“Damn,” I cursed.
“Do not be so hasty,” the djinni told me. “I agreed to trace all connections, and I have found one. Laura Marshall is one of the founding shareholders of a small investment trust operating in Calgary—a real estate investment trust. I have a list of apartments, a few warehouses—it’s approximately eighty million dollars in property, with over seventy percent purchased in the last nine months even though the trust has been operating for three years.”
“So, the company was originally hers, but the vampires took it over?”
“Almost certainly,” he nodded. “May I have that again for a moment?” Aheed took the USB stick away from and plugged it back into the computer.
“Very well. I have added all the information I could find on both of her identities and on the Sigrid REIT. Their head offices are in the northwest, as are a significant portion of their properties.”
“Somewhere to start,” I agreed. “Thank you.”
“The deal is kept,” Aheed said in formal tones.
12
“WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO?” Eric asked me once we were outside again.
“I’m not sure,” I admitted as I strapped myself into the snowshoes. “Check out the offices tomorrow night, late enough that any mortal staff should have gone home?”
“Want a suggestion?”
“I’ll take one, sure,” I admitted to him. “I’m still trying to get past flailing around lost, but I’m not sure how successful I’m being.”
“Call Oberis,” Eric said simply. “Jason, you’re dealing with powers and factions and politics you know nothing about—and no one knows this city’s inhuman politics better than our lord.”
“Still don’t want to trust the Enforcers?” I asked.
“If we need to bring them in, that should be Oberis’s call,” the gnome told me. “And if he makes it, he’ll go straight to the Wizard. We can’t do that.”
“Will he help?” I asked. I had, after all, just caused Oberis a lot of trouble.
“You are fae; he is your lord,” Eric said as we snowshoed our way across the still-buried streets. “Even if you weren’t a Vassal of the Queen, he would help. Now he knows what you are, he is bound to help by his fealty to the Nine.”
Eric borrowed my phone and dialed the number for me before passing it back. The phone rang once, and then Oberis answered.
“What is it, Jason?” he asked abruptly.
“I have word on my task,” I told him. “The Keeper advised that I bring it to you. We have a lea—”
“This is not something to discuss on the phone,” Oberis cut me off. “Stay where you are.”
He hung up, and I looked at Eric in confusion. “He said to stay here; I’m not sure why.”
“So I can find you,” a familiar voice said behind me, and I turned swiftly—only to tangle my feet in the snowshoes and crumple to the ground.
The Seelie lord laughed and helped me back to my feet. He hadn’t bothered with snowshoes, simply standing lightly atop the thick drifts of snow in a pristinely white suit. Even compared to the chill of the winter day, his gloves were cold.
“Do you trust me, Vassal of my Queen?” he asked me, and offered me and Eric each one of his hands. The gnome took it unquestioningly, but I looked at him for a moment and then breathed deeply.
“I did call you,” I admitted, and took his hand.
There was a flash of cold, cold nothingness, and then warmth wrapped itself around me. We stood in a featureless black expanse I recognized as Between, where the Queen had taken me to tell me of exactly what I’d been born to.
“Between,” Oberis confirmed as he saw me glance around. “We are in a bubble of warmth and air sustained by my power. Here, unless a member of the Wild Hunt has followed us, we have perfect privacy.”
I nodded. “I don’t suppose Eric could conjure us some chairs?” I asked, with a glance at the gnome.
“Not here,” he answered. “My ‘conjuring’, as you call it, is actually retrieving objects from a storage space I keep Between. I can’t access it from here.”
“You said you had word on your task from the Queen,” Oberis said quietly, his white suit and fair skin seeming to glow in the dark of the Between. After a moment, I realized it wasn’t an illusion. The light we were seeing each other by was emanating from the noble’s skin. “I assume this means you have learned something about the vampires.”
“We have learned that they have turned at least one person taken in the city, and returned them to the population to act as their agent,” I explained. “He used lifesblood to appear alive and interact with mortal authorities.”
“Damn,” he murmured. “Lifesblood—you’re sure?”
“I saw the footage of the man walk and breathe as if alive, and yet it was barely a day later when we know he fought Jason here as a vampire,” Eric confirmed. “Heartstone is the only way.”
The fae lord turned away from us. “This is bad,” he told the darkness beyond his circle of life and light. “It also explains how the vampires snuck into the city.”
“Some of the Enforcers have betrayed the Low Covenant,” I said quietly. The Low Covenant was the one that bound together every faction in a given city and laid out the laws they would function by.
Oberis nodded. “Our Covenant laid out exactly who got how much heartstone. So, either the heartstone is being funneled back into the city by one of the known recipient groups, which is unlikely, or it is being siphoned off at the source. By the Enforcers.”
“Wouldn’t the Wizard know he was betrayed?” I asked.
“He should,” my lord answered grimly. “And yet clearly he has been betrayed and knows nothing of it. What else have you learned?”
“Under the name she owned the house I found her in, Sigridsen owned significant holdings in a real estate investment trust,” I explained. “It owns apartments and condos all through the northwest, where the disappearances of people have been concentrated. The trust also owns several warehouses, and has an office near the University.
“Most of the property was bought since the vampires came here,” I finished.
“Good enough reason to believe they are funneling money through this trust,” Oberis agreed. “We need to act on this evidence ourselves,” he told me and Eric. “If we could trust the Enforcers, I’d bring them in, but with evidence of corruption among their ranks, I must have enough evidence to go directly to Kenneth.”
“What do you need of me?” Eric and I asked, almost simultaneously.
“Of you, Eric, nothing,” Oberis said gently. “If you can do your best to keep the Unseelie quiet until this is resolved, I would appreciate the effort, though.
“Of you, Jason, patience,” he continued. “You are the representative of our Queen in this, so I would have you present, but it will take me time to quietly assemble the arms and people for such a task. If I acted today, all I could send would be you and Laurie.
“Give me three days, and I can assemble a strike team of gentry and major non-noble fae,” he told me. “You will primarily go in with them as an observer, but you will accompany them. Acceptable?”
I thought about it for a minute. “You can’t act yourself?” I asked. Oberis on his own would be far more comforting support than a dozen gentry or “major non-noble fae”—like Laurie.
“I am bound by the Low Covenant myself,” Oberis reminded me. “I cannot become personally involved in things without talking to Kenneth first. So, we will need a chance to assemble a team. Keep your head down until then, all right?”
“Okay,” I agreed. “It makes sense. Thank you,” I added.
Suddenly, the three of us were standing in my sparsely furnished living room.
“I will do what I can,” the Seelie lord told us. “It is in everyone’s interest to see the feeders driven from the city. Enjoy your snow day,” he instructed, and stepped back Between, vanishing from my apartment.