Chapter 19
I woke up to music.
Jasper had draped himself across me at some point during the night, arm heavy over my chest, chin against my shoulder, dead to the world.
The man slept like he'd staked a claim. His breath came slow against my neck, each exhale warm enough to make my skin prickle, and I lay there with my hand on his forearm and listened.
The sound came from down the hall, not from inside my head.
Strings, and something low underneath them, a voice maybe, all of it threaded through the stone walls and into the room where Jasper's heartbeat knocked against my ribs through the thin space between us.
I should have moved. Luka's people had brought us in hooded the night before, and the compound was still unmapped in my head, which meant every hallway was a liability.
But Jasper's arm pinned me to the mattress, and his breathing hadn't been this even in weeks.
In Spain he'd slept in shifts, one hand near the katana, waking at every creak.
Now he pressed his face into my shoulder, and the music pulled at something down the hall.
I let myself have one more minute of this.
His stubble scraped my collarbone when he shifted.
I turned my mouth against his hair and breathed him in: smoke, sweat, the cheap soap from the communal bathroom.
I gave myself one more minute. Then I eased out from under him without waking him, pulled on my jeans, and went to find it.
A man I'd never seen before sat cross-legged on the floor of the common area, drawing a bow across the strings of a horsehair fiddle. He was older, built wide, with scars running down from the corner of each eye like silver tear tracks, eyes closed, bow moving slow.
I thought he might be asleep until he opened his mouth. Two sounds came out at once: a low drone underneath a high, clean note. I'd been around throat singing once before, at a cousin's wedding in Turkey, but it sounded nothing like this. This sounded almost sad.
I stopped in the doorway.
"You're blocking the door," Lorenzo said behind me.
"I know."
He squeezed in beside me with his coffee, shoulder against the doorframe, and we stood there listening.
"What is that instrument?" Lorenzo said.
"No idea."
"What is he doing with his voice?"
"Also no idea."
Lorenzo sipped his coffee. "I like him."
The door at the end of the hall banged open, and a kid came through it like he was already late, laptop bag bouncing off his hip, hoodie pulled up despite the fact that Casablanca in August was a personal attack on everyone in it.
He was maybe eighteen, muttering under his breath at something only he could hear.
The bag was covered in patches: a raised fist, an old IWW globe, something in Hindi I couldn't read.
He angled around us without slowing down, dropped into a chair at the table, had his laptop open and was typing before he'd finished sitting down.
Then he said something sharp to his screen, not a question, more like a correction, and kept going.
"Hola," I said.
He held up one finger without turning around.
Lorenzo snorted into his coffee.
Thirty seconds later the kid spun his chair around, pulled one earbud out, and looked at us like we owed him for it.
"Vihaan," he said. "Don't touch my setup." He put the earbud back in and spun around.
Jasper found me in the kitchen twenty minutes later, staring at the hot plate. He came in, looked at the shelf: sardines, beets, two cans of something with the label half off, and poured himself the last of the coffee without checking if any remained.
"There's a kid out there talking to his laptop," he said.
"Vihaan. Don't touch his setup."
He drank his coffee and stared at the wall. I slid the last of the bread across the counter. He took it without looking, chewing already, gone somewhere behind his eyes, running the compound approach in his head, walking the north gap on repeat until the steps were automatic.
He pulled a cigarette from the pack on the counter and lit it without breaking his stare.
The first drag hollowed his cheeks. His lips closed around the filter, and I lost whatever thought I'd been holding.
He exhaled slowly, smoke curling between us in the bad light, and his mouth stayed parted for a second after.
I knew that mouth. I'd had it on my throat in Brussels, on my hip in Spain, whispering my name in the dark like a man testing whether saying it would break something.
Now he stood in this ugly kitchen, smoking like he had nowhere to be.
Three feet separated us. I could taste the smoke from here.
I put my hand on the back of his neck instead.
He went still.
"We're going to get her back," I said.
"I know."
"Jasper." I squeezed once, thumb against the knot at the base of his skull. "Look at me."
He turned his head. The exhaustion on his face had nothing to do with sleep. I kept my hand where it was. If I moved it, I'd put my mouth on that knot, and if I did that, we'd never make it to the briefing.
