This wasn’t the first time Caren had worn dampening bracers—though by now it had actually been years. Heavy goddamned things, she was remembering, and freezing fucking cold. Even in her fleece-lined leather jacket, sitting in a cramped, heated car with three other warm bodies, the ratcatcher was covered head to toe in goosebumps.
“Caren Paige Balarao Navarrete.”
“Yo.” Caren sat sprawled against the damp wall of her cell with one knee propped up, rubbing the cold-iron bracers on her wrists against each other over and over to make them click.
Her eyebrows shot up at the sound of a key in the lock. “Word? Am I free to go?”
The two Ordinators marched into the cell, hauled her to her feet.
“Fuck…is this it? Y’all 'bout to scramble my eggs?”
They gave her no explanation. Just led her to a waiting room—a pretty nice one, with a leather couch—and left her sitting there while they stood guard over the exit.
Eventually, the door to one of the offices opened, and possibly the hottest girl Caren had ever seen walked out. “Okay, Dad. I’ll see you tonight,” she called back into the office behind her, then turned around with a toss of her long, maple-hued mane. Caren could have sworn the girl looked her over head to toe before walking out.
Caren sat gawking after her—and almost jumped out of her skin when a booming baritone spoke her name from the office doorway. “Caren Navarrete?”
“Yo—yeah.”
“Come in.”
It was a big, fancy office with fancy-ass furniture. Caren sat down in the big fancy chair across the big fancy desk from the bald white man in the fancy suit and robe who, after shutting the door behind him, settled into an even bigger, fancier chair behind the desk. A gilded name plate in front of him read, MASTER-GEN. ABRAM SAUVAGE, in a fancy, hard-to-read script.
“Do you know who I am?” he asked.
Caren wondered if it was a trick question. Pointed at the name plate. “Going way out on a limb here, I’d guess you’re ‘Master-Gen Abram Sausage.’”
Master-Gen Abram Sausage folded his hands on the desk front of him, fixed her with an inscrutable stare.
“Ms. Navarrete,” he said, “how would you like to have those adamantine bracers taken off your wrists for good?”
Caren shifted, sighed, started punching her thigh. Ran through a few worst-case scenarios in her head. Meillassoux’s guys hadn’t bothered to pat her down when they’d taken her weapons—so she still had Peri’s goodies tucked in hidden pockets in the lining of her coat. A well-timed lightning stick, lunaria flare, or Morphean miasma bomb would come in pretty handy, she figured, if things went wide. She really wasn’t thinking it would come to that…but then again, hard to say. The Betancourt kid seemed almost sweet—not at all your stereotypical career criminal. But Zhao was a bona fide freak. Made Caren think of a three-year-old pulling the legs off bugs—except this three-year-old was in a ripped-af thirty-year-old’s body, and instead of bugs it was probably people.
Betancourt’s music and friendly chitchat were a welcome diversion from what otherwise would have been a tense ride—but after a physical altercation involving Zhao playing “Sit on You” by Tim and Eric, there was only silence, and not even anything to look at, thanks to the blindfold. Caren’s fist beat against her thigh hard enough to bruise—which was barely a distraction from what had become an unrelenting throbbing in her chest, and visions of Sylvan’s dumb sad-puppy face that kept flashing in her mind.
Daddy’s Boy, she couldn’t help but notice, didn’t utter a peep the whole ride. Didn’t even move a muscle, as far as she could tell. She wondered if his stoic little Old-World ass had finally ossified.
Their journey finally came to an end in what had to be a parking garage, judging by the light level, the climate and the echo. Betancourt helped Caren exit the Trans Am in a respectful, almost gentlemanly manner. She tried to listen for what might be going on with Grenville and Zhao—caught only snatches of the latter whispering and laughing his weird sicko monkey laugh. Felt a small surge of annoyance that he might be giving Grenville a hard time again. The rookie was already scared stiff.
Caren couldn’t help wondering if she’d made a mistake bringing him along.
Whatever. That one’s on Abram fucking-smart-guy Sausage, for assigning Daddy’s Boy to a case like this in the first place.
