Merlin's Children (The Children and the Blood) (34 page)

And that counted for something.

So much more than anything else thus far, that definitely counted for something.

*****

Sunrise crept over the horizon, brushing the little strip of neighborhood with soft colors and lighting the haze on the fields at the end of the road. In the guest room, shadows clustered behind the thick curtains, and only the thin strip of light slipping past her broke the gloom at all.

On the bed, Lily rolled over in her sleep and sighed.

Ashe glanced back. Bundling the blanket tighter beneath her cheek, Lily settled into the covers and didn’t move again.

For a moment longer, she watched the girl before turning back to the window. It was odd to think that in a few days, they’d be escaping the war together. The whole world felt like an option, barring those places she knew the Blood were hiding and that she wouldn’t have wanted to go to anyway. It was strange. She knew she should be excited. Happy, even.

Instead, she just felt numb.

For the past six months, all she’d wanted was for this to end. First with the Merlin, and later when she discovered Lily was alive, her only goal had been to stop the fighting so they could live without constantly worrying about who else might try to kill them each day. She’d thought the spell would do it, and when that wasn’t an option, she’d still been ready to let go of everything to give Lily that chance. No matter what, she’d at least wanted Lily to be able to go somewhere and rebuild a semblance of home.

But that wasn’t ever going to happen. She’d have a life with her sister now, of course, but it wouldn’t be like before. They’d spend every day looking over their shoulders, never getting close to anyone because, at any moment, Jamison might find out where they were and they’d have to cut ties all over again.

And it would never change.

Against the window frame, she shifted uncomfortably, her gaze tracking a woman walking a dog through the faint morning light. Whatever happened, she’d handle it, and if this was what it took to keep Lily safe, then it was what she’d do.

She’d just really wanted to go back to having a home someday.

A creak sounded behind her and she turned. One hand gripping the doorframe, Gary was watching her, his wife peering warily over his shoulder. Tension lined his face, while Annie fingered their dog’s collar as though wishing she could convince the placid animal to attack.

Ashe glanced to Spider, but the girl’s eyes were already open as though she’d never been asleep at all.

“You said tomorrow,” Gary told her.

Spider’s gaze twitched to the bedside clock. With a contemptuous look to the couple, she pushed back the blanket and rose to her feet.

“Can you have one of them pull the car closer?” the man persisted with a halting gesture toward Ashe and Cole. “Since they’re less–”

Spider leveled a flat look at him and he fell silent. With a quick motion to Annie, he retreated to the stairs.

Shaking her head, Spider exhaled and then caught sight of Ashe watching her.

“You should’ve seen how they reacted to having two black guys around,” she said, irritation thick in her tone. She snagged her bag from the floor. “Didn’t matter that Carter’d gotten them set up here. They just worried over whether they’d have to explain him and Sam to the neighbors.”

“Sounds familiar,” Cole muttered as the girl disappeared down the hall toward the bathroom.

Ashe glanced over as he shoved the blanket aside from the space he’d taken on the hardwood floor. Rubbing his eyes tiredly, he drew a breath and then moved to stand, only to pause as he noticed her.

“We leaving?” he asked, his voice tight.

“Soon as she gets back.”

He finished climbing to his feet. Scrubbing a hand over his hair, he crossed to Lily’s side to wake the little girl.

Ashe turned back to the window. As always, Cole presented his own problems, in so many ways, she was starting to lose count.

“Time to go?” Lily asked, a weariness in her voice that Ashe could tell had little to do with being woken so early.

“Yeah,” Cole said.

“Where?”

Cole paused. “Back to Banston. We’re going to meet up with Bus.”

Blankets rustled as Lily clambered hurriedly from the bed.

Down the hall, the bathroom door opened. Sighing, Ashe checked the street again and then turned to grab her own bag before following Lily and Cole from the room.

Gary and Annie were waiting at the base of the stairs.

Wordlessly, Spider stepped around them, ignoring the angry noise Gary made as she did so. Tugging open the front door, the girl glanced down the road, and then walked outside, leaving the others to come after her.

The door slammed the moment they made it through.

“Friendly,” Cole commented.

Lily made a disgusted noise.

Scanning the street, Ashe didn’t say anything as she followed Spider to the SUV. Pulling open the door, she waited for Lily to climb in while Cole circled to the other side of the vehicle and Spider swung up into the driver’s seat.

