“Has Boris hurt him?”
“What? No, not that I know. But Mike is a sensitive guy. It would be easier on him if Boris just beat him once in a while, but that’s against the Rules, so Boris just … yells a lot.”
“You know Boris well?”
“Enough. He courted me as a thrall back during my senior year. Ended up taking on Mike instead. Man, I was jealous too. Super jealous. Didn’t realize how big of a dick Boris could be. I dodged a bullet.”
I could feel Maggie hanging out in the back of my head, quietly listening to the conversation, quietly judging my entire part in this. I hated it, but I kept my professional face on. “Do you think something has happened to Michael?”
“Honestly? No idea. He’s smarter than most people give him credit for. Came in here two days ago asking to borrow some money. My dad owns this place, so I lent him a hundred bucks out of the register. Been having a feeling like I’m not going to get that money back, though …” He trailed off, staring at my hand still holding the roll of twenties. I peeled off five more and slid them over.
“Consider Mike’s debt paid.”
Relief crossed Byron’s face. “Thanks, man.”
“No problem.” It was Lord Ruthven’s money, not mine. “Any idea where he went after you gave him the cash?”
“No, sorry. He refused to say. Look, I’ve got to finish up. My dad will chew me out if I don’t close on time tonight.”
Maggie made no comment, so I took it as truth. “All right, thanks for your help.” I reached into my endless wallet – one of my favorite magical items that lets me carry around anything I can fit through the opening – and produced a fake business card. It said, Alex Frome, Private Investigator, and gave a number that routed to my real one. “If you see him again, could you call my number? He’s got some people very worried about him.”
Byron nodded along and I left, returning to my truck to meditate on this new information. It was almost dark, the lights of the parking lot flickering overhead while “Turn Your Love Around” played on the radio. I considered the options for my next move, then fished around in my wallet for Jacques’s card. I dialed the number.
“Williams here,” the voice answered.
“Jacques, it’s Alek Fitz.”
“Ah. Alek. I didn’t expect to hear from you for a few more days. Have you already made progress?”
“Maybe. Quick question: what day did you hire Ada?”
“I could check my calendar, but I’m pretty sure we talked on Saturday. That’s the day my sources confirmed that Boris had hired Valkyrie Collections to track down Michael. Is there a reason you need to know?”
“I’ll write up a proper report in the morning, but I’m pretty sure Michael Pavlovich is still alive.”
“Why is that?”
I summed up the conversation with Byron, then explained my thoughts on the timeline to Jacques. “Boris called my boss on Friday. Michael borrowed money from his cousin on Sunday. So Boris couldn’t have killed Michael and then hired us as a cover up.”
Jacques was quiet for a few moments. “Yes, I can see the logic. Unless Boris knew that Michael was going to run away, and he’s done the murder in the last forty-eight hours.”
He seems awfully fixated on the idea that Boris has killed Michael, Maggie commented suddenly.
“Do you have any evidence that Boris is a killer?” I asked Jacques. “Sounds like he’s a regular around these Sip’n’Bites and has never been seen raising a hand in violence against his thralls.”
“Trust me,” Jacques said confidently. “Boris is a killer. Though I suppose that if you can find Michael alive, that’s a good thing.”
He supposes. I rolled my eyes. Fucking vampires. “I’ll keep looking, of course,” I told him. “Business as discussed yesterday, then?”
“Of course, of course. Keep a close eye on Boris. In fact, I want you to string this job along. I’ve heard you get quick results, so I need you to slow things down for Boris so you can spend more time investigating his affairs. Even if he hasn’t killed Michael, I know there’s evidence that he’s breaking the Rules. I need you to get that evidence before it gets to OtherOps.”
I scoffed. I’d never actually been told to take longer on a job before. The whole “reporting on one client to another” had rubbed me the wrong way. But getting paid to waste time sounded kind of fantastic. As long as Boris didn’t walk in on me twiddling my thumbs at a KFC, I could get a nice, relaxing week out of this. Something told me that wasn’t going to go down as easy as I’d like, though.
I agreed with Jacques and hung up. I ran a hand across my face. Well, at least I’d been given permission to head home and spend the rest of the night watching old movies. Maybe I’d even start work late tomorrow. Customer is king, after all.
“Look,” I said to Maggie, “can we agree that neither of us likes this situation and stay friends? You don’t have to help if you don’t want to, but it’s going to be a miserable couple of weeks if you’re mad at me this whole time.”
I could sense Maggie stewing. She didn’t answer.
“Is there something you’re not telling me?” I asked.
Fine, she finally answered. It’s not your fault. You just don’t need to be so hard on these thralls.
“Oh, come on. They chose …” I cut myself off. “Ack. Sorry. I won’t start a fight if you won’t. Deal?”
Deal.
“Thanks.” I genuinely felt better already. “Like I said, you don’t have to help if you don’t want to, but … you said Jacques isn’t telling me everything, right?”
Right.
“Was he still not telling me everything?”
Definitely.
“I thought so. Is there a chance that he’s going to frame Boris? Did he kill Michael himself?”
I don’t think so. He wasn’t lying when he said that it was a good thing if you find Michael alive.
“That’s something, at least. But he is widening the scope of my job – actively looking for evidence that Boris is breaking the Rules, rather than just finding out if Michael is dead. Should I call Ada?”
She said you were at Williams’s disposal. Seems to fit the job.
“She also said that I shouldn’t work directly against Novak.”
And that was bullshit. You were already hired to look for evidence that Novak broke the Rules. Williams is just telling you to look a bit wider. I don’t think anything has actually changed.
Maggie was right. It wasn’t hard to talk myself out of calling Ada. It would be a waste of breath and would just continue to look like I was trying to get out of the job. I may be a slave, but I did have some professional pride. “All right. Let’s assume that Michael Pavlovich is alive and on the run from his vampire master. Where the hell do I go from here? Has he hopped a bus to somewhere on the other side of the country?”
I doubt it. None of the contacts in that OtherOps file were outside of the greater Cleveland area, and he only has a high school education. He has nowhere to go outside Ohio.
“Poor bastard. Then we have our next step: we find out where thralls go when they run away.”
Chapter 5
I spent four days wasting time, half-heartedly questioning my Cleveland-area contacts about thralls, Michael Pavlovich, and Boris Novak. It was a fairly fruitless endeavor. Nobody knew anything about Michael. The few people who did know Boris said he was an asshole. And thralls? Well. Nobody gives a shit about thralls. They were the persona non grata of the Other, lower on the totem pole than even imps. A teeny tiny bit of me started to feel bad for them.