“He might have wards, though, and other magical protections.”
“My knives are wrought iron, so I can cut through most spells and wards in a pinch.”
“Huh,” Sebastian grunted. “That’s handy. What about a personal ward?”
Mallory cocked her head.
“You know, like a magical suit of armor? I have a ring my great something-or-other gave me that has a pretty good passive ward in it. Did your dad ever give you something like that?”
Slowly, Mallory nodded, and Sebastian saw her jaw muscles flex. Her voice was tight when she spoke. “He gave me plenty of things, but he always took them back after I completed my mission. Apparently he didn’t trust me with such power.” Hatred flashed through her eyes, but she quickly suppressed it. “I did have two artifacts with me when I...left. He called them a cloak and a shield. One was to hide me from detection wards, and the other was to deflect surprise attacks from any wards I might trigger. I haven’t used either since then. It wouldn’t surprise me if he designed them with trackers or even some booby-trap he could activate from a distance.”
“Hm, well, they could be really useful. If Aunt B looked at them and said they were safe, would you use them?”
Mallory hesitated, but then nodded slowly again. “They won’t do us any good tonight, though. They’re hidden away, and like you said, we have no time to waste.”
“Alright, then. We’ll have to make do. I left my ward with Aunt B, and I bet she’ll have something generic she could lend you just for tonight. I promised I’d keep her up to date on my progress anyway, so we can swing by there on the way to the Midtown Castle.” Sebastian thought guiltily of his aunt’s unanswered call from last night. The porthole had not warmed again since, and he wondered if she was waiting anxiously to hear from him. Had it been Lily awaiting contact from him, he knew she would have been dying of impatience by now. But the dear old bat was made of sterner stuff. Hopefully she wouldn’t be too annoyed at the delay.
Mallory didn’t look particularly thrilled at the idea, but she didn’t argue. Instead, she continued her briefing and gave him a short biography of Jacopo Romano’s known exploits, as well as a few juicy details Sebastian felt sure Mr. Romano would not have been happy to realize someone had ferreted out.
“Our greatest weakness going in is that we don’t know the nature of Mr. Romano and my father’s relationship. I was there to see and be seen, but both I and Mr. Romano’s security were excluded from my father’s private meeting. Since he used the name Blackwood as opposed to Morganson, it probably wasn’t money related, or connected to the kidnappings.”
Though Mallory spoke evenly and without expression, that muscle in her cheek started twitching again, and Sebastian wondered what she thought about John Faust kidnapping his bastard children away from their mundane mothers. What must it have been like to be raised by a father who had stolen you away from your family? The thought made his childhood seem idyllic in comparison—well, if you ignored the part about his parents dying.
“I’ve done a search for any Blackwoods that might be connected to the LeFays, but there’s nothing recent. The only possibility I can find is of a barony in Wiltshire, England. The line abruptly ends with Alistair Blackwood, and the barony title goes to some distant cousin for no apparent reason. There’s no record of his sons’ deaths. They just disappear from historical record, which stinks of magic.”
“We’ll just have to do our best, and be ready to kick butt and take names if it comes to that,” Sebastian said, reaching down to scratch Sir Kipling behind the ears. The cat had finally reappeared in the living room, and he now lurked beside Sebastian’s chair, seeming like he’d returned to his normal, imperious self. He acted personally offended that there wasn’t room for him to sit on either of the tables piled high with papers and other paraphernalia, and so he had come to claw at Sebastian’s sock in complaint.
Mallory stood and began pulling the tables and chairs to the edge of the room. “Yes, we will. Now, before we head over to stake out the location, I need to teach you how to not get us killed. While I’d love to take you through proper combat training”—her eyes glinted, and Sebastian could just imagine the pounding she’d like to inflict—“we don’t have the time, and you’ve obviously had a recent injury. So, I’m going to go over some basics. Come here.”
