Shadow's Blade, page 26
“Have you had any trouble with break-ins?”
“Break-ins?” she repeated, incredulous. “What is this about?”
“I’m still trying to figure that out. Can you show me the room in which Gracie stayed while she was here?”
I thought she would refuse. I wasn’t giving many answers, and my reticence had to be frustrating her. But after regarding me for a few seconds, she shut off the burners and led me through a corridor to a cramped bedroom. A twin bed along the far wall was flanked by two sagging air mattresses. Stuffed animals and picture books were strewn on the floor.
“I haven’t straightened up since they left. I keep hoping they’ll come back so I won’t have to.”
“May I?” I asked.
She hesitated before letting me pass. I would have preferred to search the room without her watching me, but I didn’t have the nerve to ask her to leave. I checked under the mattresses and in the bedding, and made a quick search of the closet and dresser.
“If you tell me what you’re looking for, I might be able to help you.”
If Amaya thought the knife was in the house, would he send men in for it, or would he be content to guard the house and make sure it remained hidden? The answer seemed to be the latter. But it begged another question: did he know it was here, or was this merely a guess?
“Mister Fearsson?”
“Telling you what I’m after could endanger your life.” I tried a spell. Three elements. My hand, the knife, wherever it was, and the distance in between. I released the crafting on the third repetition of the elements. Nothing happened.
“What was that?”
“I tried to summon what I’m looking for.”
“So perhaps it’s not here.”
“Perhaps. Or maybe the spell failed.”
I returned to the doorway. “I’m grateful to you for speaking with me,” I said. “I’m sorry to have disturbed you.”
She glared at me, but then led me back to the front door. “You’re a rather exasperating man.”
“Gracie thinks so, too.”
Her expression softened a bit.
“She’s brave and smart as hell,” I said. “And her children are adorable.”
Marisol smiled. “Thank you. And thank you as well for keeping them safe.”
“I’ll be in touch as soon as I can. You have my word on that.”
I left her and started back up the block toward Billie’s car. As I walked by the first of Amaya’s sedans, however, I slowed and, making up my mind, stepped to the passenger side window and knocked on it.
A few seconds passed and then the window rolled down, revealing two guys I didn’t know. They were dressed in suits and both appeared to be Latino.
“You can tell Jacinto I’m on my way to his place next. He’ll want to know.”
I didn’t wait for a reply, but continued to the car, got in, and drove away.
I didn’t expect that Amaya would be amused by the stunt, but I also didn’t think it a great idea to show up at his place unannounced. A few months before, I had made the mistake of doing just that. Amaya had been pissed, and his army of bodyguards had been twitchy as hell, which is not something you want in guys carrying MP5 submachine guns. I wasn’t about to repeat the mistake. It was bad enough I would be showing up without having been invited. With this in mind, the next time I found myself idling at a red light, I warded myself against the attack spell I thought Jacinto would be most likely to use.
I drove up toward North Scottsdale, still avoiding the interstates, and in fact, all the major highways, including the Pima. I didn’t know if whatever mojo Saorla had used on the roads would counteract the glamour I’d put on Billie’s car, but I wasn’t about to chance it. The drive took far longer than it should have and even knowing that the car was protected, I spent way too much time checking my mirrors to see if I was being tailed.
By the time I turned into Ocotillo Winds Estates, the sun had set and the Western sky was on fire with yellows and oranges and reds. I asked the uniformed security guy in the subdivision’s front guard house to call ahead to Amaya’s house and tell him I was here.
Despite taking this precaution, as soon as I steered the Honda into Amaya’s driveway, I was surrounded by armed men calling for me to exit the car with my hands up, turn, and brace myself against the car door. They knew me; I’d been to the house often enough that I recognized several of them. But Amaya didn’t make a habit of welcoming folks who happened to drop by, and I was driving a strange car. If I had been in their position, I’d have done the same thing.