The four of them piled into an elevator. As the doors chimed shut and the floor started to rise, Caren’s blindfold came off. She squinted, adjusting to the light. It was a fancy elevator, ornate beveled mirrors making the space seem to go on endlessly. She could see the whole party duplicated ad infinitum: Betancourt pocketing the blindfolds, then standing quietly, his folded hands fidgeting in front of him, eyes glued to the floor. Zhao running a comb through his pomp, cheesing it and making finger guns at his reflections. Grenville standing perfectly still, staring blankly ahead, fingers interlaced, the veins in his temples seeming to stand out more than usual.
Caren watched the numbers over the doors light up in sequence, floor after floor—and when they didn’t stop at the twenty-first, which was the top floor, all the numbers abruptly vanished, replaced by a set of red-glowing runes.
The elevator slowed to a halt. The doors slid open. Betancourt led the way into a spacious entry hall decorated in a style Caren could only think to call modern gothic: ornate accent pieces, floor lamps, statues, et cetera, all of which she was willing to bet were bona fide antiques, complementing an overall aesthetic that was somehow a bit on the minimalist side—stark black-and-white with tasteful silver accents, splashes of blood-red in places like the pattern on the rug and the tassels on the damask blackout curtains, which she noticed were all currently drawn, maybe to obscure the view, since their hosts seemed to have gone to lengths to mask the location.
A pair of male-model-looking guards in three-piece suits, black with red ties bisecting perfectly steamed red shirts, bowed slightly to Betancourt and Zhao. “Maréchal. Mr. Zhao.”
“Wilhelm. Teodoro,” Betancourt greeted them each in turn. “Wilhelm, would you let the Conseiller know we’re back with the guests? Thank you.” Wilhelm again bowed, then disappeared down the hall.
Caren watched Wilhelm go. Surveyed Teodoro, who remained.
Turned to Betancourt. “So is it true literally everyone in this gang is a hot gay dude?”
“Actually, I’m bi,” said Betancourt.
“I’m extremely pansexual,” said Zhao. “Extremely.”
“Of fucking course you are,” said Caren.
Grenville continued to stare straight ahead, his expression inscrutable.
Wilhelm returned and once again bowed. “Le Conseiller instructs that the guests should be escorted into the drawing room.”
“Thanks, Wilhelm. Lead the way,” said Betancourt.
Betancourt followed Wilhelm down the hall. Caren moved to follow Betancourt.
“Let’s go, Lil’ Pidgie.” Zhao reached for Grenville’s arm.
“He’s a big boy, bruh. He can walk by himself. Don’t be a fucking hentai.” Caren made sure to put just enough warning in her tone.
“Madam! Are you implying…?” Zhao grimaced. “… With Lil’ Pigeon? I’d never! I prefer older. Waaay older. I trawl for tail at the AARP convention.”
“Vernon.” Betancourt sounded tired.
They continued down the hall in silence, between rows of flickering candelabra sconces and framed oil portraits of fine-featured men, till they arrived at the drawing room—a huge, dome-ceilinged, luxuriously furnished chamber. Here, too, all the curtains were drawn, the space dimly lit by sconces and lamps. The focal point of the room was an ever-burning fireplace, which Caren knew had to have cost a fortune—pale blue Greek fire roaring tirelessly within a perimeter of pure adamantine, the only known substance in existence it couldn’t burn through. The overmantel—which she realized must also be made of adamantine—featured a detailed, high-relief depiction of various wild animals locked in combat.
On the wall opposite the fireplace, a little incongruous with the rest of the decor, hung a larger-than-life-size portrait of a woman with sparkling blue eyes, wearing a flowing, off-the-shoulder white dress, seated in a sunlit garden, in a frame of silver cherubim. Nearby, a black Oriental Shorthair cat was curled up asleep in its velvet bed, which levitated in midair.