Sebastian did as she asked, moving warily—he hadn’t forgotten the bucket of ice. Coming to a stop across from her in the middle of the room, he met her eyes. She was considerably shorter than him, but Sebastian already knew from experience that anyone who was dumb enough to underestimate her because of her height was in for a rude awakening. Even if he hadn’t already seen her in action, the steely intensity of her gaze left him no doubt as to her competence.
“Stand up straight,” she snapped.
He did, wincing slightly.
“Not like a tin soldier, you idiot. Relax and keep your muscles loose, or you’ll wear yourself out.”
Gritting his teeth, Sebastian concentrated on forcing his muscles into a loose readiness that his body fought for all it was worth. The primal part of his brain was tense as a coiled spring and yearned for violent release. He’d been trying to ignore it, but it leaked through anyway. Whenever he wasn’t consciously focused on relaxing, his muscles slowly tensed tighter and tighter until he was in danger of a full-body cramp.
“Better. Now, I don’t care what kind of experience you think you have, all I care about right now is that you stay alive. We’ll start with some basic moves and the best defensive stances.”
For the next half hour Mallory took him through a crash course in hand-to-hand combat, starting with how to make a correct fist, have a solid stance, punch with maximum power, and more, then moving on to half a dozen blocks, strikes, and evasive maneuvers. Sebastian was familiar with some of them, though beyond ensuring he could throw a solid punch without breaking his hand, he’d never spent time practicing. He’d always relied on wit and magic to get him out of trouble.
His “instructor” made him repeat the moves over and over again until she was satisfied with his form. Sir Kipling, who had taken refuge on top of the bookshelf, watched with half-lidded eyes as Sebastian tried to focus past the buzzing impatience in his head and weary burn in his limbs.
As teachers went, Mallory was not one Sebastian would have recommended for children, sensitive people, or really anyone but diehard masochists. Yet, as stern and exacting as she was, for the first time since he’d met her, she seemed comfortable in her own skin. As she taught him, she lost herself in the exercises. She didn’t soften, exactly, nor did she get more friendly. She just relaxed into the flow like it was familiar territory, as if the movements were old friends she knew exactly how to deal with. With her mind focused on her instruction, her stone mask slipped away, revealing a competent woman who took great pride and care in every detail. Sebastian was struck by how like Lily she seemed whenever Lily was in the throes of her book research, and that made him wonder if Mallory and Lily had gotten their perfectionist nature from their father. He didn’t let the thought linger, though. It was too depressing, considering what the man had done to both his daughters.
By the time she had finished taking him through it all, he had worked up a sweat and his ribs ached fiercely. Mallory—who still didn’t have a hair out of place—stepped back, and Sebastian dropped his hands and looked around for a chair to collapse into.
A stinging slap whipped his face around and he shouted in surprise, stumbling back a step.
“You’re dead.”
“What the heck! What did you do that for?” Sebastian yelled, rubbing the tender spot on his cheek.
“You’re dead,” Mallory repeated, eyes glinting dangerously. “I just broke your neck. Or I could have, if I’d decided showing you what a clueless idiot you are was worth losing ten grand. In what moronic universe do you ever take your eyes off your opponent? Did I tell you to drop your guard? Did I say we were finished?”
�
��No,” Sebastian grumbled, glaring daggers at her. Her weight shifted, and some instinctive part of his brain got him moving just in time to stumble back another step and fling up a hand. He managed to partially deflect her second slap so that it caught the side of his head instead of his face where it was aimed. The blow smarted, but he didn’t have time to think about it because she kept coming, aiming open-handed strikes at his face, shoulders, hips, and thighs. His arms moved faster than his brain could keep up, and he only knew he was succeeding—mostly—because his hands and arms hurt worse than the rest of his body did. Finally, his back hit a wall and he had nowhere else to go. Mallory’s last strike snaked under his guard and caught his throat in a claw-like grip. He froze, knowing she could crush his windpipe in the blink of an eye if she wanted to.