The hair on the back of her neck rose and she glanced to the house. At the front window, the barest edge of the curtain was tweaked back. Suppressing a disgusted sound of her own, she got in after her sister as Spider turned the key in the ignition.

She could feel the couple’s gazes trailing them as the SUV drove away.

As the elevator slowed, Harris sighed.

He couldn’t believe he was doing this.

In almost a week of searching Chaunessy, he’d gleaned precious little information on how the Blood ran their empire. Their security was extensive, ranging from magical barriers around any sensitive location to a central monitoring station on the fifteenth floor that scrutinized every other level. The wizards weren’t particularly talkative either, at least to him, and from the few conversations he’d managed to overhear, he’d only gathered a handful of names for Malden to run. He was getting nowhere slow, and after days of putting it off, he’d finally surrendered to the fact he needed to use every resource at his disposal.

No matter how irritating that resource could be.

The elevator door slid open, rewarding him with the sight of the squat little man sidling along the cafeteria deli counter. His pale hands shooting out from the voluminous layers of his coat, Mud snatched a pair of sandwiches from behind the back of the counter attendant and squirreled them away with lightning speed.

Drawing a breath, Harris made himself leave the elevator before he could change his mind. “Hey!” he called as he strolled into the cafeteria.

The man dropped the sandwich and turned to bolt before he realized who had spoken. Recovering quickly, he plastered his dirt-smudged face with a smile. “Hey, buddy!” he cried. Exaggerated bafflement furrowing his brow, he picked up the plastic-wrapped sandwich again and returned it to the tray as though he couldn’t understand how it had fallen. “What brings you down here?”

Harris shrugged. “Just stretching my legs.”

Mud looked like he wouldn’t have seen the appeal of such a thing even if he’d been in chains for a year. “Uh-kay,” he allowed, his smile faltering a little.

Harris leaned over slightly, casting a look to the attendant. “She noticed,” he whispered.

If he hadn’t been gambling on his own ability to get the arrogant little man to talk, the gamut of expressions would have made him laugh, shooting as they did past alarm, fear, and then stuttering into a sort of ingenious confusion so transparent, it wouldn’t have fooled a child. “Huh?” Mud asked, seeming to notice the woman behind the counter for the first time. “I, uh…”

He trailed off as the attendant glanced back at her tray of sandwiches and then looked to him, her face darkening.

“I was going to have a seat, if you’d care to join me?” Harris offered.

Mud edged toward the door. “I should probably get–”

Harris made a cautioning noise, his eyes sliding meaningfully toward the attendant.

The little man made a beeline for a table.

Theatrics fading, Harris glanced to the woman. “I’ll pay for the sandwiches,” he told her tiredly before following.

By the time he reached the other side of the cafeteria, Mud had already managed to devour most of what he held in his hands. Plastic wrappings lay in shredded pieces all over the small, round tabletop, interspersed with smatterings of lettuce and tomato.

Harris repressed another sigh.

“Thanks for that,” Mud said between bites as Harris sat down. “Regular bunch of Nazis, they are.”

“Wizards,” he agreed, ignoring the fact the man’s comment didn’t remotely approach logical.

“No kidding.”

The conversation fell flat and the sound of Mud eating filled the room.

“So what gives?” Harris tried. “I thought you were out on patrol?”

“Got me watching prisoners now.”

“They agreed to that?”

He couldn’t keep the surprise from his tone, but it didn’t matter. Mud just smiled, sandwich and all. “Gave ‘em a good tip and got paid,” he replied.

“Oh yeah?” Harris managed, looking away quickly.

Mud returned to his sandwich, radiating self-satisfaction.

Harris waited, but nothing more came. “Too bad,” he commented.

“Huh?”

“Oh, nothing. I just can’t imagine guard duty’s very interesting. No news, no information. Just watching folks all day. Leaves you out of the loop entirely.”

Derision twisted through Mud’s expression. “I hear plenty.”

“Come on,” Harris chided. “It’s not like wizards talk much. Not to the likes of us, anyway. Besides, I’ve been here just as long as you, and I still haven’t even heard how Jamison manages to pull it all off.”

“Pull what off?”

“His money, for starters,” he said as though it was obvious. “How does he keep the lights on around here? Or the jets and cars and hotels damn near everywhere. How’s he pay for all that and still keep every Merlin and Taliesin with a laptop from tracking down where he’s hiding? It doesn’t make sense.”

“Well, that’s your problem right there, isn’t it?” Mud countered superciliously. “It’s not Jamison who’s doing it.”

