Chapter 11 #3
“Of course you have.”
“As I have said, I do try to cater for all eventualities.”
The guard opened the door for us. I nodded my thanks and headed for the Merc, which was parked in the no-standing zone again. I waved a hand toward it. “One of these days, you’re going to get booked for doing that, you know.”
“I already have been, but convenience is more important than cost.”
“Spoken like a true multimillionaire.”
He glanced at me, eyebrows rising. “You’re not exactly poor, dearest Bethany.”
“That is beside the point.”
He shook his head, asked Henrick to open the trunk, and retrieved what looked to be a small medical kit. The neutralizing spray was inside. “Arms out.”
I obeyed, doing a slow turn as he quickly and efficiently sprayed me. I wasn’t sure what was in the damn stuff, but by the time I climbed into the car, the horrible scent was gone.
“Sealand next, sir?” Henrick asked.
“Yes, thank you.”
As we smoothly pulled away from the curb and rejoined the traffic, I said, “What do we know about this place? Anything?”
“I called the real estate agent, but he couldn’t tell me a whole lot about its current usage, other than the fact it had been rezoned several months ago for commercial purposes.”
“Did you get a buyer’s name?”
“It was rented, not purchased. The agent was reluctant to part with the rental information, but I convinced him.”
“Threat or bribe?” I asked, amused.
“Cash generally opens more doors than threats. The renter’s name was one Elise Andersen.”
“I take it you’ve run a background on her?”
“I had someone run it for me. Hopefully that way, we’ll delay any alerts being raised if they’re watching everything I do.”
“If the rat followers have infiltrated the IIT, then it’s likely they’ll also have alerts placed on particular names, too.”
“It would depend on whether Carla’s aliases are known by them.” He paused. “Of course, it’s also possible this whole thing is a trap.”
My gaze darted to his. “What makes you say that?”
“The fact it was rented between Macsen’s second and third break-ins. Elise wanted immediate access and paid one year in advance.”
Which wasn’t suspicious in and of itself, but if Mathi’s radar was twitching, I was going to listen. “How are we going to deal with the situation if it is?”
“Henrick will cruise past so we can check if there’s anything untoward going on externally. If there’s nothing obvious, then we’ll approach from an unexpected angle.”
“Unexpected meaning what, precisely?”
His smile flashed. “A roof or skylight is always a good option when they’re expecting you to go through the front or back door.”
“I hope there’s a ladder, because this butt is not designed to be clambering up the side of a building.”
“You don’t need a ladder. Just order the wind to lift us both up there.”
“We could both be taking our lives in our hands, you know that, don’t you?”
My voice was dry, and he laughed. “I trust in the fact that you have no desire to depart this world until you’ve found your mother’s killer and had your fill of Cynwrig. I suspect the latter could take a long time.”
“He’s expected to take a wife once he and his sister are crowned, and that gives me at most six months rather than years.” And then there was the whole deal about my allotted time of death, which I couldn’t mention to Mathi because he wasn’t aware of that yet.
“Then all you have to do to delay his marriage is not find Geitha’s Tears.”
I cut him a sharp glance. “You know they’ve asked me to find that?”
“It was mentioned.”
“By Cynwrig?”
“No.”
I waited for him to elaborate, and frowned when he didn’t. “Treasa? Bodhrán?”
“No.”
“Mathi—”
He smiled. “It was your interfering old crone, if you must know. She seems to have taken an extraordinarily deep interest in you, and rather firmly passed on the ‘suggestion’ I ensure no harm comes to you.”
But how had she known about— The thought stopped.
I’d been wearing the Eye when Treasa had asked me to find the necklace, and also when I’d been questioning Cynwrig about it.
The Eye was linked to the one the crones had, and while I wasn’t exactly proficient at contacting them via it—as Mom obviously had been—it was a certainty that they did not have the same problem.
Beira might be watching me on the wind, but for those times when the wind couldn’t help her, she was just using the Eye.
I glanced out the window as we turned left into the industrial estate. I’d never actually been out this way before, and was surprised to see so many recognizable name-brand retail stores. Maybe I needed to come out this way more often.
“Mom had been working with them,” I replied eventually. “Beira wants me to take her place, so it behooves their plans to take a deeper interest in me.”