“Poor peripheral awareness.” Her voice was flat, devoid of emotion, and she wasn’t even breathing hard. “Always keep moving. Only retreat when you know what’s behind you and you’re heading toward a more advantageous position. Never give up ground you don’t have to. You’re bigger than me and have a greater reach. You backed up because your mind—your will—was weak. Never react out of fear. It will blind you and take away your options.”
Sebastian swallowed carefully, feeling his Adam’s apple move against her grip. “Um, thanks, but I’d like to point out that you’re a lot better at this than me. If I’d held my ground I would have just gotten beat up.”
“Everyone is better than you, you idiot, and they always will be if you don’t stop playing around and take this seriously. Your height is an advantage, so use it. Getting beat up is better than having your windpipe crushed and dying of asphyxiation.”
She fell silent, and for an uncomfortably long moment she just stood there, holding his throat and staring up at him with dead eyes. Then she blinked and the moment was over.
“Since you are terrible and will probably get backed into a corner on a regular basis, I might as well teach you how to get out of it.”
That started another half-hour mini-lesson about escape methods, grappling moves, and pressure points. He could tell she was working to keep things basic, because there were times when she’d start going into more detail and visibly rein herself in. The sheer wealth of knowledge hiding behind her cool exterior amazed him. His amazement wasn’t enough to distract him from his discomfort, though. He was hot, tired, and aching. Even though Mallory had avoided striking him in the torso, his side still throbbed from the excess movement, and breathing deeply hurt more than usual.
Finally, she stepped back and let him away from the wall. He kept a wary eye on her this time, ready for a surprise attack. She, in contrast, turned her back on him and walked over to the table with her laptop. Sebastian was briefly tempted to give her a good smack, but his self-preservation instinct kicked in and reminded him that he was tired and slow, and she probably had eyes in the back of her head.
“Go drink some water, then come back,” Mallory said, sitting down at the computer and putting her hands to the keyboard.
Sebastian drank what felt like a gallon of deliciously cool water, then splashed his face liberally before returning to the living room. When he emerged from the kitchen, he found Sir Kipling curled up on Mallory’s lap, a smug look on the cat’s whiskered face. For her part, Mallory was ignoring him, both hands typing away at high speed. And yet, she hadn’t dumped him onto the floor.
A small victory, but a victory nonetheless.
Sebastian didn’t get to grin for long, because Mallory started ordering him around again. She had him practice the moves she’d taught him while she gave him a crash course on how to be a good principal—the term bodyguards used to describe the person they were assigned to protect. Despite the past hour of training, Mallory made it very clear that for this mission, he was just there to talk, and he should leave all the butt-kicking up to her. If he hadn’t been so tired and sore, he might have argued about it. But his physical condition, combined with the oppressive weight of anxiety on his shoulders, had taken all the joke out of him and left him with nothing but grim determination.
By the time Mallory had finished her lecture, he was panting in shallow gasps and damp with sweat again, so she sent him to cool off and take another shower before he got together his outfit for the evening.
They had errands to run, and then a castle to storm.
Yippee.
5
Storming the Castle
Midtown Castle was so named for its location in Midtown, Atlanta, just north of downtown, as well as for the massive stone foundation it was built on that made the expansive house look positively medieval. According to Mallory’s briefing, it had been constructed in the early 1900s by a wealthy and rather eccentric agricultural businessman. After his death, the house had been used for many years by Atlanta’s art community, being conveniently located across the street from the Woodruff Arts Center and the High Museum of Art. This connection to art was actually why Sebastian had heard of it—and Jacopo Romano—from Anton. The gallery owner had been involved in many art-related events hosted there, and the man had been livid when the building was bought by out-of-state money and turned into an exclusive restaurant with a members-only nightclub in the basement.
