We eventually stopped at an office. Or, at least, I guess it was supposed to serve that function. It was so stuffed with weaponry that it was a little difficult to tell. I shoved an antique shield off a chair and sat down, as Geminus got behind the desk.
“What is this princess going to do for me?”
“Her name is Claire, and she’s half- human,” I told him shortly. “She grew up here and only recently claimed her heritage when she agreed to marry a Blarestri prince. But she’s never really gotten used to the way the fey do certain things. She’s a vegetarian pacifist, for instance; she hates unnecessary violence.”
“I’m fascinated.”
“You should be. Anyone else would have just turned you over to her family for punishment.”
“I don’t recall angering any fey. Not of the royal kind, at any rate.”
“They tend not to like it much when you steal from them.”
“Then I am fortunate, for I have stolen nothing.”
“You were seen at the club, right before the fey ended up dead and the rune went missing.”
It was a lie, but I thought it was worth a shot. But he didn’t take the bait. “Was I?”
“And you’re certainly strong enough to take out a fey warrior.”
“You flatter me.”
I glanced up at the wooden sword mounted over the fireplace. It was old and crumbling, barely held together by some stained twine, but carefully preserved behind a glass case. Two thousand years ago, Geminus had gotten his start as a gladiator, one of the few ways for poor young men of the time to rise to fame and fortune. He was rumored to have been fearless, despite a seer prophesying that he would die on the arena sands. He hadn’t, instead winning the sword and his freedom after successfully defeating numerous opponents.
By all accounts, he’d been doing the same thing ever since.
“I don’t think so,” I said simply.
He laughed. “Strong enough but not stupid enough. No relic is worth that kind of trouble.”
“Not even if it gets you control of the Senate?”
“But I do not wish to control the Senate,” he told me easily. “Let them bicker and squabble and plot and plan. My interests lie elsewhere.”
“You expect my employer to believe that you just shrugged off what happened at the auction? Come on, Geminus. That’s not your style.”
“Of course I didn’t.”
“Then what did you do?”
He sighed and kicked back against the wall, one foot propped up on the desk.
“After Cheung did his fiddle with the auction, I was… annoyed. It was obvious that he’d never intended to give the stone to anyone but Ming-de. I don’t like being played, so I had my servants to do some checking. They discovered who the sellers usually used for authentication. And fortunately for me, the little bastard was swimming in debt.”
“You’re talking about the luduan.”
“Yes. I offered him a deal. I’d pay his debts if he switched the rune for a fake when he examined it.”
“And once the fey found out and tracked him down?”
“That was his problem. But he could always deny it. There was no way anyone was going to know where, exactly, it went missing.”
“Why were you at Ray’s, if you already had a plan in place?”
This time, he didn’t budge. “I wanted to make sure he didn’t double-cross me. The stone was worth considerably more than I was paying on his debts. I didn’t trust him.”
“What happened?”
“My men and I surrounded the building, and the luduan went in. He was supposed to bring me the rune, but he never came back. I finally sent one of my boys in to check on things, and he found the luduan gone and Raymond screaming about a dead fey. I decided it might be prudent to leave at that point.”
“You’re telling me a luduan killed a fey warrior?”
“They’re both fey, and the guard might not have been expecting it.”
“If I were him, and I had something worth a king’s ransom, I’d have been expecting it.”
“Yet someone managed to do it.” He had a point there. “I don’t know if he killed the guard. I don’t know that he has the rune. I only know I don’t. You can tell your lady that.”
“I will. And she may even believe you; Claire’s the trusting type,” I said, standing up and tucking my card under a corner of his blotter. “Unfortunately, her family isn’t, and they’ll be here tomorrow. Knowing Caedmon, he may decide to find the rune in the most efficient way possible.”
“And what would that be?”
I shrugged. “Attack everyone who was at the auction and see who doesn’t die.”
CHAPTER 33
Five minutes later, I hit the sidewalk in front of Geminus’s building. Not literally, this time; he hadn’t thrown me out, but he also hadn’t admitted a damn thing. Leaving me hours away from the trial and fresh out of ideas.
Two silent shadows peeled off the bricks and followed me as I headed down the street. They didn’t say anything, including asking about what had happened upstairs. Of course, my cursing had probably already told them it wasn’t good.
I leaned against the side of a building a few blocks over and lit the crumpled old joint I found in my jacket. Sucking in a long breath, I held it for a second before letting it out. Drugs don’t do a lot for me thanks to my revved-up metabolism, but they’re better than nothing. And this was excellent weed.
After a moment the wave hit, lifting my bones away from one another and loosening the joints in sequence—neck, shoulders, wrists, fingers—leaving me feeling like I was floating on the tide. The tension washed out of me from spine to fingertips before coursing away, leaving me calmer, if not any happier.
Not that I needed to be calmer. That little scene with Geminus had disturbed me, but probably not for the reason he’d intended. It wasn’t the first time I’d been assaulted; it was, however, one of only two times in my life I could remember really wanting to fall into a dhampir rage and being unable to do so.
The other had been yesterday, whensubrand attacked.
I should have been able to break Geminus’s hold, at least long enough to give me a chance to get my weapons. And when I stabbedsubrand, it should have been somewhere vital. Instead, they’d both made me look like a fool, and I strongly suspected I knew why.
The fey wine had seemed like a godsend, but I should have known better. Everything that came out of Faerie looked better, prettier, more enticing than it really was. It glittered like gold, but scratch the surface and what was revealed was a lot darker. So I was left with a choice: take the wine and put up with memories I didn’t want and a substantial power loss, or don’t take it and suffer homicidal blackouts.
Wonderful.
The clock ticking steadily inside my head wasn’t helping my mood, either. Geminus had my number, but he hadn’t used it. Either he really didn’t have the stone or he was cocky enough to believe he could take on the fey. That left no one on the party list who wasn’t dead or buttoned down tight. At least as far as I was concerned. Caedmon might have more luck, but he wasn’t here. And by the time he arrived, Louis-Cesare would have been sentenced and possibly executed.
Marlowe had been right: something needed to shake loose, and it needed to happen now.
I hailed a cab. There was one person who hadn’t been on the list who might know something. I’d already had my daily quota of ancient vampires with attitude problems who weren’t going to tell me shit. But talking to Anthony beat doing nothing.
Although not by much.
A yellow taxi slid to a stop in front of me, and the silent duo got inside. I started to do the same when my phone rang. “Yeah?”
“Who the hell taught you how to answer the phone?” a brisk voice asked.
I wasn’t sure I recognized it; the weather was overcast and the signal was lousy. “Fin?”
“The one and only. You still interested in that deadbeat?”