Just like the high clan girls. I tried to look only mildly interested. “Lone wolves?”
“No. Felan.” It was one of the smaller, lower-ranked clans in the area. That surprised me. Clans are close-knit, with what reflects on one reflecting on all. I had a hard time imagining any clan wolves being allowed to take up a profession that, while legal in the supernatural world, wasn’t likely to improve their clan’s standing.
“Maybe the leaders found out what they were doing and came for them.”
Jezebel rolled her eyes and flopped back onto her messy bed. “Who do you think sent ’em here?”
“What?” I was certain I’d heard wrong.
“The leaders got a percentage of what they made. Mine do it, too. Lots of ’em do.”
“Wait a minute. You’re telling me that their clans forced the Felani girls to work here?”
Jezebel shrugged. “I don’t know about forced. But you know how it is. Defy the leaders and you pay for it, and keep on paying. So does your family. I figured I’d do my time. Another year and I’m out of here, and nobody else from my family gets tapped. I got two younger sisters, you know?”
I nodded. A pretty little blackmail routine: do as we say or we take your sisters instead. Could that be why Daniela had been kidnapped? By parents outraged over Sebastian’s indifference to the fate of their own daughters? As much as I wanted an answer, it seemed unlikely. A low-ranking family from a minor clan would no more attack Arnou than they would turn vegetarian. Humans might try it, if they were enraged enough, but Weres just didn’t think that way.
“I need to find out where those girls went,” I said after a minute. “Where are the records kept?”
I got a disdainful look. “You want to talk about stuff everybody knows, okay. We talk. But I’m not getting in trouble for—” I waved a hundred in front of her face and she stopped abruptly, but still looked mutinous. “That won’t cover the beating I’ll get if anyone finds out I helped you.”
I added a second bill and fluttered them in front of her. “I can blank short-term memory. No one has to know.”
“Yeah. I’m sure.” Her eyes tracked the money, but she made no move to take it.
“I’m a war mage,” I added.
The bills were suddenly gone, disappearing somewhere in the short, bright wrapper she wore. “The records are in Yuki’s office,” she told me briskly.
“The woman who checked me in?”
“He ain’t no woman. But yeah, he runs the place.”
“Is there any way to get him away from the desk for a minute?”
Jezebel shook her head. “He wants to make sure we don’t bring any regulars in on our own and stiff the house. He guards that door like a hawk.”
“Is he a mage?”
“No. Tsume.”
“But that’s a clan name.” It meant “claw” in Japanese.
“Yeah. He’s our last wolf. Acts like one, too. No offense.”
“I’m not a wolf.”
Jezebel wrinkled her forehead. “But you smell like—”
I held up a hand. “Don’t, okay?” Yuki being a wolf constituted a problem. Unlike humans and most mages, Weres are very resistant to magical suggestions. There was a good chance I wouldn’t be able to spell him to tell me anything, or to blank his memory afterward. And Weres don’t frighten or intimidate easily. This could get ugly.
I stepped into the hallway and cast a privacy spell to let me call Gil without worrying about Were hearing. “I didn’t give you my personal cell so you could ruin my holiday,” he told me acerbically.
“It isn’t Christmas for another four hours. And besides, you haven’t heard why I’m calling yet. I might have a line on those girls.”
“Like hell you do. You haven’t even been on the case a day!”
“I said might have. But there’s a chance I’ll need to use a little . . . persuasion . . . to get my lead to talk.”
“What lead?”
“Just a guy. It might be nothing. But I wanted to clear it with you first.”
“You called me up on Christmas Eve to ask if you can torture someone?”
“It probably won’t come to that.” I stepped out of the way of a large dominatrix in a shiny PVC cat suit and the guy in chains who was crawling after her. They edged around me politely. “Although I appear to be in the right place for it.”
“What? Where are you?”
I didn’t answer, because a door had opened down the hall and a very familiar backside emerged. The guy it was attached to didn’t see me, maybe because the half-dressed young woman lounging in the door had his whole attention. “I’ll take care of you, Nissa,” he said fondly. “Now what are you going to do for me?”
“I tell everybody, we no talk to the mage.” Her voice was low and sultry, with a heavy Spanish accent.
“To any mages,” Cyrus corrected, a finger to her lips. “But particularly to any with dark hair, spectacular legs, and homicidal tendencies.”
She pouted. “Is she prettier than me?”
“She’s more dangerous than you, which is what you need to keep in mind,” he chided. Then he kissed her.
His shirt was unbuttoned with the tails hanging, leaving the hollow of his throat pale and vulnerable. I swallowed hard, trying to resist the alien desire to leap down the corridor and tear into that soft flesh, to feel his blood slick and hot in my mouth. For a moment, I could actually taste it.
“Lia!” Gil’s voice in my ear made me jump. “Where the hell are you? What’s going on?” I tried to answer, but the words wouldn’t come.
I’d wondered why Cyrus had left Jersey at almost the same time I did. I’d been vain enough to think that it might have had something to do with me, although he’d made no effort to contact me. I’d also thought things might have gotten a little hot for him in Atlantic City, so he’d moved West to its bigger, badder cousin, where he wasn’t as well known. But what if he’d had another reason?
Because I found it really hard to believe that all this had been going on and no one in the high clans had heard anything. And since no effort was being made to stop it, it was a good guess that they were being paid to look the other way. For that to work, they’d need someone to gather and channel the kickbacks to the leaders. Someone with lots of contacts and no reputation to lose, who could be a convenient scapegoat if things went wrong. Someone like Cyrus.
I slipped back into Jezebel’s room and shut the door with a soft click, laying my forehead against it. The sudden adrenaline rush faded to leave me cold, sick, and shaking. I had to take a few deep breaths to catch up with myself, to remember that there was a procedure to be followed. If I was right and leading Weres were dirty, I needed proof. And for me to successfully bring a case like this, it had better be airtight.
“I’ll call you back,” I said, cutting into whatever Gil had been squawking. I put my phone away very deliberately and turned around so I wouldn’t be tempted to put a fist through the door. “I’m going to go talk with Yuki,” I said.
Jezebel took in my expression. “Huh. Think I’ll go talk to him, too.”
As a Were, Yuki was a sad disappointment. He started looking panicked before I even asked him anything, about the time I hung him from the chandelier in his office. It was wrought iron with lots of pointy bits and didn’t appear to be all that comfortable. I smiled pleasantly like my trainers had taught me and pulled out photos of the missing girls.
“Have you seen any of these?” He started to shake his head and I held up a finger. “Think real hard. Because I know you’d hate to lie to me. Just like I’d hate to see you get overly intimate with the coatrack.”
“I haven’t seen them,” he said. For some reason, all the lilt had gone out of his voice.
“He’s telling the truth,” Jezebel said. “I could smell it if he was lying.”
“Then what about the two wolves who went missing from here? What happened to them?”
I could almost see Yuki trying to puzzle out how much he could plausibly get away with denying. I was about to apply more threats, but Jezebel decided we’d talked enough. I got the feeling there wasn’t a lot of love lost between those two, and she obviously thought it would be a shame to waste a good memory wipe. After she pulled a Taser out of her wrap and started waving it around, Yuki became positively voluble.