now that she wasn’t going to miss the opportunity to do what she apparently did best while she had the chance.
“Did you sleep well, dear?” she asked as she flipped two eggs. I wondered how she knew to flip just those two, because she left the rest to keep cooking. She seemed a little tentative asking, and I suspected I knew why.
“As well as I could, given the limited time I had to sleep,” I said, and she broke from the stove with a teapot in hand to pour me a cup. Cuppa, I think they call it over here. I could smell the strong blend, not quite the coffee I was looking for, but good enough.
“I didn’t even hear you come in,” she said as she whirled back toward the stove. “Fell asleep with the light on, can you believe it? I tried waiting, but I just couldn’t keep my eyes open.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “I found the bed, and I was probably out about five seconds after I hit the sheets.” I’d had horrible dreams, too, ones that had involved the souls in my head intervening at various times to wake me before I thrashed out of control. It wasn’t the most fun thing to have Wolfe, the cause of so many peoples’ nightmares in his life, trying to calm me after having my own. It was actually surreal.
Surreality is more fun than vanilla reality, Sienna, Wolfe said.
I sighed.
“I expect Matthew will be along shortly,” Marjorie said, scooping the eggs out of the pan. “He never was one to have a lie-in, even after a late night.”
It took me a minute to work out what a “lie-in” was, but I got it. “He’s an early bird, huh?”
“Crack of dawn,” she said, dishing all six eggs onto my plate with so much gusto that I didn’t feel I could tell her to keep some for herself. Next came the beans—half the pot and I was surprised she stopped at that. She dumped four slices of toast next, and I realized now I had enough carbs on my plate to take my already sturdy hips to a new level. “Eat up, dear.” She turned away, leaving me to wonder how I was supposed to fit any of the slabs of bacon in the middle of the table onto my plate.
I did what the Brits call “tucking in” and started working my way through my plate. It wasn’t much of a struggle, since I’d lost my dinner around midnight and hadn’t had anything to replace it since. After a few quiet minutes, Marjorie must have run out of things to do, because she finally sat down across from me with a single slice of toast, a spoonful of baked beans, a half-slice of bacon, and maybe a fifth of a fried egg, probably the corner of one of mine that I hadn’t even noticed had been missing a piece.
“So, dear,” she said after she’d spent a long minute chewing a bite of food the size of my pinky finger but about a third of the volume, “about what we were discussing last night…”
I cocked an eyebrow at her. I didn’t remember much of what we’d talked about. Call it the travel fatigue. “What?”
“You said you hadn’t had a holiday in a long time?” She cut a piece of bacon the approximate size of a pencil eraser and positioned it closer to her mouth on her fork. “It sounds like you desperately need a holiday.”
I paused, letting my beans drip onto my plate. “I agree. Maybe someday.”
“I don’t understand,” she said, shaking her head, that lone little piece of bacon still poised on the end of her fork. Watching her eat next to nothing and take forever to do it was making me feel extremely self-conscious about my own desire to devour everything, not just on my plate, but in the world. “Why not just take a couple of weeks?”
“Because I’m behind,” I said. “Because I have ten thousand idiots who don’t know what a meta actually is trying to get my attention every single day. I get calls from the police across the country, from New York City to Los Angeles and all points in between, who’ve seen something wild or weird, and they automatically ascribe it to metas. And I have to check out almost all of those reports, once they get to a certain point of escalation.”
“It sounds like you get about a bit, then,” she said and finally—finally, thank the heavens—put that piece of bacon in her mouth and started to chew it.
“Yeah, I do,” I said. “Half the time I have to fly commercial or on military transports to get there because I’m not awake enough to fly myself, but yeah. I get around.”
“And you can’t take a break in any of those places?” she asked innocently enough. Now she had—I swear—one fricking bean on her fork. Just one.
“I got to spend a Saturday in Arizona a few weeks ago,” I said with a shrug. “I had a hotel room with a view and everything.” I felt a little embarrassed. “But, I, uh… I kind of fell asleep at six o’clock at night. And I had a flight out at four the next morning. It’s always something like that.”
“Well, surely you get to take some time for yourself on weekends…?” Her voice trailed off expectantly.
I looked down at my plate. “Not really, no.”
“Why are you here, dear?” she asked, and I looked up to find her staring at me. “Surely this murderer can’t be that bad.”
“It is. Your son needs my help.” I felt full, now. Appetite gone, back to business. “He’s up against something—someone—that he doesn’t understand.”
“But you do?” She seemed skeptical.
“I don’t know if I understand them, at least not on a personal level.” I felt my face harden. “But there’s no one better than me to fight them.”
“Ah,” she said and looked away a little pointedly. “I see.”
I felt my blood cool a little. Something about the way she said it made me feel uncomfortable, like I’d said something to lose some of her respect. “What?”
