"Can you not have Dante send you the passport?"
"Are you kidding?" My lips curled into a jaded smile as Adrian's fingers tightened on my shoulder. "Christian wants to see us dead. I don't think he's going to help us escape Germany."
She sucked in her breath, her eyes huge as she turned them on Adrian. "You did not mention that Dante is the Dark One pursuing you."
Pain radiated from under Adrian's grip. I touched his fingers, wordlessly asking him to loosen his hold. He did so immediately, rubbing the sore spot as he answered Gigli. "Does it matter who is trying to find us? We still need to get to London."
"But this changes everything. Dante is"—she spread her hands wide in a gesture of helplessness—"very resourceful. You know that as well as I. The airport will be the first place he looks for you. This is not merely a matter of booking you on a flight to London. If you insist on flying, you must have new identities, and I cannot help you with that."
I stood up, twining my fingers through Adrian's. Frustration raged in an angry swirl around him, wrapping me in its embrace until I thought I would scream at the obstructions that seemed to block our every move. "Look, I realize we're asking a lot, and I don't have much I can offer in return, but I can withdraw some money from my retirement fund—"
"Money," she said, snorting at the idea. "What good is money? It is used only in the mortal world, and I keep my contacts with that to a minimum."
"A big bucket of cash sure would come in handy right about now," I snarled, immediately ashamed that my bad mood had caused me to lash out at someone who was trying to help us. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean that. It's just that it's important that we get to London. Very important. And we'll do almost anything to get there, so whatever it will take—money, information, kobolds, whatever—we'll get it just so long as we're on a plane in the next couple of hours."
Adrian disentangled his fingers from mine, wrapping both his arms around me as he pulled me back against his chest. "Who do you know who can make us new identities?"
Gigli had pursed her lips at my outburst, softening the look to a thoughtful moue as I'd pleaded with her. Her lips relaxed into their normal full lines now as she eyed us. "Seal."
I leaned back against Adrian, exhausted and too overwhelmed to cope anymore. "Trained or harbor?" I asked.
"The man who can help you is named Seal," she answered, looking away quickly. "He will be able to make you both new passports."
"At what cost?" Adrian asked, his voice rumbling deep in his chest.
She wouldn't meet his eyes. "That is between you and him. I cannot help you there. Once you have the passport numbers, I will arrange for you to be on the next flight to London."
I had a bad feeling about this guy Seal, but didn't see that we had much choice. Adrian's frustration was still spilling onto me, joining with my own impatience and leaving me edgy and more than a little jumpy. Gigli wrote down the directions to Seal's apartment while I rubbed my arms, trying to quell the sense of disaster that seemed to grow stronger with each second that we were stuck in Germany.
Before we left, Gigli gave me an odd look, then unlocked a steel filing cabinet, pulling out a small green book which she offered to me.
"What's this?" I asked, flipping through it. It was in Latin, filled with diagrams and brief explanations along with what appeared to be very bad poetry. I translated a few sentences, surprised when I realized they weren't poems… they were spells.
"It is a book of charms. As you can see, it's not very old, and thus not worth much on the resale market. I thought you might like to have it, as you are a Charmer."
I smiled and handed the book back to her. "Thanks, but no thanks. I know that no one but Adrian believes me, but my Charming skills are pretty much limited to a couple of wards."
"How do you know what you can do until you have tried?" she asked, her lips curving in a smile.
Unbidden, the image of Beth's bleak grave rose in my mind. I grimaced and looked away. "Trust me, I know."
Chapter Twelve
"Do you know this guy Seal?" I asked as Adrian and I hurried toward the nearest intersection, where we stood a better chance of finding a taxi.
"I have heard of him," he answered. His voice was flat, but as soon as I slid my fingers around his wrist I could feel what he had been trying to hide—intense, profound worry. "He is a forger of some repute, a mortal, but one who has dealings with immortals."
A taxi zoomed to a stop as if it had read Adrian's mind. I slid into the back seat, waiting until Adrian had given the address before snuggling up to him, asking softly, "Why did I hear an unspoken but in that last sentence?"
His arm tightened around me. "When I heard of him last, he was mixed up with the Eisenfaust, an offshoot of the German Mafia."
"He sounds like a delightful individual." I gave his ear a quick kiss, just because it deserved it. "But if it comes down to you against him, my money's on you."
"I am not concerned with beating him in a fight," Adrian said, his eyes a bright cerulean that promised so much. "I am worried about what payment he will ask."
"Well, I've told you how much I can raise. If he asks for more than that, just flash a little fang. I bet that'll knock a couple of grand off his price."
Seal turned out to be an emaciated man whose skin—the color of very milky coffee—was stretched tightly across his bony frame, making me think of him as sort of an animated skeleton. The entire five minutes we were in his apartment, the skin under one eye ticked constantly, but it was the jittery, slightly unfocused look in his muddy eyes that screamed serious drug addict.
"What do you want?" he asked in impolite German through the barely opened door after Adrian had pounded on it for three minutes.
"Gigli sent us. She said you could help us."
The eye peeping out at us narrowed as it examined first Adrian, then me. "A Dark One and a human. What sort of help do you want?"
"I prefer to not discuss my business in public," Adrian said. I nodded, holding firmly onto his arm while giving the hallway behind me a suspicious glare. I swore I saw something small and rodentlike move under one of the many piles of garbage that had been scattered down the dirty passage.
Seal's shadow moved behind the door as it closed, the sounds of several chains scraping across it as he unlocked it. His head popped out to peer around us.
"Come in, come in," he said quickly, pulling us through the door before he slammed it shut, locking in fast succession three dead bolts, four chains, and a metal brace designed to keep a door from being kicked in. "Now you will tell me what business you want of me."
Adrian frowned as he glanced around the room. It, like our host, was threadbare and shabby, hinting of days of glory long past. Dingy wallpaper peeled off the walls, bits of it drooping onto a sad, shapeless armchair. Two and a half plastic chairs sat around a small linoleum table that held an extensive array of printing equipment—probably worth more than the entire apartment building. No wonder Seal was serious about keeping people out of his digs.
Adrian pulled out one of the plastic chairs for me, removing the plate of furry French fries and a half-eaten burger so I could sit. "We need to get to London without anyone knowing our identities. How quickly can you make us passports?"