I didn’t answer, being preoccupied with an internal countdown… nine, eight, seven…. When I hit five, I said calmly, “Fifty bucks says it’ll die by the time I finish this”—the screen went dark with a cheeky little blip—“sentence.”
Louis-Cesare reached into his pocket and pulled out a sleek new cell phone in a shiny black case. He pushed it across the table to me. “Who is Claire?”
I could have pointed out that the bet had been to fix my old phone, not to give me a new one. But he’d been carrying exactly the model I’d been lusting after for months, but hadn’t been able to afford. Taking time off to search for Claire had played havoc with my bank account.
“I met her at Gerald & Co.—the auction house.” I paused for a minute to pound my piece of possessed circuitry into a hundred pieces. “Gerald’s occasionally came across an item that was dangerously unstable but also potentially valuable. They needed a null to keep anything freaky from happening while their people decided if whatever it was could be stabilized. She also worked some of the auctions, to keep the more volatile merchandise quiet while the suckers were bidding on it.”
“Why were you there?” Louis-Cesare asked after a moment, his tone managing to convey disbelief that they’d let anyone as disreputable as me into a genteel auction. He’d obviously never been to Gerald’s.
“To place a bid.” I started fiddling with my new toy, which had every bell and whistle known to man.
“For what?”
“Sweet! This thing even has Internet!”
Louis-Cesare just looked at me. I gave in with a put-upon sigh. “Wallachia’s first ruler was a Transylvanian named Radu Negru. Around 1300, he decided to build himself a grand new cathedral at Curtea de Arges, which is now a two-donkey town but was then the capital. According to legend, construction was going a little slow, and Radu threatened his chief architect, a guy named Manoli, if he didn’t start to see some progress. Trying to excuse himself, Manoli claimed that evil spirits were opposing the project. The solution: bury a living woman in the foundation to appease them.”
“What does this have to do with you meeting the null?” Louis-Cesare looked like he thought he was being had.
“I’m getting there. Anyway, Radu and Manoli agreed that the first woman on-site the next day would get the honor. As it turned out, the unlucky lady was Flora Manoli. She pleaded with her husband for mercy, and when that didn’t work, she cursed him and any other man who touched her grave. Shortly thereafter, Manoli fell off the roof of the cathedral and plummeted to his death.” Louis-Cesare was looking confused and slightly annoyed. “Legend says that he hit the dirt right next to the spot where he’d bricked up the missus.”
“I still do not see—”
“After a number of suspicious deaths, the stone over Mrs. Manoli was removed and replaced with a new, curse-free version. The old rock was broken up and buried, but enterprising village women located it and sold the pieces. Most of them have been lost over the years, but a few survived. Gerald & Co. somehow got hold of one of the remaining bits.” I’d hoped to snag the thing for a song, but someone with deeper pockets had also believed the legend. “I met Claire during the auction and we went for a drink afterward. Turns out she needed a roommate.”
Claire was working for a skinflint outfit like Gerald’s because the family business was entailed—one heir got control of everything, and the rest were out of luck. After her father died, she and her cousin Sebastian fought over control of the business and she lost. And since rival heirs were usually killed, she preferred to lie low until things calmed down. I’d given her a few pointers about how to stay beneath her family’s radar, and in the process learned that she’d recently inherited a rambling old house with lots of spare room and had a pressing need for untraceable cash.
“And now she is missing?’ Louis-Cesare prompted.
I scowled. “Yeah.” A fact that, among other things, made me look pretty damn incompetent.
Claire had set my rent ridiculously low, saying that she was just glad of the company, and had also told me that I could use the attic for an office. I don’t like taking advantage of people, at least not the nice, trusting ones, but I’d needed cheap digs. To soothe my conscience, I’d decided to throw protection into the deal. I couldn’t very well act as her full-time bodyguard and still take other clients, but I’d foolishly assumed that, with a dhampir as a roommate, she’d at least be safe at home. So it had come as a rude shock when she was snatched right out from under my nose.
“You are sure she did not leave by choice?” Louis-Cesare asked.
“I returned from a job to find an empty house and no note.”