Chapter 9
Chapter
Nine
Mathi’s eyebrows rose. “The woman spying on your aunt for the Looisearch?”
“Yes. The last I’d heard, she was still at my aunt’s.” Mainly because I’d used my magic on her and had then totally forgotten about her.
“She couldn’t have been part of the red knife restrictions, though, because she’s not a pixie.”
“No, but I’d ordered her not to leave a defined area of my aunt’s house. Given the IIT haven’t contacted me to release her, she should still be there.”
“Unless the IIT reached out to the pixie council to undo your orders.”
I wrinkled my nose. “Possible, but I wouldn’t think they’d consider Stace a big enough threat to risk the danger of undoing my control over her.”
“Then how did she get here?”
“I have no fucking idea.”
He stopped recording and handed the phone back to me. “If death can break the red knife restrictions, could it also break another pixie’s orders?”
I shrugged and released her shoulder. Her body sluggishly resumed its original position, a stomach-churning sight that was oddly worse than the smell itself.
“Given she’s here,” he continued, “doesn’t it all but confirm that your aunt found a way to escape the red knife restrictions?”
“Just because Stace escaped doesn’t mean my aunt did.”
“You no more believe that than I do.”
“The only way to escape the red knife is death. If you’re dead, you’re dead; there’s no cheating it, it’s final.” It was almost stubbornly said. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, despite my instincts agreeing with said evidence, there was a part deep within that really did not want to believe my aunt was behind the attacks. That she really wasn’t on a quest for vengeance against all those who did Vincentia wrong.
“That would depend on the definition of final, would it not?” Mathi replied. “Perhaps once upon a time there was no cheating it, but these days, there are dozens of people who technically die on operating tables, at home, or in the middle of some sort of activity, and a good ninety percent of them are successfully revived. The success rate when elven healers are used is even higher.”
“Yeah, but something like that would take a bit of organizing, and there just wasn’t enough time between her being handed the red knife and her disappearance. Besides, she couldn’t receive any visits without permission from the pixie council—with the exception of those supplying vital goods or services.”
“Medical services would come under the latter, and if I remember correctly, they never did find her body, did they?”
“No, but there was evidence of a fight and plenty of blood.”
“All of which can be staged easily enough—believe me on that.” He crossed his arms and stared down at Stace. “Did they test the blood and any DNA found at the scene to see if it was hers?”
“I would presume so.” I thrust a hand through my hair. “If my aunt is alive, then why hasn’t she come after me? She blames me for Vincentia’s death, even if she never came out and said it.”
“Perhaps she saves the juiciest morsel for last.”
I cast him an annoyed look. “I’m being serious.”
“So am I. I would also remind you of the ghul’s comment—revenge is a dish best served cold. I do not think it a coincidence she said that to both you and the other pixie.”
“If that other pixie was my aunt, she’s paid a heavy price for her escape from the red knife.”
“Undoing powerful magic often does exact a high toll.” He shone his light onto the plinth beyond Stace. The words etching the stone were clearer in person than they had been in the dream. “That looks like old Brythonic, or old Brittonic, as it’s also often called.”
“And that is?” I asked.
“It’s commonly acknowledged as the oldest human language in Britain, and generally used by the Celtic people known as the Britons. Somewhere in the sixth century it split into what we now know as Welsh, Cumbric, Cornish, and Breton.”
“Can you read it?”
He glanced at me, amusement evident. “I am not that old.”
“Yet. And you didn’t answer the question.”
“I know enough Welsh and Gaelic to guess, but it’ll be by no means perfect.”
“We can take a photo and get perfect later.”
He nodded and studied the inscription for several minutes. “Okay, the first line says something about what was once... gifted... is now... ”
He stopped, frowning.
“Cursed?” I suggested.
“Possibly. There’s a few letters I don’t recognize.” He frowned. “ Those who reunite and raise in... hatred... not love will end entombed . The third line says something about joining the queen in endless sleep within the palace that never melts.”
“Borrhás apparently gave the horn as a lover’s gift to a queen who wanted to rain winter down on her enemies,” I said. “When she won the battle, she forsook Borrhás, and he in turn locked her in an icy sleep from which she will not wake until the earth itself no longer exists.”
“Which is why you never double-cross an old god. They get nasty.”
I dragged out my phone and took several shots of the inscription and the empty cradle on top, then swung the light around to see if there was anything else here. In one corner, almost invisible against the shadows that hunkered there, was a somewhat grimy-looking brown backpack.
