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"All right," she said. "Tell me everything."
Chapter Twenty-four
"This is not how diplomacy is done," Anastasia said as we approached the Château Raith.
"You're in America now," I said. "Our idea of diplomacy is showing up with a gun in one hand and a sandwich in the other and asking which you'd prefer."
Anastasia's mouth curved up at one corner. "You brought a sandwich?"
"Who do I look like, Kissinger?"
I'd been to Château Raith before, but it had always been at night, or at least twilight. It was an enormous estate most of an hour away from Chicago proper, a holding of House Raith, the current ruling house of the White Court. The Château itself was surrounded by at least half a mile of old-growth forest that had been converted to an idyllic, even gardenlike, state, like you sometimes see on centuries-old European properties. Huge trees and smooth grass beneath them dominated, with the occasional, suspiciously symmetrical outgrowth of flowering plants, often located in the center of golden shafts of sunlight that came down through the green-shadowed trees at regular intervals.
The grounds were surrounded by a high fence, topped with razor wire that couldn't be readily seen from the outside. The fence was electrically charged, too, and the latest surveillance cameras-seemingly little more than glass beads with wires running out of them-monitored every inch of the exterior.
At night, it made for one extremely creepy piece of property. On a bright summer afternoon, it just looked... pretty. Very, very wealthy and very, very pretty. Like the Raiths themselves, the grounds were only scary when seen at the right time.
A polite security guard with the general bearing of ex-military had watched us get out of a cab, called ahead, and let us in with hardly a pause. We'd walked past the gate and up the drive through Little Sherwood until we reached the Château proper.
"How good are her people?" Anastasia asked.
"I'm sure you've read the file."
"Yes," she said, as we started up the steps. "But I'd prefer your personal assessment."
"Since Lara's taken over the hiring," I said, "they've improved significantly. I don't think they're fed upon to keep them under control anymore."
"And you base that assessment on what?"
I shrugged. "The before and after. The last batch of hired muscle was... just out of touch. Willing to die at a moment's notice, but not exactly the sharpest tacks in the box. Pretty and vacant. And pretty vacant." I gestured back at the entrance. "That guy back there had a newspaper nearby. And he was eating lunch when we showed up. Before, they just stood around like mannequins with muscle. I'm betting that most of them are ex-military. The hard-core kind, not the get-my-college-funded kind."
"Officially," she said, as we reached the top of the steps, "they remain untested."
"Or maybe Lara's just smart enough not to show them off until it's necessary to use them," I said.
"Officially," Anastasia said dryly, "she remains untested."
"You didn't see her killing super ghouls with a couple of knives the way I did during the White Court coup," I said. I rapped on the door with my staff and adjusted the hang of my grey cloak. "I know my word isn't exactly respected among the old guard Wardens, but take it from me. Lara Raith is one smart and scary bitch."
Anastasia shook her head with a faint smile. "And yet you're here to hold a gun to her head."
"I'm hoping that if we apply some pressure, we'll get something out of her," I said. "I'm low on options. And I don't have time to be anything but direct."
"Well," she said, "at least you're playing to your strengths."
A square-jawed, flat-topped man in his thirties opened the door. He was wearing a casual beige sports suit accessorized by a gun in a shoulder holster and what was probably a Kevlar vest beneath his white tee. If that wasn't enough, he had some kind of dangerous-looking little machine gun hanging from a nylon strap over one shoulder.
"Sir," he said with a polite nod. "Ma'am. May I take your cloaks?"
"Thank you," Anastasia said. "But they're part of the uniform. If you could convey us directly to Ms. Raith, that would be most helpful."
The security man nodded his head. "Before you accept the hospitality of the house, I would ask you both to give me your personal word that you are here in good faith and will offer no violence while you are a guest."
Anastasia opened her mouth, as if she intended to readily agree, but I stepped slightly in front of her and said, "Hell, no."
The security man narrowed his eyes and looked a little less relaxed. "Excuse me?"
"Go tell Lara that whether or not we rip this house to splinters and broken glass is still up for debate," I said. "Tell her there's already blood on the floor, and I think some of it is on her hands. Tell her if she wants a chance to clear the air, she talks to me. Tell her if she doesn't that it is answer enough, and that she accepts the consequences."
The guard stared at me for several seconds. Then he said, "You've got a real high opinion of yourself. Do you know what's around you? Do you have any idea where you're standing?"
"Yeah," I said. "Ground zero."
More silence stretched, and he blinked before I did. "I'll tell her. Wait here, please."
I nodded to him, and he walked deeper into the house.
"Ground zero?" Anastasia muttered out of the corner of her mouth. "A trifle melodramatic, don't you think?"
I answered her in a similar fashion. "I was going to go with 'three feet from where they'll find your body,' but I figured that would have made it too personal. He's just doing his job."
She shook her head. "Is there some reason this can't be a civil visit?"
"Lara's at her most dangerous when everyone's being civil," I said. "She knows it. I don't want her feeling comfortable. It'll be easier to get answers out of her if she's worried about all hell breaking loose."
"It might also be easier to question her if we aren't worried about it," Anastasia pointed out. "She does hold the advantage here. One notes that there is fairly fresh plaster on the walls on either side of us, for instance."
I checked. She was right. "So?"
"So, if I was the one preparing to defend this place, I think I might line the walls with antipersonnel mines wired to a simple charge and cover them in plaster until I needed them to remove a threat too dangerous to engage directly."
