Mercenary Read online

  I fought not to fidget in my seat. “I’m sorry, but the case I’m working is very sensitive, and I’ve given my word to maintain strict confidentiality. I can’t answer any questions at this time.”

  Arianne’s face darkened. “So we are to answer your questions, but you will not answer ours. How very arrogant.”

  I ignored her and addressed Aaban and Charbel. “If you could tell me where you both were on the night of May 17th between 8 p.m. and midnight, I would greatly appreciate it.”

  Arianne stiffened. She relaxed immediately afterward, but not so fast that I didn’t catch her reaction.

  “My brother and I were at home,” Charbel volunteered. “We are both working to establish our businesses in a new city, and that requires a lot of planning.”

  Not a great alibi, I noted. I looked at the sorceress. “And you?”

  “I had dinner here with a friend. A senator. I can give you his name, if you like.” She smoothed her palms over the arms of her chair, hands flexing as if fighting to stay calm. “Why do you ask about that night?”

  “There’s no way you could have known this, but my last case involved a demon,” I told her.

  Arianne paused, a pinch of real confusion creasing the skin between her brows. She shared a glance with Aaban and Charbel, but both demons appeared equally confused. “I’m sorry?”

  “A demon.” I glanced at the ifrits. “Not like you. She was a possessor, dybbuk to be precise. She was bound with a cleric, so she had a dose of legitimacy demons don’t usually have.” I cleared my throat. “No offense.”

  “None taken,” Charbel murmured.

  I looked back at Arianne. “And my case before that took me to a sidhe society function. Lots of high court, all of them wearing their pretty faces over their true colors.”

  Arianne frowned. “I fail to see what any of that has to do with anything.”

  I leaned closer. “It means that recently I’ve been spending a lot of time with the best liars the Otherworld has to offer.” I tilted my head and met her eyes. “Why don’t you tell me where you really were the night of May 17th?”

  “Why do you ask about that night?” Arianne countered.

  Scath shifted on the floor. Not a lot, just a small adjustment in her shoulders, a slight tilt toward Arianne.

  “Tell me where you were,” I said evenly.

  Something tickled the edge of my consciousness. It was the only warning I had before my brain lit up like a Christmas tree, pain sliding over my skull as if I were reliving Asher’s earlier attack. Blue light shot like lasers across my vision, a reflection of the psychic spells searing through my psyche.

  Arianne wasn’t playing around. There had been no probe, no testing the strength of my defenses. She hit me with everything she had, tearing through the shield like a dog opening a Christmas present. Pain greyed out my vision, and for a second, I saw the world through a curtain of fog.

  A feline snarl tore through the air as Scath launched herself over the desk and straight into the dream sorceress. Arianne shoved herself out of her seat, but she wasn’t fast enough to keep Scath’s jaws from closing on her arm. Bone crunched and the sorceress screamed, a bloodcurdling sound that sent shivers down my spine.

  Adrenaline shot through me like a dose of firewater straight into my veins, and I hissed as her spell shattered, tiny jagged pieces tearing at my mental walls as they retreated, leaving my memories exposed. Arianne snarled, dark eyes locking onto mine as her power drank my surface thoughts with the desperation of a parched escapee from Hell.

  Scath growled and shook her head, her teeth grating more flesh from Arianne’s arm. Arianne screamed again, and her power bled away from my mind long enough for me to renew my shields, covering my battered psyche.

  The smell of burning fur filled the air with an acrid scent. Aaban stood with one hand on Scath’s flank, his skin from the wrist down glowing like a piece of glass pulled from the oven at the end of an artist’s wand. The searing white-yellow was too bright to look at directly, and I squinted and tilted my face away, toward Scath’s head. Scath growled around her bloody grip on Arianne’s arm, but didn’t let go.

  A spell hovered on my lips, but before I could get the word out, the white noise in my mind cleared, and I realized it wasn’t white noise. They were thoughts. But not my thoughts.

  Arianne’s.

