Erwin turned. “Ah.”
A white glow drenched his eyes. Tiny tendrils of white lightning sparked off his right hand and flared, combining into a current. A beam of pure white shot from him, severing the wasp nest in half, as if with a knife.
Erwin wasn’t just a flasher. He was a sniper. Figured.
“You’ve heard of Virai,” the woman said.
Most Red Legionnaires knew of Virai. The Red Legion did black ops, so when the Mirror needed muscle and raw numbers, they tapped the Red Legion first. Virai was the head of the Mirror, the power behind the agency. His name was whispered.
“Sure.”
The woman raised her chin. “I am Virai.”
William blinked. “The Virai?”
“Yes. You may call me Nancy, if you would like.”
Nancy. Right. “Why did you bring me pictures of dead children?”
“Because you have spent the last two years living here, safe and cozy. You needed a reminder of who you are.”
Arrogant crone. William bared his teeth in a slow wolf smile. “Your pet sniper won’t stop me. I’ve taken his kind before.” In his mind William leapt over his action figures, hit Erwin, breaking his neck on the way down, rolled . . .
“Perhaps,” Nancy said. “But can you take two at once?”
Her eyes blazed with white. Magic unfurled from her in a glowing shroud, held for a long breath, and vanished.
The imaginary attack died as imaginary William got sliced in two by Nancy’s flash. They had him. One superior flasher he could handle. Between the two of them, they would mince him into pieces before he got his fingers around anyone’s throat.
William crossed his arms. “What is it you want?”
The woman raised her head. “I want you to go deeper into the Edge and find Spider. I want you to take away the object he’s looking for and bring it to me. If you kill him, I would consider it a bonus.”
Well, he did ask. “Why me?”
“Because he knows my agents. He knows the way they think, and he kills them. You’ve tangled with him twice and survived. So far, it’s a record.” She locked her teeth, making the muscles on her jaw stand out. “Spider is the worst kind of enemy. He’s a true believer, convinced that he’s serving a higher cause. He won’t stop until he’s dead.”
“And you’re here because you don’t want to waste your people hunting him,” William said. As a changeling, he was expendable. Nothing new there.
Nancy’s voice cracked like a whip. “I’m here, because of all of the operatives available to me, you are the best man for the job and I can’t suffer another failure. I can’t compel you to help me. I have no authority over you. I can only ask.”
If that was the way she asked, he hated to hear what her order sounded like.
She did ask all the same. That was new. He’d been given orders all his life. Declan was the only one who bothered to ask him anything. The dumb blueblood insisted on treating him as if he were a real person. Still, William reflected, he had a comfortable life. Asking alone wouldn’t pry him free from it—but they also brought Spider to the table. The knowledge that the child murderer was within his reach would eat at him now, burrowing like a tick under his skin, until it would drive him crazy. He had to kill the man. It was the last bit of unfinished business he had. He’d murder Spider, taste his blood, and come back here without a weight on his soul.
Go deeper into the Edge, huh? The Edge wrapped the junction of two worlds all the way from one ocean to another, widening and narrowing whenever it felt like it. Sometimes it was three miles deep, sometimes fifty. “Where in the Edge is Spider?”
“In the swamps,” Erwin said. “West of here, the Edge narrows down almost to nothing and then abruptly widens to encompass an enormous swamp the locals call the Mire. We estimate it to be at least six hundred square leagues, perhaps bigger.”
Nine hundred square miles. “A hell of a swamp.”
“The Mire is sandwiched between the Weird and the Dukedom of Louisiana and the Broken and the state of Louisiana,” Erwin continued. “Most of it is mud and water, impassable and unmapped. The Dukedom has been dumping exiles into it for years. They’re too full of magic to escape into the Broken, so they simply stay there, stranded between the worlds.”
William raised his eyebrows. “A swamp full of criminals.” He would be right at home.
“Precisely.” Nancy nodded. “Spider is an urban agent. Nothing short of a dire need would drag him to the Mire, where he’s out of his element. There are a dozen places where things are heating up, but instead his crew is scouring the swamps. They’re looking for something. I want to know what it is and I want to own it.”
She didn’t ask much, did she? Just the moon and the stars.
“The Louisianans moved a detachment of Air Force wyverns to the border with the Mire,” Erwin said.
William grimaced. “They expect to airlift Spider as soon as he gets out of the swamp.”
Erwin nodded.
Whatever Spider was looking for had to be valuable if they were willing to park a wyvern for him.
A predatory light sparked in Nancy’s eyes. “The Dukedom of Louisiana wants a war, but they’re unwilling to risk it unless they’re certain of their victory. Spider has been trying to deliver the means to win this war for the last ten years. This time he must’ve found something remarkable. If the war starts and the Dukedom wins, every changeling within our borders will be murdered.”
“Don’t,” William warned. “The pictures were unexpected, but I’m not an idiot. I know what you’re trying to do.” Changelings had a harder time controlling their emotions. That was one of Hawk’s favorite tactics: rile up the changelings, get them angry with the scent of blood or a punch in the face, and send them into the fight to rend everything they came across. He was an old wolf and this wasn’t his first hunt. “Cheap tricks don’t work on me.”