‘No. It’s just strange that someone would want to know.’
‘Why are you being so weird?’ she said suddenly.
‘What?’
‘This is a date, right? We’re on a date. I was making small talk, asking about stuff that’s not relevant to our jobs. Like your home, your mum, your dad. But you’re getting all nervous. Haven’t you been on many dates?’
He was now actually glaring at her. ‘No, honestly. You?’
‘Almost zero.’
‘Because we both…’ He made a gesture that attempted to include a ton of sadness and horror and all the world.
‘We both…’ She made the gesture back at him. ‘Yeah. Thought so.’
He found he was smiling now and, amazingly, she was smiling back. With her tooth biting her bottom lip, just a notch. There was still something reserved about her, though; maybe there always would be. The way she’d underlined the word dad back there, as if seeing if that would get a reaction — had that been an indication that she suspected what he was really up to here, that she knew Costain would have found talking about her dad and his current situation difficult right now, because those were pointers towards what he was secretly planning?
It was entirely possible that she did suspect he was up to something. She was vastly intelligent, used to picking signal out of noise. Okay then. He was used to the possibility of those around him being suspicious of him when he was undercover.
It dawned on him that he’d been looking at her for a long time, and she’d accepted that calmly, looking straight back at him as if they were both sizing up the enemy.
He realized he was hard. Now would not be the time to get up from this table. What had they been talking about? He cleared his throat and looked away. ‘You, erm, asked about my parents. Dad was a taxi driver, Mum did some cleaning. They split up; I went to live with Dad in Nottingham. They both passed away a while back.’ There, he’d said ‘dad’ a few times without suddenly blurting out all his plans. Okay, he decided, two can play at this game. He reached into his jacket pocket and found the card. ‘Listen, I just remembered, sorry to bring up job things tonight, but I found this in here earlier and, well, I didn’t mention it to the team today.’
‘What?’ She was looking openly suspicious at him now.
He slapped the card down on the table. It was a business card with just a map that had a bit of the Sight about it and a date. ‘I found a few of these behind the bar at the Goat, in a drawer marked “auction”. What do you reckon that’s about?’
* * *
Ross tried to keep her expression steady, but she was so angry — with herself and with him — that she wanted to leap up and throw this table over him. She had to wait while the waiter brought their meals over, and Costain made ridiculous small comments about the preparation of the dishes, as if he was still trying to impress her.
She’d thought she could safely see how much he knew, but he’d had that card. He knew it was an auction. He could either tell the others about it — and there must be a reason he hadn’t done so already — or, worse, he could come along himself. If the object she was so desperately seeking was on sale there, as the barmaid had hinted it might be, then he would understand, if he didn’t already, that he needed it as much as she did. He would bid against her. He might still have dodgy sources of cash that could go much further than an intelligence analyst’s savings would. Or, if the auction was based on barter, on sacrifice, he was better placed with his life in the underworld to find terrible things to offer, when all she would have was herself.
That whole chain of thought fell like a row of dominoes as the plates were put on the table. If she was honest with herself, she’d been having fun watching his fumbling attempts to unlock her, enjoying watching him, until now.
What was she going to do? She couldn’t risk him bidding against her, so she had to try to get him onside. It meant not showing him this anger and instead telling him what he wanted to hear. So he had won, damn it. For now.
She reached into her bag, found her own card and put it down on the table beside his. ‘It’s an invitation,’ she said, ‘to an auction, as you’ve realized. An auction, I think, of occult London objects.’
He smiled right across his face, as if appreciating her all over again. She’d revealed hidden depths. ‘Why haven’t you told the others?’
‘Why haven’t you?’
The smile continued. ‘Because I’d like to see if there’s anything on sale there that might help me avoid going to Hell.’
She took a deep breath and let her secret out. ‘And I’d like to see if there’s anything on sale there that would get my father out of Hell.’
‘Interesting.’ He wasn’t pretending at all now, just going through the motions, giving her credit as a fellow player while looking at her as if he wanted to eat her. ‘And do you think there will be an item on sale there that will allow either … or both … of us to achieve our respective goals?’
She paused for a moment, getting tiny satisfaction from keeping him in suspense. ‘I’ve been reading up on an object called the Bridge of Spikes. There was a document about it in the hoard we found in the Docklands ruins. Very hard to translate, but I managed it. It talked about a device that resurrects a person to full, breathing, unharmed life, wherever their body is, and simultaneously wipes clean what you might call their ethical record.’
‘A “Get out of Hell Free” card.’
‘Exactly.’
‘Is this a London thing?’
‘No. It was used once, in medieval times, somewhere in the Middle East. I think it can be used once per century. And, yes, that means that this occult shit can happen in other cities. I haven’t told the others that, either.’
He took a long drink of his wine, his eyes never leaving hers. ‘Once per century also means that only one of us could use it.’
Her lips were dry; Ross took a drink herself. Her heart was racing. An efficient solution to Costain’s problem now, she knew, would be for him to kill her and dispose of her card. She was pretty sure he wasn’t capable of that. Pretty sure. But now he had the prospect in front of him of having all his sins erased, would he decide it was worth it? She examined his face again. No. At least not before he was sure he had it in his sights, there at the auction on the night. She would have to play him along, right up to that moment, then find a way to get the object and run. ‘Right.’
‘I knew you were thinking that.’
‘I was.’
‘You’re also thinking I might bid against you. Try to nick it from you if you won. Worse.’
‘Yeah.’
He paused, considering, then looked at her with a quizzical expression that contained an edge of hurt. ‘Is that why you agreed to this? To see how much I knew?’
She shrugged. ‘Maybe a bit.’
He seemed to accept that. ‘What are we going to do?’
She found she wasn’t angry any more. As he’d said, they both now knew what the game was going to be. ‘Join forces. Go to the auction together. See what happens?’
He considered that. Then nodded. ‘What about … this?’
‘What?’
‘Is this still a date?’ He was trying to make her think he was actually still concerned about that — that it really did matter to him. She wasn’t sure how she felt about it. If she was going to be stringing him along, waiting for a chance to take the object for herself, she didn’t want to have to play the scarlet woman to do it.
That would only be the case if she wasn’t also genuinely … okay, this was complicated. She looked him in the eye. ‘If you want it to be.’
He looked like the cat that had got the cream. The size of his reaction, and the moment it took for him to conceal it, warmed her. Or fooled her, she thought, a moment later. He held up his glass. ‘Cheers.’
She picked up her glass, satisfied that at least her hand wasn’t shaking, and touched it to his. ‘Cheers.’