Page 29 of The Shade of Things
Me: *incredulous emoji face*
Ryann: That’s not what’s happening.
Three more dots appeared and then disappeared. I tapped my foot impatiently until another message popped up.
Ryann: These games have been running for decades. Lonestars around the world conferred back when it first hit our radar and decided it wasn’t a threat to the prime directive because no one would believe these Sapiens. It was deemed that population’s problem.
Me: Lovely. Let the ones who don’t know a problem exists deal with it.How do we find a portal into this game city?
Ryann: No idea.Sorry. What little information we have points to there being more than one person behind these games. A powerful Consortium operating from the shadows. Be careful.
There were no further dots. Freaking fabulous. I gave her points for caring enough to covertly arrange for Eli and me to investigate this, while being smart enough to keep her hands clean, but this problem had been on the Lonestars’ radar for some time now. Their decision to make it the Sapiens’ problem smacked of political agenda and cowardice. Now it was mine to fix with no more of a jumping-off point than “Hey, there’s a shadowy organization, don’t die.”
I debated three responses before letting Ryann have the last word. Getting bitchy with her wouldn’t change anything.
Glancing back at the door, I tightened my hold on my phone not wanting to leave Laurent while there was this weird vibe between us, but Blood Alley beckoned, and only a fool kept Zev BatKian waiting.
* * *
The master vampire received me in his office. There was no hiding the faint smudges of purple under his eyes on his pale marble skin, though he was otherwise impeccably groomed, the picture of power and control.
A fat stack of receipts sat on his desk, the top one bearing a red question mark. BatKian punched numbers into his accounting calculator, comparing the tally to the slip of paper. “Well?”
It was bizarre to see him doing something so mundane as bookkeeping. I figured his role was to menace and destroy priceless works of art with the occasional piece of furniture to mix things up.
I perched on the edge of the chair across his desk, my purse in my lap. “I found the Banim Shovavim who hired Tatiana.”
The calculator fell silent, but only for a moment. “And?”
He wasn’t usually this clipped.
“He’s being tormented in the Kefitzat Haderech by the angels.” When Zev’s eyes flashed like this was useless to him, I hurriedly continued. “But I think he gave me a clue to the Ascendant’s location.”
Zev always held himself stiffly, so it wasn’t until his shoulders sagged a fraction of an inch to normal rigid lines that I realized how tense he was. “Tell me everything he said from the beginning. Exactly as he said it.”
I started with how Arlo had shown the angels the cracks in the seams to how they’d made him the cracks in the seams, and through to his admonishment to “leave the monsters in the dark” when I claimed to be seeking the Ascendant.
There was a burst of clattering keys, and Zev swore softly before ripping off a long strip of the adding machine tape. Why had angel prejudice about Banim Shovavim flustered him?
“Where is it now?” he said.
“He gave me a quote, and I think it’s the key to the location. ‘The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.’”
The torn-off strip of paper curled in on itself, and I looked away politely from one of the very large sum totals. But seriously, how loaded was he?
“Shakespeare.” Zev frowned. “I’ve heard it before in context of a place.”
“You have?” I gripped my purse in anticipation. “Where?”
“I’ll look into it further.”
“Maybe if you tell me what’s going on, I can help—”
“There is nothing ‘going on’ as you put it.” There was a faint growl under his polite words, and I backed off. He took a breath and moderated his tone. “You have done well. Continue to amass any information you can.”
And didn’t that feel like a brush-off? My suspicion that he had more intel on this device than he’d let on crystalized into a hard certainty that he knew precisely what it did and it wasn’t just a random amplification of magic. What, exactly, did he want it for?
My brooding was cut short by Eli texting to ask if I’d spoken to Tatiana. He’d gotten Deputy Chief Constable Esposito’s green light to go into the game. Right. My other job.
