“Aha. I’ll buy that for a dollar.” What kind of a hunting accident would it have to be to kill a damn bouda? Were they hunting an elephant and it fell on him?
“The boy was sort of collectively raised,” Aunt B continued. “The sect mostly consisted of women, the only men being the prophet, a few old-timers too creaky to leave, and the prophet’s progeny. They spoiled him rotten, but eventually he grew up. You’ve seen the way he looks. He got to sowing some wild oats. The prophet started getting messages that Ascanio was unclean real quick. Except by that point, Ascanio was strong enough that the prophet was worried about confronting him directly. Ascanio’s daddy had written the whole sordid account of his sin in a confession, so the prophet found the mother’s name, looked her up, and called us. ‘Come and get him before something bad happens.’ So we came and got him. He is ours now. He has a good heart. He just doesn’t know the rules and doesn’t have an awful lot of sense in that pretty head of his.”
So the only male role model Ascanio had ever had was a lecherous, murdering con man. Great. That explained a few things.
Aunt B stared into my eyes. “You will take care of my boy, won’t you, Kate? I’d consider it a personal favor.”
“I’ll do what I can,” I told her. “But I can’t pull him out of the fire if he jumps into it after being warned.”
“I don’t ask for miracles,” Aunt B said. “Just things within reason.”
It would take a miracle to keep Ascanio in line. But now didn’t seem like a good time to mention it.
AUNT B WANTED TO BE LET OUT HALF A MILE FROM my office, at some bakery. When we got in, Andrea was already there, sitting at her desk. The loyal hound took a running start and hit me in the chest. I could’ve used Grendel’s company last night. But Andrea still needed him more than I did.
“Did you sleep here?” I asked.
She raised her chin. “Of course not.”
Yep, she slept in the office. Sometimes being by yourself in an empty apartment, with nothing but your own craziness for company, was far worse than weathering a night in the office in an uncomfortable bed. At least in the office you could pretend you were still at work and keep busy. I’d been there.
Derek stuck his head into the fridge. “There is nothing to eat.”
“Did you not eat before we left?”
Derek gave me a long-suffering look. “Yes, I did. But by lunch we’ll need food, and we can’t afford to keep running out of the building for munchies.”
He was right. We had three shapeshifters to feed, and every time one of us left the office, we became a target. “Fine.” I opened the safe and handed him three hundred dollars. “There is a grocery down the street. Get something that will keep well.”
“I’ll go with him,” Andrea said. “I need to walk the fur-face anyway.”
They left, and I watched Ascanio bar the door behind them.
The box containing the evidence from Adam’s house wasn’t at my desk. If Andrea spent the night, she probably took it upstairs. I ran up the steps. There it was, spread out all over the floor into neat little piles: Polaroids on one side, Andrea’s and my notes on the other, little baggie with dead ants in the middle. I sat on the floor. There had to be something here we could use. Something we were missing. So far all I had to work with were theories and suppositions. The volhvs had probably kidnapped Adam; Roman pretty much confirmed it. But unless he was lying, the device was still out there, somewhere. The Red Guard didn’t have the device either, otherwise the Guardsmen wouldn’t have hired us to look for it. Adam couldn’t have moved the device by himself. It weighed a ton. That left the Lighthouse Keepers. They must’ve wanted both Adam and the device, but the volhvs snatched Adam from under their noses, so they took the device instead. And used some sort of vehicle to move it out of Sibley, leaving the trail of screwed-up magic. And I would know what that vehicle looked like if only Ghastek condescended to let me in on it. Ugh.
If the Keepers had Adam’s gadget, nothing good would come from it. Of all the opponents I had to face, fanatics were the worst. Most people could be bribed, threatened, intimidated. None of the usual methods of persuasion applied to fanatics. They did things that defied logic.
And we still didn’t know what the hell the device actually did. I sifted through the evidence. Adam had kept a journal, but it was missing, along with all his other notes.
Twenty minutes later I was no closer to solving anything. I picked up pieces of paper at random, marked in Andrea’s neat, precise hand. LIST OF CLOTHES. LIST OF COOKING UTENSILS. LIST OF GROCERIES. She cataloged the entire house. I scanned the grocery list. Not like I had anything better to do. Cheese, milk, bananas, chocolate, protein shakes . . .
Wait a bloody minute.
Sugar, dried apricots . . .
I stared at the list. I’d seen this list of ingredients before. I’d watched them being put into a blender one by one: bananas, sugar, protein shake, chocolate, milk. It was a nauseating mix Saiman used to drink when he was about to change shape and expected to burn through a lot of calories in a hurry.
I double-checked the list. Saiman was Atlanta’s premier expert on all things magic. He dealt in sensitive information, owned a part of an illegal martial arts tournament, and had fewer morals than the Norse gods he had descended from. He was a complete and utter egoist, focused solely on gratifying his own wants, and any dealings with him came with a giant price tag. A few months ago his egoism had finally gotten him into trouble. He maneuvered me into playing his escort for the evening and then displayed me for Curran’s benefit to avenge a blow to his pride. Curran didn’t take it well. In fact, I was amazed Saiman was still among the living.
Saiman also changed shape. Any human body type, any gender. Once he’d turned into a woman, seduced a pagan priest, stolen his magic acorn, and then hired the Mercenary Guild to keep him safe while the priest’s friends and relations turned themselves inside out trying to kill him. The priest he’d seduced happened to be a volhv. And I was the idiot merc sent to guard him. He was the reason why I had to go to Evdokia instead of the volhvs and got my childhood smashed to pieces.
If Saiman was involved, he could’ve impersonated anyone. He could’ve been one of the guards or he could’ve pretended to be Adam Kamen himself. But why? What the hell did he want? Saiman was loaded. Maybe he was one of the investors ...
A faint metal clang announced the bar being removed from the door. That was some fast grocery shopping.
“Hi there!” Ascanio’s voice had the unmistakable overtone of a young guy trying to be smooth.
“Who are you and where is Kate?” Julie’s voice asked.
CHAPTER 14
I GOT UP, PADDED TO THE RAIL, AND LEANED against the wall, hidden in the shadow. From here I had an excellent view of the main room. Ascanio barred the stairs. Julie stood in the middle of the room, with a determined look on her face. Her light hair was pulled into a ponytail. Good balance, light on her toes. Her hand was on one of my throwing knives. No matter how many times I took them away from her, she always managed to steal them.
“I’m Ascanio Ferara of Clan Bouda. The question is, who are you?”
“Move aside.”
“I can’t do that,” Ascanio purred. “I’m under strict orders not to let anyone I don’t know upstairs. And I don’t know you.”
At least in one respect the school had been good for Julie—they’d made sure she had frequent meals. She’d come a long way from the waif I found in the Honeycomb. Still slender and pale, she looked stronger now, and her legs and arms no longer resembled toothpicks. She was also pretty, a fact Ascanio noticed, judging by his killer smile and the light flexing of his arms.
One cute face and all my orders of not admitting strangers flew right out the window. The kid was hopeless.
“Move,” Julie repeated.
“No. You see, I have a problem. Kate didn’t tell me she was expecting an angel.”