“Who is it?” I wonder.
“Hell if I know.” He shrugs, looking frustrated. “A person I’d never met before. Some skinny young guy with long hair who wears a lot of black either to conceal himself or as a fashion statement.”
This brought Marlow to Concordia. He wasn’t simply running from the authorities, he’s been tracking the real killer. And the real criminal is somewhere in Iron territory, hiding among the wolves. Not a terrible hiding spot. It’s secure, at least. Is someone sheltering him? Probably. How else would he avoid detection? How will we? Snooping around in neighborhoods or the main square where wolves live and work every day, that’s totally different than hiding out on the edges of the territory.
"To find the real killer, we need to get into the heart of the Iron Pack."
"Yeah," he agrees, sounding as excited by the prospect as I feel.
"The very spot where you're a wanted fugitive."
"Yeah."
"Okay," I say. It sucks but at least I know what we're dealing with now.
Marlow tilts his head. "Just like that?"
"No. No idea how we’ll pull it off. But at least we know what we need to do and can come up with something together. We even know what to do next.”
Marlow nods. “Whatever we do, we can’t do it here. We need to get into Concordia.”
Yep. Investigating a pack of werewolves with a wanted fugitive isn’t one of my many survival skills. Even the wolves with the weakest noses could find the demon if he were right in the middle of their den. The Cloak of Cloaking won't do the trick by itself.
We'll need magical help, which means sneaking past the wolves and slipping into Concordia. It’s not going to happen tonight, but we can start putting together a plan.
~
Wynn
The rest of dinner passes quietly. I’m still thinking over everything Marlow told me. Looking for something he missed, something that can help us now.
“What about your client? The one you were working for when this started. Could they have set you up?”
“Nah,” he answers without stopping to think it over. “Just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“Are you sure?” In his line of work, with his clients... Seems more than plausible to me.
“I’m sure.” Marlow looks pained as he explains. “She’s not even twenty. Came to me because this asshole elf won’t leave her alone. But he’s some hotshot attorney who lives in the city and she’s a goblin so the cops aren’t taking her seriously.”
“That was the job?” I ask. Whatever I expected, it wasn’t that.
He nods tightly, staring down at his plate.
“When you told me about being a private detective, you made it sound like you were extorting people and selling their secrets to the highest bidder.”
“My spies bring back all kinds of information,” he says slowly. “Information I’m not ashamed to use for profit. But a large part of my job… Brighton’s the closest supernatural authority for those in the surrounding human cities. They don’t always take calls from my kind of clients, so I…”
That’s all he can manage before he clams up and presses his lips together like admitting to being a decent person is causing him physical harm.
“You help people that the authorities ignore?” I fill in. “Out of the goodness of your heart?”
He snaps his eyes to mine, scandalized. “No! I charge!” Marlow hangs his head a moment later, ears red. “Most of the time I charge, assuming they can pay.”
“So blackmailing people and selling secrets...” He won’t look at me and the picture becomes clearer. “Let me guess. If your creatures discover secrets about a terrible person who hurts others, you don’t have a problem profiting, but you don’t use the info your spies find about decent people.”
He gives me a sorrowful look. “You make me sound almost honorable, Wynn Blackwood. It’s disgusting.”
“It sounds like you are almost honorable, Marlow Maddox.”