Mathi walked over, picked it up, then opened it. “Purse, phone, keys, that sort of stuff from the look of it.” He paused and pulled out a small, almost empty vial of brown liquid. “There’s also this. The label says it’s Dearil.”
I googled it. “Apparently, it’s produced by distilling several psychoactive plants. When a minor amount is applied to the skin, it gives a long-term high without long-term effects. When injected, or large amounts are applied, it initially has a hallucinatory effect, but within twenty-four hours will shut down all bodily systems and kill.”
“Perhaps that’s how the two escaped,” he said. “They arranged medical help to be on hand, took enough of this stuff to die and break the magic, and then left after staging a fight.”
“If medical help was called in, there’d be some record of it.”
He returned the vial and put the pack down. “Not if it was unregistered medical, brought in out-of-hours and out of the sight of whoever was keeping a watch on the place.”
It made as much sense as anything else right now. “We should head back up top and ring Sgott. He can organize the local officers to come down and take over.”
“And also warn them not to detain us. We still have to check out Menlo, remember, and get back in time for our evening activities.”
“I daresay yours will be more pleasurable than mine, given mine is a stake-out.”
“Pleasure can still be had in a working environment.” He led the way back to the narrow stairs. “One just has to proceed a little more... cautiously.”
“Speaking from experience, are we?”
“I never mix business and pleasure in my office.”
“Which does not actually answer the question.”
He laughed. “I will not deny there have been occasions where mutual desires both contractually and physically were combined to the benefit of all.”
I rolled my eyes. “Only a light elf would describe hot monkey sex in such bland terms.”
Once we were out of the souterrain, I rang Sgott while Mathi contacted the owners to warn them their property was about to be invaded by the IIT. It took the local division half an hour to reach us, and it was another hour by the time they took our statements and photographed our footwear to account for our prints in the cavern. They were pleased we’d at least had the foresight to record our interference with the body, even if we both got a lecture about doing so. Once we were finally allowed to leave, we walked back to the car and jumped in. As Mathi did a U-turn, I punched the address into the GPS.
We stopped in Gort to grab hot drinks and a couple of pastries—the latter for me, not Mathi, who turned his nose up at the look of them—then continued on, arriving in Menlo just over an hour later. It couldn’t actually be described as a village, as it was little more than a collection of single-story, modern-looking bungalows with pretty gardens fronted by waist-height stone fences. The actual village—Menlough—lay a few klicks farther along the main road.
Alys Tew lived in the second on the left. Mathi stopped a few houses farther down. “How do you want to play this?”
“Harper said Alys had retired, so she’s probably elderly. It’s better if I talk to her alone.”
He nodded and “I’ll wait here, then, but leave your phone on and open so I can hear the conversation.”
“An old woman is not going to overwhelm me.”
“No, but she might well set a swarm of bees on you if you piss her off badly enough—and let’s face it, you do have a proclivity for doing that.”
I laughed, grabbed my phone, and called his. Once he’d picked it up, I locked the screen on mine so I didn’t accidentally hang up on him then tucked it into my pocket. Then I climbed out, walked back to Alys’s, and followed the path through a row of neatly trimmed roses to a set of stairs and a glassed-in entrance. I rang the bell to the right of the door then stepped back, listening to the building’s song. It was a newer house, so its music was greener than what I was used to back in Deva, but it nevertheless spoke of a building well cared for.
The inner door opened, revealing a small woman with golden skin, silver-shot green hair that was tucked into a neat bun on top of her head, and earth-brown eyes. She squinted up at me for several seconds, then said, in a somewhat frail voice that did not match the robustness of her body, “Do I know you?”
“No, ma’am. My name is Bethany Aodhán and?—”
“You’re Riayn’s niece?”
I raised my eyebrows. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Well, this is a surprise. She used to speak about you when she dropped in for a cup of tea.”
“Not fondly, I would imagine.”
Alys cackled. “Not always, I’ll grant you that. Would you like to come in for a cuppa? I take it you’re here to ask some questions?”
“Did Riayn warn you that I might be?”
“Not specifically.” She pressed a button near the door, and the glass door in front of me swung open. “Come along then.”
She turned and walked back inside without waiting for me, her movements sure and steady despite the quiver in her voice. I closed both doors behind me and followed her to the right, into the kitchen. She motioned me toward the table then grabbed the kettle and moved over to the sink to fill it. I tugged out the chair and sat down, feeling a little awkward because it, like the counters and stove, had been designed for someone her size not mine. Once she’d filled up the kettle and put it on, she pulled out a drawer to collect the teapot and a couple of cups and saucers.
