Owl and the Tiger Thieves Page 11

  An inclination of his head. “So you say. In my estimation, part of anyone’s value is her reputation—and yours isn’t what it used to be.”

  The two of us glared at each other, me wanting to kill him and he calculating. He broke eye contact first and went back to studying the gossip rag. “You asked me what I want; here it is. I want to be included in your plans to find the Tiger Thieves.”

  I snorted. “You? Help me?”

  He leaned back against the elevator glass. “In a manner of speaking.”

  I would have laughed, said that he was out of his mind, very funny—but the serious tone and expression were still there.

  Shit, he was serious. Artemis was a supernatural—a dangerous one, despite his harmless exterior and antics. I’d seen just how dangerous and unpredictable he could be firsthand—and Rynn hadn’t trusted him as far as he could throw him.

  Rynn had also grossly underestimated his cousin, which had almost gotten me killed a few months ago. Which was why I stopped myself from laughing.

  “Why?”

  “My own reasons—and no, before you ask, I’m not sharing them with you.”

  I scoffed, “Then the answer is no.”

  “Fine. But you’ll have to take it up with Oricho since I’ve already struck the deal with him. As you’re aware, those kinds of arrangements are difficult to break.”

  Oh for the love of— I was going to have strong words with Oricho. The elevator chimed its arrival on the twenty-third floor. Finally. I ducked past him and set a fast pace for my room, Captain in the lead. We’d see what Oricho had to say about all this . . .

  But Artemis managed to get in front of me and block my way. “You can use me. The Albino proved that. How long do you think you would have lasted on your own?”

  “And wait until you stab me in the back? Not fucking likely.” Captain hissed at Artemis, making him jump. I dodged past him and reached my door.

  “I’m not asking you to trust me. You shouldn’t trust me. You shouldn’t trust any of us! I’m asking you to use me as Oricho’s offered help—I may not be Rynn, but I have my uses.”

  “You mean by using people? Manipulating them, controlling them?” Goddamn it, of all the times for my lock to stick. I swiped the card again as Artemis continued to plead.

  “Suggesting. You’d be surprised what most people are open to. It’s been behind the fall of most of your civilizations. And we don’t all express or use our talents in the same way. We make do with what we have.” He leaned in until his face was close enough that I could smell his breath and a trace of amber—not unlike Rynn but a darker, more burnt version. “Not so unlike you.”

  I would have liked nothing better than to send him packing—but there was a problem with that: it was unlikely that he would lie about having struck a deal with Oricho.

  And even though I was loath to admit it, I didn’t believe for a second that Oricho would bring Artemis in unless he thought it essential to our success in breaking the armor’s hold over Rynn. Oricho was a lot of things and I had issues with his methods, but he was sincere about stopping a supernatural war and trying to save humanity from the monsters. That necessitated removing Rynn’s chaotic reign from the picture.

  And screwing that up was something I wasn’t willing to risk, even if it got me stabbed in the back. Not without talking to Oricho, at any rate.

  Artemis smiled. He didn’t need to be able to read my emotions to know I was trapped.

  “Just don’t let Lady Siyu find out you’re still here,” I told him. “It’ll raise too many questions. They’ve got a blind spot for how humans react, but they’re not stupid.”

  “I know how to make myself unseen. Even with my own kind. Trust me, it’s one of my many talents.”

  A cold feeling spread over me again. Trust was a strong word, one I wouldn’t apply to anything involving Artemis. I also got the distinct impression that Artemis’s “talents” ran much darker than Rynn’s.

  “So do we have a deal?” he asked.

  I must have had my head knocked around a few too many times in the Albino. “Fine,” I said, holding out my hand. “After I talk to Oricho. If he says I have to deal with you, I’ll deal with you.”

  Artemis grasped my offered hand in his, gripping it with a cold, isolating touch, again so unlike Rynn’s.

  What did I say the definition of madness was again? Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result? Making another goddamned deal with one of the monsters . . . if I hadn’t been in the mad category before, this sure as hell put me square into it.

