Bleeding Out (17 page)

But I know nothing about them, this coven, this company. They block my questions at every turn. They give me things to do, cases to occupy my time, junctions to puzzle over, but never a real answer. I’m tired of agnosis. I’ve had enough of their protection. I need to expose their roots. Doing this, I realize, will not end well. But it will end. Love may be circular, but knowing is ending. I pay the bill and step onto the street. I’ve made my decision. I’m going to sin against those who offered me shelter. I have no other choice. Selena was wrong about retirement. I can’t walk away from the CORE until I’ve seen its face. At least then I’ll know what’s hunting me. I’ll recognize its scent.

I go to the Forensics unit. Everyone moves crisply beneath the industrial air-conditioning. My body feels frozen into relief. All my sins and freckles show. I linger in a peripheral hallway until two thirty, when I know that Selena will take a fifteen-minute coffee break. Then I make my way to Ru’s place. Like a political prisoner trapped forever between time zones, Ru lives in this suite, dreaming of his home world and its beautiful methane storms. When I come in, he’s listening to a CNN podcast.
He takes out the earbuds, pausing to disentangle the cord from his left horn, then smiles at me.

“Tess. I am glad to see you. This day has been highly unproductive so far. Would you like to give me five and accompany me to the music library?”

“You mean take five,” I say. “‘Give me five’ is a high five.”

“Nothing that you just said made sense.”

I extend my palm. “See? We’ve both got five fingers—”

“Actually, I have talons.”

“Just slap my hand. That’s what ‘giving five’ is all about. You give me your five fingers, and I give you mine. It’s a greeting.”

He slaps my palm uncertainly. “How was my gift?”

“It was great. Look, I need your help with something. Do you feel like going to the basement?”

He brightens. “There could be rats.”

“Excellent. You can brush up on your colloquial rodent.”

We leave the suite. The security camera records our exit. I’m not concerned, since people stopped checking the tape a while ago. There’s only so much trouble that a Ptah’li child can get into, even in this building. We take the elevator to the subbasement. Ru studies the blue walls in fascination. I use my card to open the door to the reference library.

“What is this place?” Ru asks.

“It’s an archive. How would you feel about messing
around with the computer? Selena tells me that you’ve reprogrammed the Nerve before, so this operating system shouldn’t give you any trouble.”

“Does it require an upgrade?”

“Not exactly. Watch.” I activate the tabletop computer. “Give me information on Lord Nightingale,” I say.

Majel Barrett’s voice returns. “Did you mean ‘Ode to a Nightingale’?”

“No. Lord Nightingale.”

“Did you mean Florence Nightingale?”

I turn to Ru. “This is the only search term that stumps the computer. Is there anything you can do to loosen its tongue?”

The look that Ru gives me is not odd, but simply curious. “Are you asking me to override the machine’s security protocol?”

“It sounds so break-and-entry when you say it like that. But yes.”

He studies the screen for a few moments. Then he opens the keyboard interface and begins typing. His fingers are a blur. Every once in a while, the computer starts to say something, as if protesting, but he cuts it off with another stroke. Finally, it emits a tone, almost like an old 2400 bps modem scrabbling to connect to another line. I hear static. Then silence. Ru looks up.

“Ask it again,” he says.

“Give me information on Lord Nightingale,” I repeat.

The computer is silent for a few seconds. I wonder if
we’ve broken it. Then the voice returns. But it doesn’t say anything that I can understand:

I look at Ru. “Is this another glitch?”

“This is the sector that was encrypted.”

I ask about Lord Nightingale again. The voice repeats its message. It’s obviously a poem, but in what language?

“Fermosu,”
I murmur. “It kinds of sounds like
hermoso
, which means ‘handsome’ in Spanish. The rest sounds Arabic.”

“I do not understand the dialect.”

I look in my purse for a pen and paper. All I can find is a pencil and an old phone bill. I tear off part of it and write down the words.

“Tess. I have a question.”

“Shoot.”

He spits green acid on the far wall. The metal bubbles and melts. I realize that idioms can be dangerous when used carelessly.

“I meant,” I say, “ask me your question.”

“Oh.” He looks slightly embarrassed. “Why do you think someone would go to such trouble to encrypt a poem?”