“Why your… your young man didn’t stick around. The one who walked you out of your house after—” She looked up at me, and her eyelashes fluttered. “Oh, listen to me. I’m so sorry. That came out all wrong!” She reached a hand out as if to reassure me, but I pulled my arm back where she couldn’t get to it, and I saw her blanch at the motion. “I mean to say…”
“It’s okay,” I said. I felt a lump in my throat. “I can see you didn’t mean anything by it. And… you’re right, for what it’s worth. This—this addiction to the job—is exactly why Scott and I broke it off.”
Her lips were pursed, and they gave a little twitch. “Something you said, though, dear… it bothers me.”
Now
I felt my blood really chill. “What was that?”
“You said he wouldn’t remember your time together?” She was watching me shrewdly. “Anyone else, I might assume they were being humble or self-deprecatory, perhaps just down-playing themselves.” She did not take her eyes off of mine. “Why do I get the feeling that you weren’t being any of those things?”
The lump in my throat felt like I’d swallowed Stonehenge. “I—”
Saved by the bell. The front door lock clicked and opened, and I turned to see Webster enter with his coat flapping and swaying as he shut it behind him. I pushed the plate slightly away from me, just enough to signal I was done, and looked back to see Marjorie chewing delicately on a bite of something I hadn’t seen her put into her mouth.
“Ready to go?” Webster asked, crossing the sitting room to enter the kitchen.
“Yeah, I’m done,” I said, and my voice sounded a little hoarse.
“But dear, you’ve hardly eaten a bite,” she said, then turned her attention to Webster. “And you—”
“No time this morning, Mum,” Webster said, cutting her off but not rudely. “Got a call from Dylan, said he’s going to stop by the office with something for us to take a look at.”
“If it’s pics the crime scene photographer took of me with my pants shredded, I’m not going to be surprised,” I said.
“If it’s that, I’m giving him twenty quid for the lot,” Webster said with a grin as he grabbed a piece of toast from the table.
“Matthew!” his mother called him out, though I wasn’t sure if it was for grabbing the toast or what he’d said. He kissed her on the cheek, and her moment of ire dissolved into a blushing smile.
“Got to go, Mum,” he said, gesturing at me. I was up and on the way out quicker than he could follow. I didn’t realize until later I hadn’t even thought to thank Marjorie for breakfast.
Chapter 28
“Did I interrupt something?” he asked once we were in the car and moving.
“Breakfast,” I said. “It’s the most important meal of the day, don’t you know.”
He let out a chuckle. “I like the way you say that.”
I looked over at him as red brick houses passed outside his window one by one. The skies were grey again, and he had the heat going, filling the car with the smell of the hot air ducts. The tangy barbecue from the beans lingered on my tongue. “The way I say what?”
“Dontcha know,” he said, chuckling again. “It sounds like that one movie, the one with all the snow and murders—”
“Fargo,” I said. “It’s interesting to hear it described that way, but… that’s Minnesota. Snow and murders.” At least it had been in my experience.
“Does everybody talk like that there?” He looked over at me as he hit the blinker to signal his turn.
“Some worse than others.” I frowned. “I don’t really sound like Frances McDormand, do I?”
He let a guffaw. “Just a bit. And you looked a little like her, too, pulling that gun. Smoother, though. Like you’d done it more.”
“Hm,” I said, noncommittal. I could see him looking at me out of the corner of his eye. The gun comment was his way of fishing, I knew that much.
He waited a few minutes before he made a move to set the hook. “So… you can burst into flame, can’t you?” I nodded without looking at him. “Throw fireballs at people? I saw that on the telly.” I nodded again, waiting for him to get to it. It took him a minute, but he followed up in just the way I was expecting. “So… why do you need a gun?”
“Because I don’t always want to burn everything down,” I quipped. That was sort of true. I could throw fire, but it was not the cleanest experience. My nets of light, they were a lot more precise.
“That’s a cheap answer,” he said, turning back to the wheel. Now he sounded sullen, or at least, just a little bit.
“It was a cheap question.” That got a little flare of anger to his eyes. “You know what you are, alone and unarmed, in a room with me?” I looked over at him, waiting for the answer, waiting to see if this would just make him madder. “You know what I’d call it?”
Those little embers of fury cooled, turning into a twinkle. “A damned lovely Saturday night?”
I blushed at that. A lot. Because that was true. But I stayed on point. “Prey. Victim. Easy pickings.”
That took him back a step. “You see everyone like that?”
“I don’t,” I said. “I mean, I always keep my eyes open for threats, but I don’t see the balance of humanity that way. But make no mistake about it—in a fight, an unarmed human is nothing but a speed bump between me and whatever I want.” I thought about doing something to demonstrate, but damaging his car or personal property seemed pointless; he’d already seen me turn into a dragon and regrow my foot. “Weapons are what my military friends call ‘force equalizers’ for humans. Without them, you’re always at the mercy of someone stronger than you.”
