We inched around the destroyed van with the help of our new police escort, who also insured that we reached the auction house in record time. He sat on his motorcycle, scratching his head and looking around uncertainly. He was probably wondering what we were doing at a dilapidated warehouse on the Brooklyn waterfront without so much as a nearby deli to explain its allure. I stayed in the car until Heidar worked his magic on the man's mind and he left happy. Then Tanet and I piled out onto the asphalt.
It was high noon, chosen because the trolls and vamps would be asleep. That didn't mean there wouldn't be security, of course, but after several years on the payroll, I knew Gerald's as well as anyone. Which probably explained why my palms were sweating.
"He uses booby traps in daytime," I told the rest of the team. "Bad ones."
Heidar translated for Tanet, who nodded before transforming into his alter ego and bounding over the chain-link fence. A few flaps of his powerful wings took him up to the second story, and a heave and a wiggle forced his considerable bulk through a window. Unfortunately, he didn't bother to open it first.
So much for the element of surprise.
"What's he doing?" I asked.
Heidar gave me a sardonic look while breaking open the lock on the front gate. "Why do you think your father sent him with us?"
I preceded him through the fence and up a cracked concrete sidewalk. "To help?"
"He wants the rune, Claire. I saw it on his face when you were telling him about how we met. Your brother is here to get it for him."
I sighed. It didn't surprise me. The week I'd spent with my new relatives had been both very strange and eerily familiar. Strange because the family seemed genuinely happy to have me around, a sensation I'd never had growing up. Familiar because, despite the otherworldly surroundings, the plotting and scheming had been exactly the same as I'd heard every day as a child. This time it was Fey politics instead of human, but it gave me an identical queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach. Politics had led Father to try to sell me to the Fey, made the family declare me a murderer, and caused the Svarestri to try to kill me on sight. I hated politics.
"What would happen if the Dark Fey got the rune?" I asked, after Heidar kicked in the front door. The sound of splintering wood made me wince, but it made no sense to try to sneak around when we could hear the crashes a 1,200-pound dragon made as it tore through the place.
"I don't know. The Dark King would persuade your father to give it up sooner or later, in exchange for more lands, a higher title..." He shrugged. "Whatever it took. What he would do with it afterward... I don't know," he repeated. He didn't look happy about the prospect.
Unlike Tanet, we headed directly to the lower levels, but all we encountered on the way down was peeling paint and dusty stairs. I didn't see any vamps, but that didn't mean much. If any were powerful enough to be awake, they'd be waiting for us below, well out of the sun.
At the bottom, the light switch didn't work, which meant that the loading area would have been completely dark except that Heidar was glowing like some otherworldly lantern. I'd asked him why he glowed in the human world and not in the Fey, but the answer was really long and complicated, and I'd fallen asleep in the middle of it. So it remained a mystery. But for once, I was grateful for it.
We made our way across the room easily, unimpeded by the usual jumble of pallets, boxes, and packing material that tended to be strewn around. I finally managed to find the button to operate the loading door, but as with the light switch, it didn't work. Heidar manually forced the thing up its tracks, letting in enough sunlight to illuminate the whole room. Not that there was much to see.
I'd never seen the place so clean. The only signs that anyone had ever run a business here were a stenciled logo on the wall for a 1950s-era beer company and a broken pallet. It looked like Gerald's was out of business.
Heidar walked over to where the podium had rested when not in use and managed to pull down the platform. There was nothing on top. The bolts that had once held the giant dragon's head sat empty and, like everything else around us, were covered in dust.
Heidar looked around, his face getting unhappier by the minute. "I don't like this, Claire. It feels too much like a – "
"Trap?"
Heidar spun around at the voice, but I just stiffened. I didn't need to look to know who'd spoken. Heidar tensed, remembering Seb's face from the last time we'd all been here together, but I knew there was nothing he could do. The posse was already fanning out around the room, half of them mages, half well-armed humans.
"I can't drain them all," I told him as Seb walked over. The mages would have trouble getting magic to work with me in the room, but then, they didn't really need it. The guns most of them were holding would work just fine.
"I know."
Seb stopped in front of us, a cautious few yards away. His suit was a light, summer-weight khaki that did nothing for his sallow complexion. It looked hot, or maybe he was more nervous than he was letting on.
I realized that I hadn't heard anything from upstairs in a while, and wondered where Tanet was. If he'd encountered Seb's people, we would certainly have heard the commotion. At least I hoped so. I eyed the mages, but since I didn't know more than a couple of them, I had no way to tell if their power had recently taken a drain. Like enough to kill a young dragon.
Seb's eyes were on Heidar with a speculative gleam. "Claire always did attract unusual friends." He glanced at me. "That roommate of yours came to see me shortly after you disappeared. She seemed to think I might be involved." He smiled. "Of course, I was able to claim quite honestly that I'd had nothing to do with it!"
"Not for lack of trying."
He shrugged. "You gave me little choice. Had you gone to Faerie years ago as planned, we would never have quarreled." He looked back at Heidar. "She can be stubborn."
I was about to demand if Seb thought "quarrel" really covered our relationship, when Heidar spoke. "I've noticed." I turned to look at him, but he didn't even glance at me. His eyes were on Seb, and he was smiling. "Do you have it?"
Sebastian nodded. "I thought one of you would be by eventually." He pulled a hand out of his pocket, something clutched in his fist. "I had this place warded, so I'd know when you showed up."
"Matthew told you I tried to persuade him to sell it ahead of the auction."
"And that he refused. A good businessman always holds out for the best price."
Heidar smiled gently. "And what is your price?"
"What do you think?" Seb shot a glance in my direction and opened his hand. My vision seemed to narrow to the point where all I could see was the small gray rune stone sitting in his sweaty palm. All I could hear was Heidar's voice, telling me how important it was, how whoever had it could make a bid to rule all Faerie. Politics, I thought numbly. Had that been what all this was about? Getting me to trust him enough to come back here with him, so he could make his deal?
"Let me see if I understand," Heidar was saying. "I give you Claire, and I walk out of here with the rune – just like that?"
"I've no wish to make an enemy of the Fey," Seb told him, probably truthfully. "The family would like to do more business in Faerie, not less. This could be the start of a lucrative arrangement between us." He glanced at me again. "I could demand more for the stone, but I'd prefer to make a goodwill gesture. Give me Claire, and we'll part friends."