Chapter 10 #3
He nodded. “He was teaching me to take over the antique selling portion of his business. That’s how I knew about that bitch, isn’t it?
Saw them together, but when I asked Pa about it, he acted like he didn’t know what I was talking about.
So I started keeping tabs on them, like, when she visited him. ”
If Jarvis was training him, he obviously wasn’t as useless as Carla had seemed to think, even if he wasn’t as worldly as some young Myrkálfar I’d come across in the past. “And on the day he was murdered? What did you see?”
“I didn’t witness her attacking him, but I saw her go into his house and someone else come out. By the time I got in there, he was dead.”
“Where were you when you saw all this?” Mathi asked.
“I was driving up to his place when I saw her enter—she must have had the security code, because she let herself in. I parked opposite and waited. She was there for fifteen minutes, if that.”
I took another drink. “Who did you report his murder to?”
“The IIT, of course. Some wanker called Bryan Jonson. Didn’t take me seriously at all. Hell, even the fucker in charge of the division didn’t.”
“The fucker in charge of the day division is my father,” Mathi said mildly. “You will accord him due respect.”
“Like he respected me?” Macsen snorted. “My pa was murdered, and he makes out like I’m an idiot?”
“I’m no fan of Ruadhán,” I said, “but one thing he would never do is treat a witness like an idiot—”
“Even if he did think him one,” Mathi murmured.
“—so it’s possible you were misreading him.” I frowned. “Why are you so positive it was Carla Wilson you saw, when she’s a face shifter? Did your grandfather ever introduce you to her?”
“No, but he didn’t need to. He left me an ‘open in case of death’ envelope that contained her image—which was a photograph taken from a person of interest report issued by the IIT—and the brooch you stole from me. Which I want back, by the way. It was my grandfather’s and—”
“It was part of the éadrom Hoard, which was stolen more than six months ago,” Mathi said, even though he was aware the pectoral never had been. “Unless you want your whole family implicated in that theft, I would forget it ever existed if I were you.”
Macsen’s scowl deepened and, despite the seriousness of the situation, amusement twitched my lips.
He might look close to forty or fifty in human terms, but he definitely had the mentality of a teenager.
Maybe that was why Carla had thought him an idiot, even though no idiot could do what this young man had been doing so successfully.
“Did your grandfather leave any specific instructions with those items?” Mathi asked.
Macsen nodded. “Said if he died suddenly, or under mysterious circumstances, then the brooch would help me find his murderer, and the first place to start would be the box.”
Meaning that while Jarvil had had no immediate memories of Carla, his long-term ones were working just fine.
“What did you find in the security box? Anything specific?”
He shrugged. “Not really. Found a bunch of property deeds, birth certificates, passports, and been working my way through them.”
“And when you broke into her houses?” I asked. “Did you find anything enlightening?”
He hesitated, gaze narrowing fractionally. “If I say, will you let me go?”
“You’ve already been told your options. Full release is not one of them.” Mathi’s tone was flat, which meant his annoyance was rising. “What did you find?”
The kid sighed. It was a very put-upon sound. “Fine. I found a necklace that held her vibes. Thought I could hire a tracer and find her that way.”
I frowned. “How do you know it held her resonance? Are you sensitive to that sort of thing?”
“I’m not, generally, but when I use the pectoral, it can see sounds and the like.”
Did that mean me seeing the harp’s notes wasn’t due to my godly blood, but rather a quirk of the relic? “And this necklace—and all the other items you stole—are currently where?”
“In Dorcha Dearg, of course.”
“How?” Mathi asked. “The Myrkálfar have a watch on all your family’s residences and a ‘find and detain’ order out on your immediate family.”
“It’s not exactly hard to slip in and out of places when you can become invisible.” Another shrug. “It’s as safe there as anywhere.”
“What about the book you stole this evening?” I asked. “Have you still got it on you, or did you stash it somewhere for retrieval later after you’d spotted me?”
“I didn’t steal a book.”
I rolled my eyes, handed Mathi my coffee, then stepped forward and patted him down.
He wriggled and cursed, which delayed me finding it for all of two seconds.
I pulled it from his pocket and discovered he was actually telling the truth—he hadn’t taken a book, but rather a small wooden trinket box.
It was simple in design but obviously well cared for, because its frail but gentle song spoke of happiness.
I stepped back, found the latch, and opened it.
Inside there was a lock of dark hair tied by a faded yellow ribbon and a collection of baby teeth.
My gaze jumped back to Macsen’s. “These are hers?”
