Page 89

TWENTY-FIVE

Sorsha

For once, the Company of Light played right into our hands. Less than an hour after Antic had darted through the park near the rift invisibly, making chess pieces fly through the air over the stone tables and leading people on wild goose chases after hats that appeared to have taken on minds of their own, a white van with an exterminator logo pulled into the public lot. How very fitting.

Four men tramped out, their silver-and-iron protective gear hidden under thick hazmat suits, which I guessed they could pass off as being protection from the supposed wild animal they were here to contain. Any mortal not watching for the glint of metal would have missed the edges of the helmets and vests beneath.

They strode to the area near the rift where the imp had pulled off her pranks and hollered for the nearby patrons to leave for their own safety. When all witnesses had dispersed—other than my shadowkind allies watching from various patches of darkness and me in my perch hidden on the roof of a historic cottage in view of the clearing—they drew out their shiny nets and whips and stalked through the area.

Of course, we didn’t need—or want—them to catch Antic, or any other shadowkind for that matter. We’d only needed them to come. After a thorough search, a vigil while they waited to see if the shadowkind would emerge if they gave it some space, and another scouring of the area, they packed up into their van, muttering about how inconvenient this monster had been.

Little did they know that a few of said monsters were hitching a ride in the shadows attached to their vehicle.

I kept my phone at my side as I waited for the first stage of our plan to come to fruition. Half an hour of pacing later, a text from Ruse appeared on the screen.

We’ve got a loner. He took off the worst of the gear but is still wearing a badge. Come on by and steal it off him for us, my lovely thief?

My pleasure , I wrote back, and passed on the address he gave me to the Uber I hailed.

It was a simple enough operation. I knocked on the door of the guy’s apartment like I just needed to borrow a cup of flour. The moment he opened it, Ruse leapt out of the shadows next to him. The guy startled, his head jerking around, and before he could even see me moving, I’d kicked his legs out from under him. Thorn and Flint emerged to pin his limbs to the floor while I yanked open his button-up to uncover the silver-and-iron badge he’d fixed to his undershirt.

Borrowing my tricks—tsk tsk.

As soon as I’d tossed the toxic metals aside, Ruse started talking in his cajoling tone. “Good day to you, my friend. I’m so sorry about the sudden intrusion. If you’ll give me a moment, I’ll get this all straightened away to attend to your best interests.”

Within minutes, he had our captive laughing at his jokes and beaming eagerly when the incubus told him we desperately needed his help. “I don’t know who’s giving the orders,” he said. “But I can tell you a few locations we’ve worked out of. Maybe someone at one of them can tell you more.”

Ruse smiled. “Perfect. We so appreciate anything you can contribute. I’ll be sure to inform your colleagues what a team player you were.”

We hopped from lead to lead across the afternoon and into the evening. The first several Company dupes had no idea where the big boss might live, but they all knew someone else who was connected to the Company. Finally, our game of leapfrog led us to a woman who’d worked on our Very Important Person’s security detail. After chatting with Ruse for a bit, she coughed up an address in the Financial District, as well as some other choice information.

“I never got the guy’s name,” she said. “Never even saw him. He lives in the penthouse, and I worked outer security, patrolling the block outside. Never had any trouble, but I guess you can’t be too careful with these monsters, especially when he’s helping keep the whole Company organized.” She sighed. “It was an easy gig, that’s for sure. But I got bored and asked to be in on more of the action. Kind of regret it now.”

“We’ve got the building,” Snap said eagerly when we were back in the RV. “Does that mean we can carry out the rest of Sorsha’s plan now?”

“We’ve got to investigate the place first and determine our best point of access,” Thorn said. “It doesn’t sound as though reaching this man will be a simple matter, even knowing his location.”

I shot a fond smile at the incubus, who was back behind the wheel. “We need Ruse to get a hold of one of the head honcho’s current security people. That should be our ticket in.”

The Financial District was a forest of skyscrapers, concrete faces and gleaming windows towering so high they looked as if they really might touch the clouds. Ruse cruised by the condo building our contact had indicated. I definitely wasn’t scaling that slick face from the outside. But that didn’t matter when we could charm ourselves an inside man—or woman. We’d gotten this far, hadn’t we?

