Kelley Armstrong - Broken

“Trust me, these days, I fall into that category of women no one wants to see topless.”

“I wouldn’t complain.”

Her gaze rolled over to Clay, expectantly. He just turned to watch a taxi zip around the corner, then swore when he saw it was occupied.

Zoe sighed. “Not even going to rise to the bait, are you, Professor?”

“Show me bait; I’ll rise.”

“Oh-ho. So you think just because I’m a woman-”

“Didn’t think that at all. Doesn’t matter.”

“Well, you may be prettier right now, but don’t forget who’s the one with eternal youth. In a few years, that six-pack of yours is going to look more like a collapsible cooler bag.”

“Yeah, probably.”

Another sigh. She started to say something else when a trio of young women ogled Clay, tittering as they passed.

I waved toward a variety store with a rack of tourist T-shirts in the window. “Want one?”

“Please.”

“I couldn’t resist,” I said as I handed him the folded shirt.

He shook it out and laughed. It read “Had a howling good time in Toronto ” above a picture of a mutant wolf with fangs as big as walrus tusks. Typical tourist wear-drawn by someone in a distant country who’d never actually seen a wolf, but was certain Toronto must be teeming with them, running alongside the Inuit, moose and polar bears.

Clay shrugged it on. “How does it look?”

“God awful,” Zoe said.

Nick waved a finger at me. “The joke will be on you five years from now, when he’s still wearing it.”

“That’ll bother you more than it’ll bother me.” I reached into the bag and pulled out chocolate bars. “I heard stomachs growling.”

I produced a bottle of water for Zoe.

“Ah, nice and cold,” she said as she took it. “You’re so sweet.” She glanced over at Clay and sighed. “And so wasted.”

“Damned shame, isn’t it?” Clay said through a mouthful of chocolate.

“Criminal.”

At the hotel, we left Nick and Zoe in the lounge. Upstairs, Jeremy popped his head outside his room almost the moment we stepped off the elevator.

“There you are,” he said. “I was about to go out searching for you.”

“It’s just a scratch,” Clay said.

Jeremy ushered us into the room. He gestured to the bed, and had the bandage off before Clay even finished settling. A frown, then he reached down to an already-prepared basin of warm water, took out the cloth, squeezed it and carefully sponged off the blood. As the wound came clean, Jeremy’s frown grew.

“It does appear to be-” he began.

“Just a scratch?” Clay finished. “Told you.”

“But why did it bleed so much?” I asked, drawing closer for a better look.

“It’s a deep scratch,” Jeremy said. “It looks as if it nicked a vein.”

Clay looked over at me. “Right again. I’m a genius.”

“No,” Jeremy said. “You’ve been hurt so often you can’t help but recognize the signs.”

“What about…?” I began, then paused. “It was Rose.”

“She’s worried about syphilis,” Clay said.

Jeremy shook his head. “Don’t be. Unless she bit him, that isn’t a concern.”

Jeremy cleaned it well, then plastered it up and told me to let him know if it started bleeding again or bothered Clay. No sense expecting Clay to tell him. To him, as long as the limb was still attached, he was good to go.

Once Clay was bandaged again, Jeremy and I both breathed easier, and I could tell Jeremy what had happened at the museum.

“So the zombies are catching on to our plans,” I said.

Jeremy nodded. “Meaning our chances of catching one, without serious risk, are rapidly diminishing. Time to take a break and focus on Shanahan.”

“I’ll talk to Zoe. See if she’ll be more forthcoming about him now.” I turned to Clay, who was picking up the tourist shirt. “Hold on. I’ll grab one of yours.”

“I like this one.”

I rolled my eyes and helped him into it. “As for this Hull guy, his mannerisms suggest that he is what he claims to be-a refugee from the Victorian portal-but Clay thinks he’s working with the controller, maybe an actor hired to get close to us.”

“Explains how he just happened on the scene,” Clay said. “Better than ‘I was following the zombies.’ ”

“So what do we do about this supposed meeting?” I said.

“Let me think about it. For now, go back to Zoe.”

We started for the door.

“Oh,” Jeremy said. “Anita Barrington hasn’t called you, has she?”

I double-checked my cell phone, then shook my head.

“She called me here, at the hotel,” he said. “Something about digging up a story we’d probably like to hear. I called her back and left a message asking her to phone your cell or Antonio’s, but she hasn’t returned my call…”

“We’ll swing by there after we talk to Zoe.”

We had the lounge to ourselves, so there was no need to take our business to a more private spot.

I explained our suspicions about Shanahan, and why we needed to find him.

“Patrick Shanahan as a zombie-controlling madman?” Zoe said, her finely drawn brows raised.

“Madman…debatable,” I said. “But the zombie-controlling part seems a good guess. As for why he’s controlling them or why the portal was embedded in that letter or what he hopes to gain by getting it back, we’re still working on all that.”

“As motivations go, I always liked world domination myself. Or perhaps this is just metropolitan domination. Patrick never was the type to think big. Never struck me as zombie lord material either, but I can’t say I know him well. It’s a working relationship, and a sporadic one at that. Most of my jobs for the family were with his grandfather, and he wasn’t chummy with the hired help either.”

“Which means you won’t be able to give us much insight into Shanahan.”

“Next to none. But I know someone who can. A client. Randall Tolliver. He grew up with Patrick.”

IN A CITY LIKE TORONTO, WHICH, AS FAR AS I KNEW DIDN’T even have a Cabal satellite office, the supernatural community is small. I’d lived here, on and off, for ten years after I became a werewolf, and never knew it existed. Zoe said there were only a few sorcerer families, so the community was tight-many of them knowing each other from birth, as Patrick Shanahan and Randall Tolliver did.

Although Zoe claimed to know Tolliver much better than she did Shanahan, she’d say little about him-protecting another customer.

We had a heck of a time finding Tolliver. His office either didn’t have his exact schedule, or was reluctant to provide it, so we ended up canvassing a list of places he was expected to visit that afternoon. We stopped at a low-income housing complex, then an AIDS hospice, both times being told he’d come and gone.

Those places gave me a pretty good idea what Tolliver did for a living. An investment broker of another kind…the sort who buys bargain-basement housing, turns it into something barely livable and reaps the benefits of government assistance. Typical sorcerer.

“Let’s pop by his office,” Zoe said. “I’ll see if I can sweet-talk the receptionist into paging him for me.”

Clay swung a look my way that begged for something more active than trailing Zoe across town.

“How about we catch up with you after you find him?” I said. “We’ve got another stop we can make in the meantime.”

“ Erin?” Anita said as we walked into the bookshop.

The girl popped up from behind a display where she’d been unpacking books.

“Can you watch the store, dear? We’ll be in the back.”

Anita ushered us through the beaded curtain into the back office.