Page 19 of Tusks And Conditions

"Before you go where?"

"To find Blacktide before he finds me."

"No." The word exits my mouth before my brain approves it, which is a thing that has been happening with alarming frequency since this man entered my life. "Absolutely not. You are not walking into a crime lord's territory alone with nothing but a vague plan and a death wish."

"I don't have a death wish."

"You have a napkin that says 'drove a lot' where your mileage log should be. You absolutely have a death wish."

He blinks. His eyes tighten, something complicated and raw that he buries almost immediately beneath that flat, professional calm, but I see it. I see it because I have been studying his face for days now, cataloging his micro-expressions the way I catalog financial anomalies, and I have become fluent in the silent language of Jagger Ironjaw, and what I just saw was surprise. Genuine, unguarded surprise that someone is arguing with him about his own survival.

I set the death warrant down on the kitchen island. I smooth it flat with both hands, because touching something terrible is easier when you can flatten the creases and make it organized. Then I walk to the living room, lift my laptop from the coffee table, and carry it back to the island and open it.

"What are you doing?" His arms stay at his sides, his huge frame motionless except for the steady pulse of his runes.

"My job." I pull up the forensic accounting database I'm still licensed to access through my firm's VPN, the one with the cross-referenced financial tracking tools and the supernatural entity search function that cost the company forty thousand dollars and that nobody else in the office knows how to use properly. "Korvan Blacktide. Eastern docks. Smuggling and black market enchantments. If he's running operations at that scale, he has a money trail. Everyone has a money trail. Even magical crime lords have to pay for things. Warehouse leases, shipping manifests, utility bills. The IRS doesn't care if you're trafficking hexed narcotics. They care if you're reporting the income."

"Sabine, you don't need to..."

"Shell companies." I'm already typing. The database loads, and I enter the name, and the screen fills with data, and my fingers move across the keyboard with the speed and precision of someone who has spent over a decade turning chaos into columns. "He'll be running his operations through shell companies. Layered LLCs. Probably registered in multiple supernatural jurisdictions to exploit the regulatory gaps between human and non-human tax law. The enchantment trade alone would require specialized equipment storage, which means commercial real estate, which means lease agreements, which means public records."

Jagger gapes at me. His mouth is slightly open. One of his tusks catches the light.

"There." I spin the laptop so he can see the screen. "Three LLCs registered to a holding company called Varek Maritime Solutions. Filed under the Non-Human Commercial Activities code. The registered agent is a goblin named Dretch Finwhistle who also appears as the signatory on seventeen other shell entities, all of which trace back to a single tax identification number that was issued six years ago to..." I click twice more. "Korvan Blacktide. And Varek Maritime Solutions currently holds the lease on four commercial properties, three of which are in the eastern dock district, but the fourth." I tap the screen. "The fourth is a warehouse at 1847 Greywater Lane. Industrial zone. Off the main grid. And the utility payments on that property are triple what the other three generate combined, which means whatever he's running out of that location requires significantly more power, which means it's either a manufacturing center for enchanted product or it's his base of operations, and either way, it's the address you need."

The silence in the apartment is absolute. Even the Snarbo has stopped whimpering and is staring at me with all eyes wide and unblinking. Jagger looks at the screen. Then he looks at me. Then he looks at the screen again, and when he looks back at me, his expression has changed entirely. The flat professional calm is gone. In its place is something I have never seen on his face before. Something open, unguarded, almost stricken in its intensity, and if I had to name it, if someone put a gun to my head and told me to label the emotion currently written across the face of this enormous, terrifying, beautiful Orc, I would say it looks like awe.

"You did that in four minutes."

"Three minutes and forty seconds." I close the laptop halfway. "I'm very good at my job."

He doesn't move. He stands there, filling up my kitchen with his impossible size, his runes still illuminated but softer now, shifting from that angry red to something closer to deep gold, and his eyes are fixed on my face with an intensity that makes my lungs forget their primary function. Then he reaches out and gently, so gently, closes the laptop the rest of the way.

"1847 Greywater Lane. Thank you. Stay here."

"I just told you I'm coming with you."

"No. You're not."

"Jagger."

"Sabine." He leans down, and his face is suddenly very close to mine, and I can see every detail of the runic tattoos that trace along his jaw and up across his cheekbone, delicate lines that glow warm amber in the dim kitchen light, and his breath smells like green tea because I got him hooked on it last week, and his eyes are a deep, dark gold that is, quite frankly, unfair. "You are the most terrifyingly competent person I have ever met. You just dismantled a crime lord's entire financial infrastructure with a laptop and a VPN in less time than it takes me to lace my boots. But where I'm going is not a spreadsheet. It's not a database. People will try to kill me, and I will let them try, and I will not let them succeed. But I can't do that if I'm worried about you."

"I can..."

"You can do anything. I know that." His hand comes up, and his fingers, enormous and rough and impossibly gentle, brush a strand of hair away from my face, and the touch sends a jolt through my entire nervous system that has no business being as devastating as it is. "But not this. Not tonight. Stay here. Stay safe. Let me handle the part that involves violence, and when I come back, you can handle the part that involves making sure he goes to prison for tax fraud, which honestly might be worse."

He straightens. He moves through the apartment with a speed and efficiency that transforms the space around him, pulling weapons from the duffel bag in the corner, strapping blades to his forearms over the gleaming runes, checking a short, brutal-looking sword with his thumb. He goes to each window and presses his palm against the glass, and the runes on his hands flare bright white, and I feel something settle over the apartment like a heavy blanket, a pressure in the air that makes my ears pop and the Snarbo sneeze.

"Ward glyphs." He pulls on his leather jacket. "Nothing gets in. Nothing. Not even a DMI inspector."

"Jagger, please don't do this alone."

He stops at the door. His hand is on the knob, and his back is to me, and I can see the outline of every weapon strapped to his body beneath the leather, and the back of his neck is glowing so bright they cast shadows on the wall.

"Lock the door behind me."

He steps into the hallway. The door closes. And then I hear it. Something shoved against the doorknob, like a chair. From the outside. And finally, the low, resonant hum of an outward-facing ward glyph being pressed into the door. The magic was designed to keep the city out, but it was the heavy, physical object that trapped me inside my own beige, perfectly organized, suddenly suffocating apartment.