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She smiled slightly. “You may also take whatever you find here. Jonathan included. He has been helping my husband to create . . . things . . . to use against you in the war. But he would not say where they are. I believe he wishes to use them to bargain for his life.
“Or what is left of it.”
She was handed a piece of paper and a quill by one of her fey, and she scribbled on it. She handed it to me, and it appeared to be a map. “I would give you safe passage,” she added, “but coming from me, it would likely do you more harm than good.”
I stared at the paper blankly, and then back up at her. “Why are you doing this? You fought against us. You tried to kill us—”
“I did a great many things,” she agreed. “Thinking it would all be shown to have been right in the end. I was wrong. And now a great jewel of Faerie is dead, at my hand, while I consorted with a monster. I cannot bring her back—”
She cut off, and for a moment, the beautiful, serene mask fell, and I saw another face beneath it. One that looked more like a little girl’s: confused, sorrowful, in agony. And then determined, too, as she regained control.
“I cannot bring her back,” she repeated. “I would give my life to do it, if it would suffice, but it will not. She is gone, and I . . . have to find a way to atone for that.” She had been staring at the floor, but now she looked at me suddenly. “Do you think there is such a thing? A way back?”
“I . . . don’t know.”
“No more do I. But I will find out.”
And then she was gone.
* * *
Efridis didn’t disappear, but she may as well have done. She and her fey could move like lightning when they chose, scooping up their misbegotten brothers and disappearing through a portal. Their speed said that they’d about had enough of Hong Kong. Frankly, so had I, but I had a mess to clean up.
And what a mess it was.
“So Aeslinn was behind the new triad that was leeching all the magic,” I said to Zheng, who had only understood about half of what we’d been told.
“Yeah,” he paused to kick one of the dead bodies. “Only that Efridis bitch butchered the lot of them before we could ask any questions, so how are we supposed to find the army? We don’t even know what the hell it looks like!”
“They’re still sort of warm,” one so his vamps said, kneeling by one of the corpses. “If we had a bokor—”
“Do you see any bokors around here?” Zheng snapped. He was in a temper, and I didn’t blame him. The consul was going to thank him very prettily for finding out all about Eternity—which I assumed was Jonathan’s idea of a joke, since that was what he had been after—but in her very next breath, she was going to inquire about this magical army. And when he couldn’t tell her . . .
Yeah.
“Maybe it’s all the crazy shit we’ve been fighting,” Jason said. “That stuff looked like an army to me.”
“Too random,” Tomas said. “The fey like organized, disciplined troops. The stuff we’ve been seeing . . .” he shook his head. “Some of that might have been discards, things Jonathan couldn’t use and released to keep people scared and away from here. But it’s not an army.”
“How do you know so much about Faerie?” I asked.
He shrugged. “That’s where I went, to escape your husband.” He hesitated, and then blurted out. “Are you really married?”
“Yes, why?”
“You don’t bear his mark.”
I looked at him levelly. “I bit him.”
Tomas just stared at me for a moment, and then he laughed. “Okay, don’t tell me. Who knew a dhampir would have a sense of humor?”
“Yeah, who knew.” I handed him my card.
“What’s this?”
“I might have a job for you, and your team, if you want it.”
He tilted his head. “What kind of a job?”