On prominent display in the room were a pair of lavish shrines: bowers with incandescent blacklight rose vines overflowing, and dozens of floating alchemical globes casting their soft glow onto two framed oil portraits of beautiful men. Signs beneath the portraits read, respectively, Takayuki Murakami, Cherished Companion and Wyatt Winter, Beloved Brother. Caren saw Grenville survey the shrines briefly. He turned and shot her a questioning look.
“Were they, um, both killed in the…you know. The other day?” Caren asked Betancourt quietly.
“Yes, ma’am.” There was a small hitch in his voice.
Zhao went over to the cat, which was floating at just below average-human-head-height, and started talking baby talk to it, vigorously rubbing its big bat-ears. The animal seemed startled out of its sleep at first, but when it saw Zhao it extended its long body in a luxurious stretch and rolled onto its back, slowly blinking its emerald eyes while he scratched its belly.
Caren noticed Grenville watching the exchange. His eye then seemed to settle on something in the corner beyond the cat—an ornate old piano-like instrument with two rows of keys. “Is that a harpsichord?” It almost startled Caren, hearing his voice. He hadn’t spoken a syllable since before the car ride.
“Indeed it is,” replied a lyrical tenor with a crisp Old-World accent.
“Mon Capitaine.” Betancourt bowed.
Caren turned and saw standing in the doorway a trim, clean-shaven, elegant-looking man in, she guessed, his late thirties or early forties, wearing a tailored dark gray suit over a black shirt and tie with a red rose boutonniere, soft chestnut-brown hair combed back off his face and resting gently on his shoulders. He was flanked by six equally well-dressed men—every one of them GQ cover model material like himself, which was totally consistent with the rumors Caren had always heard about Meillassoux’s Boys…except that most of them were visibly injured. On the leader’s left, a young man wearing black kid-leather gloves and gold-rimmed spectacles on a chain, the long strap of a satchel brimming with books and newspapers draped diagonally over his torso, leaned on a pair of crutches, his left leg wrapped in a full cast. Toward the back of the retinue, another young man’s head was wound around with gauze, while another wore an eyepatch, and another’s right arm ended in a bandaged stump. Only the tall, bearded statue of a man on Meillassoux’s right appeared to be unscathed—though he was holding a cane, so Caren couldn’t be sure. But he didn’t seem to be leaning on the cane, and it looked more like a fashionable rich-guy cane than a walking aid—polished ebony wood with a silver hawk’s head for a handle.
The ganglord himself—consistent with Sylvan’s account—had a trio of roughly parallel scars down the left side of his face from forehead to chin, mostly already healed thanks to, Caren assumed, a timely and liberal application of restorative panchrest—but they were pretty gnarly scars nevertheless, on what otherwise would have been a flawlessly symmetrical visage.
Jesus…Megyesi’s circus freaks really did do a number on them.
“Do you play?” The ganglord continued to address Grenville as he and his entourage advanced into the room.
Grenville showed no evidence of having heard the question. For a moment, Caren thought he might have powered down again.
But then, finally—“No,” he replied. “I mean…not really.”
“Ms. Navarrete, I presume.” Meillassoux turned to Caren, inclined his head. The four men in the back of the retinue, whose clothing Caren realized more or less matched those of the guards who’d greeted them in the entry hall, took up positions surrounding the group.
Caren bobbed her head. “How’s it going.”
“As you’ve likely surmised, I am Soren Dreyfus-Meillassoux. I believe you spoke with my Conseiller, Ishaan Ram, on the telephone.” He indicated the bearded man on his right, who offered a slight bow. “You’ve already met my Maréchal, Nathaniel Betancourt, and my colleague Vernon Zhao. And please allow me to introduce Miles Winter.” Meillassoux gestured to the young man on his left, the one with the big bag of reading material, who only blinked, pushed his spectacles up his nose, and shifted his weight on his crutches.
The ganglord’s eye settled on Daddy’s Boy. “I believe you failed to disclose to Ishaan,” he continued, to Caren, “that your companion is Ashton Grenville.”
Caren eyed Meillassoux. “… Why? What about him?”
“By all reports”—the ganglord arched one manicured eyebrow—“he’s a dangerous man.”
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