Chapter 10
10
The knock sounded again at my door, more loudly this time. “You alive in there, Eva?”
“I’m alive,” I groaned still laying back against my pillows. “Sort of.”
My door opened, and Braxton stepped in. He wore sweats and a white T-shirt with his feet bare, and his hair was tousled like he too had taken a nap. “I assumed you were sleeping when I saw your boots by the door, but then I heard voices. I wanted to make sure you were okay.”
“Why would you need to make sure I’m okay?” I asked suspiciously. “It’s not like either of us are usually home all night.”
He stepped the rest of the way into my room and sat at the foot of my bed. “Dawn called. Someone found her missing messenger. He’s dead, and it wasn’t a pretty way to go. ”
I stared at him as my mind made sense of things. Was he talking about my replacement? Dawn had claimed he’d bailed in the middle of a job. “Did the client kill him?”
“Seems that way.” Braxton shrugged. “Can’t be sure, but he was dumped right outside the Silver Quarter. That’s where his delivery was. Dawn just wanted to warn you to be careful.”
“I’m touched she cares,” I said sarcastically, though my mind was hung up on his words. A messenger dead, near the Silver Quarter where the angelics lived. Could it have been the same pair that tried to kill me?
“Um, what is that?” Braxton’s eyes were on Ringo still fast asleep on the bookshelf. Poor little guy must’ve been exhausted.
While we both watched him, his head popped up. He looked around, blinking his eyes, then jumped off the shelf, darting past Braxton’s feet.
I climbed out of bed and we both followed him into the main room just as he darted into our shared bathroom. The door somehow slammed shut behind him. A moment later, we heard the toilet flush, then the sink started running.
Braxton turned toward me with his eyebrows raised.
“Yeah.” I shrugged. “Goblins use modern plumbing.”
“That doesn’t explain why there is a goblin using our modern plumbing. ”
I shrugged again. “Trolls were trying to eat him.” I walked past him toward the kitchen.
Braxton followed me. “That still doesn’t explain it, Eva.”
“He could be helpful.” I pulled out the coffee carafe and started filling it with water from the sink.
“It’s almost dinner time,” Braxton commented, looking down at the carafe in my hands.
I emptied the water into the coffee maker and pulled out a bag of ground beans. “I had a weird day, and night. Let me have my coffee.”
“I guess I know better than to argue with you.” He stepped around me, pulling a loaf of fluffy white bread out of the next cabinet over. Sandwiches were a regular dinner for both of us. It would be nice to eat healthier, but who had the time?
“So are you going to tell me what happened?” he asked as he pulled a jar of grape jelly out of the fridge. “Did you fulfill your bargain with the devil?”
“Not quite.” I glowered as I waited for the coffee to start brewing. I would not be thinking of the dream. I needed to keep that devil off my mind. I considered telling Braxton about my new bargain, but that could be dangerous. I would have to keep it to myself, and tell Ringo to do the same.
“You should call Dawn about the messenger. Find out who he was delivering to, just to make sure you don’t take the wrong job. ”
Wrong job. I knew something about taking the wrong job . I almost had to laugh, but it was a good idea. I didn’t know if it was the same two angelics, but it would be smart for me to find out.
“I’ll call her after coffee.” I glanced at him. “And if any other goblins come around here while I’m gone, just call me. Don’t kill them.”
The bathroom door creaked open, and Ringo scurried out, his fur damp and fluffed up around him. He must have taken a bath in the sink.
Braxton stepped out of the kitchen to observe the tiny goblin. “And why would more goblins come around?”
I stepped up beside him and shook my head, unable to imagine Mistral actually showing up in my dinky apartment. More likely I’d be kidnapped at some point and brought back to the Citadel. “Don’t worry about it, it probably won’t happen.”
He went back into the kitchen to finish making our sandwiches. “This new secrecy thing doesn’t become you.” He finished stacking the bread together, then handed the plate to me. “Now I’ve got a job to get ready for.” Scooping up his sandwich from on top of mine, he headed for his bedroom to get changed, stopping with his free hand on the knob to look back at me. “Promise me you won’t get into any more trouble.”
I smiled sweetly. “I try not to make promises I can’t keep.”
Shaking his head, he went into his room .
Once I had poured my coffee, I carried it along with my peanut butter and jelly sandwich to the sofa. Ringo hopped up beside me, eyeing the sandwich hopefully.
I tore it in half, handing him one piece. “You don’t think Mistral would come here, do you?”
