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He’d lost one senatorial protector, and now he wanted another, and Ray had been shopping me around like a side of beef.
I’d have had something to say about that, but Olga’s ears had perked up at the first mention of smugglers, and she’d started looking the place up on her phone. I hadn’t gotten interested until she pulled up a photo of the flirty twosome up there, in all their neon glory. Who, to a dazed, frightened, and confused little kid, might have looked like a couple of—
“Fish,” Olga said, staring at them.
“Yeah.”
At least, that was her theory. One she’d acquired after spending all day on the phone with everyone on her late husband’s contact list, in the not-entirely-legal underworld where he’d once worked, and coming up with zilch. Nobody knew what “fish, tracks, door” meant, and nobody cared.
Except for Olga, who’d decided that, on what he believed to be his deathbed, the troll kid had wanted to tell someone what he’d seen. Like maybe where he’d been brought in from Faerie? Or where his fellow slaves were being bought and sold?
Of course, he could have just been raving, and we were wasting our time. But waiting for him to wake up and confirm the theory was not going to work for Olga. I’d come out of my room after changing clothes to see her through the open door to the boys’ room, staring down at the little troll, flanked by the fey Caedmon had left there to guard him.
She hadn’t said anything, but she hadn’t had to. Her lips had been tight, and her eyes wet. She was wondering if her nephew had ended up the same way.
And one way or another, she was determined to find out.
So here we were. Being given a wide berth by t
he beautiful people, I noticed. Which was strange because Olga and the boys were under glamouries.
Sort of.
I turned to see a knot of tough-looking dudes standing on the sidewalk, wearing white shirts, dark trousers, and bandoliers of Bibles, because they were having a hard time figuring out how to conceal all the extra weapons.
It looked like the boys had learned a thing or two from last time, and stocked up. I eyed a straining backpack with grenade-shaped bulges, a couple guitars—one with a scope on it—and a bike that one of the guys had tucked under his arm and which could be anything, anything at all. Except a bicycle, presumably.
“Okay. We’re absolutely, positively clear on the no-snacking-on-the-witnesses thing, right?” I said.
Olga looked offended.
“Okay. No snacking until after I’ve questioned them.”
She nodded. Apparently, this was an acceptable compromise. I waited while she explained things to the posse so they’d actually listen. As a member of the Senate’s task force on smuggling, I was technically in charge of this little squad, but I was pretty sure I was the only one who thought so.
Except for the second valet, who was standing off to the side, and did not appear enraptured with our remaining ride.
“You, uh, you’re gonna have to move that,” he told me, staring at the deep ridges in the road that had been left by the truck, part of which appeared to have been dragging the ground. Probably the part that was now on fire. Or maybe that was just the oil leaking out of the smoking engine and filling the ridges.
“Seriously,” he said, getting in front of the group as they started to move away from the curb. “I’m gonna need you to—”
He cut off when a dozen “Bibles” were suddenly thrust in his face.
He blinked. “What are you guys? Gideons?”
And then a third valet came running over, dressed like the other two except for a maroon sports coat that he was stuffing full of crisp new hundred-dollar bills. “Get in the truck,” he told the other guy.
“That truck?” Valet Number Two looked at him like he might be crazy. “Are you high?”
“No, but you’re going to be off the schedule for a week if you don’t get your ass in gear.”
“I’m not getting in there! It’s a fire hazard!”
“That was not a request.”
“Look at it! It’s not even a real thing. It’s like . . . it’s like . . .”
“Frankentruck?” I offered.