“What is it you’re wishing to know?” she asked when she finally turned to face me.
Movement caught my eye, and after a moment, I realized it was a bee. In her hair. Several of them, in fact. Mathi’s comment was not far off the mark after all.
“When did you last see her?”
She pursed her lips. “It would depend on your definition of ‘see,’ wouldn’t it?”
“As in come here, share tea, and have a good old chat.”
“Ah, well, that would have been a good three or four months ago.” She placed the tray on the table then pulled out her chair. “I did see her in the street a few weeks before the knife, though, and let me tell you, she was furious with you.”
Given it would have been around the time Vincentia had made the unwise decision to work with the Looisearch and Rogan, that was no surprise. “Let me guess, she claimed I’d stolen Vincentia’s heritage?”
She raised an eyebrow, briefly disturbing the bee crawling through her fringe. “And did you?”
I smiled. “Technically, no. I simply stole back what they took from my mother.”
“Well, technicalities aside, I’ve never seen her so angry. You should watch your back, young woman, because that sort of anger can twist a mind.”
That sort of anger had twisted a mind. “And the time she came here—was it simply a social visit?”
She wavered a hand. “Mix of business and pleasure.”
“Can I ask what she wanted, then?”
She studied me for several long seconds, the bees in her hair buzzing around a little more energetically. “Why are you asking me all these things? Why not just ask your aunt? Surely the council will give her niece special dispensation.”
“No, they won’t, given Vincentia’s attacks on me are part of the reason she was given the red knife.” I motioned toward the teapot. “Shall I?”
When she nodded, I poured two cups, adding, “Besides that, there’d be no point, as she’s not there. She’s gone missing.”
Alys frowned. “How? The only way to escape the knife is death.”
“Yeah, I know. The IIT are looking into it.” I slid her cup across and poured milk into mine. “I take it there’s been no rumors floating about?”
“No, but then, it was pretty widely advertised that her place was off-limits except under certain circumstances.” She took a sip of her tea, her expression thoughtful. “As to your question, she was looking for storm witch recommendations, and came here because she knew I’d worked with a number over the years.”
“Did she say why?”
“Said they had a wealthy client who was looking for some sort of god’s horn for his collection.” She shrugged. “I told her no good would ever come from messing with godly artifacts, but I doubt she listened.”
Meaning she had known about Borrhás’s Horn, and well before the hoard, which it had supposedly been a part of, had gone missing. Then the old woman’s choice of words hit. “ They had a client?”
Her eyes gleamed. “You didn’t think Vincentia was the only hunter in that little unit, did you?”
“Well, yes.”
Alys cackled. “Your aunt saw, Vincentia hunted. They were a good team, from what Riayn said over the years.”
Meaning it hadn’t only been the codex that had aided Vincentia in her hunts, and I guess that made sense given the codex had never been blood-bonded to her.
I took a sip of tea. “I don’t suppose Riayn mentioned the client’s name?”
“No, but it could no doubt be found in that study of hers. She was meticulous when it came to her records.”
“The IIT likely took her computer when they were investigating her disappearance.”
“No doubt, but it won’t do them any good, because she never listed their private commissions on the computer. Riayn always declared she never trusted the things, and did things the old-fashioned way, as the gods intended. Of course, it helped that they didn’t have to pay tax on payments they didn’t declare.”
The latter certainly sounded like something my aunt would say, even if the former didn’t. But then, it wasn’t like I’d ever really known her all that well, and time did change people.
Time, bitterness, and greed.
“I might head over there and check it out, then.” Whether I actually could get onto the property, let alone into the house, would very much depend on whether the red knife restrictions remained. But it would be one sure way to uncover whether she’d faked her own death—if actually dying and then being brought back to life could be called faking it—or not.
“So, tell me,” Alys said, “do you still run that old tavern in Deva? Riayn was a little annoyed that your mother got the place in its entirety.”
“Given Riayn got just about every other investment in Gran’s will, I daresay that was her greed showing.”
Alys cackled in agreement, and the conversation moved on. I flicked off the phone about halfway through so as to not bore Mathi, and left an hour later with the promise to visit if I was ever up this way again.
“Well,” Mathi said as I climbed into the passenger seat. “I have spent more boring hours in my lifetime, but not by much.”
“Yeah, sorry about that.”
