“What purpose would revenge over such a petty thing serve?” Michael frowned.
“I have heard from my friends that a bratva man stabbed someone because they beat up his friend at a club,” I replied. “Knifed him in the gut. His brother wasn’t even that badly hurt… but in that culture, if someone hurts your friend, it is as if they had hurt you ten times more.”
Ayashe turned to look at me again. “Okay, so you got your hands on some instructions. Ten kilos of girl, I’ll take your word on it. Does any of this mention the children or the murder?”
“No.”
She reached back into her jacket and drew the pistol, and she was fast. It was in her hands and aimed before I’d done anything more than put the chair between her and me. “Then I’m arresting you under suspicion of trafficking narcotics and being involved in organized criminal activity,” she said. “You have the right to remain—”
“Ayashe!” Michael barked, moving around the desk. “What are you doing?”
“Hey. What’s all the shouting about?” Jenner’s voice rang out from the threshold of the doorway. She, Mason and Talya formed a wall just inside the room, blocking entry and exit. “I get nervous when someone screams and I’m not around. You won’t like me when I’m nervous.”
“You can hold the litany, musor. You have no grounds to arrest me,” I said. “A file without any of my handwriting, without my fingerprints, that points to the murdered couple you’re investigating? The problem lies with your vaunted Elders – I’m just the messenger, and you know it.”
“Get down on the fucking floor.” Ayashe swelled up on her feet, her lips peeling back in a silent snarl. I retreated as she advanced, holding Binah close to my chest.
“Now you wait just a goddamn moment.” Mason said. He and Jenner pulled up on either side of me, Talya hovering anxiously to one side between the standoff. “What the fuck is going on, Ayashe?”
“This guy is in the Russian Mob.” Ayashe wasn’t visibly angry now – she had taken on the cold brushed steel look of an experienced killer. “That’s reason enough.”
“Your accusation is flimsy compared to the evidence of your own people being in the ‘Russian mob’ as you put it. The drugs weren’t addressed to me.” I hadn’t come armed. More’s the pity.
Spotted Elk regarded us gravely. “In all honesty, I must agree with Ayashe. He admitted to us that it was his apartment.”
My eyes narrowed. Michael’s face flickered with an expression that was difficult to read, but he glanced at me and I knew that he hadn’t intended to tell Ayashe anything.
“Of course it was.,” Ayashe snapped. “You think it’s coincidence that he just shows up in our life and gets involved in this? That he starts off with our youngest member and manipulates her—”
“Don’t talk about me like I can’t think for myself!” Talya bristled, swelling on her feet. “It was a chance meeting!”
“What the fuck do you think he’s really doing here, Jenner?” Ayashe gestured at me with the muzzle of her pistol. Maybe it was my imagination, but I was sure I saw the black hole at the end of the barrel shudder and shiver like a liquid.
“Seems like he was helping us,” Jenner replied. “Or trying to.”
“I’m leaving. That is what I am doing.” I pulled my gloves up along my wrists as a deep tension wracked my stomach and tugged my stitches. “Go shove your badge up your ass.”
You have three seconds to get down on the floor before I decide you’re too hostile to live.” The barrel was aimed right between my eyes.
Mason put himself between me and the gun. “You and what friggin’ army, Ayashe? I can vouch that we found the damn film, that we got the motherfuckers who hurt Josie, that Rex honored his half of the deal. Or doesn’t the word of an Elder mean anything to you now you got a shiny badge and a pat on the head?”
“Mason, silence. She has a point,” Spotted Elk said. “We were wrong to trust a criminal presence. No matter what I said about him or what you’ve seen—”
“You came here alone, Ayashe, and I don’t think we give a fuck about what you say.” Jenner caught my arm and started me walking. “C’mon, Rex. Mason. Let’s go.”
“You ain’t going nowhere!” Ayashe snapped around Spotted Elk, shoving him aside with furious speed and strength. He hit the edge of his desk with a cry of pain, eyes wide with hurt and confusion in the moment before Jenner interposed herself Mason and Ayashe and punched the taller woman straight in the mouth. Ayashe stumbled back and snarled, and Mason left me to go to his woman’s side as they faced off.
“Stop this!” Michael raised his voice over the din. “This is crazy!”
Talya ran to me and caught my sleeve, her eyes wide and red-rimmed. I nodded, and without a word, she ran with me and Binah out into the hallway, took another door, and steered us down the fire escape. We clattered down to the ground floor and exited out a different entry to the outside.
“I can’t believe this,” she said. Her voice was shaking. “Ayashe’s so stubborn, and I just know she’s going to register you as a fugitive, and… all you did was try to help us. Rex, I’m so sorry.”
“Forget it.” I said. “If they cherish their pride more than the truth, they have no need for a mage. They need twenty-one caskets and a saddle for their high horse.”
Talya dug her nails into the doorframe. “I know, but we can talk with the Tigers and work something out. Jenner holds her own against the other factions here. Please don’t go.”
“If Ayashe’s serious, she will turn up at the clubhouse with a SWAT team. Jenner cannot prevent that.” I pressed my lips together. “I have spent my life outside of a cell. I want my freedom.”
Talya’s nostrils flared, an odd moment of body language for a woman as small and prim as she was. “You know, John and Michael have been trying to recruit me ever since I started working here. This is my first time inside of the Cycle, my first lifetime as a shapeshifter. Someone like John or Ayashe, they might have had twenty, thirty lifetimes that they can remember, and they still act like children. If that’s all they have to offer, that’s not the person I want to be.”
I regarded her in silence, unblinking.
“My point is… I believe you. Whatever it is you and the Tigers found, I believe it. We won’t let them arrest you. You’re the only one besides us that cares about something other than themselves.” Talya smiled a grim, bitter little smile, withdrew back into the stairwell, and closed the door.
Altruistic? Me? Perhaps I had stepped into a paradoxical other world, a world where I was something more than a bullet in Sergei’s gun. Perhaps she was full of shit, and I needed to leave before I was locked up for trying to impose truth on their unreality.
I stared at the side of the building for a moment, ruminating on my decision, and then turned and walked away.
Chapter 19
I found the Tigers clustered around their motorcycles. Jenner was clearly furious, but physically no worse for wear. Mason was clearly as angry as his wife, though he was nominally less explosive. He was also far larger, and I didn’t know just how much control he held over his temper.
When we arrived back at the clubhouse, a few of the other Tigers were playing pool and shooting the shit in the garage common room. They looked up as Jenner slammed the door behind us and stormed off across the floor, clinking on every step. Duke was at the bar, talking with a tall, ascetic-looking man who seemed to be equal parts bartender and mechanic.
“Come on, Duke,” Jenner snapped. “We need to sort out a plan.”