Grave Visions (Alex Craft, #4)(65)
He gave a tight half shrug. “I believe the queen is of the mind to keep her potential enemies where she can keep an eye on them.”
And here I thought she simply eliminated potential threats.
“Besides,” he said as he pulled into the parking lot in front of a nondescript gray building, “all of that happened hundreds of years ago. Most of the nobles have messy, intertwined pasts.”
Not a surprising complication with being near-immortals. Live long enough and I suppose you’d have a lot of complicated history. But I didn’t have time to dwell on that because we’d arrived at our destination: FIB headquarters.
The building squatted on the very edge of the Magic Quarter, nearly backing up to the river that separated the main part of the city from the more witchy and fae districts. The building had a sign, but it was a small one, easily missed if you weren’t looking for it. Clearly it wasn’t a place the public was welcome to stop by and file reports or check up on a case.
Falin parked behind the building and turned off the engine. Then he sat there, frowning at his steering wheel. I paused, my hand on the door.
“If you say you don’t want me to come in, I might strangle you,” I warned him.
His gaze tore away from the steering wheel slowly, the frown not moving as his eyes refocused.
Crap. Judging by his expression, that had been exactly what he’d been thinking.
“No.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “I have everything at stake here. I don’t care what secrets the FIB might have in there—in fact I promise to try to forget anything not relevant for this case—but I need all the intel I can get right now, and I need it sooner rather than later.”
For a long moment he just stared at me. I swear, he didn’t even blink. His gaze moved over my face, no doubt taking in the bruiselike circles I’d noticed under my eyes or the fact the mirror had reflected back a face slightly paler and gaunter than I’d worn a few days earlier. His frown tightened, and then he nodded, pocketed his keys, and climbed out of the car.
I’d been expecting an argument, been sure I’d get a lecture on fae secrets—or hell, the FIB were technically classified as a government agency, so admonishment that we were dealing with state secrets and classified information not meant for a civilian wouldn’t have been unwarranted. The lack of argument was actually more frightening. It highlighted exactly how little time I might have left.
Please let us find something. I needed a break in this case. A map with a big red X on it was unlikely, but hopefully the FIB database would have something.
Falin used a glyph to unlock the back door of the building and led me through a bland gray hallway. A couple of doors lined the hall, most closed, but the few open ones were rather disappointing. I’m not sure what I was expecting from the FIB offices, but they were run by fae, so something more interesting than a shoebox-sized break room complete with a crappy folding table and a mostly empty vending machine. Falin stopped in front of an office with his name on the placard by the door. Again, no key, just a few glyphs by the lock and the door popped open.
His office was as dull as what I’d seen of the rest of the building. It had depressing gray walls, a pressboard desk with a computer, and a window covered by dusty blinds. Wow, the Tongues for the Dead offices are actually nicer. Of course, that was because of one decorating-savvy brownie who’d had access to a vault of gold I hadn’t known existed until she’d spent all of it, but still. This was the court’s official representation in Nekros, and it was depressingly boring. After the terrible beauty of Faerie, I’d expected more.
I started to say something, but Falin crossed directly to his computer, his face still grave. Yeah, probably not the time to discuss decor. I watched over his shoulder as he pulled up an official-looking program and logged in.
He glanced back, and for a moment I thought he was going to comment on my hovering, but after a brief pause he said, “About twelve years ago the winter court began keeping an electronic database of all the fae in our court and all the independents in our territories. Before that, censuses were conducted when the doorways changed and recorded only on paper.”
“And how many times have the doors changed since the electronic database was created?”
Falin’s shoulders sagged. “We are still in the same territories.”
My lips formed a silent O as Falin keyed JENNY GREENTEETH into the program. I knew that the doorways to Faerie moved, and that they may stay put only a single season or might take decades to move again, but I hadn’t realized the Winter Queen had counted Nekros as part of her territory for quite so long. I doubted many mortals knew who ruled the area where they resided—it didn’t affect their lives much. Fae were another story.
“I’m guessing the fae in other courts’ territories aren’t in your database? Is there some sort of shared database?” The look on his face was a clear no. Humans might believe the FIB was a large unified agency, but each court governed their own territories with totalitarian control. And apparently they didn’t share information.
Falin hit ENTER and a pixilated SEARCHING popped up on the screen. This wasn’t exactly cutting-edge technology, but considering most fae were hundreds, if not thousands, of years old, it probably seemed pretty new and advanced to them. Falin was fairly young for a fae—how young, I didn’t know, just that he’d been born after the Magical Awakening, so no more than seventy mortal years. He was also more technologically savvy than many of his contemporaries and he thrummed his fingers against the desk in a staccato of impatience as he waited for the sluggish program to search for our query.