by Stacia Kane
Her brows drew together; maybe with anger, maybe with worry, but he didn’t let her ask. “I shut it out. It didn’t see you, it didn’t touch you. It couldn’t even hear you.”
“But it knows what happened.”
“It knows.” And later it would try to force his memories to open to it, and it would probably manage to get at least a few images of her, a few vicarious thrills, some knowledge of how she felt, how it had felt, how she’d made him feel. Sensations and moments it would taunt him with for…well, for as long as it wanted to.
He couldn’t prevent that. But at least he got to keep her to himself for now; even a few hours of privacy, of being able to keep her for him alone, was a relief he rarely had a chance to feel—well, over the years he’d stopped caring so much, anyway, and the beast stayed fed and quiet for longer when it was allowed to lurk in the background, so he’d let it.
He wasn’t about to explain that right at that moment. The rest, though? “It’s a sin. It knows when I commit one, and it knows what kind it is. And it feeds off of it, and…that’s it, really.”
“And then you mark them down, so you don’t forget.” Her fingertips slid through the soapsuds on his chest, revealing the count again. Proving it was always there, just under the surface. She contemplated it for a minute. “Not as many as I thought there would be.”
“Mortal sins only,” he said. “Each one stands for ten. Otherwise I’d have marks everywhere, and I’ve only been keeping track for nine years or so.”
She nodded slowly, absorbing that. Probably doing the math in her head, as she kept uncovering the marks. “So am I going to be on there?”
“No.” He caught her hand, held it in his. “That’s only for sins I committed for it. Not the ones I committed for me.”
Her face flushed. Her hand squeezed his, bracing herself on it; she leaned forward to kiss him. A real kiss, a long one. It was supposed to be gentle, he knew, and about emotion rather than passion, but that didn’t stop his body from responding. Instantly.
He grabbed the back of her neck, holding her there while he sat up straight and wrapped his other arm around her waist. There was just enough room to roll her over him, onto her side, her head cradled by his hand so he could turn to face her. So he could deepen the kiss, so he could encourage her to let her tongue play with his and then close his teeth on it so she made one of those little sounds he thought were some of the best things he’d ever heard in his life.
“Oh, no,” she said finally, breaking the kiss just when his hand found her breast. “You need to recuperate more. Don’t forget, we still have bad guys to find.”
“I’m recuperated.”
“Uh-huh. So you wouldn’t mind lifting some weights right now? Maybe going outside without your sunglasses?” She touched his cheek, asking him without words to look at her. “You said Doretti wants you to do something later. I kind of think you should be at a hundred percent for that, don’t you?”
“I’ll be fine.”
“What does he want you to do—shit, we haven’t even talked about your conversation with Nielsen. What’s going on, what did he say?”
Yeah, they probably should talk about all of that. Damn it, as long as he was living in a fantasy where he didn’t have a beast in his head, he’d hoped he could pretend the rest of it didn’t exist, either.
And yeah, he ought to make sure he felt like his normal self before hunting for Dunhill and meeting with Laz. Especially since that hunting and meeting would probably include at least some violence, and it would probably need to be inflicted by him. He was the one with the built-in lie detector, after all—nobody knew why he was so good at uncovering liars, but they knew he was.
“He doesn’t know who wanted the demon-sword.” He sat up; they both shifted back to where they’d been before, with her back against his chest. “All he got was a name, Dunhill. There’s a Dunhill who works for Fallerstein. That’s what Laz wants me to do tonight, find him.”
“I don’t think I know anyone with that name,” she said. “In my circles, I mean. No agents or dealers that I can think of.”
That was about what he’d expected. He wasn’t sure how it fit in, but it was probably worth something just the same. “Nielsen said Dunhill told him he knew where one was, and asked for a good thief—a good lock picker. Nielsen gave him Frank Mercer’s name.”
“Oh.” Sadness touched her voice.