“No, you absolutely are not.”
I laughed. “Let’s head over to Aunt Riayn’s and see if we can get in.”
“Wouldn’t the IIT have a watch on the place?”
“From the little Sgott said, it was the local coppers who were tasked with keeping an eye on the place, and they were generally contacted before any approved visitation so they could be on hand to check IDs and ensure the person entering was who they’re supposed to be.”
“I thought the red knife’s magic had entry restrictions built in?”
“It does, but no magic is one hundred percent insurmountable—and if my aunt really is alive, then that’s certainly solid proof.”
I guided him across to my aunt’s, which was only a couple of minutes away. Mathi stopped the car yards short of the gate, and we both climbed out. I caught the wind and spun her off to the left and right, trying to get some sense of what might await within the property’s boundaries, but she came back with little more than the happy song of the leaves she had danced across.
“The wind says we’re alone out here,” I said.
“Makes sense, given crime scenes are very rarely preserved more than a couple of days.” He studied me for a second. “You okay?”
“For the moment, yes.”
“I am unconvinced by that, but I shall pretend otherwise. Are we driving in or walking?”
“I think we need to first discover if we can actually enter.”
“That’s a given, isn’t it? The IIT and crime scene bods got in here, remember?”
“They might well have been part of red knife inclusions—the IIT would no doubt have ensured they could interview her if the need arose in the future.”
“Sgott is nothing if not thorough,” he agreed, and motioned me to proceed.
I took a deep breath to calm the sudden rise of nerves and walked around the open car door toward the front gate. I paused just a fraction before stepping over its boundary and continuing on for several yards. There was no response. No thrust of magic forcing me back. No barrier slowing my feet and making it impossible to continue.
“Well, that’s definitely confirmation the red knife has been voided,” Mathi said. “To repeat, are we walking or driving in?”
I hesitated. “Let’s drive, just in case we need to leave in a hurry.”
He nodded, and we jumped back into the car and drove in. The driveway was long and narrow, winding its way through a forest of lovely old trees. They were a random mix of pine, rowan, and ash, and their chorus was so strong I could hear it over the engine.
Before too long, the house came into view. It was a long, stone-built gable-ended farmhouse centered in a small clearing, with chimneys either end, a whitewashed front, and a bold red door. There were two windows on either side of the door on the ground floor and five above. Wisteria covered the front of the building, and though it was bare now, it’d be postcard-perfect in spring.
My gaze went to the open-fronted shed sitting to the right of the house. There was no car sitting there now; had Stace taken it, my aunt, or someone else perhaps? Given the knife’s restrictions no longer held, it was perfectly possible the car had been stolen and the house ransacked. It wouldn’t be the first time we’d walked into that sort of mess.
Once Mathi had stopped the vehicle, I dug my knives out of my purse and strapped them on. The wind stirred forlornly around the building, and an odd sense of... not foulness, not darkness, but something in between filled the air. It might have been a result of the red knife, but something within doubted it. My gaze rose to the first floor; Stace’s window was open several inches, the curtains fluttering through the gap almost happily, the material’s ends wet and a little raggedy. That window had been open for quite a while, because those curtains had been pristine the last time I’d seen them.
I walked around the front of the car and up the steps to the front door. From within the building came the song of wood, but it was a forlorn, lonely note that held just a hint of darkness.
That darkness, I realized, came from the blood that still stained the kitchen floor.
The red knife remained where Lugh had rammed it, hilt deep in the doorstep.
I wasn’t getting any hint of magic, not from the red knife and not from the building overall. I nevertheless drew one of my knives and pressed its tip against the door handle. No light flickered down the fuller. Nothing ill clung to the metal.
I sheathed the knife, then carefully turned the handle, pushing the door all the way open without entering.
The hallway beyond was spacious and airy, with stairs that led up to the next floor directly ahead, and doors to the left and the right. Wainscoting lined the walls and ran up the stairs, the wood painted but its song so strong and vibrant despite the wisps of dark loneliness that ran through it. I glanced to the left, where the coat hooks were. The two coats that had hung there the first time I’d come here remained, though they were lightly covered in dust, the same as everything else. At first glance, at least, it didn’t appear as if anyone had been in here recently, let alone ransacked the place.
I glanced around to Mathi. “You check the living area to the left; I’ll head into the kitchen.”
Where she’d supposedly been murdered.