The house itself was three stories of handsome Victorian-style architecture that would have fit nicely into any one of the historic neighborhoods throughout Atlanta. Its large wrap-around porch and front deck would have made it a beautiful place to sit on a summer evening spent enjoying the lush foliage and birdsong that typified most of Atlanta’s old neighborhoods. Except, this house was not in a neighborhood, but right smack in the middle of a bustling city center, flanked on both sides by towering glass skyscrapers and surrounded by busy streets. The bottom two stories of the out-of-place building—made of Stone Mountain granite—were almost an afterthought of strangeness, raising the elegant house onto a massive and imposing foundation that sported only a few small windows cut into the rock. It was a curious oddity in the middle of Atlanta—one of those landmarks that many knew about, but few had ever been inside. Sebastian himself had driven past it numerous times over the years, but he’d never given it more thought than to chuckle over its strange construction.
“That is one weird house,” Sebastian muttered as he stared through the pair of binoculars Mallory had given him. The two of them were tucked into a dark and unused office on the sixth floor of one of the commercial buildings that towered over the Midtown Castle. Mallory had spirited them up into the skyscraper with her usual quiet efficiency—Sebastian got the impression that infiltrating high-security places was old news to her. Not that the commercial building boasted anything more than average security. Sebastian was confident he could have gotten them up just as fast through bluff and sleight of hand if he’d needed to.
Sir Kipling, of course, would have beaten them both.
“Rich people do odd things when they’re bored,” Mallory said, her gaze busy watching the street. “Believe me, building an eccentric house is on the tamer side of things.”
Sebastian decided not to ask how she knew what qualified as “tame” to the rich and powerful. She probably wouldn’t have answered anyway. “Okay, so we agree it’s weird. Glad we got that out of the way. But couldn’t we have concluded that from, say, the safety of the car? Not that I mind a little mischief here and there, but was this spectacular view really worth the risk of getting caught by some lucky security guard?”
“I thought you said your cat was good at keeping watch.”
“Well, he is when he feels like it, but—”
“These windows are tinted and provide a secure point of observation. The Castle’s immediate surroundings are all covered by surveillance cameras, and the security team will likely be keeping watch on the street and any nearby place where people normally stop and loiter. Those waiters down there are not just serving food,” she finished, pointed downward.
Below them, the expansive third- and fourth-story decks were empty, but Sebastian
could see inside through the large upper windows to the elegantly decorated tables populated by early evening diners, all decked out in their finest. Waiters in crisp, professional uniforms glided between the tables—and seemed to glance out the windows more often than a normal server would need to. Sebastian also spotted several discreet guards on the lower levels standing in out-of-the-way corners, and he had no doubt there were more he couldn’t see.
Despite his impatience, he kept his mouth shut and settled in to wait as he and Mallory did what any professional did before infiltrating a new location: counted personnel, timed guard changes, scoped out security, and generally got a feel for the obstacles in front of them. He itched to march down there, jab a security guard in the chest, and demand to speak to Romano. But just because he was impatient didn’t mean he was also stupid.
Sir Kipling came and went as time passed, seeming amused to check in on them and demand a thorough scratching behind the ears before slinking off again to patrol. After a while, Sebastian forced himself to eat one of the sandwiches they’d stopped for on the way, knowing he needed to keep up his strength even if the food tasted like cardboard in his mouth. The quiet of the room made it too easy for his thoughts to wander toward dark places, so he thought about the preparations they had made instead.
They’d stopped by Aunt B’s house on the way over. Mallory had refused to go inside—shocker—so Sebastian had hurried in by himself to give everyone a careful summary of what they’d found so far, leaving them with a vague “we’re off to dig up some more information.” It was only common sense not to announce to your law-abiding friends the illegal shenanigans you were about to commit. It was a policy he’d stuck to since he’d first met Lily. Mrs. Singer had been delighted to hear about Trista—Sebastian had informed her of the name change, but couldn’t tell whether or not the information had stuck—and she would have marched out to drag the girl from the car for a hug if Sebastian hadn’t stopped her. Jamie, too, had to be held back, as he was anxious to meet his “assassin sister.” Sebastian hadn’t bothered pointing out that Mallory was not an assassin—probably—nor technically the boy’s sister. He didn’t have the heart to squelch Jamie’s enthusiasm at being related to a “totally badass chick,” a comment which had earned the teenager a swift smack to the back of the head from his mother.
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