“With them, we’re all just targets for each other,” he said, a little too glibly. “Would you want to do your job knowing that anyone, anytime, could have a gun on you?”
“I always do my job assuming that,” I said, shrugging it off. “You’re a fool if you don’t.”
He shuddered. “That’s bloody mad.”
“What about you?” I kept my voice calm and level. “You can’t tell me there aren’t criminals out there with guns in London? Metas with powers that could outmatch you? Bad guys who have you outnumbered who would love to see you defenseless?”
“I can tell you this—” he said, and his voice was rising, just a little, to match the intensity of our growing argument. He stopped when my phone rang, though.
“Hello?” I said, answering without even looking at the caller ID.
“Blimey,” came my brother Reed’s voice in the worst—the single worst, bar none—English accent I’ve ever heard. “’ow’s the weather over there, Guv’nor?”
“You’re a jackass,” I replied.
“Me?” Webster asked, and I realized I was still looking right at him.
“Not you,” I said.
“Not me?” Reed asked, and I made an exasperated noise. “Sorry. I wanted to check in on you.”
“I’m fine,” I said, keeping my tone carefully neutral. “How’s everything back at the ranch?”
“Well, the cows ran away,” Reed said dryly, “and there’s a fearful drought.” He’d switched into some sort of terrible Western accent that made me want to reach through the phone and bonk him on the head, Three-Stooges-style. “Reckon we’ll turn to cannibalism when the winter comes…”
“You missed your calling as the first course for the Donner party,” I said, mirthless. “Anything going on?”
“SSDD,” he said. “Got a call from Atlanta. Local PD ran across something they couldn’t handle. I’m having them send me some footage, but so far it sounds like NBD.”
“If you don’t stop speaking in acronyms—”
“Sorry,” he said, and he did sound a little contrite. “NBD is ‘No big deal.’ You should spend more time on Reddit. That and Whedon movies are where all the cool twists of English phrase are coming from nowadays.” He paused for a second, and a little levity crept into his voice. “Need me to explain what SSDD means, too?”
“Some Stupid Damned Dumbass,” I said, twisting the generally accepted meaning of SSDD. “What are you doing about the Atlanta thing?”
“I’ll hop a plane if I need to,” he said. “Until I get any kind of confirmation, I’m not getting off my well-sculpted, happy ass. Details are pretty sketchy yet, anyway. How’s London treating you?”
“Well, we’ve already got a climbing body count,” I said. “And I lost a leg.”
I could hear the wince. “A leg? Are you going to be walking around saying ‘Arrrrrr’?”
I shook my head then realized he couldn’t see me. “SSDD.”
There was a pause. “You meant that in the way you quoted earlier, not what it really is, didn’t
you?”
“You’re pretty smart for a stupid damned dumbass.”
“Uh huh,” Reed said. “Are you still playing ride-along with that detective inspector?”
“Yep,” I said, turning my body to look out the front windshield. I didn’t even realize I’d been staring at Webster throughout my conversation until he brought it up. “You’d like him. He and I were just having a conversation that sounds very similar to one you and I have had over the years.”
“He’s cute, isn’t he?” Reed asked, and I heard the teasing through the phone.
I felt my lips pucker. “Mmmhmmm.”
“I’m no meta, but your volume’s turned loud enough that I can hear him,” Webster said with a tight smile.
“Gotta go,” I said to Reed, “unless you need anything else?”
“Want me to hop a plane and come over?” Reed asked. “Or would that be a total cockbloc—”
“We’re fine, okay, see you later,” I said hurriedly and hung up on him before he had a chance to finish his sentence. I could feel my face, flaming red, and I stared out the front window.
“Your brother, right?” Webster asked after an appropriate interval of time. Like, at least twenty seconds.
“Yeah,” I said, feeling the heat gradually fade from my cheeks. “He’s worried. Clearly.”
“Right,” Webster said, nodding. “Clearly concerned.” His lips twisted in a grin. “About blocking my—”
“Shut up and drive, Detective Inspector,” I said, all that redness back in my cheeks. “Because in case you haven’t heard, I can still kill a man with a touch.”
He was quiet for about two point five seconds this time. “I’ve heard of worse ways to go.”
Chapter 29
The streets were still crowded, but it was dying down. Philip was in the back of the van, one of the larger models, with seats stripped out to carry cargo. He was kneeling behind the front seats on the hard, metal floor, taking breaths every ten seconds or so, trying to control his breathing. Concentration was going to be key for what he needed to do next, and that wasn’t going to happen if he couldn’t get his anger under control.
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