As they frisked me, I told them they’d find my Glock in the shoulder holster and a second weapon in the ankle holster. They took both pistols, of course, and made sure I wasn’t carrying anything else. At last, one of them said that I could lower my hands.
I faced the guards and saw Rolon standing with them, my weapons in his hand, the dim glow of the twilight sky illuminating his face.
“What the hell, Jay?” he said by way of greeting. He wasn’t smiling, which was unusual in and of itself. He also gave no indication that he was about to escort me into the house. After all we’d been through together during the summer, fighting Saorla and other dark mystes, I had come to think of him as a friend. But clearly friendship only went so far when a person worked for Jacinto Amaya.
“It’s good to see you, Rolon.”
“I wish I could say the same, amigo. Jacinto is not too happy with you. He says you reneged on an agreement, didn’t do what you were hired to do. You even hung up on him. And now you show up here uninvited, unannounced.” He gave a small shrug, the gesture strange on so large a man. “He’s not sure what to make of this, you know? He doesn’t know if you’re a friend or what?”
That was a hell of a thing to say. Either I could assure him that I was Amaya’s friend, which would allow Jacinto to demand all sorts of favors from me, starting with the delivery of Gracie and the kids to his “protection.” Or I could refuse to rise to the bait, in which case I was all but declaring that I didn’t think of Amaya as a friend. That was bound to go over well with his armed guards.
As for the rest, between Amaya saying that I’d failed to do what he’d hired me to do, and Saorla complaining that I had failed to give her a promised boon, I was in danger of gaining a reputation in the magical community as a man who couldn’t be trusted. True, she was an evil wack-job, and he a murderous drug dealer. But still, people took trust issues seriously, particularly in an isolated and stigmatized community like ours.
In the end, I chose to punt.
“The nature of my relationship with Mister Amaya hasn’t changed,” I said. “And I haven’t reneged on anything or failed to do what he hired me to do. In fact I’ve done most of it already, and might well finish the job very soon. I did announce that I was coming, both at the gate to the subdivision, and to the guys Jacinto has watching the Trejo house. As to showing up uninvited . . .” My turn to shrug. “I really didn’t have any choice in the matter. If you’ll let me in, I can explain all of this to him.”
For a few seconds he didn’t move. At last, a short burst of amplified static sounded from something in his other hand. I hadn’t realized he was holding a walkie talkie.
He lifted the receiver to his mouth. “You heard?” he asked.
“Yes.” Amaya’s voice. “Send him in.”
“Roger that.”
He lowered the device and flashed me a smile. “Looks like you talked your way back into his good graces.”
I doubted it would be quite that easy, but I was glad to see the grin on Rolon’s face.
“Thank you, my friend.”
“That’s kind of a lame car you’re driving,” he said, walking me toward the front door.
“That’s my girlfriend’s car.”
“My point exactly. You should have borrowed Paco’s lowrider, or that Lexus Jacinto let you drive during the summer.”
“This was a last-minute choice. And I notice you didn’t say I could have borrowed your new lowrider.”
He shook his head, his expression growing serious. “No, way. Too much car for you.” He smiled again and I had to laugh.
Rolon led me through the foyer and into the grand living room where I’d met with Gracie’s parents and Jacinto a few nights before. It seemed like years ago.
Amaya sat in a leather arm chair near the window, the glowing skyline of Scottsdale and the dying embers of the sunset at his back. He didn’t get up, or say anything to me. He didn’t even crack a smile.
“Thank you, Rolon,” he said with a glance at his man. “You can go.”
Rolon nodded and turned. Once Amaya could no longer see his face, he glanced my way and raised an eyebrow. I think he meant it as a warning.
The echo of his footsteps was still fading when Amaya’s spell hit me. I’d expected that he would attack with the same conjuring he had used the last time I showed up uninvited, and I wasn’t disappointed. Then it had felt like a fist, or a pair of them: one to the jaw, the other to the gut.