“Every blame you lay,” I sang as we rounded the corner, “every sprite you slay, we’ll be watching you.”

Antic shuddered as if she thought I was anticipating some slaying going on tonight. “Don’t worry,” I said. “If it looks like anyone’s getting slain, we’ll do a lot more than watch.”

“I’d like to slay them ,” she muttered. “Big bullies.”

We parked several blocks from the building with a mind to how thoroughly the Company tended to guard their more prominent members. After setting the RV to look like a tour bus that had every business parking downtown, Ruse, Thorn, and Snap went to scope out the big boss’s place, the three of them insisting that Flint stay back with me in case we had to deal with Company attackers after all.

I paced the narrow hall, trying not to fidget and carefully avoiding looking directly into the wingéd’s eyes. Antic bounced between twisting my discarded shirts into ridiculous poses and chattering with Gloam, who’d shed his despondency with the sinking of the sun.

My trio returned with matching pensive expressions.

“We could only go so far up,” Thorn reported. “The highest floor had silver and iron panels built into the walls and floor—possibly the ceiling too.”

Snap nodded. “We couldn’t check it very closely, because the floor underneath was totally vacant. Very bright lights all across the ceiling, making sure there were no shadows for us to travel through, and cameras watching for intruders. I didn’t pick up any useful impressions from the areas we could reach.”

“The main elevator doesn’t go up to the penthouse,” Ruse added. “The only access we could identify was through a secondary elevator on that shiny sub-penthouse floor. There aren’t any guards there, although that may cause more problems than it solves. We don’t know who’s working ‘internal’ security with him. From what our recent friend told us, the external folks don’t know much about getting to this guy.”

I exhaled slowly. “All right. Then we wait, and we watch. Unless this guy’s got all his security living with him twenty-four seven, someone’s got to come out of there eventually. We see who it is, track them until we can get to them alone, and prep them for Ruse’s charm like we did the others. We’ve made it this far. No rushing, or it could all fall apart.”

Thorn and Snap left again, Thorn to keep watch over the brightly-lit buffer floor and Snap to test the public areas of the building for any impressions that could point us in the right direction. I touched base with Klaus, who had nothing further to report.

“If you want me getting in on anything other than information-gathering, just let me know what I can do,” he said.

I grimaced at the ceiling. After everything we’d been through with the Fund, I was uneasy even with him knowing we were in San Francisco. I wasn’t sure I wanted to tip him off to our exact location. What if he had his own change of heart?

“We’re covered for now,” I said. “The best thing you can do is keep an eye on the local Fund and let us know if they seem to be on the lookout for us.”

Night fell with no sightings of the head honcho’s inside men. Finally, I curled up on my bed to get some sleep. I wasn’t going to be much use to my companions if I was zombified with exhaustion by the time they needed me.

It was Thorn who woke me, but not in the way I’d have liked one of my lovers to come to my bed in the wee hours of the morning. He cleared his throat, and that yanked me out of sleep with a jolt through my nerves. When I looked up at him, it was still dark, only a little artificial light filtering through the small window to catch on his white-blond hair.

“We have our guard,” he said. “I believe now may be an excellent opportunity to prepare him.”

“Right, right.” I shoved myself out from under the covers, finger-combed my hair back into a messy ponytail, and allowed myself the small indulgence of tapping the warrior’s impressive chest. “Next time you wake me up, I expect it to come with benefits, not work.”

His dark eyes gleamed. “We might have a moment for a brief benefit if it would raise your spirits to the task.”

“Perfect way of looking at it.” I gripped his tunic and rose up on my toes to kiss him. Thorn returned the gesture, his mouth so hard and hot it left no doubt that there would be plenty of benefits to come when the time was right.

Ruse had driven the Everymobile to new digs while I’d slept. I stepped out into the quiet of a residential street, bungalows and two-storey houses set behind small, neat lawns. The incubus emerged from the shadows by one of the smaller places down the block and beckoned me over silently.

When I reached him, he tipped his head toward the house, his voice dropping to a whisper. “We were hoping you could keep your beauty sleep, but he wears his damned helmet to bed . The boss man must have made these lackeys awfully paranoid.”