He nodded, and I moved forward cautiously. Other than the dark stains of blood and the fingerprint dust that just about covered every surface, little in the kitchen had changed. It was a typical farmhouse style and ran the full width of the building. An old green AGA on which there was a dark spray of what I suspected was blood sat in the brick fireplace directly opposite, and kitchen cabinets ran to the left and the right of this. More cabinets and an old butler sink lay to the left, against the rear wall. The long, well-used oak table sat in the middle of the room, surrounded by a cheerful variety of mismatched wooden chairs, three of them upturned, and one broken.
I carefully made my way around all the stains, then tugged my sleeve over my fingers and began opening the drawers. Alys might have said the details of the buyer would be in the study, but it always paid to be thorough.
Thorough in this case revealed absolutely nothing other than the usual shit that collected in kitchen drawers.
I returned to the hall and glanced in at Mathi. “Anything?”
He closed the bottom drawer of the exquisite Victorian cabinet he’d been inspecting. “Nothing more than old birthday and Christmas cards. Why do people collect that sort of stuff?”
“Sentimentality,” I said dryly. “And that is definitely something you would know nothing about. Let’s head upstairs.”
I led the way, running my fingers along the wainscoting like I had previously, though this time I was using the network’s song to settle my increasing nervousness rather than slipping into its golden stream to trap Stace in her room.
At the top of the stairs, I paused and motioned to the room on our right. “Why don’t you start checking the study, while I head down to the B I’ll go through the account records.”
I moved around to the front of the desk and sat down on the chair there, placing the iPad on the desk before opening the book. The book had been divided into months and didn’t appear to hold any actual contracts; instead, a name and three numbers. Presuming my aunt filed things in a similar manner to my mom, one was the year, and the second a month, and the last was a date. I quickly shuffled through the pages until I hit May last year. Alys might have said the commission had come in only three or four months ago, but it was doubtful that was when the initial approach had been made. There would have been at least a few weeks—if not months—of research beforehand to ensure it was both viable and profitable.
“According to these accounts,” Mathi commented, “they were making good money relic hunting—though the most profitable part of their business appears to have been selling off found relics to the highest bidder.”
“Yeah, it was something that pissed Lugh off no end, especially when Vincentia beat him to one.”
Mathi looked up. “Did that happen often? Surely not.”
I smiled. “Only a couple of times, but once would have been more than enough for Lugh.”
There was nothing that mentioned the horn in either May or June, though they did get a couple of good commissions for nongodly artifacts.
“There’s a record here for a partial deposit on service to be rendered,” Mathi said. “July eighth, which, if we’re presuming she went to Alys after she’d found the horn, fits in with the timeframe.”
I flipped through the book and found it. Like the other records, there was no name listed, just the numbers and an addendum that said, “private collection.”
I rose, walked over to the filing cabinets, and scanned the drawers until I found the right one. Unsurprisingly, it was locked. “Mathi, I don’t suppose you have your lock-picking thingies on you, do you?”
“I never leave home without them.” He rose and moved around the desk.
I stepped back, watching as he removed a small leather pouch from his wallet and then removed a thin metal pick. After a few minutes of intense concentration, there was a click and the cabinet drawer opened.
“What are we looking for?”
“Record number 8-3-C.”
He flicked through the files, found the folder, then placed it on top of the cabinet and opened it. “Okay, according to this, they were commissioned to find the two parts of Borrhás’s Horn by one Reginald Cowley, a collector of Viking artifacts. Lives in Alderley Edge.”
Which just happened to be one of the most affluent and expensive areas in Cheshire. I pointed at the bottom line. “Says here they found one half of it five weeks later and the full commission was paid.” Which, when it came to missing artifacts, was a pretty damn quick turnaround. “Wonder why he paid in full if he didn’t get both halves?”
“Maybe they all believed half of the horn was all that remained.”
Hardly, given my aunt obviously had both. “You know, if we ever do retrieve the whole hoard, it might pay for the council to keep a closer eye on things. Or, at the very least, order the Ljósálfar to do more regular audits.”
“The council hasn’t that power, and the Ljósálfar are unlikely to agree.”
“Why not—they are the keepers after all, and surely it is part of the job to do that sort of thing.”
“Audits are done, but you have to remember, we have a rep for somewhat shady business dealings and the love of a good profit. And, as has been proven by the hoard’s theft, not even the bibliothecary, who are possibly the most dedicated law-abiding members of the Ljósálfar society, are immune to a worthwhile bribe.”
“But what of Liadon? She is the keeper of all records, so surely she’d be aware of unaccounted differences between one audit and another.”
