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“Give me one good reason why I should help you.”
“I’ll pay triple.”
I smiled and ate omelet. “That’s a good reason.”
Chapter Twenty-one
“I can’t believe I waxed for this,” I said, eight hours later. And picked a banana peel out of my hair.
Marlowe didn’t even bother to tell me to shut up, which wasn’t a great sign. Not that I thought he was in any real danger. Slava’s guys knew the penalty for killing a senator, and they weren’t going to risk it, orders or no. But he was looking a little under the weather.
I, on the other hand, didn’t have a scratch on me, unless you counted the ladder in my hose. I guess they’d assumed I was just his evening snack pack or something. Because they hadn’t even bothered to rough me up before they threw us both in the Dumpster.
Which was kind of where they lost me.
Slava had been on Marlowe’s radar long before he bought a yacht from the wrong guy. He was infamous for providing a smorgasbord of vice to the local paranormal community, including running one of the biggest prostitution rings in Manhattan. And for operating a notorious sex club, appropriately named the Aerie, in the penthouse above.
Of course, that wasn’t what had annoyed the Senate. They weren’t in the habit of policing vice and believed that what two adults did privately—or not so privately, in the right venue—was up to them. Unless said adults weren’t exactly human, weren’t exactly here legally, and weren’t exactly willing.
Slava was rumored to have reversed the usual fey-enslaving-humans thing to provide unusual delights to his more jaded—and well-heeled—customers. Which definitely was illegal, only nobody had ever been able to pin anything on him. Which was the part I didn’t get. Why did a guy who’d stared down both the Senate and the Circle for decades suddenly go nuts when Marlowe showed up to ask a few questions? Sure, a visit from the chief spy didn’t make anybody happy, especially somebody who was guilty as hell. But if half the rumors were true, Slava had been living that way for years. Why panic now?
I dug coffee grounds out of my décolletage and slid another glance Marlowe’s way. But he didn’t look like he wanted to discuss it. He was just sitting there, like the Buddha of Trash, his burgundy velvet evening coat splattered with blood and mustard, the latter from somebody’s day-old Reuben, by the smell. I wrinkled my nose and tossed one of the five-inch black satin torture devices he’d provided over the side of the Dumpster.
It bounced off the curb and landed in a puddle of something nasty.
Of course it did.
I sighed and heaved myself out after it. That was harder than it sounds, thanks to the Ace bandage in dress form that constituted Marlowe’s idea of sexy. But at least the color was nice. Crimson wasn’t my usual thing, but it covered a multitude of sins, not to mention ketchup.
Although I couldn’t help but notice that I smelled a little…unusual.
Chanel No. 5 obviously wasn’t meant for the trenches.
I brushed myself down, rescued the shoe, and looked up to find the Buddha making faces at the sky. I couldn’t see him that well—lower Manhattan is fairly well lit at night, but we were in the shadow of a building. But he looked like he was having a stroke.
Or it would have, if he’d been human. Since he was a vampire, I assumed he was having a conversation with some of his boys, doing the telepathic equivalent of tearing them a new one. So it was no real shock when less than a minute later a bunch of little cat feet came running down the sidewalk, and resolved themselves into a group of silent, black-suited vamps.
One of them made the mistake of trying to help the boss out of the Dumpster, only to have a fist knotted in his collar. “Well?” Marlowe snarled.
“No portal activity, my lord. If Slava has one on the premises, it is not active at present.”
“Then he doesn’t have one.” Marlowe jumped out and landed on the street beside me.
Someone else must have said something, because he responded. But he was the only one who bothered to articulate for the little dhampir. So I got only his side of the conversation as he stripped down, the mustard-covered shirt following the Reubenized coat back into the Dumpster.
“Of course I’m bloody sure! He knows we’ll be coming for him. If he had an easy out, he’d use it!…Damn it, I said no! A mass stampede would be the perfect diversion. We’re not going to give him that.…I want this building sealed, do you understand? Every door, every window, every crack. We have him, and we’re damned well going to keep him!”
Marlowe had stripped replacement garments off the vamp closest to his size and threw them on while he looked me over. “I’m going back in. Are you up for it?”
“We just got kicked out.”
“That’s not what I asked,” he snapped, shoving studs through the holes in his shirt cuffs.
“But relevant. We never made it past the lobby. And now he’s probably got people watching the exits, too. How do you expect—”
I stopped, because a fire engine chose that moment to sling around a corner. That wouldn’t have been all that unusual, except that its lights were flashing, its siren was blaring, and it was skidding on what looked like only half its wheels. And then it straightened up and came barreling down the street. And onto the sidewalk. And through the double doors of the swanky building Slava called home in a burst of light and sound and shattering glass.
Which was either the biggest coincidence ever or Marlowe’s attempt at a distraction.