This time I was warded. The force of the casting knocked me onto my heels, but otherwise it had no effect on me. If anything this appeared to piss him off even more, and for a second I feared that I had miscalculated.
But instead of throwing a more powerful spell at me, he glanced away, a small smile curving his lips. I let out a breath I hadn’t known I was holding.
“I’m getting predictable.”
“Not really,” I said. “But I was figuring—hoping, really—that you wanted to make a point more than you wanted to actually hurt me. And so that spell would have been the natural choice.”
“Like I said, predictable.”
I conceded the point with a shrug.
He indicated a chair near his. “Sit down. If you want a beer, there’s one in the fridge by the bar.”
I thought about it for half a second and decided that I really did want a beer. “Can I get one for you?”
“Sure,” he said.
I took two Bohemia Stouts from the refrigerator, opened them both, and handed one to Jacinto before dropping myself into the other chair.
He took a long swig and said, “You didn’t do what I hired you to do. I told you specifically that I wanted her brought here.”
“Yes, you did. And I told you I might not be able to. She’s still wanted for murder, and we’ve had run-ins with dark sorcerers, weres, and Saorla. It’s not safe to bring her here, not for her and the kids, not for me . . . and not for you. You don’t want to be arrested for harboring a fugitive.”
“How is she?” Amaya asked. I took the question as a measure of acquiescence.
“She’s a pain in the ass, if you want to know.”
“That’s not—”
“Did you know that she’s a were, as well as a weremyste?” I wasn’t going a very good job of keeping Gracie’s secret, but Kona and Kevin weren’t going to tell anyone, and I had a feeling Amaya knew already.
“I had some idea,” he said. At least he was being honest with me.
“And did you know that the silver-haired gentleman’s name is Lionel Fitzwater?”
“Yes. He and I have had dealings before. How did you learn his name?”
“He introduced himself, right before I kicked his ass.”
That earned me a broad grin. “I wish I’d seen that.”
“What do you know about the knife?” I asked.
The smile vanished as quickly as it had come. “What do you know about it?”
“It’s called the Sgian-Bán. It’s a stone blade infused with the blood magic of necromancers, and it was used to kill Saorla and her kind and thus give them eternal life.”
None of this appeared to come as a surprise. “What else?”
“Fitzwater is trying to find it, no doubt on Saorla’s behalf. He’s already killed several people, including an Akimel O’odham named Lucas Quinn, a pawnshop owner named Burt Kendall, and Burt’s assistant. I think he also broke into the Davett house, but I’m sure he didn’t find it there. And you expect him to show up at the Trejo place as well, which is why you have your men watching their street.”
“About that,” he said. “I don’t recall giving you permission to approach them.”
“And I don’t recall asking you.”
He had been raising the beer bottle to his lips and he paused now, eyeing me over the brown glass. “Fair enough,” he said, surprising me. “The truth is, if we’d known about the knife sooner, we might have gotten to it first, and a lot of this could have been avoided. I knew Lucas. I liked him. He and I did a good deal of business, all of it on the up-and-up, two collectors trading goods. If he’d trusted me enough to tell me about the knife, he might still be alive.”
“Maybe he thought it was too powerful for you to have. I think Lucas was smarter than all of us.”
“Meaning what?” I heard a warning in the question and knew I was pushing up against the limits of what Amaya would tolerate.
“If everything people have told me about the Sgian-Bán is true, it could do incalculable harm if it fell into the wrong hands.”
His nostrils flared. “And you’re saying I’m—”
I held up a hand. “No, I’m not. You and I are on the same side in this war. When it comes to magic, I know where your heart lies. But however noble our intentions might be, and as powerful as we both would like to think we are, Saorla and Fitzwater might well be stronger. Wielding that knife would be a terrible mistake, because if we’re beaten, and they take it, everything we care about could be lost.