  Artemis smiled, a self-satisfied expression full of the knowledge that he’d won this round—though, as I kept reminding myself, not the war. With a passing glance down the hall, as if just realizing where we were, he said, “Well, I know when and where I’m not wanted. Don’t forget to send me our travel arrangements.”

  “Wouldn’t dream of it.” Despite the frustration and anger building inside me, I kept my voice calm and civil. Regardless of whether or not Oricho was on board, Artemis knew enough to be dangerous to me now. I had to tread carefully. Captain, picking up on subtler signals, flicked his tail and let out a tentative growl.

  Artemis arched an eyebrow, looking again like Rynn’s darker, evil shadow. Every expression he made was more a mockery of the human expression, devoid of any sincerity. “So many secrets,” he tsked, shaking his head as he backed away.

  I didn’t open the door to my room until I heard the elevator doors hiss shut.

  Captain let out a long, forlorn mew.

  “Yeah, I don’t trust him either, Captain.” Much like Lady Siyu, I was certain Artemis was waiting to stab me in the back. I preferred Lady Siyu’s methods. There was an honesty to her outright threats even I could appreciate.

  Captain let out another loud, insistent meow as he planted himself in front of his food dish. I sighed and fished out a can. Choosing which battles you fought and when were things I’d been forcing myself to learn lately; I was fighting enough people and supernaturals on multiple fronts. At the moment, Captain begging for food and Artemis weaseling his way into my plans weren’t the battles to pick. At least Captain knew it; so probably did Artemis.

  “Cat-pain,” I said, rubbing his head, as he began to scarf down the tuna now in his dish. I left him to gorge himself in peace and, after placing my new six-pack of beer in the fridge, relieving it of one, I sat down in front of my laptop. Again.

  This time I opened my email, ignoring the World Quest icon at the bottom of my screen and the messaging box. No, that was a lie. I did look and once again felt the pang of emptiness that there wasn’t anything from Carpe.

  World Quest was the online role-playing game I subscribed to that was modeled after ruins and civilizations from the archaeological record—accurately, with monsters. It was also more than it seemed. I hadn’t seen hide nor hair of Frank or Neil after the disaster in Shangri-La. We’d all gone our separate ways. I couldn’t blame them. I had gotten a vampire to give us a ride out. I’d have hightailed it as far as possible away from me too.

  There was comfort in the fact that I wasn’t solely responsible for trashing the place. I’d had copious help—between the mercenaries, IAA, and the elves . . . I had barely touched Shangri-La while it had fallen to its ruin.

  To be honest, I was surprised the game was still running. From what I’d gathered from the designers, Frank and Neil, it had been developed in a magically made city that had a will of its own if not an actual mind. As a result, it had woven its fingers into the makeup of the game. I couldn’t help wondering how the game was still running if the servers in Shangri-La had been destroyed along with the city and the pocket dimension that had sustained the trading hub of the ancient world.

  I pushed thoughts of Carpe aside. I was blaming myself for enough things as it was. Carpe—whatever had happened to him after he’d pushed me out of Shangri-La—wasn’t something my brain could handle right now. I didn’t know when I’d be able to pr
ocess it. Yet another wonder of going through the numb stage of grief. By definition you didn’t feel a hell of a lot.

  Carpe had picked the wrong side. He’d known that and had done what he could to make it right. As Nadya had said, that had been his choice, not mine.

  I hadn’t thought I’d miss his meddling ways—not this much.

  I drafted a quick email to Oricho. It was simple and to the point: What the hell are you thinking letting that degenerate incubus in?

  I rewrote it to make it more polite, taking out hell and adding a please and thank you, but the point remained the same. Next I pulled out my phone. Time to fill Nadya in. “You up?” I texted.

  A moment later my phone rang, Nadya’s name flashing across the screen.

  “You will not believe the couple weeks I’ve had,” I answered, and began to recap my most recent adventures—beginning with Peru and finishing off with Artemis accosting me in the lobby. Nadya, being the generous best friend she was, listened patiently, interrupting only to ask for clarity.

  “I don’t know what game he’s playing but it ends with a knife in my back.”

