Hands of Flame. C.E. Murphy
very different relationship than you and I do. And terror has its uses.”
“So does boldness. If you didn’t take them, who did?” Margrit put the argument aside firmly, confident she’d won.
Daisani gave her a long, hard look, speaking volumes about the game she played before he, too, set it aside. “Even if he knew about their predicament, Janx no longer has the resources to move two gargoyles. Besides, he hasn’t been seen in days. It’s possible he’s left the city.”
“Do you really think he’d give up his territory that easily?” The House of Cards had burned, selkies and djinn moving into the vacuum left by its fall. Janx had retreated underground to lick wounds both literal and figurative, but Margrit doubted he’d readily walk away from the criminal empire he’d created. “There’s still a lot of upheaval going on at the docks. Cops have been down there nonstop since the raid and they’re still not keeping all the violence in check. The opportunity to take it all back is there for a strong enough leader.”
“Ah, yes, the docks. Speaking of which, how’s your friend Detective Pulcella? I’ve seen him on the news several nights a week since the House was raided. He’s a good-looking young man, isn’t he?”
Margrit’s hands curled into fists. “Yes, he is. I haven’t really talked to him since the raid.” Tony Pulcella was a homicide detective, though the bust that had given prosecutors Janx’s financial books had put Tony on a fast track to promotion and a wider range of responsibilities. The clincher was Janx’s arrest, and he’d been working long hours toward that end, as evidenced by innumerable news-camera glimpses of him day and night. He was well outside his jurisdiction, but homicides linked to Janx cropped up all over the city, and Tony had long since been part of the team trying to bring the crimelord in. His determination to do so had helped tear apart his relationship with Margrit, and ironically, she was now far more deeply entangled in Janx’s world than her ex-lover could ever have imagined.
“Quite the proper hero,” Daisani went on blithely. “A pity for him that he can’t see what’s really going on.”
“How could he?” Bitterness laced Margrit’s question. “You’d kill him if he found out about you.”
Newscasts didn’t show the way the Old Races moved, too fluid and graceful, marking them as creatures unfettered by the bounds that held humanity in check. Margrit had learned, though, to look for other signs on the news: djinn with their jewel-bright gazes, selkies with their tremendously dark eyes, all pupil and blackness. The two races had forged a treaty to support each other, making natural enemies into one tremendous force, their numbers vastly greater than any others of the Old Races. The selkies had long since bred with humans to replenish their failing numbers, breaking one of the few dearly held laws that all five remaining races had in common. The insular, desert-bound djinn had supported the selkie petition to return to full standing amongst the Old Races in exchange for selkie help in taking over and running Janx’s underworld empire.
Neither party appeared to be happy with the arrangement now that it was met. Clashes on the street had the feel and damage of gang warfare, leaving police bewildered when weapons were found abandoned at the water’s edge, blood on the ground and no sign of embattled people in sight. One journalist was dead, his camera destroyed. Margrit had little doubt he’d captured a selkie or djinn transforming, and paid the price for it.
Janx had run the House of Cards with an iron hand, unapologetic in his activities but keeping a sort of peace with his tactics. That was lost, leaving opportunistic humans with knowledge of how to control a troublesome empire to face two Old Races with ambition and a slippery pact just strong enough to unite them against outsiders. Even hyperbolic newscasters, always eager for a bad-news story, were becoming reluctant to dwell on the troubles at the docks and warehouses, as if ignoring them would make them disappear. But the city was suffering, and that was news, not sensationalized or dramatized. Goods were coming in and shipping out more slowly than they should; dockworkers were striking for fear of their lives and police were under verbal attack for failing to protect citizens and materials alike. That they were up against an enemy they literally couldn’t comprehend didn’t matter.
It was the worst scenario Margrit could have imagined springing from her attempt to make the Old Races reconsider their archaic laws and move into humanity’s modern world, the consequence of her arrogant belief that her way was the right one. “I wonder if talking to them would help,” she said aloud, thoughts too far from the conversation she’d been holding to follow through on it.
Daisani canted his head in curiosity. “The police?”
“The selkies. The djinn. Somebody’s got to do something to stop their fight, and Tony’s not going to be able to do it. I set this ball rolling. Maybe I can—”
“Negotiate a cease-fire?”
“Yeah, something like that.” Margrit lifted a hand to her hair, ready to pull her ponytail out so she could scruff her fingers through it, and discovered she wore corkscrew curls in a tightly twisted knot. Stymied, she dropped her hand again and caught Daisani’s amused smirk. “I know,” she muttered. “It’s a tell. Remind me not to play poker with you.”
“I very much doubt you’d allow yourself such obvious divulgences in a poker game, Margrit. No more than you would in court. We’re all allowed our little slipups in day-to-day life, however.”
“Even you?”
Daisani’s eyes lidded. “Rarely, but once in a while even I have a lapse in judgment.”
“Yeah.” Amusement quirked Margrit’s mouth. “I’ll tell my mother hello next time I talk to her.”
Surprise shot over Daisani’s face, ending in a rare laugh. “Oh, well done. You see? I do have my tells. Do say hello, and I gather from that remark you’re dismissing yourself. What will you do?”
Margrit spread her hands. “Find the gargoyles.”
Her cell phone rang so promptly on Margrit’s departure that she turned back to eye Daisani’s building suspiciously, as though the vampire might have waited until she was out the door to politely ask just how she expected to accomplish that. The building gave no sign of whether it was Daisani calling, and the phone, when she pulled it free of her purse, came up with a Legal Aid number. Wrist twisted up to check the time, she imagined another hour had been stripped from the notepad by her desk as she answered.
“Margrit, this is Sam. The opening statements for the Davison trial have been moved up to this afternoon.”
“They were supposed to be Friday!” Margrit overrode the receptionist’s apologies with her own. “Sorry, it’s not your fault they moved it. Look, Jim’s prepared to take the case on alone. I’ll come in as cocounselor, but this is his as of Monday anyway.” She glanced at her watch again, promising she’d be at the courthouse as soon as possible, then closed the phone with a snap and shot a second glare at the Daisani building.
The single best reason to work for the business mogul was that when Old Races complications cropped up in her life, she could at least explain the situation without causing impossible difficulties. Biting back a curse, she hailed a taxi and returned, with a growing degree of reluctance, to what she still thought of as her real life.
FIVE
SUNSET CAME WITH a blinding burst of pain.
Alban flung himself away from agony, a howl ripping from his throat. He heard stone tear, deep wrenching sound, and a woman’s startled curse, but neither stopped him from snarling and savaging his way forward. Taloned feet dug into the floor, muscle straining with fury. Iron squealed, tearing without breaking. He howled again, reverberating sound so deep plaster crumbled. There was no escape: iron bound him hand and throat and ankle, making walls distant and red with pain. He couldn’t move his hands more than a few inches from his head, chains limiting his range of motion.
Panicked instinct drove him to try transforming, anything to escape the bone-deep fire of iron. Fresh pain spasmed through him,