Harris didn’t have to work hard to look skeptical. “Excuse me?”

“It’s not Jamison,” Mud repeated. “Oh, it’s his money. But Brogan’s the one who set it all up. The mansion in upstate New York, the cars and fake IDs and all the crap here. He even took the company Jamison’s great-granddad founded, broke it up and turned it into a whole bunch of new ones without the Taliesin council being any the wiser. Morons just thought the damn thing went bankrupt after Jamison supposedly died. But the money’s still there, boatloads of it, all funneling back to them a dozen different ways. Brogan’s just got it so covered in paperwork, anybody on the outside doesn’t stand a chance of seeing how it all fits together.”

Harris paused, filing the information away and then refocusing. He gave an amused scoff. “Yeah, right.”

The little man’s brow furrowed. “What?”

He shrugged. “Seems a bit far-fetched, is all. I mean, ‘boatloads’ of money? Secret companies? Hidden mansions? You have any proof that’s not just something the Blood dreamed up to make Jamison sound more impressive?”

“Why would they? You said yourself the man has tons of cash. Hell, most of the higher-up wizards do. Being outsiders like them tends to lend toward long-term thinking, so the bastards and their ancestors have been investing and building up money for years. Why should Jamison be any different?”

Harris chuckled dismissively. “Because having cash and having all of what
you’re
talking about are two totally different things. If you haven’t heard of any proof, let alone seen any…”

He let the scorn hang in the air and waited.

“And what the hell would you know,
Detective
?” Mud retorted, his tone twisting the last word into an insult. “Six months ago, you thought the damn queen of Merlin was some teenage delinquent you could
arrest
, for pity’s sake. And now you want to pretend you know more than me about what’s going on?” He scoffed. “Please. Did you know Jamison used to be married to a Merlin? Until he killed her, that is. Or that they brought in some crazy old lady and stashed her in Jamison’s office the other day, but nobody dares ask why? No. You didn’t. ‘Cause I know things about this place that’d make your skin crawl off. And as for the setup Brogan made… they’ve got all the proof you need stored up at that mansion of theirs. Jamison stayed in that house for eight years. You don’t do that and not leave a trace.”

Harris couldn’t stop the internal cop from kicking in. “Jamison killed his wife?”

Mud shrugged enigmatically. “That’s what they say.”

“When?”

“Back before the war.”

“How do you know?”

The little man snorted. “Oh, they don’t pay attention to the likes of us, remember?” The amusement in his beady eyes took on a patronizing cast. “Obviously, I just listen better than you.”

Harris ignored him. His earlier words aside, truth was no one could miss Mud. He lived at the heart of a putrid fug of month-old produce and dirt. In all likelihood, the lump had bribed wizards for information, or else gotten into places he shouldn’t and lived to tell the tale.

“And the old woman? Who–”

He cut off as his phone buzzed. Pulling it halfway from his pocket, he glanced to the number and then drew it swiftly out.

“Excuse me,” he said to Mud as he rose.

The man was too busy tearing into his third sandwich to respond.

Walking to the windows several yards away, Harris thumbed on the phone. “Hey, Scott. You find anything?”

“Nothing on a Charles Brentworth,” Malden answered. “I have a Lucas Brentworth that turned up at Croftsburg Memorial Hospital about a month ago. Unconscious, heavily injured, possibly the victim of a hit-and-run. Records show he skipped out after receiving treatment, though, so there’s not much to go on. But that’s not why I called.”

“What’s up?”

“Had a question. You heard anything about a missing old woman?”

Harris froze. “I’m sorry?” he managed.

“Just got word of a missing person’s report from Montana that I thought might interest you. Remember that farm where the girl lived? Well, the power company headed up that way about three days ago on a report of some outages. Turns out the stretch right by the girl’s house looked like someone went through with a wrecking ball. Poles down, wires everywhere, ground torn to pieces. Neighbor’s house was a mess too. State records have an old woman living there, but no one can find her. Locals say some fairly strong windstorms came through the area right around that time, and the police are worried she might’ve run off when her roof collapsed. Search and rescue hasn’t turned up anything yet, though. But it got me thinking. No one knows for certain when the old lady disappeared. So what if she didn’t run off in the storm? What if that’s just the reason anyone noticed she was gone, and she disappeared a long time ago? After all, God knows what she might’ve seen, living so close to the girl. So I wondered if maybe you’d come across anything that meant I should point the Montana cops that way?”