Blood Tally

Chapter 8

I was trying to consider a half dozen different problems on the way to the Medina OtherOps prison in the morning. Jacques Williams was testing my professional and personal ethics. I was still exploring the online world of genealogy to try and find my parents. The most immediately pressing of my problems was that Nick the Necromancer could now spill the beans about Maggie’s presence to OtherOps, which we’d already decided we needed to prevent. But the one that kept flitting around the back of my head was my run-in with Boris the night before.

“You really think he’s that powerful?” I asked Maggie.

I do. Some vampires are naturally powerful – guys like Lord Ruthven and Dracula. Most, however, slowly get stronger with age. Boris isn’t running with the Vampire Lords, which means he shouldn’t be anything special, and he’s only been a vampire since the forties. You should be able to take him in a fistfight. The fact that he manhandled you …

“You don’t need to bring that up,” I grunted.

She went on over the top of me. The fact that he manhandled you so badly and he was able to walk off the blast I gave him means he’s much stronger than he should be.

How?

No idea. Vampires can gain strength a handful of ways – time and progeny are the most common.

Like, from their thralls?

Yeah. Each vampire pulls a little strength from their thralls and former thralls. But they’re not allowed to have more than four at any time. Since Boris isn’t that old, it can’t be that.

“So he might have some other way of gaining power. Do you think that has something to do with why Lord Ruthven wants an excuse to wipe him out?”

Quite possibly. The Vampire Lords don’t like a challenge to their authority. Boris being a free vampire would normally just annoy them. But if he’s figured out a way to gain power independent of simply living a long time, well …

It explained a lot about the situation – or at least why Jacques and his boss had it out so bad for Boris. I knew there were more layers to this than I’d been told. The blood tally Michael stole when he ran away was involved somehow. But I couldn’t connect the dots as I pulled into the OtherOps prison in Medina. I put all of this out of my thoughts and headed inside, fiddling with Maggie’s ring while one of the guards filled out the visitor forms. After a few minutes, I was shown down the hallways and into a cafeteria-like room where a couple of inmates were talking with their families or just watching one of the TVs mounted on the walls.

Nick was sitting in the corner. He looked odd without all the black makeup. He had a severe haircut, an orange jumpsuit, and a bored look on his face. It reminded me that Nick might have been a wildly powerful necromancer, but he was still a nineteen-year-old kid. He nodded to me from across the room, and I went to join him. As I sat down across the table, I noticed that I’d read that bored expression wrong. He was reserved, maybe even a little haunted. He leaned forward.

“Were you followed?” he asked.

I was surprised at the question. “Who the hell would follow me here? It’s not like it’s a secret where you’re locked up. Speaking of which, I thought they sent you to New York.”

“My great uncle has some pull with OtherOps. He paid for this prison to get a high-level suppression team just so they’d transfer me back here.”

“Rich uncle. Nice.” I crossed my arms. I did not want him to think we were chums. Maggie had agreed not to make a scene, but I could feel her watching Nick like I might watch a spider on the ceiling. She might not be able to kill him right now, but she was going to keep an eye out for the opportunity. “Okay, you got me here. Talk.”

Nick hunched his shoulders and glanced toward the other prisoners. “They shanked Kimberly.”

“I heard about that.”

“No, I don’t think you did. It happened right before I called you last night. She was under guard, in the hospital wing, and someone finished her off in the hospital. Like I said, my uncle has pull, so I get to hear things really fast. As of this morning, they still have no idea how someone got in to kill her. There’s literally nothing on the security cameras.”

I felt a cold chill on my spine. Getting past an OtherOps guard detail and the cameras meant that she’d been targeted by high-level sorcery.

Matthias.

“You’re worried that you’re next, aren’t you?”

“Of course I’m worried that I’m next,” Nick hissed. “Originally, I thought that Kimberly hired me on her own. But I’ve been putting the pieces together since she first got shanked and I’m guessing Kimberly was hired or coerced or something to hire me. That person is now trying to cover their trail so OtherOps doesn’t get a whiff of them. I’m guessing the only reason I’m not dead is because of the high-level suppression team.”

I realized two things at once: first, that Nick didn’t have nearly as much information as I did, and second, that he was a much cleverer guy than I’d given him credit for. He put all this together with the whispers he could get in prison. “So Kimberly’s death has removed the compulsion that keeps you from talking about why she hired you. Why aren’t you already in witness protection?”