  I stumbled and put a hand to my head, trying to make sense of the chaotic flow of images. Arianne had attacked too rashly, determined to break through my defenses and grab the information she wanted before I had the chance to stop her. In her haste, she’d been sloppy and the conduit she’d opened had gone both ways. Suddenly I knew why Arianne was so upset, why she’d been so desperate to know why I was asking about that night.

  “Stop!” I shouted.

  Scath didn’t release her grip, and Aaban’s mouth tightened as he slid his hand down her side, leaving a trail of smoke in its wake as fur and flesh burned under his power. Scath growled, and this time there was pain in the sound. Still she didn’t let go.

  I snatched the amethyst statuette off Arianne’s desk and swung it down toward Aaban’s arm.

  The ifrit withdrew his hand from Scath’s flank a split second before the rock carving slashed through the air, but he didn’t step back. “Tell it to let go,” he said, his voice tight. “Release her now, or it’ll be a pile of ashes when I’m done.”

  “Scath, let her go. Please.”

  Scath didn’t release her grip, and she didn’t take her green stare off of Arianne.

  I put my hand on Scath’s back. “She’s just scared. Her friend is missing.”

  I didn’t know if it was my plea or the pain from the burns, but Scath released her grip. Her sides heaved and her breathing had a rasping quality it hadn’t before, but like Aaban, she didn’t retreat from the fight. She stayed on top of the desk, her mouth smeared with Arianne’s blood, her green eyes glowing a fluorescent chartreuse. The smell of burnt fur and flesh turned my stomach, and I swallowed hard.

  I winced at the state of Arianne’s arm. There was too much blood to get a good look at the injury, but the sound of breaking bone haunted me. The sorceress’ eyes were glazed, and the color had bleached away from her skin, leaving behind a trace of purple veins—a sign she was still peering into the dreamworld. She couldn’t read my mind like a telepath, but she’d entered my dreams before, and a connection like that never truly went away. I didn’t know what she’d seen in my head, but I knew what I’d seen in hers.

  I stepped closer to Arianne’s chair, putting myself between her and Scath. “Tell me about Stasya.”

  The sorceress shook herself, as if the mention of her missing friend had pulled her from the astral plane where she’d retreated to read my thoughts. The moment her eyes cleared, she sucked in a sharp breath, jerking her arm against her chest. Hatred spilled into her eyes and her uninjured arm rose as she pointed at Scath.

  I threw up a hand. “Wait! Wait, let’s all just calm down.” I put a tentative hand on Scath, careful not to touch the long burn down her left side. “I saw an image of a centaur. Stasya. She worked for you.”

  Arianne swallowed hard. I gave her time to collect herself, waiting patiently despite my pounding heart as she pulled herself together. She half-sat, half-fell into her chair and groped with a shaking hand at the bottom drawer of her desk.

  “Not exactly.” She lifted a small leather case from the drawer and laid it on the desk. “She lived here, but I was not her employer.”

  “Stasya was my employee.” Aaban resumed his previous position near the door. He kept his attention on Scath, but there was no anger in his voice, no sign he intended to hurt her as long as she didn’t attack again. In fact, there was no emotion in his voice at all.

  “She disappeared that night, the night of the seventeenth,” I said, trying to hold on to the thoughts I’d gleaned from Arianne during her attack. “That’s where you were. You were looking for her.”

  Arianne opened the ca
se, revealing a line of small potion bottles, a roll of gauze, and a small sewing kit. “I was here, as I told you. However, I was not with a senator.”

  “You were searching for Stasya by way of the astral plane,” I guessed.

  Arianne nodded. “Stasya came to this country specifically to work for Aaban. She didn’t have the means to support herself yet, so I offered her room and board while she built up her resources.” She picked up one of the potion bottles and popped the cork with one hand, filling the air with the sweet scent of Lady’s Mantle. “That night, we were supposed to have dinner together, but she didn’t show.”

  “Maybe something came up?” I asked. I laid my hand on Scath’s back. I hadn’t used any healing spells on myself today. Thanks to Flint’s refusal to let me brew potions, and his insistence on training the entire day, I’d opted to reserve my strength for emergencies. But the burn down Scath’s side looked bad, like melted wax mixed with ashes. I didn’t know how fast she’d heal on her own, but I was willing to spend the energy to help.