“That’s presuming the bibliothecary actually made a note of the missing items. If they are being paid by outside sources to steal smaller relics—and I would guess that is what happened to the horn, and even that singing bowl that mysteriously appeared at the museum—then they are unlikely to implicate themselves by noting their absence during an audit.”
“Did they ever interview the other bibliothecaries about the theft and the missing man?”
“I would presume so, as the council did request it.”
“And did the council ever get an answer?”
“Said bibliothecaries were all memory ‘adjusted’ and had no recollection of events leading up to the theft or indeed their dead counterpart.”
“Convenient.”
“But a sensible course of action if you wish to avoid blame.”
My eyebrows rose. “You think they intentionally had their memories erased?”
“I think there’s no one—beyond our small circle, that is—above suspicion when it comes to the hoard.”
I wrinkled my nose. There was a part of me tempted to say, “There were plenty of people we could trust,” but it was becoming ever clearer that Fate had woven threads of deceit and deception through the fabric surrounding us. I also suspected the whole trust issue would become even murkier in the future.
“That doesn’t explain why, if Vincentia and Riayn found half of the horn for their client months ago, Stace’s body was in that souterrain. She didn’t appear on the scene until much later.”
“You’re presuming the half they found was in the souterrain. It could well have been the missing half.”
“True.” I got out my phone and took a pic of the page. “I guess the easiest way to clear the timeline up is to get back home then head out to Alderley Edge and speak to the man.”
Mathi glanced at his watch. “It’s an hour’s drive from the airport—we might be cutting it fine for our hot dates.”
“I’m sure Eljin will happily sit in the pub if I’m back late, but if your date is the impatient type, I’m happy to head out alone.”
“Oh, and wouldn’t Sgott be pleased about me abandoning you like that.”
“How would he even know?”
“He would, trust me, but it is irrelevant because we are a team and one does not abandon a teammate mid-quest, even if the prospect of hot sex looms on the horizon.”
“Then we had best get going.” I paused. “Should we keep the accounts and contracts books with us, do you think?”
He nodded and tucked the file back into place. “It might also be worth asking Sgott to authorize the removal of these records to the council’s premises. It’s possible your aunt and Vincentia found other minor hoard artifacts that could be of use to the council’s quest to curb the black-market trade in relics.”
“A trade the Myrkálfar and no doubt many others on that council profit from.”
My tone was dry, and he smiled. “The sensible do not trade in godly relics, and even the Myrkálfar tread warily around them.”
“I think that’s the nicest thing I’ve ever heard you say about them.”
He rolled his eyes. “Get moving, woman, or we will never get home in a timely matter.”
I laughed, picked up the iPad, and got moving.
Reginald’s address led us to the outskirts of Alderley Edge, though it remained within walking distance of the village. It was a huge, white-rendered, double-fronted modern-looking building with lovely arched windows and slate roofing. Positioned to one side of the house was a large, open-fronted garage housing two Ferraris and three Porsches.
Mathi pulled to a halt in front of the arched entranceway and undid his seat belt. “The antique collecting business obviously does well.”
“If you can afford to park your expensive cars in sheds that have no doors, then you can afford a hobby as expensive as collecting godly relics.”
I shoved my knives into my purse, then climbed out and glanced up at the sky. While the flight back from Ireland had been without problems, we’d hit peak-hour traffic on the way here and, as a consequence, it was now close to five and dusk was staining the clouds a pretty shade of pastel pink.
“I’m betting that shed,” Mathi said, studying the house rather than the shed, “houses all sorts of security measures that make doors surplus to requirements. There’s certainly a good range of measures on the house.”
“Not unexpected if he’s a collector.”
I walked around the front of the car and up the marble steps. Cameras tracked our movements, and the large intercom to the right of the double oak door came to life.
“How may we help you?”
What I presumed was a small circular camera positioned at the top edge of the intercom had lit up, so whoever that voice belonged to was obviously viewing us.
“We’re here to speak to Reginald Cowley on a matter of some urgency.”
“Do you have an appointment?”
“No, but as I said, the matter is urgent.”
“Then I’m afraid it is not poss?—”
“It’s about Borrhás’s Horn,” I cut in, “an item he commissioned Riayn and Vincentia?—”
I didn’t get a chance to finish. The oak doors crashed open, revealing not only a man-mountain, but the biggest fucking shotgun I’d ever seen in my life.
And it was aimed straight at my face.