The battered contraption that rattled to a stop by the curb was part yellow school bus, part ancient semi, and part Mad Max movie prop. And all hard-core. Like its occupants, who required a rugged ride, but had been damned cagey about what had happened to the last one.
I watched Olga’s posse pile out and frowned. Misplacing Stan’s property was no joke. He was connected, specifically to a fat-ass were named Roberto who owned half of Brooklyn and had zero chill. I mentally upped finding Stan’s truck a few notches on the priority list, and turned my attention to tonight’s errand.
The theatre we’d parked in front of had seen better days. A third of the lights were out on the old-fashioned marquee, there was peeling paint everywhere that wasn’t dirty brick, and the COMING ATTRACTIONS posters were so faded behind their yellowed plastic covers that they could have been anything. It wasn’t the sort of place you’d expect to have valet parking.
Yet, while I stood there, a Mercedes, a BMW, and a Jaguar hummed up to the curb behind Frankentruck, disgorging a stream of beautiful people headed for the theatre’s front doors. Where two neon mermaids were flicking their tails above the name Delmare. I’d never heard of the place, but apparently it was owned by an old acquaintance of Ray’s from his smuggling days.
Ray’s guy had flourished under Geminus, who’d liked the rare and exotic slaves he specialized in. Geminus had had his pick of them for the illegal arena games he was running, and in return, he’d provided the kind of ironclad protection that allowed the smuggler to stay ahead of the law. But Geminus’ death had left the guy up a creek, and he was currently looking for a new paddle.
Me.
He’d lost one senatorial protector, and now he wanted another, and Ray had been shopping me around like a side of beef.
I’d have had something to say about that, but Olga’s ears had perked up at the first mention of smugglers, and she’d started looking the place up on her phone. I hadn’t gotten interested until she pulled up a photo of the flirty twosome up there, in all their neon glory. Who, to a dazed, frightened, and confused little kid, might have looked like a couple of— “Fish,” Olga said, staring at them.
“Yeah.”
At least, that was her theory. One she’d acquired after spending all day on the phone with everyone on her late husband’s contact list, in the not-entirely-legal underworld where he’d once worked, and coming up with zilch. Nobody knew what “fish, tracks, door” meant, and nobody cared.
Except for Olga, who’d decided that, on what he believed to be his deathbed, the troll kid had wanted to tell someone what he’d seen. Like maybe where he’d been brought in from Faerie? Or where his fellow slaves were being bought and sold?
Of course, he could have just been raving, and we were wasting our time. But waiting for him to wake up and confirm the theory was not going to work for Olga. I’d come out of my room after changing clothes to see her through the open door to the boys’ room, staring down at the little troll, flanked by the fey Caedmon had left there to guard him.
She hadn’t said anything, but she hadn’t had to. Her lips had been tight, and her eyes wet. She was wondering if her nephew had ended up the same way.
And one way or another, she was determined to find out.
So here we were. Being given a wide berth by the beautiful people, I noticed. Which was strange because Olga and the boys were under glamouries.
Sort of.
I turned to see a knot of tough-looking dudes standing on the sidewalk, wearing white shirts, dark trousers, and bandoliers of Bibles, because they were having a hard time figuring out how to conceal all the extra weapons.
It looked like the boys had learned a thing or two from last time, and stocked up. I eyed a straining backpack with grenade-shaped bulges, a couple guitars—one with a scope on it—and a bike that one of the guys had tucked under his arm and which could be anything, anything at all. Except a bicycle, presumably.
“Okay. We’re absolutely, positively clear on the no-snacking-on-the-witnesses thing, right?” I said.
Olga looked offended.
“Okay. No snacking until after I’ve questioned them.”
She nodded. Apparently, this was an acceptable compromise. I waited while she explained things to the posse so they’d actually listen. As a member of the Senate’s task force on smuggling, I was technically in charge of this little squad, but I was pretty sure I was the only one who thought so.
Except for the second valet, who was standing off to the side, and did not appear enraptured with our remaining ride.
“You, uh, you’re gonna have to move that,” he told me, staring at the deep ridges in the road that had been left by the truck, part of which appeared to have been dragging the ground. Probably the part that was now on fire. Or maybe that was just the oil leaking out of the smoking engine and filling the ridges.
“Seriously,” he said, getting in front of the group as they started to move away from the curb. “I’m gonna need you to—”
He cut off when a dozen “Bibles” were suddenly thrust in his face.
He blinked. “What are you guys? Gideons?”
And then a third valet came running over, dressed like the other two except for a maroon sports coat that he was stuffing full of crisp new hundred-dollar bills. “Get in the truck,” he told the other guy.
“That truck?” Valet Number Two looked at him like he might be crazy. “Are you high?”
“No, but you’re going to be off the schedule for a week if you don’t get your ass in gear.”
“I’m not getting in there! It’s a fire hazard!”
“That was not a request.”
“Look at it! It’s not even a real thing. It’s like . . . it’s like . . .”
“Frankentruck?” I offered.
“Yeah! Like that! Where the hell am I supposed to—”
He broke off for the second time, when a fan of fat bills appeared in front of his face, like magic. His eyes crossed; my own narrowed. Not at the bills, but at who was holding them. And then smirking slightly when they disappeared, into the pocket of the khakis now clambering into the truck’s wonky cab.
A moment later, Frankentruck went belching and burning around a corner and I was left staring down with Louis-Cesare.
“We could have handled that,” I pointed out.
“But why waste time?” Tonight he was in a green pullover that looked knitted, but shone like silk. It changed his hair almost to red and his eyes to aquamarine, the same startling hue as his father’s, which wasn’t fair. Like the jeans, which fit him like a glove but didn’t fit the old-world bow he managed to execute flawlessly.
I scowled at him.
“I went to the house,” Louis-Cesare said. “I was informed you were here.”
“So you decided to stalk me?”
An eyebrow raised.
“I decided to see the show. I hear it is quite something.”
The words were mild, but there was a definite challenge in those blue eyes. He knew we weren’t here to see the damned show. Any more than he was.
To be here already, he’d have had to be awake well before sunset. And while a master at Louis-Cesare’s level was perfectly capable of daywalking, it was still unpleasant. Not to mention burning through power like nobody’s business. There was absolutely no reason for him to have been up and about that early.
Except the obvious.
“And it had to be tonight.”
“Is there a reason it shouldn’t be?”
Yeah. A whole list of them. Which I might have enumerated, except Olga took that moment to step heavily on my foot. And heavily for a troll is no joke. I gasped; she simpered.
“Good show. You come.”
Louis-Cesare smiled at her, and kissed the hand she regally extended. “What an excellent idea. I’d be delighted.”
And so the whole sorry lot of us went to see the show.
Chapter Twenty-three
Ray went to see his buddy, and the rest of us went to get tickets. Olga splashed out on box seats, probably because the Mormons wouldn’t fit in the regular ones. And I guess she wanted to keep an eye on the boys so they didn’t get too trigger-happy too soon, so she squashed them all into the same box.
I watched it worriedly.