“Such as I can’t talk about this over a phone! There’s no telling who’s listening—”
“Everyone, if you keep screaming.”
“—and there’s certain terms I don’t need showing up in a file somewhere!”
But then he told me anyway.
“Such as number one: she was working with loyal confederates, who are even now tracking down the rest of those damned weapons, and smuggling them . . . somewhere we don’t need them to be. Giving her partisans a war-changing advantage should we ever invade!”
“Should? I thought that was the plan.”
“Until last night! But until we find those weapons, it’s suicide to even attempt it. No one is willing to send their people in there as things stand!”
“Okay,” I agreed. “That’s bad.”
“And number two isn’t any better. If her associates aren’t loyal, then they are sitting on a trove of . . . power . . . like nothing we’ve ever seen. Those fights have been going on for decades! They involved thousands of . . . people . . . especially after Geminus began enlarging and promoting them. There’s no telling how much . . . power . . . they currently have—”
“You think they’re going to sell it.”
“Of course I think they’re going to bloody sell it! And while I have people watching the black market, what if they don’t go there? What if they decide that, instead of selling it off in dribs and drabs, and taking a chance on getting caught every time, they just make one big sell? To our enemies who will fucking use it to fucking end us?”
I hated to admit it, but the asshole had a point.
“All right,” I said. “But I still don’t know what you want me to do. I’ve been on this for less than a week and I haven’t even been looking for weapons. I’ve been trying to help Olga—”
“Save it. I can’t talk like this. I’m coming down there.”
Damn it, I knew it!
“I have things to do,” I said. “I can’t just wait around the house all day—”
“Like hell you can’t. I’m leaving now. If you’re not there when I arrive, so help me God—”
“What? You’ll shoot me again?”
“No.” It was vicious. “I’ll make you wish I had!”
Click.
Goddamn, I hated that vampire.
* * *
—
I found the little troll in the boys’ room. The door was open since it was early afternoon, and the guys were off on adventures. But the bed skirt on Aiden’s bed was hiked up, to give a view of the door, and ruffling slightly.
Like somebody was breathing under there.
I sat the tray on the table the boys used for coloring and puzzle doing, got down on my hands and knees, and lifted up the skirt a little more. And found what I’d expected: two violet eyes, glowing faintly in the dark, a small hunched body, and a smock covered with bacon jam. For a moment, we just looked at each other.
I debated trying to fish him out, decided that probably wasn’t likely to go well, and brought the platter down instead. I put it on the braided rag rug beside the bed and started looking through the sandwiches on offer. There were two more BLTs, fat and happy looking; a couple of egg salad, thick and spicy, with a generous sifting of paprika; a couple chicken salad topped with lettuce, tomatoes and red onion slices; and no fewer than four PBJs. Because you can never have too many PBJs.
And just in case that wasn’t sufficient, Gessa had stuck a handful of turnovers around the sides like parsley only not, because trolls don’t get the point of garnishes you can’t eat. Their idea of how to improve a plate of food is to add more food, which is a hard point to argue with. Particularly when they’re still warm from the oven and dripping with glaze.
“Smells good,” I said idly, my own mouth watering a little, because the cinnamon-apple and sweet cherry scents were busy battling it out for dominance.
I pushed the mounded tray a little closer to the bed, started munching on a turnover, and attempted to look harmless.
I guess I succeeded, because, after less than a minute, a small, thin arm snaked out and grabbed a cherry pie.
It jerked it back under the bed, too far for me to see anything, but I could hear smacking going on.
I listened to him inhale a few more turnovers and a couple sandwiches, and then pulled over the paper and crayons that the boys use to design knights and fighter jets and knights piloting fighter jets.
Violet eyes peered out at me curiously.
I flipped back the rug to get a work space, and fed the kid another sandwich. He took it from my hand this time. He appeared to like the meat ones best, but he ate them all. Yes, ten full-sized sandwiches—or twelve, if you counted the two he’d had as an appetizer—along with half a dozen small fruit pies.
Trolls had to have a stomach that extended into another dimension; it was the only explanation.
“Fish, tracks, door,” I said clearly, and picked up a blue crayon.
I drew a fish.
He ate egg salad at it.
I drew train tracks, and even got the perspective right.
Nothing.
I drew a door, complete with a damned good version of a doorknob, if I do say so myself.
Nada.
I finally sat back and ate a pie.
This was starting to look like a waste of time—well, other than for feeding up the kid. Healing took food, and trolls weren’t like humans; soup wasn’t going to put flesh back on those bones. Cherry pie, however, appeared to be a hit. I watched as the rest of the pies and the platter they sat on were slowly pulled under the bedclothes.
I finished off my own snack, and contemplated my artwork. This was starting to look like a dead end. But like the stuff with Efridis, I just couldn’t let it go.
The kid didn’t know much English, and those weren’t survival terms that you’d prioritize: “food,” “water,” “bathroom,” “bed,” “medicine,” “help.” They looked more like words he’d deliberately tried to pick up, maybe even asked people about, despite the fact that doing so might earn him a beating. But he’d learned them anyway, possibly at different times, so as not to arouse suspicion, and then spoken them on what he thought was his deathbed.
Damn it, they meant something!
I just didn’t know what.
Like I didn’t know why Dorina had felt it necessary to send me another memory. I’d thought the point was the bones, and the fact that people were literally being killed for a potion ingredient. True, one time was vamp bones and the other fey, but the method was similar. Find a vulnerable community, people no one would miss, and exploit the hell out of them.
So what was I overlooking?
I reclined back against the trundle and rubbed my eyes. Come on, Dory. You’re better than this.
And, normally, I was. Normally, it didn’t take somebody hitting me over the head with a clue-by-four for me to figure out what I was dealing with. Normally, the problem was how to stop it, not how to find it, but this . . . I wasn’t getting this.
I’m tired, I thought at Dorina. Why don’t you just tell me?
Nothing.
Damn it, I know you can hear me!
Like she could probably hear Mircea last night. Because he didn’t get it: Dorina didn’t go to sleep anymore. At least, not like she once had. Every mind had to have rest, so there were times she wasn’t aware of what was happening, just like me. But there was no way to tell when those were anymore.
And she’d been aware enough to attack Efridis when she saw her, hadn’t she?
So she knew what Mircea was planning.
There was a mirror across from the bed—just a little thing, hung at kid height. One of Claire’s vain attempts to teach good hygiene to a couple boys who were happier splashing about in the mud. I doubted it was used much, but it was there and in my line of sight when I was sitting down. I caught my reflection in the glass, and swallowed.