  Scath snorted and leaned away. Her breathing hadn’t even out yet, so she was still in pain, but if she didn’t want my help, I wouldn’t force her. Reluctantly, I dropped my arm.

  Aaban shook his head. “Stasya would not fail to keep a meeting without calling. She was a soldier, one of the best. It is the reason I asked her to come here. Arianne and I managed to convince Mr. Temple to give my company a chance to compete with Underhill. He assigned us a job, and I wanted Stasya to be part of it.”

  “When she went missing, I knew it had to be Walsh.” Arianne splashed the potion over her torn skin, gritting her teeth as her blood fizzled where the liquid hit it. “He’s angry that Roger granted Aaban a job, but he couldn’t do anything to stop it. If he uses undo influence over Roger to keep him exclusive to Underhill, Aaban could report him to the Vanguard.”

  “The Vanguard forbids Otherworlders from setting themselves up as religious figures or serving in government,” I mused. “If you could show that Ian was stopping you from participating in the same government-related work as his company, you could charge him with puppeteering a branch of the human military.”

  “Exactly,” Aaban said. “And believe me when I say, it has not been easy for Mr. Walsh to resist the temptation to break those rules. He does not welcome the competition. Unlike Underhill, my company does not maintain a centralized physical headquarters. Rather, we operate as a hive, with compartmentalized facilities throughout several countries. I have spent decades building my company to be ready for this moment, training locals from a variety of strategic locations. I don’t just offer them jobs, I offer them security, a way to improve the lives of everyone in their village. My people are loyal in a way Underhill’s people are not, and we can be effective in ways he cannot dream of being.”

  “But he hasn’t done anything you can report,” I clarified.

  “No,” Aaban admitted bitterly. “Nothing overt enough for the Vanguard.”

  Arianne’s ragged breathing made me look at her in time to see her remove a long crystal from the first aid kit and draw it down her arm. She hissed and for a second her breath froze, chest becoming still as if something had closed around her lungs and wouldn’t let go. Just as I was about to ask if she was all right, her breath left her in a loud whoosh, and she dropped the crystal.

  “I could help you, if you’d like,” I offered.

  The glare Arianne shot me pushed me back a step. “Do not insult me, witchling. I need no help from you.”

  I gave the first aid kit a pointed look. “If you’re using the kit instead of a spell, then it would seem you haven’t given healing spells the same studious attention as you’ve given your other less altruistic spells. That’s a mistake most often seen in over-enterprising wizards. I’m surprised your mentor allowed you to get away with it.”

  Charbel arched an eyebrow, glancing from me to Arianne like a man who’d walked in on an argument the second before fisticuffs began.

  Arianne snapped her mouth shut and grabbed the roll of gauze. “Ian knows he can’t stop Aaban from competing, so he planned to sabotage his mission instead. I believe he took Stasya so he could torture information out of her. If he could discover the details of the mission, he could put himself in a position to make sure Aaban fails.”

  “If you can prove that, then you can make the same argument for interfering with competition to the Vanguard,” I pointed out.

  “Unfortunately, no,” Charbel corrected me. “Mr. Walsh could argue that if Aaban’s company was unable to protect something as basic as a mission dossier, then perhaps they were not qualified to get the job to begin with. What he’s doing is no different than the corporate espionage that is common among humans.”

  “Stasya has not returned since that night.” Arianne jerked the gauze until it pinched her skin. “He killed her. I know he killed her.”

  She was sweating now, and she looked far too pale. Animosity between us aside, it took some effort not to offer help again.

  I replaced the statuette on her desk, letting the new information filter through what I’d learned from Barbara and Ian. If Arianne was right and Ian had killed Stasya, then it was possible that Roger had witnessed the centaur’s fate. Seeing a centaur alone would strain the sanity of most humans, but if he’d seen more than that, torture or murder… Centaurs were not weak creatures. They were ferocious, and they craved the thrill of battle. I didn’t want to think what it would take to torture information out of Stasya.

