I parked in the subterranean garage and took the elevator down to the cold lobby of Edward’s private bunker below the building. The Grey’s muttering faded to a distant whisper as the lift descended. From inside the metal box, it was difficult to see the grid of magical energy that shot through the material existence of Seattle and I lost touch with that world I’d come to accept as I plunged down.
The elevator paused at the bottom, waiting for a security code to unlock the doors. The wait dragged on. I wondered if someone was messing with me. . . .
The doors opened after a minute and Bryson Goodall stood on the other side with his security keys and card in hand. He kept his gaze just off mine, as if he feared I’d read in it what I already knew. He looked mussed, his military bearing replaced with a more casually aggressive stance and his clothes rumpled by a long day’s wear, the tie and suit jacket missing. Even his strange indigo-blue aura had changed, going darker and more purple, like a bruise. I cocked my head to the side and peered at that strange energy; it looked like a tangle of dark blue, black, and ruby flames shying away from the burning crimson of the magical wards on the doors beyond him. Odd that I hadn’t noticed that before, or had something changed . . . ? The layers of gleaming energy that wrapped the room seemed slightly out of alignment, too, though everything was still there. Including the clinging, stomach-tilting smell of a vampire in residence.
The next set of doors would not unlatch so long as the elevator was open, so, saying nothing, I stepped out into the luxurious lobby of Edward’s underground home. The deep carpet and soundproofed walls hadn’t changed in the ten days since I’d last seen the bunker, yet it seemed as if something was different, broken, or out of place. The lift doors closed behind me, leaving Goodall and me alone in the cottony silence of the antechamber. I turned my head side to side, openly studying the room and feeling jumpy. I saw a thin crack of light in the wall to my left—the outline of a previously hidden door that was now a little ajar.
He noticed the direction of my gaze and shot a glance over his shoulder before turning back to me. “Monitoring room,” he said.
“You monitor Edward’s sanctum?”
He snorted. “No. The rest of the building, yes.”
“So you saw me drive in.”
“Didn’t recognize the car. Sorry.”
I doubted that. If he’d been checking on me as I suspected, he knew I’d replaced my destroyed classic Land Rover a year ago with a newer, silver-gray version paid for with the windfall from a weird little job in Oaxaca. Oh, yeah, he was messing with me.
“I need to see Edward,” I said, tiring of trying to analyze whatever game Goodall was playing.
“He’s gone.”
“I heard that. What sort of ‘gone’ are we talking here?” I moved toward the heavily warded doors to the inner sanctum, feeling the gruesome flare of the fell magic embedded in the carved metal panels set into the massive wooden portal. An impression of gaping, toothy jaws flickered a moment in the rage of blood magic that sheeted the doors.
Goodall moved to block my way but flinched aside with a sharp-bitten yelp as he brushed the wards. He sidled in front of me, keeping his distance by inches.
“I said he’s gone. You can report to me.”
I offered him a cold smile. “I don’t think so. Just tell me where Edward is right now. If he’s in hiding behind those doors, I still need to talk to him. And if he isn’t,” I continued, adding a mental push to my words, “you need to tell me where he is.” I felt the spiked energy of my uncanny talent for “persuading” people to talk prickle against my skin as it pressed on him.
He gave an unconscious shiver at the contact. “No, I don’t.”
“But you do know.”
“And I am not going to tell you. Your usefulness to Edward is at an end. Things didn’t work out.”
“For whom?” I pressed harder on the Grey, on the magical compulsion I was building against him. It worked even on vampires, though only the weakest of them, and Goodall was no vampire—I’d met him in the hot sunshine at Burbank’s airport less than two weeks ago and I’d never seen a vampire that could stand the sun. “I know what happened in London. I did what Edward sent me to do. So who’s not happy with my performance?”
He narrowed his eyes and he might have been sweating, but it was hard to tell in the eldritch flicker from the wards on the doors. “You weren’t supposed to come back.”
“According to whom?” I was as surprised by his words as by his resistance to my push, but I shouldn’t have been; Goodall gave every indication that he’d spent some time in the hard-core military. Even in the freakish lighting, the muscles under his wrinkled shirt were solid and his stance was poised. But there was something wrong about his eyes, about the way he moved. . . . I was too tired and too focused on my own efforts to pinpoint it. I felt the sharp edges of the magical compulsion shift and scrape between us as he tried to respond to it in the most limited way, maintain his control while giving up only worthless blither.
“The plan was to get you out of the way. Make Edward feel safe....”
“So you could kidnap him?”
“Wygan took him,” he growled. “Not me.”
“Right. And how did Wygan get ahold of him? Judging by the way you’re cringing, the spells on the doors are still intact, so he didn’t go through them to get Edward.” I was pretty sure no one knew exactly what I could or couldn’t see in the Grey, and if Wygan and his cronies thought I was more Greyblind than I was, that was fine. “You held the doors for him, didn’t you?”
I pushed as hard as I dared, feeling the cold black needles of energy that formed the compulsion pierce into me as well. It felt terrible, like icicles that cut into bone and froze the body from the inside out. Goodall made a subvocal growl, grinding his teeth as he glared at me. I was getting the impression the charming bodyguard didn’t like me much. “You let him in,” I said. “I guessed you were the mole, but I still don’t know how you got into Edward’s graces.”
“Things change,” Goodall whispered.
“Not that fast. You didn’t just decide out of the blue to be Wygan’s spy. Tell me where Edward is.” I already knew that Wygan, the ruler—they called him the Pharaohn—of an ancient Egyptian strain of vampire called the asetem-ankh-astet, was behind the problems that I’d gone to London to solve for Edward. I also knew that Wygan had plans for me, too—something unpleasant to do with the Grey itself, that strange intersection of the here and the not-quite—and that he’d been moving toward this plan for a long time. He’d tried to force other Greywalkers to become the tool he needed, but he’d never succeeded until he got to me. I still wasn’t quite what he wanted, but I suspected I was closer than I’d like.
Wygan had a pattern: He used other people as cat’s-paws and leverage to get what he wanted—he almost never got his own hands directly in the dirt. Goodall must have been another of his manipulations and that must be the source of the wrongness I was picking up. I wasn’t sure what Wygan wanted or needed Edward for, only that he hated him for something done long ago. But revenge alone didn’t make sense of the long, complex game he’d been playing. I still didn’t know Wygan’s plans—didn’t know him, come to that—and I’d have to figure them out if I was going to beat him.
Goodall moved his right hand between us, reaching toward me with the keys between his fingers like claws. “I could kill you.”
“The Pharaohn wouldn’t like that. Other people have had that idea; they aren’t with us anymore.”
Goodall winced at my use of Wygan’s title. He could make of that what he wanted: threat or warning. I’d disposed of most of the London problem, but I’d also seen how awful Wygan’s retribution was on those who disappointed him.
“Just tell me where Wygan has Edward.”
“I can’t. And I wouldn’t if I could.”
“Don’t make me hurt you, first,” I warned him, sliding my pistol from its holster at my back. I didn’t intend to use it unless I had no choice; a gun should never be an idle threat but the promise of death. I didn’t want to kill Goodall—or anyone. When someone dies near me, I feel it, like a blow that drives me down and tears me open. But I survive it. And I would shoot him if I had to.