“To be honest this is the same reason I didn’t bring Gracie and the kids here when I found them. I was afraid you wanted to use them much the way Saorla does. And if you’re defeated they’ll be taken.”
“You don’t trust me to keep them safe?” Amaya asked.
“I know what they’re worth, the same way I know what the knife is worth. I don’t want them being treated as bounty in a magical war, and I don’t want them being used as warriors, either.”
“And you believe I intend to do just that.”
“Don’t you? Hasn’t that been your intention all along?”
“You say we’re on the same side in this war. You claim me as an ally. But you treat me as an enemy. That’s not very smart, Jay.”
“I’ve never treated you as an enemy, and you know it. Your problem with me is that I refuse to treat you like a general. I’m not in this to follow orders. I don’t want those kids within a thousand miles of this war. And I’m willing to let Gracie choose sides for herself.”
Amaya sipped his beer, his gaze fixed on me.
“You didn’t answer my question,” I said.
“I’m aware. Annoying, isn’t it?”
I started to ask another question, but thought better of it. I didn’t know if Amaya had considered what I wanted to ask him about, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to put the idea in his head.
“Marisol didn’t seem to know that I’d found Gracie and the kids,” I said instead. “I’m a bit surprised you didn’t tell the Trejos right away.”
“Now you’re questioning my judgment?”
I stared back at him, saying nothing.
At last he took another swig of beer, at the same time allowing his gaze to slide away. “I didn’t want to tell them until I could arrange a reunion. Bring her back here and my first call will be to Marisol and Eduardo.”
“If you promise me that you’ll turn Gracie and the kids over to her parents, I’ll bring them here tonight.”
He scrutinized me with those impenetrable dark eyes, and I had a sudden, unsettling flash of what it would be like to have the man as a true enemy. “Are you trying to dictate terms to me, Jay?”
“Yes, sir.”
My candor seemed to put him at ease. “It’s an empty offer anyway. The Trejos can’t protect them. The safest place for them is here with me, and you know that. But I’ll tell you what I will do: I can bring Marisol and Eduardo here, and let all of them stay together in one of the guest villas. Engracia and the kids would be safe, and with her parents.”
“I’ll think about it,” I said. “But to be honest, I’m not sure they’d be safe even here. Saorla is more powerful than both of us.”
He didn’t argue the point. “How did you beat Fitzwater?”
“I had a little help from Gracie, and I fought dirty.”
Amaya laughed. “Good for you. At some point I’ll want details.” He stood. “But tonight I have a dinner and fundraiser to attend, so I’m afraid I have to cut our conversation short.”
I stood as well and gripped Amaya’s proffered hand. He maintained his grip, his other hand on my shoulder, his eyes boring into mine.
“You’re playing a very dangerous game, Jay. I hope you know that. I like you. What’s more, I respect you. But don’t push me too far. I don’t respond well to defiance, and I don’t like it when people show me up.”
I didn’t flinch from his gaze. Maybe that made me foolish, but I didn’t think that he wanted to hurt me so much as scare me. And, I realized, I wasn’t as easy to scare as I used to be.
“I swear to you, Mister Amaya, I’m not trying to show you up. I’m trying to find a weapon of incredible power and at the same time do what’s best for a young woman and her children. And though you might have instructed me to bring them here, you hired me to find them and to keep them safe. I’ve done the first part, and I’m trying to do the second.”
“I’d like to believe you, but I won’t wait forever.”
I drained my beer and placed the bottle on a coaster. “Then it sounds like I have work to do. I should be on my way.” I crossed to the arched entryway to the living room. “Before this is over, I’m going to have to fight Saorla again,” I said, pausing on the threshold. “She wants Gracie and the kids even more than you do, and at one point I promised her a boon.”
His eyebrows went up. “A boon? What the hell were you thinking?”
“I wasn’t thinking. It was this past summer, a few hours before we faced her and her friends at my dad’s trailer. I was just trying to keep Billie alive.”
“So, what are you going to do?”