“It looks to me like a game of hide-and-seek. Someone made sure that this reference computer held no information about Lord Nightingale. However, they did leave a small piece of data in exchange, like a bread crumb.”

“Will it lead to fowls?”

“Danger and disarticulation, most likely.”

“But you are going to follow it.”

“Yeah. I’m dumb like Gretel that way.”

When I get to Lucian’s place, Modred is there. The
two of them are sharing a pot of tea. It would be normal, except that Modred doesn’t actually swallow anything. He savors it in his mouth for a moment, then deposits it politely in a spit cup. This does not look like gathering information. It looks like a darker version of
As Time Goes By
.

“Tess.” Modred isn’t pleased. “I see you’ve spoken with Lucian about what transpired at Quartilla’s party.”

“It’s not like we were making a lot of headway on our own. I thought involving another brain would help.”

“You’re only making things more complicated.”

“We’ve been cruising the shores of complicated for a while now. Wait until I show you the verse in my purse.”

“Who else have you spoken to?”

“Lady Duessa.”

He sighs. “Only the dead can keep secrets. I often forget that.”

“Turn that frown upside down, buddy, because I got an address and talked to a little bronze lady. What have you managed to come up with?”

“Nothing. You should stay out of this, Tess.”

I ignore him and pull out my phone. “No word from Selena. I guess we’re on our own. Lucian and I are going to meet with the supplier tonight.”

Modred’s face darkens. “That would be stupid. Even with a necromancer in tow—”

“Hey, nobody’s towing me anywhere,” Lucian interjects.

“We’ll be out of sight,” I say.

“I’m coming with you.”

“Dude, we’re fine.”

“I am not asking. I am coming.”

“I don’t know,” Lucian says. “You’ve got a loud aura. It increases the chances of the supplier noticing us.”

“They won’t sense me. If I wished it, neither of you would sense me, no matter how close I was.”

“Okay, okay, everyone’s aura is the cock of the walk. Let’s not argue about this. Modred, I need you to translate something for me.”

“Do we really have time for this?”

“It could be significant.”

“I would prefer to spend some time with the text, if possible. Translating on-site seems vulgar.”

I hand him the crumpled edge of my cell-phone statement. He peers at the verse. Then he hands it back to me.

“I believe it is a
jarcha
. An eleventh-century poetic fragment from Iberia. It’s written in a mixture of Arabic, Occitan, and Gallician-Portuguese.”

“Can you read it?”

“No.”

“Shit. Really?”

“It’s older than me.
Non me tanqas
could mean ‘don’t touch me.’”

“
Bastate
sounds like ‘stop it,’” Lucian says. “That’s all I can make out. Why are we looking at this poem?”

“Because this is what a CORE computer spit out when I asked it a question about Lord Nightingale.”

“It gave you a
jarcha
?” Modred frowns. “That makes no sense.”

“Welcome to my world.”

“He was still human then,” Lucian says. “Still Theresa of Portugal. Whoever planted the poem must know of his former life.”

“But is it a joke?” I ask. “Or a password of some kind? I could ask Duessa, but she never tells me anything straight, and she already thinks that I’m way out of my depth.”

“Quartilla might be able to read it,” Modred says. “She’s older.”

“I’m a little weirded out by her finger-bone cuff links.”

“She’s actually not that bad once you get to know her.”

“First things first. We’re meeting Albert at the restaurant.”

“Albert?”

“The zombie waiter.”

“Lovely,” he mutters.

On our way to the restaurant, I arrange several marbles. Lord Nightingale. The Seneschal. My mother. These people should not be related. As a necromancer, Lord Nightingale is connected to Pharmakon, but only obliquely. I guess my mother must have known the Seneschal, but what could his connection be to the drug? That was Mr. Corvid’s world, not his. The Seneschal was more of a friendly uncle who collected antique weapons.

I have managed to read a bit about Theresa of Portugal. She was the bastard daughter of King Alfonso. She fought with her sister, Urraca, for control of peninsular Spain, and was eventually defeated by her own son. She died in political exile. It’s hard to believe that this woman, looking slyly at me from a manuscript, could have become the person that I met, whose throne room was hung with glowworms. Theresa, you touched my hand.
Non me tanqas
. That was what Lucian said.
Don’t let him touch you
.

