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The Venetian plaster here was beige rather than cream and trimmed with light brown. Bookshelves filled the arched alcoves—Linus embraced technology, but he loved the texture of paper. Like the foyer, the study was elegant and uncluttered—two padded chairs, a love seat in the corner, a black-and-gold desk that would have been at home in Versailles, and a single ficus tree to the left of the fireplace that somehow thrived despite Linus’ neglect. The air smelled of aromatic tobacco and coffee. He kept loose tobacco on hand because he liked the scent and either Pete or Hera, his other bodyguard, replaced it every few weeks when it lost its aroma.
Linus Duncan sat behind the desk, engrossed in his tablet. A heavy crystal glass with about a finger of whiskey waited forgotten on his right.
I sat in the nearest chair.
Linus leaned back and looked at me. “How did it go with Montgomery?”
Apparently we were going to ignore me being attacked in the park and him being attacked in his house.
“I’m in.” I would have to phrase this next bit carefully. “There are complications.”
He pinned me with his gaze. “What complications?”
“Lander Morton and Alessandro Sagredo are a package deal.”
He rested his elbows on the arms of his chair and steepled his fingers, thinking. “Is that a problem?”
“No,” I lied. “It’s not a problem. It just makes things slightly more complicated, because I have to account for an overpowered assassin with an unknown motive.”
“Don’t we all.”
“I’d like permission to run a Warden Network search on Sagredo.” The Warden Network included access to several law enforcement databases that were off-limits to civilians.
“Why?”
“I don’t like to be surprised.”
“Denied,” Linus said. “You know his capabilities and his temperament. In some ways, you know him better than almost anyone else. Anything the Warden Network would tell you would be a guess at best. How are things progressing with Albert Ravenscroft?”
“They’re not.”
Albert Ravenscroft, the heir to House Ravenscroft, was a Prime psionic, twenty-six years old, handsome, and very persistent. He operated on the assumption that if he just put in enough time and effort, I would recognize his beauty and wit. Even if his efforts had managed to wear me down, our relationship would be doomed. Albert was interested in marriage.
Six months ago, when a psychotic mind ripper mage had trapped Alessandro, I made a deal with my evil grandmother. She gave me what I needed to save him. In return, I swore to dedicate myself to House Baylor. I would never become a part of another House. The man who married me would have to join mine. He would have to take my name and abandon all claims on his previous family. I hadn’t shared this bit with Linus because he didn’t need to know. Albert was looking to strengthen his House, not to run away from it.
Linus mulled it over. “His choice or yours?”
“Mine.”
He watched me carefully. “Albert would be easy to manage.”
“I have no interest in managing him. Besides, I’m busy. Why are we interested in House Morton?”
Linus’ tablet chimed. He glanced at it. “It appears I have a guest. I think he’s here for you.”
He turned the tablet toward me. On it Alessandro drove a silver Alfa Romeo Spider through the broken gates and parked in front of the door.
We waited in silence. Five seconds. Ten . . .
Alessandro walked into the study carrying an unconscious Pete over his shoulder, deposited him on the love seat in the corner, and sat in the other chair.
Linus looked at Pete and sighed. “Please join us, won’t you, Prime Sagredo?”
No. Don’t join us. Turn around and go away as far and as fast as you can.
Linus looked at me, then at Alessandro. Neither of us said anything.
“Well.” Linus spread his arms. “Let’s start with you, Alessandro. Why are you here?”
Alessandro threw one long leg over the other and leaned back. “Officially I’m here because Lander Morton hired me to kill the person or persons who murdered his son.”
Linus raised his eyebrows. “Do you think I’m hiding them here in my house?”
“Unofficially I’m here because she is in danger.” Alessandro looked at Linus. “Does the name Ignat Orlov mean anything to you?”
He pronounced Ignat with an uh, so it sounded almost like ignite.
Linus grimaced, as if he’d bitten something sour.
“It doesn’t to me,” I said.
“Former officer of the Russian Imperial Defense,” Alessandro said.
“An Imperium-sanctioned assassin,” Linus supplied. “Trained, experienced, and very good, since he managed to survive all these years.”
