“Just, uh, just putting away some bad guys. You know how it is.”
I hit it a few more times, which sounded like . . . I was hitting the dashboard. Stan seemed to think so, too. “So hit ’em in this direction and bring back my truck. You know it’s three days overdue, right?”
“Sure. Absolutely. Was just going to do that. Uh, look, is there some kind of weekly special?”
“Yeah. Bring my truck back before the week’s out and Roberto’s boys don’t break your legs.”
Pissant little son of a— “You know I’m a senator!” I said, to no one, because he’d already hung up.
I switched back to James.
Or so I thought.
“You are not invited!”
“Marlowe?”
“Do you understand me?” The voice was livid.
What else was new?
“Invited to what?”
“None of your business! Go away!”
“Listen—”
“No, you listen. This is an important night for me—for all of us. I am not going to have you ruin it!”
“I’m not trying to—”
“You never try, but it always happens! You went to the theatre and now there’s no theatre!”
I started to say that wasn’t my fault, but . . . it was a little my fault. “I’m not trying to crash your damned party! I just need to tell you—”
“If I see one glimpse or get so much as a single whiff—”
“Like you know what I smell like!” I was trying to keep my temper—I really was—but Marlowe was like nails on a chalkboard. “And it’s Mircea’s apartment. I’ll come any time I damned well—”
“You’ll be escorted off the property! In pieces!”
I actually laughed at that one. “By you and whose army?”
“I don’t need an army.” He somehow managed to hiss it, despite it not having any s’s. “I’m warning you—stay away!”
He hung up.
Goddamn it.
I started to call him back, but then realized I already had a call waiting.
“Hello?”
“Don’t you dare hang up on me again!”
I sighed.
James.
“I didn’t hang up before; I had another call. And why are we talking about this? I have immunity, and that aside, you were almost finished—”
“You don’t get to decide when we’re finished with a crime scene! You don’t get to decide anything! Particularly when you use your shiny new immunity to aid and abet the escape of a dozen felons!”
“A dozen?” I frowned. “Ten of them were slaves. They didn’t do any—”
“They hid the troll who caused all this! They deliberately used their bodies to hide his signal and that of the woman he’s working with—”
“They didn’t hide anything. Sitting on a floor is hardly—”
“—and as a result, I have a warrant in my hand for their arrest—”
“Don’t be a dick, James! This is on me. They had nothing to do with it!”
“—and another for your friend Fin, who does not, in fact, have immunity.”
“James—”
“I’m not bluffing, Dory. I want the big guy. Now.”
“I don’t have him!”
“Don’t lie. You do it badly.”
“I do it perfectly, but I’m not doing it now.” It was the truth. The freaked-out trucker had returned with a skeptical-looking cop just as I was leaving, and I’d nervously looked back at the waterline—to see exactly nothing.
Big as he was, Blue moved like smoke.
“If you think that’s going to work,” James said ominously.
“I don’t have him!”
“Then your friend is going to enjoy our hospitality until you do.”
“James!”
“I want the selkies, too,” he went on ruthlessly. “No one even had a chance to question them. You bring me the dozen you cost me, and your friend goes free. Otherwise, I’m sure there’s plenty of—”
“You’re not going to lock him up!”
“—counts I can dig up on one of the biggest bookies in this city. He could go away for years. Or even be deported, if we rack up enough charges.”
I didn’t answer that time.
I just sat there for a moment, holding my phone.
Every war mage I knew was a giant asshole. Every single one, except for James. The last time I’d seen him, other than tonight, had been a month or so ago, on one of his days off. He’d been painting his dad’s shop, while his wife cooked burgers in the small courtyard out back, and his youngest daughter wove a wreath out of centaury and feverfew, which he proudly wore while we ate.
I’d dropped in to pick up an order, and they’d invited me to share their meal because that’s the kind of people they were: James; his wife, Jean; and their two little girls, Janis—because James loved classic rock, and had wanted to keep the J thing going—and Lakshmi, because that had been the name of their grandmother, and some things are more important than alliteration.
Rufus’ wife had been gone six years now, and I strongly suspected that was why James and family visited so often. It was less about chores that needed doing and more about giving the old man voices around the place other than his own. And because that’s who James was, at least on his days off.
He couldn’t be that different at work.
So he was bluffing.
I knew he was.
But Fin . . . I didn’t think James understood about Fin. The forest trolls didn’t have a forest anymore. It had been burned out from under them, and the land used for new farms by the goddamned Svarestri, who didn’t have enough evil points racked up yet, so they’d had to steal the little guys’ home, too. And then kill anybody who didn’t get the hint.
Fin didn’t have anywhere to go back to.
But the law didn’t care about that, like it didn’t care about him.
But I did, and I couldn’t risk it.
Goddamn it.
“I don’t have him, but I’ll get him,” I told James roughly. “If I have Fin out to help me.”
“Dory—”
“He has more contacts in that world than I’ll ever have. He’s how I found him this time, remember? And he won’t help you, no matter what you threaten him with. He won’t rat out a fellow troll.”
James was silent for a long moment. “Forty-eight hours. Then I’m bringing him in. And I’m not bluffing.”
Fuck.
Chapter Forty
A short time later, I was facing the door to a sleek Manhattan apartment, feeling more than a little out of place. I had no makeup, my coiffure was a style I like to call drove-with-the-top-down, and I still had on the rumpled old sweats. Now paired with muddy gardening sandals because I’d swapped with Claire so she wouldn’t slip on the rocks.
None of which should have mattered, since Horatiu is blind as a bat.
But it wasn’t Horatiu who answered the door.
And promptly slammed it in my face.
Or, to be more precise, tried to. But while Kit Marlowe is fast, so am I. And I got a muddy Croc in the door before he could shut it entirely.
Angry brown eyes glared at me through the minuscule opening. “Go. Away.”
“Fuck. You.” I gave a little push.
And was gratified to note that Marlowe had to exert effort to keep me out. I also noticed that he was in a tux, which was unusual because he had almost as much fashion sense as me. But somebody, probably his long-suffering family, had wrangled him into a sleek black number anyway, trimmed the Elizabethan-era goatee he’d had since it was originally fashionable, and tried to do something with the dark brown ratty-looking curls.
The latter had been slicked down with some sort of pomade, but they didn’t behave any better than their master, and had sprung back up again. The result was wet ratty-looking curls, which wasn’t an improvement, but I couldn’t talk at the moment. Or do much of anything else, because he was really determined that I not get through that door.
Which was ridiculous, since I had more reason to be here than he did!
“This is my father’s apartment,” I reminded him. It was Mircea’s condo in the city, originally purchased, I suspected, for times when he couldn’t deal with the consul anymore. Being a diplomat includes knowing when to get away so you don’t strangle somebody to death, like Marlowe looked like he wanted to do to me.
“He isn’t here!”
“I’m not looking for him. I’m looking for Louis-Cesare—”
“He isn’t here, either.”
“You haven’t heard from him?”
I didn’t get an answer that time, probably because Marlowe was busy.