  Arianne’s hands shook, and I winced as she dropped the gauze. She braced her good arm on the desk, glaring at the floor as if the gauze had leapt out of her grasp on purpose. I pressed my lips together and circled the desk, carefully and with my hands up. Arianne glared at me, but she didn’t protest when I retrieved the gauze from the floor and resumed bandaging her arm. “You cared about Stasya.”

  “I care about everyone I invite into this hotel,” she said. “Stasya was under my protection, and now she’s dead. I will find the person responsible.” She stared at me, stared into my eyes as if she could read the answer she wanted on the back of my skull. “What do you know about May 17th?”

  I concentrated on wrapping her wound. Something was amiss. Arianne had used a potion and a crystal. Together that should have been enough to close the wound. Unless her first aid kit was significantly less powerful than I’d expect from a sorceress. I glanced at Scath, wondering if the beast’s saliva had something in it that would affect the healing process.

  “You’re not answering me, Shade,” Arianne said, her voice dangerously low.

  I finished the bandage. “First I need you to tell me the truth about that night. Where were you? Did anyone see you?”

  Arianne gritted her teeth. “I already told you that.”

  “You gave me two answers,” I reminded her. “I need to know the truth.”

  “I was supposed to meet Stasya. When she didn’t show, and didn’t contact me to say she wasn’t coming, I grew worried. So I searched her room, but I found nothing. There was no clue to where she’d gone, or when she’d be back. I tried to seek her out through her dreams, but—” She stopped, staring hard at the bandage on her arm. Then she continued in a dull voice. “I’ve touched Stasya’s mind before, it should have been a simple thing to track her down, especially in the dreamworld. But I tried all night to locate her with no success.”

  “Did you go anywhere to find her? Anywhere outside the hotel?”

  “No.” She shook her head. “I told you, I found nothing to go on, no evidence that could have led me to her. My best chance was to find her in her dreams. But I found nothing.”

  “Maybe she didn’t sleep that night?” I suggested. “Or maybe there was something blocking her from your magic?”

  “I have been in her dreams,” Arianne repeated. “Once I have touched someone’s dreams, it is much easier for me to find them, to influence them. It would be difficult for someone to hide her from me once she entered the dreamworld
. And I have tried since, with no luck. No one can go weeks without sleep, and dreams find us all eventually.”

  A chill ran down my spine as the full meaning of her words sank in. Arianne had been in my dreams too, had torn off a chunk of one of my nightmares to create a monster she’d then sent to kill me. Had I underestimated how much influence she had over me now?

  It was a testament to how upset Arianne was that she didn’t take the opportunity to capitalize on my sudden paranoia. But she didn’t. She just sat there, staring at her crystals. Thinking of Stasya, I guessed.

  “Arianne, have you ever been in Roger Temple’s dreams?” I asked carefully.

  “No,” Arianne said firmly. “I want Aaban’s company to succeed. I would not do anything to jeopardize that.” She must have seen the doubt in my eyes, because she set her jaw. “You don’t believe me.”

  “You have a reputation for influencing the minds of politicians,” I pointed out. “You tread a fine line with the Vanguard on a daily basis. One slip and you’d be brought up on charges.”

  Arianne narrowed her eyes. “I answered your questions. Answer mine. What do you know about May 17th? And what do you know about Roger Temple?”

  I retreated around the desk to assume my earlier position. “I can’t discuss the details of an ongoing investigation.”

  Arianne’s eyes flashed with flecks of purple light. I held up a hand before she could argue, or worse, try to tear the information from my mind by force. “I don’t have any information yet, nothing solid. When I do, I’ll come back. That’s the best I can offer.”

  “I’m afraid that is not enough,” Aaban said from behind me.

  His hand closed around my arm, squeezing tight enough that I had to press my lips together to keep from crying out. Scath growled low in her throat, and the sound only reminded me of what the ifrit had done to her—and what he could do to me.

  “Mr. Temple has been avoiding my calls.” Aaban’s hand grew warmer on my arm. “I find it coincidental that his aversion to my company began so close to the night my employee disappeared. You will tell me what you know. Everything that you know.”