“The pectoral says they are. I’m not gainsaying it.”
The pectoral was also a locator? The Codex’s archives had said nothing about that, but given the pectoral’s sudden resurfacing and the fact that its godly creator had now entered the ring, maybe it was a recent addition.
Nothing was impossible when it came to the gods and their addiction to the game.
I glanced at Mathi. “You got any decent tracer contacts?”
He nodded. “I’ll liaise with Cynwrig, though, just to be sure we get someone who is clean.”
Clean in terms of being free from the rat god’s influence. “I might also know someone, though I’m not sure if she’s in Deva or not. She was planning to relocate last I heard.”
Margaret Falconer—who’d worked with Loudon and his now dead partner Gannon running a magic shop—was an amplifier medium rather than a tracer, meaning she could talk to spirits and through that hear their resonances.
From what she’d said, a maker’s resonance always stuck to their creations, and it was that song she could trace if the item still existed in this world.
“Contact her, then, but we’ll still work on a backup list, just in case.”
I nodded. “Whichever way we go, it’ll need it done quickly. If my last vision was anything to go by, Carla’s getting a bit antsy about my presence.”
“Define ‘antsy,’” Mathi said, eyes narrowing dangerously.
“She wants to get rid of me. Her boss is saying they need to keep me around until the Harpē is found.”
“Well, let’s all hope he has her well and truly leashed.”
“Indeed.” And if there was one comfort about knowing my death had already been written into the game, it was the fact that it came at the hands of her boss rather than her.
Of course, game plans could change—we were dealing with gods after all, and they were fickle beings at the best of times.
Besides, while hers might not be the hand that ended me, she could certainly cause me serious harm.
I wasn’t about to say any of that to Mathi, however.
“If what I heard is true, he literally holds her life in his hands.”
Mathi’s eyebrows rose. “Meaning?”
“Meaning, she has some sort of implant in her brain that will kill her.”
“Don’t suppose you know what can set it off, do you?” Macsen growled. “Because that would save us all a whole lot of time and trouble.”
“While I agree wholeheartedly with that statement, I’m afraid your days of revenge seeking are over.” Mathi returned his gaze to mine. “I’ll ring Cynwrig, hand over our prisoner, and arrange a retrieval from the compound. You should go home.”
I nodded. “Let me know when you have retrieved the rest of Macsen’s loot?”
“Of course. Do you want a lift home?”
“I’ll call an Uber on the way down. Henrick does deserve some downtime, you know. And yes, I’m aware he’s very well paid to make up for the lack of said downtime.”
A smile touched his lips. “Get some rest. And that bath.”
“Is that a polite way of saying I stink?”
The smile widened. “I would never be so uncouth.”
I laughed, drained the rest of my coffee, then popped the cup into the dishwasher. “Behave yourself, Macsen, or I’ll make sure the wind not only comes a-visiting, but drops you from a great height.”
His scowl didn’t quite cover the flick of fear through his eyes. “That’s murder.”
“Some might think so. Others might think it good riddance to bad rubbish.”
The fear in his eyes got stronger, but he didn’t say anything. My gaze fell on the trinket box, and instinct stirred. I bent and picked it up. “Mathi, do you mind if I take this with me? I might try to do a scrying and see what it comes up with.”
His eyebrows rose. “I didn’t think you needed to resort to scrying these days?”
“I don’t.” Mainly because the triune was generally faster and easier. “I just feel the need to examine it a little more closely, that’s all.”
“Then who am I to gainsay instinct?”
I dropped a kiss on his cheek, then left, calling an Uber on the way down.
The thunder had given way to heavy rain, and though the Uber had parked as close as it could to the entrance, I still got very wet.
It dropped me off near the corner of St Werburgh and Eastgate Streets—as close to the tavern as they could get—but by then the rain had become so bad I could barely see three feet in front of me.
I waited until the Uber had left, then ran across the street.
The streetlights barely lifted the gloom, and Eastgate Street appeared utterly empty.
The tavern’s lights were as muted as the streetlights, but the warm chatter coming from the building cut through the storm, suggesting we had another good crowd in—always a good thing in the slower winter months.
I ran through the bollards and headed for the tavern. But as I passed the Italian restaurant a few doors up, the knife in my belt flared to life, pressing heat against my skin as it formed a shield around me.
A heartbeat later, a hand appeared out of the gloom; a dark-skinned hand holding a dagger that gleamed with silvery fire as it arced toward my heart with deadly speed.