Clutching the sandwich in his little paws, Ringo looked around the dingy interior, from the threadbare sofa to the other set of blackout curtains across the one window. They didn’t open often. It wasn’t like there was much of a view. “Not likely,” he muttered, then bit into his sandwich.
“Good.” I sipped my coffee. A devil popping up in my bedroom was bad enough.
I thought about calling Dawn, then remembered about my watch. Great, I needed to get it fixed as soon as possible. Or maybe with a good charge, it would power back up on its own.
But considering my luck lately, I wasn’t betting on it.
I dropped off my watch for repair, then headed toward my old employer’s office. Ringo was once again hidden in my messenger bag, along with Sebastian’s calling card. I had almost left it behind, but him finding me out in the city was better than him appearing in my bedroom again.
I’d offered to let Ringo stay home and rest, but it seemed he’d had enough. Plus, he might prove useful. If I happened to leave my bag for a few minutes in a room where I wasn’t , I just might hear things that I shouldn’t .
I learned that Dawn was actually in her office when I arrived, and the receptionist sent me right back. The space was just as I remembered it. Pristine white walls, plush green carpeting, and a large wooden desk fit for a queen.
The queen herself sat behind it, her hair cut into a severe bob, every hint of gray dyed to black. Her sapphire blue pantsuit probably cost what I made in a month. She wasn’t a night runner. She was barely magical at all, though a hint of troll ancestry made her the tallest woman I’d ever met. It made the expensive suits even more expensive. She got them custom-made.
She steepled her fingers and curled her red lips at me. “Am I to believe you’ve decided to come back to us?”
“Hardly.” I pulled out the chair across from her desk and sat. “But my watch is broken and I wanted to know more about your dead messenger. Wouldn’t want to take the wrong job,” I said pointedly.
Her smile wilted. “You know we screen everyone here. He didn’t take the wrong job either.”
I crossed my legs, settling my messenger bag with Ringo in it more securely on my lap. “Cut the crap, Dawn. If he was killed on the job, then it was the wrong job. ”
“He wasn’t killed by those who hired us,” she clarified. “They never received their package.”
“Maybe it was the package that got him killed. Maybe someone else wanted it. Was it ever recovered?”
Dawn’s mouth sealed into a grim line, giving me my answer.
It was exactly as I had expected. She would never admit she was at fault, and in reality, she probably wasn’t. I suspected those two angelics were the ones at fault. They were looking for something, hiring different night runners, and when we weren’t what they wanted, they killed us. “Just tell me who hired him. Unless you really don’t care if I live or die.”
Dawn dropped her head to one side, cracking her neck, then rolled her broad shoulders. “Very well. The package was to be delivered to the Silver Quarter. The sender was human, as far as I could tell.”
I already knew about the Silver Quarter, but the sender being human was interesting. “Did the human use a gargoyle as an intermediary?”
“Not that I know of, though I obviously wasn’t there for the pickup.”
“What was the recipient’s name?” I pressed. I didn’t know the name of the two angelics who had tried to kill me, but it was too big of a coincidence. They had something to do with this. At least I knew what they looked like, and that they hung out in that back room at the Circus. I could figure out their names.
I was sure Sebastian knew, but I wasn’t keen on asking him for a favor.
Dawn had swiveled her chair to start clicking away at her keyboard. After a few silent moments, her printer whirred. She pulled out the sheet and slid it across the desk to me.
I read the name and the address. Alan Goodman, and the address was in the Silver Quarter. The name was clearly fake—angelics always had fancy names—but the address might be worth checking out.
Of course, I’d have to risk traveling to the Silver Quarter without a delivery. They barely tolerated me with a delivery.
“Thanks.” I folded up the paper. Ringo shifted slightly in my messenger bag as I stuffed it inside.
The movement drew Dawn’s eye. She might have been mostly human, but her senses were still heightened.
I swung the bag over my shoulder as I stood. Dawn might not have much of her troll heritage within her, but trolls did eat other goblins. I wasn’t taking any chances.
“Thanks for the info. Good luck finding another replacement.”
Her eyes flew wide. “Eva don’t you walk out of this room!”
But the door was already swinging shut behind me.
I didn’t need to listen to Dawn trying to get me to come back anymore. She had plenty of other night runners, but not all of them could go everywhere I could. It was all based on the amount of celestial blood within us. And my mom had been full celestial. My human half muted a lot of that, but I could still cross almost any boundary.
And it seemed my next boundary would be the Silver Quarter.