“Goes by the name Arkan,” Alessandro added. “It means lasso.”
The nicknames professional killers gave themselves never failed to make me roll my eyes. “Because he snares his enemies?”
“Yes,” Alessandro and Linus said at the same time.
“Why is he important?”
“Excellent question,” Linus said.
Alessandro gave us a short, humorless smile. “Because he stole your serum.”
The Office of the Warden had a primary directive: to safeguard the Osiris serum. In unscrupulous hands, the serum had the potential to wipe out our civilization. A couple of years ago, someone broke into the Northern Vault and stole five samples of it, labeled 161-165AC. Six months ago, we had gone against an assassin firm, Diatheke, to get one of the samples back. They’d used it to turn humans into magic-wielding monsters. We’d managed to recover sample 164AC and its derivatives, and destroyed Diatheke along with Benedict De Lacy, the assassin who ran it, in the process. Four other samples were still missing.
How was that connected to the Pit? I looked at Linus.
Linus pondered Alessandro, his eyes calculating. He was trying to decide how much Alessandro knew and how difficult it would be to dispose of him, if things came to that.
“Felix Morton ran into me at the last Assembly session,” Linus said finally. “Quite literally. He collided with me in the elevator, apologized, then told me that ‘it’s been ages since we last talked.’ I found it curious, because we’d never spoken. Also because he passed me this envelope.”
Linus took out a white envelope from his desk drawer and slid it toward me across the desk.
I picked it up. A plain unmarked envelope, generic, the kind you can buy in any office store. It was unsealed. I opened it and pulled out a photograph. A shot of the swamp, probably the Pit, taken early in the morning or late in the evening. The photographer must have been aiming at the derelict building on the other side of the bog—it was in focus—and if I hadn’t looked closely, I would have missed it. Two spinning rings, half-submerged and churning water about ten feet from the shore, with a blue light glowing under the surface.
The hair on the back of my neck rose.
I flipped the photograph. On the back in a hurried cursive someone had written “Jane Saurage, my appraiser, disappeared in the Pit 07/09. This was the last image uploaded to her cloud. I need to speak with you ASAP.”
Alessandro held out his hand for the envelope.
I put the picture on the desk instead and tapped the spinning rings. “One of these controlled the creatures that attacked us.”
“I now have one in my basement.” Linus frowned. “And I have no idea how it was made. It’s biomechanical in nature, but on a level I don’t understand. I have an expert coming, but it may take some time.”
Alessandro rose, picked up the envelope and the photograph, and sat back in his chair.
Linus continued. “Four hours after he handed this to me, Felix was murdered in the Pit. His body wasn’t found until the next morning. Do you remember Agent Wahl?”
“Yes.” I tried to keep a groan from my voice and failed.
Agent Wahl had spearheaded an investigation into the trafficking of the magic-warped—people so transformed by magic, they were no longer human. Some of them had come from the Diatheke’s assassin lab which Linus, Alessandro, and our family had destroyed. I had taken that case away from Agent Wahl at Linus’ direction and his wail of outrage could have been heard all the way in Amarillo. He made it plain that he didn’t respect me, didn’t recognize my authority, and generally felt that a two-year-old could have done a much better job in my place. He had to cooperate with me, but he spent the entire time convinced that I would screw everything up beyond all hope, so he’d bugged my car, tried to clone my phone, and had me tailed in case I failed and he would have to ride in on a white steed, or possibly a black SUV, to save the day.
“He came to see me today,” Linus said.
“Has his leg healed?”
“Yes, although he’s still using the cane. Apparently, Felix contacted him about some workers disappearing and mentioned 162AC.”
Shit.
“Agent Wahl, in a rare fit of common sense, gave your name, and mine, to Felix. He left town on assignment shortly after and didn’t return until this morning. He didn’t know if Felix got ahold of me, but once he learned about the funeral, he wanted to be sure.”
And of course, Wahl would have recognized the formula. When we pulled the corpses of the magic-warped people out of a mass grave, they had been tattooed with 164AC followed by the number of the serum variant. I didn’t know what Linus told him, but at some point, Agent Wahl stopped asking inconvenient questions.