“That’s my second option,” Nick said. His eyes flicked around the visitors room once more and he took a deep breath. “Personally, I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in some OtherOps safe house, under guard, always watched and protected. And … I know that you don’t want OtherOps to find out about your ring. About your jinn friend.”

I touched Maggie’s ring without thinking, then forced my hands flat on the table. “So?”

“So I’m giving you first shot at an alliance.”

Maggie snorted loudly in the back of my head. I said flatly, “You tried to kill me, and now you want to team up?”

“That was just business,” Nick said. There was a flash of something across his face, and it took me a moment to realize it for what it was: pure terror. “It’s not business anymore. It’s personal. Kimberly wasn’t a bad person. She just wanted revenge for her brother. And now she’s dead, and I’m next in line.”

Is any of this ringing true? I asked Maggie.

All of it, she said hesitantly.

He really wants to team up?

Yeah …

He’s terrified of whatever killed Kimberly. I thought about this for a moment. I don’t consider myself a bad person either, but my gut instinct was to leave Nick to his fate and hope it happened before he could make a deal with OtherOps. Even as the thought went through my head, I knew that I couldn’t do it. I may work for some pretty horrible clients, but I’m not a sociopath. What do you think?

I think we hear him out.

The answer surprised me. An hour ago Maggie had repeated her desire to turn Nick into a pile of ash. Now she was considering this? I suppose that helped me out of a moral dilemma.

Nick nodded at Maggie’s ring. “What does your friend say?”

It was my turn to glance over my shoulder. But there was no one close enough to overhear us. “She still not thrilled with your attempt to kill me or kidnap her.”

“Like I said,” Nick repeated, swallowing hard, “that was business. I’m sorry.”

He is, Maggie scoffed, though he’s probably sorrier that he got mixed up in this shit than he is for what he actually tried to do.

I considered Nick for a couple of moments before reaching into my endless wallet. I fished around and came up with a business card that I’d gotten from Kimberly back before OtherOps took her in. It had a phone number and the name MATTHIAS in small letters in the corner. I set it on the table and pushed it over in front of Nick. “He’s a magician,” I told him. “Apparently he and Maggie had a spat back in the day. He trapped her in the ring. We’re not sure just how aggressively he’s still trying to recover Maggie’s ring, but he’s definitely the person who put Kimberly on Maggie’s trail. I’m pretty dang sure he’s the one who arranged Kimberly’s death.”

Nick stared at the card. “My uncle always said magicians are bad news.”

“That’s one way of putting it. So. You called me here. What exactly does an alliance do for me? You’re stuck in a cell for the next few years, I imagine.”

Nick tore his eyes away from the card and leaned back in his seat, looking at the wall behind me with a thousand-yard stare. I was beginning to imagine he’d rethought his course of action when he finally spoke up. “All you need to do is retract your earlier statement that I attacked you.”

“Excuse me?”

“I’m still on the hook for that Starbucks, and for bringing two draugr into a public place, but those are misdemeanors. If you retract your statement, my uncle’s lawyers can have me out of here in a week.”

“And?”

“And I give myself much better odds of surviving this stupid magician if I’m free to use my own powers and I have a reaper on my side.”

Is he still … I asked Maggie.

This is all true, she told me reluctantly. No double-cross, no deceit. This is really his plan.

I didn’t like the idea of recanting a statement to OtherOps. They were already mad enough that I wouldn’t give them more details about why Nick attacked me. They were going to be pissed when I took away their biggest leverage against him. On the other hand, I didn’t have a firm counter for a magician. If Matthias decided to cut the cat-and-mouse bullshit and attack me straight out, I would probably be a grease stain within moments. Having a genuine sorcerer of my own to counter him – even one as inexperienced as Nick – might be my best chance.

I think this might be a good idea, I said slowly to Maggie. But I’ll let you make the call. We’re equally involved here.

I could practically feel Maggie pacing around in her ring, grumbling angrily to herself. I held up a finger to Nick, indicating that he should give us a minute to let Maggie think. Ask him some straightforward questions.

I said, “If you get out of here, are you going to run for it?”

“No,” Nick answered, his expression darkening. “You don’t deal with magicians by hiding from them. They’ll always find you.”

