“Right now?”
I shook my head. “Not yet. I need to make some calls.”
The classic thing to do in this situation would have been to go to the factory, magnifying glass in hand, and look for clues. There were several good reasons why I wasn’t going to do that, the main one being I’d already tried it and it hadn’t worked. I hadn’t been able to find much on a search even before a bunch of mages and Council security spent several hours tromping around the place. Besides, why root around when someone’s done it for you?
I called Talisid but came up dry. The investigation of the barghest and factory hadn’t turned up anything else useful. In exchange, I relayed the information from Arachne. “Harvesting nonhumans?” Talisid said in surprise. “Really?”
“Do you know anything about it being tried?”
“God no.” Talisid sounded revolted. “In every instance I know of, the harvester went violently insane. If that was what they killed the barghest with, I’m surprised we didn’t find their bodies too.”
“Why’s it so lethal?” I kept my voice casual, as if from idle curiosity, though I didn’t expect Talisid to believe it for a moment. “Harvesting works on humans, doesn’t it?”
Talisid snorted. “If you can call that ‘working.’ It’s like ripping out half someone’s mind and injecting it into your own. Usually turns whoever did it into a deranged psychopath, though if they were willing to use Harvesting in the first place, most people probably wouldn’t notice much difference.”
It matched with what I’d heard. Magical power isn’t something that can be given away; it’s part of who you are. The only way to take a mage’s power is to rip out most of him with it. I can’t imagine what it would be like to try to merge that maimed fragment with your own self, and that’s if what you were taking came from a human. Trying to assimilate something totally alien, like a barghest …
“So now what are you up to?” Talisid broke into my thoughts. “Trying to track down the mages who did it?”
“Yup,” I said. “Anyone still searching the factory?”
“Empty.”
“Okay.”
“You didn’t have anything to do with that business on Hampstead Heath, did you?”
“What would that be?”
“Someone tried to settle a disagreement with military-grade weapons.” Talisid’s voice was dry and I knew he had his suspicions. “Anything you want to tell me?”
“Yeah, but I shouldn’t.”
“Hm. Watch yourself.”
Talisid broke the connection and I dialled another number, and this time I had more success. It took only a few minutes to tell the story and fix a time for the meeting. I dropped my phone into my pocket and went back to Meredith. “We’re done.”
Meredith looked up from her coffee. We were sitting in a Starbucks, the late afternoon sun slanting through the glass of the shop front. “Did you find the guy you were looking for?”
“He won’t be here till tomorrow.” My meeting with Luna and Martin wasn’t until the morning either, meaning I had nothing immediate for the rest of the evening. “Want to get dinner?”
“Really?”
“Not much we can do for the rest of the day. Besides, we might as well relax while we’ve got the chance. There’ll be trouble enough soon.” Which was about to prove more prophetic than I would have liked.
There was a beat, then Meredith nodded, looking at me appraisingly. “I’d like that.”
Meredith wanted to go back to her flat, having been away for more than a day, and I went with her. Apart from anything else, the Dark cabal might be planning to take another shot at her, and if they were, her home was the natural place to set an ambush.
Meredith’s flat was in Kensington and Chelsea, a little west of Cadogan Square. It’s expensive even by London standards and I don’t go there much. As we turned into the street, I saw that it was lined with old white-pillared terraced houses. Once upon a time, sixty or seventy years ago, those would have been used by the gentry and their servants and families; these days they’d been converted into flats for rich professionals. Some things change, some stay the same. The sides of the road were tightly packed with lines of well-polished sedans and sports cars. I stopped on the patio of Meredith’s house, my instincts warning me to check the area before going in. The sun had set during our journey and as I looked from west to east I could see the colour of the sky fading from a deep yellow sunset to midnight blue. There was a scattering of people but the street was quiet with the coming evening and nothing set off my alarms. I followed Meredith inside.
Meredith’s flat was the top one of four, the stairs thickly carpeted. “I really need to change,” Meredith said. “Could you wait a few minutes?”
If there was anything messy about her appearance, it was more than I could tell. “No hurry.” Meredith disappeared into the bedroom. I knew what “a few minutes” meant in girl talk and settled down to wait. A moment later I heard a shower start up from somewhere past the bedroom and I added another quarter hour onto my guess.
Meredith’s living room was decorated in pale green, with tables and chairs of light wood, and a carpet lined the floor. A bookcase stood by one wall-the shelves were less than half full and most of what was there seemed to be boxes or CDs. There was a TV and stereo system, both new looking, the remote controls on the table next to a bowl of dried flowers. Two soft-looking white sofas were piled with cushions and the wall held a piece of artwork made of curves of black metal. The room looked nice but somehow I didn’t feel particularly comfortable. It was a room for receiving visitors, not a place where you could put your feet up and relax. I sat on the sofa and found it was as soft as it looked.
“Where are we going?” Meredith called. I could make out her voice clearly, which meant the bathroom door was probably open … and I stopped that line of thought before it went any further.
“It’s a surprise,” I called back. Actually I hadn’t thought ahead that far. I tried to think of somewhere to take Meredith and came up blank. There are a lot of things I’m really good at but entertaining women isn’t one of them.
“So what should I wear?” Meredith called over the sound of the shower.
“Meredith, I think you’re going to look good whatever you wear.”
Meredith laughed; she sounded pleased and for some reason that put me in a good mood. The sound of the shower stopped, replaced a moment later by the whirr of a hair dryer. I got up and wandered over to the bookshelves. There wasn’t much there; it seemed Meredith was more into music than reading.
“Alex?”
I turned to see Meredith standing in the doorway wearing nothing but a small towel and a couple of hair clips. My brain kind of shorted out at that point and I didn’t notice much else. Gradually I realised that she’d just asked me a question. “Sorry?”
“Which one do you like better?”
I managed to tear my eyes off Meredith long enough to see that she was holding up a couple of dresses on hangers in front of her. “That one,” I said.
“Which, this?” Meredith let one of the dresses she’d been holding in front of herself fall to her side, giving a very interesting view for half a second before she draped the other one over the front of her body. “Do you think?”
“Yeah,” I said. Honestly, I was having trouble even noticing what colour it was. Meredith was looking down at the fall of the dress, apparently completely absorbed, thin tanned arms bare all the way to her shoulder blades. “Go with that.”
Meredith disappeared back into her bedroom and I let out my breath, only then realising that I’d been holding it. This was getting dangerous.
I still didn’t know what to do about Meredith. I knew she’d been recruited by Belthas and I knew she had a very different set of priorities than he did. I was tempted to think of her as a partner … except for that nagging voice of paranoia wondering what her real motives were. Was Meredith staying close to me because she wanted to? Or because she’d been told to? Or for some other reason I couldn’t guess?