We pick up Albert. He’s nervous when he sees Modred, although the vampire barely notices him. Albert hands me a paper bag.

“The cook made you baklava,” he says.

“Wow. Thanks.”

“Do not eat that,” Lucian murmurs.

We head to the apartment. It’s a tidy walk-up, basically a shuffled house, with six mailboxes. We hang back while
Albert goes to the door. He opens the fourth mailbox and withdraws a parcel. He leaves our note, then hurries away. I don’t blame him. I feel like we’ve chosen a pretty good spot, though. Modred has turned down his aura. We wait.

Ten minutes pass. Just as I start to think that we should have brought Chex Mix, the door opens. A guy in a mask walks out. He reaches into the mailbox and examines the note. We left a phone number that, should he call it, will connect him to the WestJet customer service line. He looks in our direction. The mask covers his face, but I notice that he’s wearing an earpiece. I can’t tell if it’s a headset or a hearing aid.

He doesn’t move for a few seconds. He’s listening. Where have I seen a mask like that before? Then I remember: A necromancer who attacked me in Stanley Park was wearing a mask of similar design. Some kind of acid-etched metal. But he doesn’t feel like a necromancer. What is he?

“We have to get out of here,” Lucian says.

His words draw my attention away from the doorstep. When I look again, the man is gone.

“Where did—”

I don’t finish the sentence. Something flashes just at the edge of my vision. I feel cold air. Then blood hits my face. Modred’s blood. His face is covered in cuts. He barely flinches as they heal.

“Show yourself! This is cheap magic.”

The cold brushes me. Then I feel a knife on my throat. He’s holding me from behind. His grip is light, but there’s something about his touch that’s making me feel cloudy. I want to disarm him, but my body isn’t listening. I reach for materia, but come up dry. Something’s cutting me off. It has to be the knife.

A charm like that has a bitsy locus. It requires skin contact, and he’s holding it steady. I go limp, which is practically the only thing I can do. He pulls me up, and the knife skips a beat on my skin. In that moment, I yell at the dust.
Go in his mouth!
It rises from the street and goes down his throat.

He gags and drops the knife. I pick it up and realize that it’s rusted. It looks like it belongs in a museum. Or maybe in a demon hoarder’s collection. As I’m thinking about this, I feel him messing with the warp of my spell. Then he sends the dust flying back at me. I call off the cloud, but in the second that it takes to do that, he’s gone. Only the knife is left behind.

“Well,” I say. “That happened.”

“Discount spells,” Modred says. “I feel like I need a shower.”

I look at Lucian. “Why did you say that we needed to leave?”

“I knew he was getting ready for something.”

“Yeah. But you knew before us, which is weird. Unless he was a necromancer.”

He doesn’t say anything.

“Did you know him?” Modred asks.

Lucian looks at me. He hesitates. Then he says:

“You just met my brother.”

I call an emergency meeting at the house. This
involves beer, potato salad, and two rotisserie chickens, since Mia and Patrick both happen to be home and we might as well do away with dinner. Modred abstains, which is probably better for all of us. I wait until everyone’s finished before I turn to Lucian.

“So. Your brother’s a dealer. How did that happen?”

“He’s not a dealer. I mean, yes, sometimes he sells, but he’s only ever dealt in party drugs before. Nothing like Pharmakon.”

“Okay.” Mia stands up. “This sounds like one of those discussions you’d rather I not be part of.”

“You can go,” Patrick says. “I feel like this is about to get awesome.”

“You might as well stay,” I tell her. “I can’t protect you from hearing weird shit forever, and that’s what our lives are about. Today, we discovered that Lucian’s brother, Lorenzo, is both alive and pushing terrible drugs.”

“He’s not alive, strictly speaking—”

I raise one hand. “No. Enough with being cute. We’re family. We can’t have any more secrets.”

“Just to be clear,” Modred says, “I’m not family, and I don’t really care about anyone here except for the Magnate. I’d actually like to go home. My face still hurts a little.”

“You can’t go,” Patrick says. “I might have questions.”