“Which suggests she’s also planning for you surviving this game.”
“As much as she can plan for that sort of thing, yes.”
“I am relieved.”
“I’m not. Not when it comes to the gods, no matter what the brand.”
His gaze narrowed. “There was a disturbing degree of fatalism in that statement—have you seen something you’re not telling me?”
I hesitated. “No conclusive dreams, if that’s what you mean.”
“What about inconclusive?”
I waved a hand, and he scowled. “Bethany—”
“Mathi,” I cut in, in the same annoyed tone. “Let’s just concentrate on the task at hand. We can discuss the long-term probability of survival later.”
“If you delay said discussion in the hope I will forget, you are wrong.”
A smile touched my lips. “Because you only forget minor things—like agreeing to tell me when you took on another lover.”
“That is different.”
No, it really wasn’t, but I let it go as Henrick swept us right into Sovereign Way, then slowed down. The screen between him and us slid down. “The building is just ahead, on the right, sir.”
It was a weekday, so there were plenty of people, cars, and trucks about, moving in and out of the various buildings.
Our building was one of the smaller ones, made of breeze blocks that had been painted half black, half white, with odd shaped—and oddly placed—windows along the front of the building.
It appeared to have a flattish tin roof, which, unless it had skylights, was going to make getting through that way difficult.
I could call up a storm and target the building with lightning, but that would take far more energy than I wanted to expend when we had no idea what we might be walking into.
“You see anything untoward, Henrick?” Mathi asked.
“No cameras at the front of the building.” He paused, glancing down the side driveway. “None to the side. Might be some at the rear.”
“Isn’t that unusual?” I asked. “Most modern churches these days have them.”
“The real estate agent made no mention of them, and they usually do if pre-installed.”
“Or perhaps they simply trusted their parishioners.”
“It’s not the parishioners these churches usually worry about,” Henrick said. “Shall I continue on?”
“Do a U-turn at the Ford dealership. Given there’s no movement and the place appears to be locked down, we might as well act like we’re meant to be there and go in through the front door. But keep the motor running, just in case we need to leave in a hurry.”
“Indeed, sir.”
We turned around and headed back to the church. Henrick pulled into the driveway and then reversed into a parking spot. Mathi opened the center console and pressed a button; a drawer slid out from the bottom of the console, revealing a small gun.
“You really do have all manner of nasties hidden in this vehicle, don’t you?”
“One can never be too careful when one has as many enemies as the Dhār-Vals do.”
He tucked the weapon under his coat, then we climbed out and walked over to the small alcove covering the dark metal doors and the semi-circular windows above it.
There was no camera in the alcove, no doorbell, and what looked to be a simple deadlock—simple when it came to someone of Mathi’s picking skills, anyway.
“You know, this is all starting to seem a little too easy.” I’d already pulled my knives out of my purse and strapped them on. The coat was long enough to hide their presence if anyone was watching the place, and it saved me the hassle of carrying my purse in.
“I agree,” Mathi said, “but our only other option is to leave, and I do not believe that is a good idea. Not if we want answers.”
“I’m not sure they’ll be here to find, but what the hell.” I motioned him to proceed, then stepped back and casually looked around, covering his movements from any of the cameras on the other buildings that might have a line of sight with this one.
In no time at all, he had the door open.
The foyer beyond was small, with little more than six feet between the front door and the plaster wall that divided this area from the next.
It didn’t stretch all the way to the ceiling, which was mostly covered in those horrid foam ceiling tiles they’d used in suspended ceilings back in the eighties and nineties.
The building itself was silent—the wall in front of us might be plaster, but its frame was metal, as were most of the other walls in this place, from what I could tell—which meant there was no song in this place to help me understand what might lie ahead.
I couldn’t help thinking that might have been why it had been chosen.
Mathi stepped inside and to the right. I stopped beside him.
There were two doors, one at either end of the plastered wall.
The one to the right was open, so I sent the wind through it to investigate.
It came back echoing of emptiness. But light flickered down the knives’ fullers, so there was danger here somewhere, be it in the form of magic or something else.
“The wind says there’s no one in the room beyond the doors,” I murmured. “But there’s magic here somewhere, so I’ll take the closed door, just in case a spell lies on it.”