“Yeah.” He wrapped his arms around her a little tighter. “And as far as Nielsen knows, Mercer took the job. So was he killed for his arm and legs, or to keep him quiet?”
“Maybe both.”
“That’s kind of what I figure. Mercer probably saw Dunhill, or at least knew where he delivered the sword after he stole it, or whatever. And, you know, Dunhill asked Nielsen to recommend somebody, and Nielsen had recommended Mercer, so maybe Dunhill figured that meant Mercer was the best lockpick.”
“He was,” she said. “I mean, that was his reputation, and he lived up to it. Stuff like that, reputation is all you have to go by.”
“Which would explain why they went after Theodore, too. He and Mercer were both known as being the best.” He took another swallow from his glass. At some point soon he was going to have to eat something, switch back to Coke, take a nap. At some point soon the lovely fantasy world in which he was spending his afternoon would have to end, like all fantasies ultimately had to.
But not quite yet. “Nielsen also knew about the mirror. He brought it up before I even had a chance to ask. He told me we’d never find it.”
“Do you think he knows where it is?”
He considered it for a moment. “No. I don’t think he does. He told me somebody gave it to your dad, and then a few months ago somebody else asked your dad to give it to them, but he wouldn’t. I guess he hid it then. Maybe that’s when he scrubbed it from his books, too.”
Ardeth took a sharp breath.
“What?”
“A few months ago.” It was barely above a whisper. With the back of her head tucked under his chin he couldn’t see her face, but he could imagine the expression on it. “Three months ago—just a couple of weeks before he died—he had my mother moved. He bought a new plot for the two of them, he said, with room for more, for me and—whoever I might want to be buried with. I couldn’t figure out why he did it. I mean, she was fine where she was and he’d had a plot there, too….”
He didn’t have to ask. He did anyway. “You think he might have hidden it there, with her?”
“Jesus,” she said. “What the fuck is that thing, that he had to hide it like that? Who was Geth—”
“Don’t.” His voice echoed in the room. Well, of course it did—that had almost been a yell, he was so desperate to get it out before she finished saying it. As it was, just that syllable had awakened the beast, made it spin and growl. Shit.
Silence hung over them for a long moment before Ardeth spoke. “It wasn’t touching that lizard-man that made you so sick last night, was it?”
“Did you think he was a lizard?” No way was she actually going to fall for this, but he’d try anyway. “I thought he was more snakelike, at least until—”
“Elvis.”
Damn it. “No.”
“The word did something to you?”
“Not to me.” He shrugged, knowing she would feel it. “To him—to it. It screamed when he said it, I mean, a scream. It freaked out. And it hurt—it hurt it, and I felt that, and its scream hurt my head….It wasn’t fun.”
Another pause. “I knew there was something going on.”
“Yeah, well, that was it. So let’s just not say that word, at least not until we have some idea why it makes the beast so keyed up. Okay?”
“Okay.” She grabbed his hands in hers and brought them up so his arms crossed her breasts instead of her waist. The water was starting to get cold; in another minute or two they’d have to get out. “That might be its name, though. It might give you power over it.”
“Not if it�
��s in so much pain it blinds me every time I say it,” he said. “Or does worse to me, to keep me from saying it. But it’s something to get started on, yeah. Hopefully once we have the mirror we’ll learn more. We’ll know if that’s its name, or just some other significant name or word or whatever. All I know is the beast has a fit when it hears that word.”
She didn’t reply. Not a surprise. He tilted his head down so it rested on hers for a second. “You know, you don’t have to come along. To the cemetery, I mean. I can handle it on my own.”
“No.” The resolute tone of her voice matched the emphatic shake of her head. “Thanks, but no.”
He nodded. “Okay, well. Laz just wants to hear from me after I find Dunhill. He wanted me to do that tonight but there’s no set time, and I’d rather have the mirror before we go into any meeting about anything. For all we know, Dunhill is the one going after that, too.”
