Who was she?
The Grigori finally shook off the hazelnut vendor and turned, picking up his pursuit. Malachi continued to follow at a distance, watching him, watching her. The woman ignored the müezzin who called the faithful, stepping lightly along the crowded streets as she made her way back toward the train station. She turned right near Gülhane Park and followed the tram line up the hill, walking a few blocks before she stopped near the lobby of one of the larger hotels.
Then she stepped into the glass-fronted building and out of sight. The Grigori stopped a block away, watching for a few moments before he pulled out a mobile phone, called a number, and spoke animatedly to whoever was on the other end. After a quick conversation, the man took one last look at the hotel, then walked away, back toward the train station.
But Malachi waited. The Grigori didn’t know he had been spotted, but Malachi had seen the quick recognition on the woman’s face. She hadn’t recognized the man, but she’d known she was being watched. Perhaps, like him, she could sense it. She was more perceptive than the average human; Malachi would have to be careful. He sat down at an outdoor café to wait, ordering a tea and continuing to munch on the roasted almonds as he scanned the streets from behind black-shaded glasses and pretended to read a newspaper someone had left on the table.
A full forty-five minutes later, the woman emerged. She lingered at the entrance for a few minutes, holding a map in front of her as she scanned the streets from behind her glasses. Satisfied her follower had left, she started back up the hill.
She crossed the street, heading toward the hippodrome. The hairs on Malachi’s neck rose as he walked. The walls whispered, centuries of secrets held in the cobbled brick and marble of Byzantium. As he strolled, ancient graffiti flickered black and grey in the corner of his eye. He saw the woman pause and take a picture of an old graveyard before she kept moving. As Malachi passed, he saw a lazy cat stretching in the sun.
Who was she? And why had she attracted the attention of the Grigori that morning? More, why had the soldier not hunted her in the common way? Grigori didn’t show restraint when seducing a target. Their wicked charm was relentless. If the woman survived the encounter, she was discarded. To follow a woman so discreetly indicated some other, more enigmatic, motivation.
She walked the length of the hippodrome, past the obvious tourist traps, then turned right near a small café. Climbing up a side street, she dodged a car coming out of a parking lot as she put her map away. It looked as if she was walking into a dead-end street before she took a sudden left and disappeared. Malachi followed cautiously, hoping to not appear too conspicuous as he approached a building tented for renovation. He stopped to read a sign detailing the improvements to the structure, which housed a museum. Then he watched from the corner of his eye as the woman approached what looked like an old Ottoman house but was probably one of the many boutique hotels that had sprung up in the last few years. A discreet doorman stepped outside, opened the door, and spotted him. Without a pause, Malachi walked away.
He turned back to the hippodrome, pausing to take note of the glowing red lanterns in front of the Chinese restaurant near her hotel before he began the trek back to Galata. The woman, whoever she was, was staying at the small hotel. He’d find her again if he wanted to. As for the Grigori’s odd behavior…
He’d have to ask Damien if he’d seen anything like it before. His watcher had centuries more experience than Malachi. He might be prone to recklessness, but he knew how to use the resources he was given.
Stuffing the almonds back in his pocket, Malachi’s thoughts turned to decidedly more practical matters. With the heat of the day rising and too many salted almonds in his belly, he needed a drink. Throwing one last glance toward the wood-fronted house, he started back toward home.
He slammed the door shut on the small refrigerator.
“Doesn’t anyone buy beer besides me?” he yelled to the empty kitchen. “If you don’t buy it, you shouldn’t drink it!”
From upstairs, a faint voice came. “You spent too much time in Hamburg. You’re back in Istanbul, Mal; we drink raki.” It was Maxim, no doubt lying in bed, waiting for the city to cool before he emerged.
“Or tea,” another voice added in the same thick Russian accent. If Maxim was upstairs, so was his cousin, Leo. “Gallons of tea.”
“Oceans of it.”
“If only the Bosphorus flowed with vodka.”
“We should get the brothers in Odessa working on that…”
Damien walked into the kitchen, glancing upward as the cousins continued to rib each other. “Drink water. You’re not used to the heat yet.”
Malachi grimaced. “I’ll be fine. I was born here.”
The watcher pulled a bottle of water from a cupboard and threw it toward him, the tattoos on his bare arms rippling as he threw the plastic bottle. “But you haven’t lived here for hundreds of years. The city has grown, and that makes it hotter.”
“Anthropogenic heat,” said Rhys, walking into the kitchen from the library and holding his hand out to Damien for another bottle of water. The pale man had been sweating nonstop for three days—not surprising considering the air conditioner had broken around that time. His dark brown hair was plastered to his forehead, and his normally pale skin was flushed. “Human activity produces heat. More humans. More heat. Not to mention climate change. Bloody humans and their automobiles will kill us all.”
Damien and Malachi exchanged amused glances. The cranky British scholar was constantly nostalgic for preindustrial times.
“Heat can’t kill us, Rhys!” Leo called from above.
“But your whining is doing a fairly good job of torture,” Maxim added. “Is whining a violation of the Geneva Convention?”
“Does the Geneva Convention apply to us?”
“Ask Rhys. He knows everything.”
The scholar’s face only grew redder. “Maybe if I wasn’t the only one working—”
“Stop.” One quiet word from Damien was all it took. The three men fell silent, even the ones on the second floor, who could hear their watcher’s voice from a distance.
Damien was of average height and weight. His face could make humans stop and stare, or he could blend into a crowd, based solely on his demeanor. The only remarkable thing about him was the intricate tattoos he had inked all over his arms. Malachi knew the work covered most of the man’s legs as well, though he kept them carefully covered. Malachi glanced down at his own markings. Four hundred years of scribing himself still hadn’t left him half as covered as Damien. Who knew how old the man was?
Damien continued in a low voice, “Leo, did you call the man to repair the air conditioner?”
A thundering set of footsteps came down the stairs and the hall. The man they belonged to stopped in the door, filling it with his massive frame. “They said they will come tomorrow. Beginning of the summer means lots of work. They’re busy.” Sweat dotted a pale forehead topped by a thatch of sandy-blond hair. Maxim followed Leo, a mirror of his cousin. The two were inseparable, cousins being as rare as siblings in their race. Their mothers had been twin sisters, and the men looked like twins themselves. Even their tattoos were almost identical, though their personalities couldn’t have been more opposite.
“So no air-conditioning until tomorrow?” Rhys asked.
Damien shrugged. “Sleep on the roof. There are beds up there and the breeze will be better when the sun goes down.”
For some reason, Malachi’s thoughts flicked to the woman slipping into the wooden house near Aya Sofia. The house had a plain street view, a classic Ottoman; it was probably cool and shaded in the interior. There might have been a courtyard. And air-conditioning.
“I should have kept following the woman,” he muttered.