Death's Mistress (Dorina Basarab, #2)(32)

A trio of trolls erupted with stomps and hoots from their primo place in front of the large mirror on one wall. It was currently reflecting the qualifying heats for the insane mage sport of ley-line racing. The World Championships were coming to town, and it was all anyone could think about. Including Fin, who was raking in the bets hand over fist.

I waited while he took some money off a Merrow, who of course was favoring an Irish driver. She wrapped her webbed hand around a pint and moved off, and I leaned over the bar. “I’m getting desperate, Fin. I don’t have time to wait around days or weeks for this guy to show. I’ve checked everywhere, and it’s like he just fell off the face of the earth.”

Fin shrugged. “All I know is he put a couple bets down with me a week ago, but never paid up. So I sent the boys after him.”

The “boys” were a couple of cave trolls, short and squat like the rest of their breed, but with the long arms and huge, shovel-like hands needed for excavating large areas of earth. Those hands were also good for slapping around welchers, so much so that Fin rarely had a problem.

“Did they find him?” I asked.

He scowled. “Not yet. They went by his job, but he wasn’t there.”

“He isn’t going to be. The management fired him after they found out about his gambling debts. I think they were afraid he’d walk off with some of the merchandise.”

Fin paused to serve another customer, with the molasses-type beer trolls prefer. I suppressed a face. You can eat that stuff with a spoon. “You’re talking about that auction house he used to work for,” he finally told me. “He got another job last week—at a gambling den in back of a pharmacy over there.”

I got out a notebook. “What pharmacy?”

He shook his head. “Don’t bother. Didn’t I tell you I sent the boys?”

“No disrespect to the boys, but tell me anyway.”

A spear of light interrupted the cheering going on around a big-screen TV mounted to one grimy wall, washing out the horse race it was showing. “SHUT THE DOOR!” we all yelled, and it quickly slammed closed.

“The owner had some trouble a few months back with mages coming in and cleaning up using spells to cheat,” Fin told me.

“There are charms against that sort of thing.”

“Yeah, but they’re expensive and have to be renewed regularly, and he wasn’t exactly making a killing. So he started keeping a luduan on-site so whenever somebody started a major run, he could have it question them. Make sure it really was a lucky streak.”

“Sounds reasonable.”

“Yeah, it worked pretty good. Until the damn thing stopped coming in. The owner said he didn’t show up for work last night or the one before. And he didn’t call in.”

“Great.” He’d either done a runner, in which case it could take weeks to track him down, or one of his other disgruntled bookies had decided to make the lesson a little more permanent. Either way, I was screwed. “I need to talk to this guy, assuming he’s still alive, and I need to do it today.”

I got back sympathetic eyes and nothing else. And that wasn’t promising. Everybody came to Fin’s, and he kept his tiny ears open. He was my first stop on most jobs that involved the fey, although today he’d been last because I’d already been in Manhattan so I’d checked there first. If Fin didn’t know, nobody did—with one possible exception.

I called Mircea on my way home. “I need a favor.”

“What a coincidence.”

It took me second. “You need me to make that pickup.”

“Yes.”

I looked around and finally found the folder sticking out from under the seat, half hidden by a couple of crumpled fast-food bags and my tennis shoes. So that was where I had left them. I tossed them in back and flipped through the file.

It was another seedy nightclub owner with a smuggling habit, only this one preferred weapons to drugs. Same old, same old. “Okay,” I told him. “I need a luduan. No name—apparently they don’t use them—but supposedly he’s the only one around.” I gave him the particulars, such as they were.

“Very well. I will have inquiries made.”

“I need him by tomorrow at the latest, Mircea.”

“And I need the vampire alive.”

“Yeah, you made that point already. I’ll call when I have him.” I hung up. This shouldn’t take long.





Chapter Ten


Everything was going great until I cut his head off.

That sort of thing tends to shock someone into silence, but not this time. The body’s arms were flailing around uselessly, the crocodile skin loafers were making scuff marks on the bathroom floor and the detached head was screaming bloody murder. Great.

I stuck a wad of paper towels in its mouth and hurried to the door. Fortunately, it seemed that the DJ’s pounding beat was enough to deafen even vampire ears, because none of the black-clad “bouncers” were rushing to aid their fallen boss. Instead, the short hallway contained only a couple making out and a guy waiting for the bathroom.

“This is for employees,” I told him. “There’s one for customers up front.”

“Yeah, but there’s a line. Can’t you two get a room or something?”