The marble rolled across the desk, and I caught it as it dropped off the edge. “And you know this how?” Caldera said.
“It is for secrets,” Xiaofan said. “To hold power over others, as a threat.”
“How many owners did it have?” I said.
“Many. One of them was you. You want the ones before?”
“Please.”
“Then, three.” Xiaofan tapped three places on the desk. “Maybe others, but those are too long ago.” Xiaofan moved her hand up, tapped the first place. “The first owner was a woman. Not young. She was . . . I don’t know the word. She held power over others, and others held power over her.”
“Politician?” I said.
“That too.” Xiaofan looked worried. “She was . . . cruel. Very cruel. She worked in secrets, and used this for secrets, too. You should fear her, I think.”
That didn’t sound good. “The second is a boy,” Xiaofan said. “Young, afraid. He held it, but only for a little while. A few hours, maybe. He gave it up quickly, to the third.” Xiaofan tapped the last spot on the desk. “A man. Young, but proud. He only held it a few minutes, and he lost it in violence.” Xiaofan looked at me, and her eyes were troubled. “I think he died. I saw it falling from his hand, then nothing. What is this thing?”
“You already figured that out,” I said. “It holds information. Secrets.”
Xiaofan shook her head. “I don’t want them.”
“Can you identify any of the previous owners?” Caldera said.
“I’m sorry?”
“The people who held this thing,” Caldera said. “We need to know their names.”
“No names.”
“Faces, then? If you saw them, would you recognise them?”
“I . . . don’t know.”
“All right, how about if you come down to the station and we show you some pictures? You think you could identify the person?”
“Wait,” Xiaofan said. “You’re with the Council?”
“Yes, I’m with the Council.”
Xiaofan shook her head quickly. “No. I’m sorry.”
“It won’t take long,” Caldera said. “Just an hour or two.”
“I’m sorry. No.”
“This is an important investigation. You just told us there was some sort of violence with this thing, and we need to find out what it was. You don’t need to worry, we’ll keep you safe.”
“I don’t want to go with the Council.”
“You might not have a choice if you keep refusing to help.”
Xiaofan looked alarmed. She looked at me, appealing.
“Okay,” I said, and got up. “I think we’ve got all we need. Thanks for the help, we really appreciate it.”
Caldera looked up at me in annoyance. “We’re not done.”
“Yes, we are.” I met her gaze and held it. “I think we should go.”
Anger flashed up in Caldera’s eyes, but I didn’t look away. We stared at each other for a second, tense, then Caldera rose with an abrupt motion and walked out. I shot Xiaofan an apologetic glance. “Sorry.”
Xiaofan nodded but didn’t speak. She was still looking warily after Caldera.
I followed Caldera out. Xiaofan shut the door behind me, and I heard the sound of the lock.
“Okay, what the hell was that?” Caldera said as soon as we were together out on the street.
“You were pushing her too hard.”
“That’s not your call to make.” We were a few shops down, out in the bustle of the street; Caldera stopped by a postbox and pointed a finger at me. “You are not in charge. You do not get to cut me off like that.”
“She’s my friend, not yours. The only reason we were there was because I know her.”
“I don’t care! You don’t act like that, ever. Clear?”
“Okay,” I said. “You remember when I said that you should be nice to her because she’s had issues with mages? Do you want me to explain why I told you to stop and why the way you were acting was a bad idea, or do you want me to stand here while you shout at me?”
Caldera glared at me for a few seconds longer, then turned and started walking down the street. “This better be good.”
I caught Caldera up and matched her pace. “I met Xiaofan last February,” I said. “She’d come over from China only a little while before. Her English was bad and the most marketable skill she had was her object reading, so she tried to make a living with that. That brought her into contact with mages, and somewhere along the line she met a Dark mage called Pyre. Know the guy?”
“Vaguely. Dark mage based in London.”
“Yeah, well, in Dark society he’s got a reputation for other things. Remember Torvald, Mr. I-Don’t-Take-Rejection-Well? Pyre’s kind of the less-nice version of Torvald. I did some investigating and it turns out he’s had quite a few girlfriends who were adepts and sensitives. A handful of them seem to have disappeared. Funny coincidence—the disappearances always came right after they turned Pyre down or broke up with him.”
Caldera was silent, and I knew she’d figured out where the conversation was going. “So Xiaofan tried to break things off with Pyre,” I said. “He didn’t like it. Xiaofan saw the way things were going and tried to get help. Went to a bunch of Keepers, they all turned her down. Pyre wasn’t breaking the Concord, nothing they could do. You know the story.”
“Yeah,” Caldera said. Her anger had blown over. “I remember the guy now. He’s had a bunch of warnings, but . . .”
“Yeah, well. Xiaofan’s got a regular job nowadays, so she doesn’t have to work with mages anymore. And given what happened last time she got too close to them, I don’t think it’s that surprising that she wants to keep her distance.”
We walked a little way in silence. “And?” Caldera said.
“And what?”
“You just said she doesn’t like working with mages,” Caldera said. “Looked like she got on fine with you.”
“Not really.”
“So what did you do?”
“I just gave her some advice.”
“Advice?”
“Back when she was having that trouble with Pyre.”
“And Pyre just suddenly decided to leave her alone?”
“More or less.”
“Was there a reason for that?”
“Pyre might have picked up the impression that Xiaofan had a curse on her causing anyone who got too close to her to suffer horrible accidents.”
Caldera eyed me. “How exactly did he get that impression?”
“It’s hard to tell how these things get started.”
Caldera gave me a look. “Anyway,” I said. “Xiaofan’s object reading is metaphorical, not precise. You heard what she told us. She can get a sense of the personality of an object’s owner, what they used it for, how it got passed on, that sort of thing, but she can’t give you the kind of stuff you’d search a database for. She’s not going to read off height, weight, and eye colour.”
“But she might be able to recognise them if she saw them in a picture.”
“It’s not really the way she works.”
“But it’s possible.”
“Maybe,” I said reluctantly.
“Then why didn’t you get her to come in?” Caldera asked. “You just said she trusts you.”
“Because she does trust me, and I don’t want to take advantage of that. If everything hinged on what she could tell us, then maybe, but I’m not going to force her to do it on a tiny off chance of getting something that might help.”
“Verus, if you never want to make people upset with you, you’re in the wrong job. We’re the police. We’re not here to be nice.”
It was still a line I wasn’t comfortable with crossing, but I knew I’d taken the argument as far as I could. “Have you checked your phone?”
Caldera gave me a suspicious look but pulled the phone from her pocket. As soon as she read what was on the screen, her brow cleared and the futures in which she kept asking me about Xiaofan vanished. “They’ve got the CCTV. Come on, we’re going back to the station.”
“After you.”
I couldn’t help but relax slightly as I stepped through the gate back into Keeper headquarters. I still didn’t feel one hundred percent comfortable in the place, but you can get used to anything, and the sound of Keepers, auxiliaries, and admin staff talking and typing and walking through the narrow halls was familiar now. Besides, when you’ve got an assassin to worry about, hanging out with a bunch of cops suddenly doesn’t seem like such a bad deal.