“Or he knows who is going after it,” she said. “So, what, do we go to the cemetery first?”
“Yes. We’ll get the mirror, and hopefully that’ll give us more information about what Dunhill and Fallerstein’s plan is—the more we know, the better questions we can ask, and the more we get, the sooner I can go see Laz and tell him what’s going on.”
“I assume I’m not invited to that.”
He hesitated. “Did your dad ever mention Laz? Do you know what happened between them?”
“He mentioned him once or twice,” she said. “Never did say what happened, or that anything had happened, it was just clear he didn’t care for him. He thought he was kind of scummy, I guess.”
“Laz said they worked on something together, a long time ago, and it didn’t go well. He said there was bad blood between them.”
“That sounds about right.” She shivered. “The water’s starting to get cold.”
“We should probably get out anyway,” he said, and was surprised to note that he almost didn’t want to. “We should figure out exactly what our plan is, too, because I’d rather not be here when it gets dark. If they know about you now, they might come here this time.”
“The people who are after you, you mean. You think they won’t show up until it’s dark?”
“Yeah. They’re not human. I imagine the sun hurts their eyes, even if it doesn’t injure the rest of them—which it probably does.”
“We should head to Mercer’s place early, then,” she said. “Get a look at his files, see who hired him and what he knew. A lot of items passed through his hands over the years, and it should all be recorded one way or another.”
“And you can get us in there?”
She sat up straight, turning to give him a pointed look.
Right. “I know you can. I’m just confirming that that’s the plan.”
“My dad would want to kick you out of this house if he knew you were insulting my skills.”
“Your dad,” he said, “would probably want to kick me out of this house for what I did to you a little while ago.”
She laughed. “He’d be more upset about you doubting my ability to get into a building. I don’t think he’d be too bothered by the rest. He’d have liked you.”
He doubted that. Seriously.
Especially if the reaction of Mickey’s good friend Nielsen could be taken as an indicator, which it probably could. Once again there was an odd little knock in his head, the feeling that something about that—about Nielsen, and Nielsen’s reaction to him—wasn’t quite right. “You know…” he started, but Ardeth had already moved on.
Or moved up, to be exact. She sighed and stood, water running off her body in glorious rivulets. Suddenly he had an idea of how they could spend some of the time before sunset, and it had nothing to do with Nielsen Pollard at all. The beast stirred again in the back of his head, reminding him to check his wall, to make sure it couldn’t see. He could already feel its irritation, and he still couldn’t quite bring himself to care. It was still worth it. Whatever it did to him. Whatever happened. It even would have been worth it, he thought, as she turned to smile at him, if the ridiculous bargain he’d thought of before were real, and someone was coming to cut off his limbs and his head like—holy shit.
Felix had been surprised they hadn’t come after Speare first. “Doretti’s favorite son.” Everyone thought that was true, didn’t they?
And Fallerstein didn’t give a shit if Doretti knew what he was up to. Maybe he even knew who Doretti would ask to help him out: somebody who could find anybody, who had access to addresses and personal information, who knew how to ask questions.
Somebody with a reputation, like Ardeth had said. Somebody known for being able to tell who was lying and who wasn’t, who was known for figuring things out and for using his head.
“You okay?” Ardeth asked. Her hand was extended in front of him, waiting for him to take it, but he couldn’t.
“No,” he heard himself say. He looked up at her, afraid of her reaction because he knew she would see it, too, and if she saw it he would know he was right. “I don’t think I am. I think I know why they’re after me. I think they want my head. It’s my head they want.”
She sank back into the tub, her eyes wide, and that was all the answer he needed. Fuck.
—
It was just past eight when Ardeth worked her magic on the front door of Frank Mercer’s place, on the third floor of an open-air apartment complex west of the Strip. Not a bad place, actually. Especially the interior, which showed Frank Mercer was a man who took the careful exactitude of his profession seriously and made it the mainstay of his life.
