Katie MacAlister - Playing with Fire

‘‘Here?’’ He shoved my change in my hands. ‘‘Not for five times that. Good luck.’’

He sped off into the darkness without even a backward glance. ‘‘Talk about your foreshadowing,’’ I muttered as I slipped into the shadows.

The lock on the door to the warehouse posed no problem to me. I smiled as I laid my fingers across the front, gently urging the tumblers within it to turn until the lock obligingly clicked open. I’ve never been sure why, exactly, doppelgangers had the inherent ability to open locks, but it was such a useful talent, I figured it was best not to question it. As the door opened, I shadowed and made my way cautiously into the lower level of the empty warehouse. A small amount of dim light from the buildings on either side filtered through the high, grimy windows, giving me enough light to make out a couple of large boxes in an otherwise empty room.

‘‘Kostya lives in an abandoned building near Greenwich,’’ Aisling had told me earlier in the day, when Gabriel and Drake were off looking for the two missing bodyguards.

‘‘Does he?’’ I’d asked, a little bit surprised by the sudden change in what had been up to that point innocuous conversation.

‘‘Yes. I’m telling you now because if Gabriel is anything like Drake, he’s not going to want you to do anything on your own. Dragons are like that: very protective, and the wyverns especially so-it’s sweet, really, but they just don’t realize that we are professionals, and sometimes, we need to be given some space to do our own thing.’’

I nodded. I had a suspicion I was being kept out of the way, which was already rankling.

‘‘You have quite a reputation as being able to take… well, just about anything, I guess. I mean, anyone who can break into Dr. Kostich’s house and take something valuable has got to be pretty good at what she does.’’

I squirmed a little in the chair, my eyes on the figure of Cyrene and the demon dog Jim as they wandered around the garden. ‘‘Er… thank you. I think.’’

‘‘Oh, that was a compliment,’’ Aisling said, laughing. ‘‘I have nothing but respect for strong women who go after what they want. But that’s neither here nor there-I’ll write down Kostya’s address for you. If you’re going back to London tonight, you’ll want to have a look around his place to see just what’s what.’’

I slid her a curious glance. ‘‘Do you think Kostya is lying about the phylactery, and Maata and Tipene?’’

‘‘I don’t know,’’ she said after a moment of thought. ‘‘It’s hard for me to read Kostya. In some ways, he’s very much like Drake, but in others, he’s a complete stranger. His emotions are so volatile. My uncle believes that stems from a prisoner-of-war mentality, but I am starting to believe that it’s just his personality. Either way, I know you’ll want to look around at his place, and figured I’d give you what information we have.’’

I made a mental note to thank Aisling again for her help. I hated to think what I might have done if I’d been forced to rely on just the blackmailer’s information.

The amulet was bound to be with the rest of Kostya’s valuables, which meant I needed to go to a small room on the second floor that Drake-the only one besides Kostya who had actually seen it-had told Aisling was protected pretty heavily by a variety of electronic alarms and locks.

‘‘Nothing like killing two birds with one stone, I guess,’’ I said to myself.

There was a sort of mezzanine in the warehouse, a flight of rickety stairs leading upward to what probably had been administrative offices. I walked carefully down the narrow hallway, avoiding both the rats, which couldn’t see me when I shadow walked, and the broken office furniture, which had been piled along the inner wall. A faint red blinking light high up near the ceiling warned of a security camera. I paused in front of the door to the last office, eyeing it carefully. I knew that to normal eyes it would look like a perfectly normal wooden door, equipped with an electronic lock linked to a retina-scan unit attached to the wall next to it. But the door bore things that the casual observer might have missed, such as the illegible words that were apparently etched into the door’s surface.

‘‘Dragon’s bane,’’ I said softly, looking at it carefully from different angles. I’d never seen one before, Magoth (wisely) never having demanded I burgle a dragon, but Aisling had warned me that any treasure Kostya held might be guarded by a bane.

This one looked powerful, glowing gold against the dark wooden door. I sighed, trying to remember what else Aisling had said about it.

‘‘They’re really tricky, and can be deadly if you don’t know what you’re doing,’’ I recalled her saying, leaning close and speaking quickly as Cyrene and Jim approached. ‘‘I went through four demons breaking Fiat’s bane, but honestly, I wouldn’t advise you to mess with anything Kostya has protected with a bane. It’s just bound to be too dangerous.’’

Those words came back to me now as I examined the door for signs of any weakness. There were none. A quick look at the other rooms, locked by conventional means, yielded nothing as well. I climbed out of the window of the room next to the sealed one, moving carefully along the narrow six-inch stone ledge. I had serious doubts that Kostya would be stupid enough to ignore any entrance into his lair, but figured it couldn’t hurt to check.

The window was guarded by not one, but three different security systems, brands I recognized as being nearly impossible to overcome. As I stood plastered against the side of the building, I thought furiously of any means to get into the room. Via the ceiling? From the floor below? Perhaps through the wall of the office next to it? Those and other hopeless ideas were squirreling through my brain when I noticed something odd about the window… One of the panes of glass shimmered slightly in the stiff breeze that was coming off the river.

I laid a hand on it, prepared to make a fast getaway if the alarm gave any sign of a blip. But it didn’t. The glass gave way under my hand, swinging open silently, the little electronic box attached to it not giving the slightest indication that the alarm had been triggered.

I opened it a bit more and poked my head into the room to get a good close look at the electronic box… It had been disabled.

‘‘Well, now. How about that?’’ I murmured, taking a fast look around the room with a penlight. The room itself was small and musty, with a curious airless feeling as if it had been sealed for a thousand years. It was empty of furniture, but one side of the wall was lined with three wooden chests, each bound with iron. Cautiously, I let myself down out of the window, bracing myself for sirens as I landed on the floor.

The room was as silent as the tomb of which it reminded me, every noise magnified. Even the breath I drew sounded oddly amplified. I checked all available surfaces for any other electronics, breathing a sigh of relief when I found none. Either Kostya had been imprisoned so long he’d forgotten how to guard the treasures in his lair, or… well, perhaps this wasn’t his lair after all.

I frowned at the door. ‘‘Then why bind a bane into the entrance?’’ I turned to look back at the window, trying to piece together the contradictions. I had taken a step toward the window when a very slight vibration shook the floor of the mezzanine.

Someone had closed the large metal door directly below where I stood. I had to get out of there… but could I count on such easy access to the lair any other time?

I didn’t debate the issue. I figured I had about thirty seconds to find both the phylactery and the amulet before Kostya-or whoever it was who had just come into the warehouse-made it upstairs. I flicked the penlight over the first of the three wooden chests. It was locked with a bright, shiny new lock, but nothing else. The second bore several powerful wards, and a couple of arcane spells keeping it shut. The latter wouldn’t stop me, but the former would slow me down considerably. The third chest was oddly unprotected.