“Yeah, well, not a lot of people do. Anyway, he was in what I guess you’d call their military, and he regularly pulled a shift guarding one of the main portals into our world.”
“Let me guess. He sometimes let a little something slip through.”
“A lot of somethings. We had a good thing going. He found people on his end who had stuff they’d rather not pay the duty on, and I took care of selling it on this side. Anyway, about a week ago, he calls and tells me he’s got a lead on something special. He told me to arrange a private sale, even told me who to contact—and that was some list! It made me nervous, because I don’t usually handle the big stuff, and these were not people I wanted to piss off. But the boss said to go ahead with it.”
“And something went wrong.”
“Everything! For starters, he wouldn’t bring me the rune until we’d already made the sale. I told him it didn’t work like that, but he said it did this time or no deal. I don’t like selling something I don’t got on hand, but the boss said to do it. And it went okay. He got the reserve he’d wanted and then some, and after the auction, I sent him a message and he said he’d be here in a couple hours.”
“But he didn’t show?”
“No, he came through the portal on schedule, but that’s the last thing that went right!”
“And this portal would be where?”
“At the club. It’s upstairs, in the manager’s old office—”
“At the—Are you crazy? You distribute from there! Everybody knows that!”
“Which is why it was perfect.” The little shit grinned at me. “You idiots were running around, checking my apartment—oh, yeah, I knew about that—and my warehouse and that tea shop I own, but nobody ever thought to look in the most obvious spot.”
“Because it’s stupid!”
“Stupid like a fox,” he said, and then frowned. “No, wait—”
“What. Happened?”
“Oh, yeah. Well, I’d called in a luduan to authenticate the piece before payment was made, and he was late. And I get nervous around those things.”
“Luduans?”
“Fey.” He made a face. “They don’t move enough or they move weird; I don’t know. Anyway, they give me the creeps. And so I tell Jókell to make himself comfortable, and I go down to get some refreshment, and I don’t hurry back, you know? I chat with some of the guys at the bar and remind Ken—that’s the DJ—that some of us like something besides techno occasionally—”
“Ray!”
“Right, right. So, after about fifteen minutes, I go back up with the tray. I push open the door, and I don’t see him, but I don’t panic because I figure even the fey have to use the john once in a while, right? And then something grabs my ankle, and I look down and it’s this bloody hand. And that’s when I found him, squashed between the desk and the wall. Or what was left of him.”
“And Elyas was there?”
“No, but I could smell him, so he must have just left.”
“And how do you know what Elyas smells like?”
“Maybe because he’d been down to the club that afternoon,” Ray said sarcastically. “He was trying to bribe me to give him the rune before the sale, and getting really pushy about it. I finally told him I didn’t have it, that it wouldn’t be delivered until after the sale, so he might as well go away.”
“You told him?”
“Well, I didn’t expect him to come down and murder the guy, did I?” Ray asked huffily. “Anyway, the fey are supposed to be hard to kill. And I guess maybe they are if you use magic. But this one had been gutted. He died a couple minutes later.”
“And the rune was missing.” I didn’t bother to make it a question.
“Damn straight. He had this gold thing around his neck when he arrived, fist-sized, with like a sunburst pattern. Kinda gaudy, but it looked expensive. But he said it was nothing, just a carrier for the rune. He showed it to me, and the rune fit inside in this little space. But when I went back up, it was gone.”
“The rune or the necklace?”
“Both.”
“Then that thing you said you ‘misplaced’—”
“Was the rune, yeah. I called Elyas as soon as I calmed down and told him that he either returned the damn thing or I’d finger him for killing a fey. And you know what they’re like about revenge.”
On a personal level. “But he refused?”
“No. I mean, he was pretty nasty about it, but he finally agreed. But it was almost morning by then, and I didn’t want him coming over when my boys were all asleep. So I told him to send it over tonight. But he didn’t show, and I couldn’t get him on the damn phone, and the boss was due in a couple hours! And I was freaking out, you know? The boss was flying in special to take the rune to Ming-de tonight, and I didn’t have it! I knew he’d kill me.”
“That sounds about right,” I agreed. That was the way the vampire hierarchy worked, even in the more legitimate families. Cause your master to lose face, and you were likely to lose yours, along with a lot of other body parts.