“Yep,” I said. “Clearly they have no reason at all to worry about shadowkind descending on them in the middle of the night.”

“Well, not before now. You want to put those thieving skills to further use?”

I didn’t have my lock picks with me, but I didn’t need them. The guard’s security wasn’t quite that tight. I crept through the backyards to make a discreet approach, and Ruse slipped into the shadows around the back door to unlock it from the inside. When he eased it open, I slunk in past him. He pointed me to the door that led to our target’s bedroom.

As I stepped inside, I almost started feeling bad for the dude. He must have had a softer side in him somewhere: his walls were adorned with posters of cartoon ponies frolicking with their magical friends. He even had a plastic figurine of a purple one watching over him from the bedside table.

That said, he was still a shadowkind-hating prick. And now he’d get to experience a truly magical friendship.

Ruse hadn’t lied—the guy had his silver-and-iron helmet pulled tight over his head, covering it from his forehead down his temples to just above his ears. It looked as if he’d added some padding to it, but it still couldn’t be all that comfortable. He was either very dedicated or very exhausted.

He had a badge pinned to his nightshirt as well, I saw—it poked just above the sheet that slanted across his chest. That would be easy enough to deal with, thank holy hand grenades.

I padded across the floor, breathing silent and shallow. With cautious fingers, I peeled the sheet down far enough that I could grasp the badge. This maneuver called for delicacy rather than speed. Just my luck that I was familiar with both.

A few twists of my fingers detached the clasp. I set the badge on the bedside table and motioned to where I assumed Ruse was watching from the doorway, not risking taking my eyes off our target. As I reached for his helmet, the guy made a muttering sound and rolled over.

Fine, I’d just have to lean farther over the bed. As soon as I had it off, Ruse could work his voodoo. We could forget delicacy now.

I set my hands against the cool metal surface, readied myself, and heaved as hard as I could.

The dude yelped and flailed. I darted backward, carrying the helmet with me, and Ruse swept in, his smooth, chocolatey voice already lilting from his lips.

“Hello there, my friend! Nothing to be disturbed about. This is the moment you’ve been waiting for all this time.”

He must have read something in the guard’s emotions to suggest a solid angle for his charm. As he talked on, I shoved the helmet into the closet, made an apologetic gesture to the poster ponies staring at me wide-eyed, and stepped back to join Thorn, Snap, and Flint, who’d emerged from the shadows.

Ruse could always tell when he had his subject eating out of his hand. It wasn’t long before the incubus offered a simpering smile and said, “All we need to know is when we can expect your boss to leave his fine abode.”

“Oh.” The lackey’s face fell with obvious distress. “I don’t think I can help you there.”

After all this, we still hadn’t found someone with answers? I restrained a groan.

“Why not?” the incubus asked.

“Well, he just… never leaves. We come and go in shifts during the day, but in the year I’ve worked there, I’ve only seen him leave maybe three times. He had an essential appointment a few weeks back, so I doubt there’ll be anything else for months unless something special comes up. Anything he needs, he has delivered.”

“If I could even talk to him on the phone?—”

The guy shook his head. “He’s on his phone a lot, that’s for sure, but I don’t have the number for it. If I was ever going to be late for or miss a shift, I’m supposed to tell the head of the team, and they just send someone else.”

My stomach sank. It wasn’t that this guy didn’t have answers—it was that the answers he had sucked donkey balls. If we couldn’t lure his boss out of his apartment with its shell of toxic metals to somewhere Ruse could get his ear, the incubus wouldn’t be able to charm the man we most needed to reach.

I stepped closer again. “Can’t you think of anything he’d be willing to leave for?”

“I’m sorry. I wish I could do more.”

I paused, feeling the weight of my companions’ attention on me. This had been my plan, and now I had to salvage it before all our efforts had to be chucked in the trash.

A glimmer of inspiration lit in my head. It might not work—but it was worth a shot. Story of my life.

With a thin smile, I propped myself against the dresser. “Actually, I think there is one more thing you could do to prove your loyalty to the cause. Listen carefully.”