“Like a museum in here,” Speare said, crossing the threshold and pulling the door shut behind him.
Ardeth smiled. “He kept things organized, didn’t he?”
“Organized” was an understatement. Speare wouldn’t have been surprised to see that Mercer drew Julia-Child’s-kitchen-style outlines of every item in the house on the walls or desks or whatever, so everything always got put back in the exact same place. At least, that was what Laz said Julia Child’s kitchen had looked like, when he’d been eagerly planning to do the same thing only to be overruled by his second wife.
But Speare had never seen a place so obsessively tidy, so devoid of any…well, any life, as Mercer’s. Almost every surface was bare and gleaming with polish or cleanser; the floors were spotless, the carpet bore vacuum lines still, the air carried the faint hint of lemon cleanser and bleach.
And something in there made the beast growl. A faint growl, one that didn’t feel nervous, but a growl just the same. There was magic in the air, too, the whisper of occult items nearby.
Ardeth disappeared down the short hall. Her voice drifted out to him as he examined the sparkling stovetop. “Speare, come on.”
The files. He followed her voice, passing a bathroom whose floor he could probably eat off if he wanted—not that he would ever want to—to find her in a small bedroom-cum-office, digging through the top drawer of a file cabinet. As he watched, she pulled a file out and tucked it into the large, empty bag she carried.
At least, it had been empty. It now obviously held a few things besides the file. “Is that the file we want?”
“It’s a file I want,” she said.
“Ardeth…” He couldn’t believe he had to say it, but apparently he did. “You’re not stealing from a dead man, are you?”
“Of course I am.” Another file went into her bag. “I’m surprised I’m the first one. I guess nobody else wanted to get in here while it was still light out—I mean, I guess someone else could have been here already, but I don’t know why they would have left some of this stuff. Look, he has a Stone of Acantha.”
She pulled the item in question out of her bag and showed it to him. “Can you believe it?”
“You can’t just take that.” He shouldn’t be amused. He knew he shouldn’t be amused. But her blithe assumption that he would be just fine with her stripping Mercer’s house bare of valuable items before Mercer was even cold—no, before th
e man was buried, he’d been cold the night before—seemed so typical of her that he couldn’t help it.
“Sure I can,” she said. “See? It’s already in my bag.”
“I mean, you—”
“He doesn’t have any family.” She went back to flipping through the files. “No one to leave his belongings to. When somebody dies without heirs, everybody goes for their stuff. It’s like tradition.”
He guessed that made some kind of sense, although it still bothered him.
“Trust me,” she said. “In another hour or so, somebody else will show up. It’ll go on all night and maybe into tomorrow, depending. Have a look around—maybe you can find something to steal, yourself.”
Her raised eyebrows told him what she was thinking. And she was right. The beast was feeling quite satisfied at the moment—several sins and a nap tended to have that effect—but it wasn’t a bad idea to do some stockpiling for the long night ahead.
The beast liked the idea, too. It was eager to look around. Whispers hid in Frank Mercer’s place, secretive little mutters of power that might be interesting, and the beast wanted to find them and see. And Speare could use the distraction to get it to stop trying to pry at his memories. He needed all the energy he could get for what was bound to be a difficult night ahead.
Ardeth gasped. “A Teriad Ring. Holy shit, I didn’t know he had one of these. Look, you put it on and it makes you impervious to arrows.”
“Arrows?”
“Well, that was advanced weaponry at the time this thing was made.” She grinned, and tossed the ring into her bag. “I’m pretty sure it works for any sort of sharp-edged weapon, really.”
“Why wouldn’t you just wear it all the time?”
“Oh, it has side effects. I think it turns your skin green if you wear it too long. Like, verdigris green, not Hulk green.”
“I don’t think Hulk green would be any better,” he said.
“No, but at least people would think it was a costume or something, instead of some kind of moldy skin disease.” She turned back to the files.