  “Mmmm, possibly,” Nadya mused. “But Oricho is not reckless. If he’s brought Artemis on, there must be a reason.”

  “Blackmail?” I’d gotten the distinct impression that Nadya had gotten to know Oricho better since the two of them had been working together in Tokyo trying to mitigate the antics of the Come-Out-of-the-Closet crowd. I wasn’t entirely comfortable with it. Oricho might be one of the more sympathetic supernaturals I’d had the pleasure of meeting, but he was no Rynn and had screwed both Nadya and me over before.

  But Nadya was an adult and could handle herself. I was the last person on the planet to shove unsolicited personal advice her way. She was a far sight from reckless and had a much better nose for trouble than I’d ever have. If she wanted to tangle with Oricho, professionally or otherwise, I wasn’t about to chastise her about it.

  At least not until it deteriorated into disaster. Good friends don’t try to prevent every disaster; just the ones that will maim you.

  “Though I do wonder what it is Artemis stands to gain from his involvement,” Nadya continued.

  I snorted. “That is the million-dollar question. My best guess? We won’t know until I’m trying to pull the knife out of my back.”

  “Which is why I think Oricho must have a good reason. He wouldn’t risk involving Artemis otherwise—not when you’ve had your first break on the Tiger Thieves in months, and with Rynn . . .” She let the thought trail off, and an uncomfortable silence filled the line. We both knew that Rynn had been stepping up his reign of chaos and violence amongst the supernatural and mercenary communities, building his own personal army and collecting supernatural weapons. I didn’t need to be reminded, I had a hard time forgetting.

  “One can hope” was all I said, and took a swig of my beer. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” I continued. “The problem is, we have no idea who Artemis’s enemies are.”

  “Maybe he just really does want a good seat to watch the world burn. Let’s face it, a seat beside you isn’t a bad choice—and people have switched sides for less,” Nadya offered. “Look, I need to go. Club duties—I have a group of Japanese businessmen in, and Oricho has lent me a pair of succubae to watch over the club.”

  “So you put them to work?”

  “Waste not, want not. I want to make sure they don’t take things too far; they’re”—Nadya paused as she searched for words—“not the kind of girls I would usually hire. Let’s leave it at that.”

  Supernatural protection and staff rolled into one. My, how far we’d come. If someone had told either of us in grad school that in a few short years we’d both be knee-deep in supernatural bullshit . . . I wasn’t about to complain. Another of my conditions for agreeing to work with Oricho had been to make sure Nadya didn’t get caught up in the inevitable shit storm.

  There was a brief pause in our conversation. I hadn’t planned on asking, I’d in fact made a point of steering my mind away from it, but I couldn’t help myself. “Any sign of Rynn over there?” I asked as casually as I could. It wasn’t a question completely out of left field. Both Nadya and Rynn had run host/hostess bars in Tokyo. If anything, I was surprised that Rynn hadn’t gone straight back to his old haunt.

  “No, thank God. He is the last thing we need running around Tokyo right now.”

  A pit formed in my stomach. I didn’t think for a moment that Rynn was ignoring Tokyo. I only hoped I could reach the Tiger Thieves before he turned his attention to it—and that there was something inside left to save.

  “Good luck, Alix, you’re going to need it,” Nadya said, and sighed. I couldn’t tell if it was for her own problems in Tokyo with supernaturals running amok or for me. I figured it was a bit of both.

  “And try not to start a bar brawl with Artemis.”

  “Depends what he says to me first.” Which was true. The supernaturals expected a certain level of hotheadedness from me. Wouldn’t want to disappoint.

  We said our good-byes and hung up.

  With Nadya back in Tokyo and Rynn—well, running helter-skelter with his own personal army, to what end no one had yet figured out quite yet—things were lonely.

  I refreshed my email to see if there was a response from Oricho yet. There was, and it was quick and to the point:

  Received your message about the Tiger Thieves amulet. I have yet to decrypt its meaning but remain hopeful.

