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“You’re going to be talking to him in a minute,” I said, examining a pair of ebony lace-topped thigh-highs. There was a matching thong, too, but no bra because there’d never been one invented to work with that dress.
“That’s just it,” Ray whispered, his eyes on the closed bathroom door. “No, I’m not. As soon as you turn me over, he’s going to kill me.”
“Why would he want to do that? He needs you to tell him where the rune is.”
“He already knows where it is. He stole it after he killed Jókell.”
“Who?”
“The fey!”
“What fey?”
“The fey who brought the rune. And don’t say, ‘What rune?’ ”
Now I was the one glancing at the door. It was closed, and I’d slammed the one to the living room coming back in, but two doors and the width of a substantial suite didn’t mean much with vampire hearing. Ray started to say something else, but I shushed him, wrapped another towel around myself and hauled him out the window.
An elaborate wrought-iron fire escape overlooked a small alley between buildings. The wind had picked up enough to ruffle the tops of a couple ornamental trees below, and some traffic still flowed along Fifth Avenue. It should be enough to mask a low-voiced conversation.
I hoped.
I shut the window behind me and unzipped the top of the duffel. Anxious blue eyes swiveled up to me. “You want to start making some sense here, Ray?”
“It’s like this. Jókell was Blarestri—that’s one of the three main houses of the Light Fey.”
“I know what it is.”
“Yeah, well, not a lot of people do. Anyway, he was in what I guess you’d call their military, and he regularly pulled a shift guarding one of the main portals into our world.”
“Let me guess. He sometimes let a little something slip through.”
“A lot of somethings. We had a good thing going. He found people on his end who had stuff they’d rather not pay the duty on, and I took care of selling it on this side. Anyway, about a week ago, he calls and tells me he’s got a lead on something special. He told me to arrange a private sale, even told me who to contact—and that was some list! It made me nervous, because I don’t usually handle the big stuff, and these were not people I wanted to piss off. But the boss said to go ahead with it.”
“And something went wrong.”
“Everything! For starters, he wouldn’t bring me the rune until we’d already made the sale. I told him it didn’t work like that, but he said it did this time or no deal. I don’t like selling something I don’t got on hand, but the boss said to do it. And it went okay. He got the reserve he’d wanted and then some, and after the auction, I sent him a message and he said he’d be here in a couple hours.”
“But he didn’t show?”
“No, he came through the portal on schedule, but that’s the last thing that went right!”
“And this portal would be where?”
“At the club. It’s upstairs, in the manager’s old office—”
“At the—Are you crazy? You distribute from there! Everybody knows that!”
“Which is why it was perfect.” The little shit grinned at me. “You idiots were running around, checking my apartment—oh, yeah, I knew about that—and my warehouse and that tea shop I own, but nobody ever thought to look in the most obvious spot.”
“Because it’s stupid!”
“Stupid like a fox,” he said, and then frowned. “No, wait—”
“What. Happened?”
“Oh, yeah. Well, I’d called in a luduan to authenticate the piece before payment was made, and he was late. And I get nervous around those things.”