"We will," I said.
He held my eyes for a beat, then leaned back into my grip, just barely, just enough. Of course he knew. That was never the problem.
Luka appeared in the doorway and said the council was ready, and I let Jasper go.
The war council met in the same stone room where they'd pulled our hoods off the night before.
It could have been a power move or just the only room big enough.
With Luka, I was never sure. Hades sat in the corner in a suit so clean it was offensive, hands folded.
Rhadamanthys had his Stetson back on and the easy posture of a man who'd slept eight hours and eaten a real breakfast. I resented him for that specifically.
Luka stood at the head of a folding table covered in maps, Rafael beside him.
Vihaan had set up at the end of the table, three screens going, still muttering. Mr. Nobody, the man from the floor, sat against the wall with his fiddle across his knees, spine straight, hands loose, holding the middle distance like he was waiting for something and had all the time in the world.
I took a seat and drummed my fingers on the table's edge. Jasper put himself behind my left shoulder, and I leaned back until my spine found his knee. Lorenzo sat beside me and stole my pen before I'd even put it down.
Rhadamanthys spread his hands on the map.
"Nevada," he said. "That's where we start."
"Nevada? Where?" I said.
“Not where. Who.” He pulled a photograph from inside his jacket and slid it across the table.
The man in it looked late twenties, dark hair loose around his face, stretched out on a chaise in white linen with a gold collar at his throat.
He angled his chin away from the camera like it was beneath him.
The collar caught the light. I'd moved enough product through enough ports to know what a gold collar on a man meant, and this one wore it like he'd been born in it.
"Nevada ran the best establishment in Casablanca," Rhadamanthys said.
"High-end. The kind of place where powerful men came to relax and forget they were being listened to.
Sex workers hear everything, and Nevada turned what walked through his doors into the best intelligence network in North Africa. "
I set the photograph down and leaned back. Behind me Jasper shifted, and his knee pressed harder against my spine. I let myself settle into it.
"Three weeks ago, he volunteered to go undercover. Achilles and Patroklos have been collecting people, trophies, leverage, call it what you want. Nevada saw an opening. Get close enough to their operation and he could access things nobody else could reach." Rhadamanthys paused. "Zeus's location."
Vihaan kept typing. Everyone else went quiet.
My pulse kicked, and I pressed my thumb into the table edge until the nail went white.
Zeus's location meant Eight's location, and I kept my face flat because if anyone in this room caught the hope tearing through me, they'd know exactly how far I'd go and exactly how to stop me.
"Yesterday," Rhadamanthys said, "Nevada sent a signal through a dead drop in Amritsar." He nodded at Vihaan. "The kid retrieved it."
Vihaan didn't look up. "The kid has a name."
"Vihaan retrieved it," Rhadamanthys said, not missing a beat. "Nevada has Zeus's location. And the extraction window is open right now."
I picked up the photograph again. Nevada stared off past the camera, completely unbothered. Three weeks inside a compound run by men who collected people, and this guy looked like he was waiting for room service.
"Where is he?" Jasper said from behind my shoulder.
Rhadamanthys tapped the map, northeast of Amritsar. "Patroklos has a compound here. Border territory, politically unstable."
"Politically unstable." Vihaan stopped typing and turned his head, like the statement was too wrong to let pass without eye contact.
"India was a colony. The British ran it under their Eastern European directorship until '47.
Then the Partition happened, and the Pantheon lost the whole subcontinent overnight.
Eighty years and they still can't get it back, because the region doesn't want them.
Patroklos is here because the Pantheon sent someone to take by force what they couldn't take by asking. "
Most of them let it pass. Rhadamanthys gave a small nod that could have meant anything. But Vihaan wasn't looking at Rhadamanthys. He was looking at the map like it showed a problem older than this mission, and he was here for that problem, not ours.
"And Nevada got himself inside," Rhadamanthys said.
"Voluntarily," Lorenzo said, in the tone of a man who hadn't decided yet if that was brave or stupid.
"Voluntarily," Rhadamanthys confirmed.