  I swore and lifted my beer to my lips, finding it empty. Great. Oricho had no fucking clue what the gold markings on the Tiger Thieves amulet meant either. Why was I not surprised? One step forward, two steps back.

  In the meantime I suggest you attempt to find the artifacts reported to be in Venice as Lady Siyu suggests. In your spare time, I recommend you seek out da Vinci’s lair. He had dealings with the Tiger Thieves and notes may have been left.

  RE Artemis: The benefits outweigh the risks.

  I snorted. Oricho’s benefits, my risks. Yup, that had the makings of a supernatural deal.

  I was about to close my laptop and head to bed when a flickering message box in the lower left corner of my screen made me pause. It was the message box I had used to talk to Carpe. I licked my lips and hovered my cursor over the email, hesitating, but only for a moment.

  It was only a message from World Quest, a generic email saying my annual subscription would renew automatically in the next month. A simple, generic, automatically generated email . . .

  I frowned as I reached the bottom, where a single line was scrawled: Hey asshole—we need to talk.

  Frank must have drafted it. Neil would have attempted to be nicer—or, if not nicer, at least more polite.

  I stared at the computer screen, trying to focus on the message in front of me, not the jumble of emotions crashing through my numbness. The problem was that, just like before, I couldn’t tune it out. Not one damn bit of it. Despite what my brain knew, some small part of me had hoped there would be a trace of Carpe in there. When you don’t actually see someone die, even though every ounce of your being says it’s the only logical conclusion, your mind still plays tricks on you.

  With a sigh I hit Reply and kept my message to Frank and Neil succinct: Fine—when and why?

  I closed my laptop. Carpe was dead, obliterated along with the pocket universe that had been Shangri-La. It had been two months; if he had miraculously survived, he’d have reared his head by now.

  I passed by the kitchen to grab a new beer before heading to my bedroom.

  The other problem with not seeing him die was that there was another part of me that didn’t want to know. The part of me that didn’t hold grudges and still wanted to hope.

  It was a small part, I’ll give you. I’d had too many people validate my grudges for me to be generous with that.

  I left the door open a crack for Captain before climbing into bed. I flipped on the TV to the international news, trying to parse the supernatural-
derived disasters from the normal ones.

  I finished only half my beer before abandoning it on the nightstand. It left a dry taste in my mouth. I hit the lights and turned in early. I needed my sleep, I reasoned, I’d be dealing with Artemis in the morning.

  I tried to drift off as fast as I could, more to forget how much things had changed over the past few months. Rynn, Nadya, Carpe—the only thing worse than being hunted by vampires, I’d come to realize, was finding out you were completely alone, especially after you’ve found out what it’s like not to be.

  I was grateful when Captain hopped up onto the bed and staked out his territory.

  If change was supposed to be so good for you, why the hell did it feel so horrible?

  5

  LAIRS OF VENICE

  Twenty-four hours later: Venice, Italy, the City of Romance—and vampires.

  The funny thing about Venice is its reputation as the City of Romance. I suppose it’s true . . . if you consider vampire pheromones a valid substitute for love.

  Oh vampires, you cockroaches of the supernatural world, is there any major city where you haven’t dug yourselves into an unretractable hole? Like ship rats or new and interesting STDs landing in a fresh port . . .

  Venice might not seem like an obvious haunt of vampires: an island city with no underground hideouts, lots of small spaces, and a naturally superstitious population courtesy of the Byzantines, who’d had a healthy fear of the supernatural. Through the Middle Ages and Renaissance, Venice was not a favorite stomping ground of the supernatural community. They preferred Florence and Rome, cities where you could eat a few people and ride to the next before anyone was the wiser.

  That was before the buildings in Venice started to sink.

  Throughout Venice today, you can find buildings where entire floors are hidden under the flooding water—but others? Nothing a few heavy-duty pumps can’t manage, especially if you aren’t concerned about molds and various diseases that breed down there. In that sense, modern Venice has become a veritable playground for supernaturals. And the tourists? It’s like a sushi train at the all-you-can-eat Japanese place on the corner—the band is constantly turning, delivering yet another delectable morsel . . .