“You won’t double-cross me?”

“You’re … the two of you are my only real allies in this. So no.”

“What about your rich uncle?”

“He’s rich, not a magician. Besides, I don’t want to involve him in this.”

“And you won’t say a word to OtherOps about Maggie or her ring?”

“I promise,” he said with a nod.

Maggie sighed. He’s on the level. Okay. Make the deal.

I put out my hand. Relief flashed across Nick’s face and he took it, shaking firmly. “You won’t regret it,” he said.

“Sure damned hope not,” I told him, getting to my feet. I pulled out one of my business cards and scribbled my home address on it. “Once you get out, get in contact and we’ll make a plan to deal with Matthias. I’ll retract my statement to OtherOps this afternoon.” I took my leave, checking out of the prison and heading downtown, where I spent the next couple of hours with a very irritated OtherOps agent. I managed to avoid running into Justin and answering those uncomfortable questions, and then I headed back to Hinkley over on the west side.

When I walked into Mum’s Hearth and Yard, Mum herself was nowhere to be seen. A young woman, probably nineteen or twenty with dark hair, a round, thoughtful face, and a Mum’s Hearth and Yard T-shirt greeted me from behind the register. I gave her my best smile and tugged on the OtherOps windbreaker I’d thrown on. Her T-shirt said Ava on it, and I thanked some nameless deity that I’d found Michael’s girlfriend.

“Hi there, Ms. Holmes,” I said in as nonthreatening a manner as I could manage. She blinked back at me sweetly. I couldn’t feel a drop of guile in her expression. She looked so sweet and naive that it made my face hurt.

“Can I help you with something, sir?”

“Yeah, I’m really sorry to bother you at work, but I was hoping that you could help me find Michael Pavlovich.” I produced one of my fake business cards, one emblazoned with the OtherOps logo and a number that forwarded to my real one.

Her brow wrinkled momentarily, and she gave me a very serious, considered nod. “Mum told me you came in a couple days ago asking about Michael.”

“That’s right, I did.” I was suddenly very tired. Tired of lying to people. Tired of hunting. Tired of being forced to be the bad guy. I kept that gentle smile glued to my face. “Do you have any idea where he’s gone?”

“I do.”

“… really?” The forthrightness of it was so unexpected that I wasn’t really sure what to say next.

“I do,” she repeated herself. “Are you really trying to help him?”

“I am.”

She hesitated for a few moments, examining my business card like a forensic expert. Finally, she said, “Okay, I believe you. He’s lost, Mr. Fitz. Scared. He has dangerous people trying to catch him. He needs help.” She searched her pockets, then produced a scrap of paper on which was written an address. “I met him for lunch at this boys home in Brooklyn Centre yesterday. You should be able to find him there.”

I took the paper. “Oh. I … thank you.” I felt a huge surge of guilt. “Dangerous people” probably meant me. This innocent kid had just handed me her boyfriend on a silver platter, thinking I was the cops. I could practically feel Maggie’s disapproval. A sudden thought interceded with the guilt, however, and I fixed Ava with a curious look. “Do you know who these dangerous people are?”

She nodded seriously and glanced around the room, though we were the only two people in the garden center. She leaned across the counter and said in a near-whisper. “He’s being chased by his master. And …”

“And?”

“And the Vampire Lords. They want to kill him for something he has.”

I was speechless. There was no way that Michael could know that I’d been hired by Jacques on behalf of Lord Ruthven. Besides, Jacques didn’t want to kill Michael. He just wanted the blood tally. Unless … unless Michael knew the value of the book he’d stolen, and he knew that the Vampire Lords would come after it.

This whole thing had gotten more complicated. And more dangerous.

Ava continued, nodding as if she’d just unburdened herself of a mighty secret. “Just try to help him. Make sure he’s safe. I don’t want him to get hurt. He doesn’t trust OtherOps, but I do. I know you’ll do the right thing.”

I swallowed a lump in my throat and held up the paper. “I’ll do my best. Thank you for the help, miss.” I returned to my truck, where I stared at the scrap of paper in my hand for a few minutes. The address looked familiar, and it only took a quick Google search to find out why.

It was the address that the lady from the clinic had dropped blood off at the other day. “Well,” I said to no one in particular. “I sure feel like shit for tricking that kid. But this makes my job easier.”