I looked back down at Nick. The cold, calculating necromancer was gone, and in his place was a nineteen-year-old kid who knew he’d just fucked up – big time. “Yup. I deal with shit like this all the time. Whoever hired you either had no idea who I am or threw you straight to the wolves. Gonna tell me a name?”
He frowned, and I could see in his eyes that he considered it a moment before shaking his head.
“At least tell me how you found me,” I said. “Do you have a tracker on my car?”
He hesitated for a moment before speaking. “Zeke called me when you arrived at his place this morning. I followed you from the pawnshop, and I’ve been watching you for the last couple of hours.”
“Zeke, you greedy piece of shit,” I muttered to myself.
I tried to warn you about him, Maggie said.
Oddly enough, I couldn’t summon any real anger. This kind of shit was in Zeke’s nature. It would be like getting mad at a dog for eating the bagel you dropped on the floor. Eh, he did warn me, I told Maggie. And he knew I would be able to handle the kid. “See, that wasn’t too hard, was it?” I said to Nick. “You can make this easier and tell me the name of whoever hired you. I might even forget to press charges.”
Nick remained silent.
Let me at him, Maggie whispered in the back of my head.
No.
What do you mean, “no”?
I mean no. I can feel how pissed you are right now. If I touch him with your ring, you’ll kill him.
Maggie muttered to herself angrily. I ignored her, put my boot on Nick’s chest, and waited for OtherOps to arrive.
“And you’re sure you’ve never seen him before in your life?”
“Never,” I assured the OtherOps agent who stood beside me in front of the Starbucks. I watched over his shoulder as Nick was loaded into the back of an OtherOps paddy wagon. The OtherOps agent was a middle-aged bureaucratic type, yawning at the destruction caused by the draugr, pen poised above his notepad.
“He claims you have some sort of property of his,” the agent said, “but he wouldn’t elaborate further. Do you want to comment on that?”
So Nick hadn’t told OtherOps what he was after. That shouldn’t surprise me. If this was a legit recovery, I would have been confronted by the cops and not some punk necromancer mercenary. I let my eyes wander back to the agent, then down to his name tag. “Agent Lindberg, I have absolutely no idea what that asshole is talking about. I’ve dealt with a lot of nutters in my job, and he’s just about as crazy as they come.”
“He seems pretty sane to me.”
“Draugr in a Starbucks, Lindberg. That’s all I have to say.”
The average person might have an inkling that the Other existed, but nobody actually wanted to think about how closely our two worlds overlapped. For centuries, the Rules have kept most of this sort of stuff out of the public eye. Nick was going to find himself in trouble with both the humans and the Other. It wasn’t going to go well for him.
Agent Lindberg gave a snort and flipped his notebook shut. “All right, you’re free to go. If you think of any reason at all why this man would attack you, give me a call.” He handed me his card, which I pocketed. The agent headed inside, where a team worked on cleaning the draugr dust from the crime scene. Some lady in a suit stood nearby, yapping into a cell phone – probably someone from Starbucks corporate talking to their insurance. A couple of plainclothes OtherOps agents spoke quietly with the Starbucks employees. They’d probably get a small payout and pro bono counseling for their proximity to the incident.
I rubbed my torn-up gums. I heal a little faster than normal humans, but they would hurt for days. My tusks were gone and my tattoos had stopped glowing, but I had a good ache in my jaw and shoulders from the fight. I’d managed to pop my arm back into its socket before OtherOps arrived, but that hurt too.
Maggie? I said tentatively, getting into my truck.
No response. I could feel her presence in the ring.
Come on.
Hmph, she responded.
I wasn’t gonna let you kill that kid.
He would have told me who he worked for.
Maybe, maybe not. I’ve got friends at OtherOps. Once he’s stewed in a cell for a few days, we’ll see if he wants to talk. No killing needed.
She scoffed. He tried to kill you first. Why are you sticking up for him?
Because he’s still a teenager. I can’t even imagine being a hormonal prick and having the powers of a necromancer. If he were some grizzled old vet, sure. But he’s still a kid.
He’ll come after you when he gets out.
If he does, you can say you told me so as one of his draugr chokes the life out of me. Maggie didn’t respond, and I could sense that something was different about her brooding. What is it? I asked.
This isn’t a joke, Alek. Someone knows I’m alive. They know I’m trapped in here. And they know you carry my ring. I’m not sure how to stress to you how big a deal that is.
I mulled over the thought for a moment. She’d been trapped in there for over five hundred years, and she’d only spent about ten years of that with me. There was a lot of background that I had no context for, but I had no reason to disbelieve her. Look, I know you don’t like to talk about your past, but since I’m the one facing whoever decides to come after you, I really need to know who or what that might be. So if you have anything you’re holding back…
I’m not. I’d expected her to sound indignant at my accusation, but she seemed more frustrated than anything else. I’ve been wracking my mind for who I might have pissed off that’s still hanging around, and I can’t think of anyone. I haven’t walked the Earth as free jinn for a really long time. And that narrows down the list to immortals and very long-lived Others.
Okay. Let’s let the kid stew for a couple days, then we’ll work him over. We’ll find out who hired him and go after that person once we’re finished with Ferryman’s job.
Promise?
Promise. Hell, maybe we can spend your anniversary tracking down an old enemy of yours.
Chapter 5
I got a phone call from a blocked number on my way to work Monday morning. “Alek Fitz,” I answered groggily.
“How’s my little Norseman this morning?” It was one of those voices that that immediately made you imagine a full pair of pouty lips. A little tickle went up the side of my neck, as if the owner of those lips had blown gently on that sensitive spot just beneath my ear. It was a voice that demanded attention. All traces of sleepiness disappeared.
“Hi, Lucy,” I said warmly. “You think you could have called me back last night?”
Lucy – or Lucifer, to use her given name – is my favorite client. She’s the CEO of LuciCorp and the most well-known of the Lords of Hell. I like Lucy a lot, and I’ve always felt like she gets a historically bad rap. She’s a top-notch businesswoman, sends me gift baskets every Christmas, and has a great sense of humor.
I heard a scoff from the other end of the line. “Always business with you, isn’t it? I was stuck in an orgy until almost two. You don’t want me to call at two, do you?”
“Not unless you’re inviting me along.”