Ilona Andrews - Fate's Edge

Kaldar was too talented, too clever, and too full of pride not to play the game. She didn’t even know the real him. He showed her what he thought she wanted to see. And he would expect her to be okay with all of it because she knew the score from the start. All the girls in the business knew it. Marry a mobster, take collect calls from prison. Marry a gambler, hide your paycheck. Marry a conman, nurse a broken heart. You made your bed, and you had to lie in it.

No, thank you. No matter how fast her pulse sped up when he played with her hair, she didn’t want that kind of heartache. Nor did she want to be somebody’s “ball and chain” or “old lady.” If a man thought she cramped his style that much, he could go and find himself someone else. She needed someone straightforward and dependable—but then those guys were boring. Audrey smiled to herself. There was always time to settle down to boring and dependable. Flirting with Kaldar was fun. She might even dip her toes into those waters, but she wouldn’t be taking a swim anytime soon. Unless, of course, she wrapped him around her finger first.

Now that would be a challenge.

JACK perched on the wyvern’s back and watched the scrubby forest around them. The little cat he’d rescued in the Broken lay next to him, curled into a tight, furry ball. He wasn’t as skinny now, and Jack had cut and washed most of the green paint off his fur. The little cat still didn’t meow or purr, but he followed Jack around the camp like a baby duck after his mother. Not that Jack minded.

A little farther off, closer to the wyvern’s hips, Ling the Merciless watched them with alert, suspicious eyes. Kaldar and Audrey were gone, and without Audrey, the raccoon turned into a nervous, listless ninny. Usually if a raccoon was out in daylight, it was sick, desperate, or rabid. This one sat out right under the sunshine and didn’t care. Weirdo.

Below, George was going through his fencing routine. Lunge, scoot back, lunge, scoot back. Gaston had been gone for most of the day, too. He said he was going to gather information from the locals, but now he was back, writing something down in a notebook.

The sun baked the wyvern’s back. Jack stretched. Mmmm, warm. Strange creatures, wyverns. The schoolbooks said that they were extremely smart, smarter than dogs, smarter than foxes, but Jack couldn’t see how one would find out how smart a wyvern was. When he wasn’t flying, the wyvern lay still, like a rock. The only time he came to life was when Gaston dumped buckets of food paste into his mouth in the morning.

Jack stirred. The little cat twitched an ear, opened one yellow eye, and looked at him. Jack raised his finger to his lips, and told him, “Shhh. Stay.” The little cat closed his eyes.

Jack slid off and padded to the wyvern’s head, silent like a shadow. Smart, right. Let’s just see. He passed the blue shoulder, the long neck, as thick as a century-old tree, the brilliant blue fringe that protruded from the corner of the wyvern’s jaw.

The heavy eyelids snapped open. Jack froze.

A huge gold-and-amber eye, as big as a dinner platter, stared at him. The dark pupil shrank, focusing.

Jack stood very still.

The colossal head turned, the scaled lip only three feet from Jack. The golden eyes gazed at him, swirling with fiery color.

Jack breathed in tiny, shallow breaths.

Don’t blink. Don’t blink . . .

Two gusts of wind erupted from the wyvern’s nostrils. Jack jumped straight up, bounced off the ground into another jump, and scrambled up the nearest tree.

In the clearing, Gaston bent over, guffawing like an idiot.

“It’s not funny!”

“He knows you’re there, you dimwit. He just chooses not to care.”

The wyvern lowered his head.

George straightened and sheathed his rapier. “Kaldar and Audrey are back.”

Jack climbed down from the tree before anyone asked him any uncomfortable questions. That’s all he needed. Especially since Audrey would be there. Audrey was . . . pretty. Really, really pretty.

Ten minutes later, when Kaldar and Audrey came up the path, he was sitting on the wyvern again. That way, nobody would think that he was scared. Not that he was. He was just cautious.

“We have a job,” Kaldar called out. “Come here.”

Jack slid down the wing and came over to sit by George. It took Kaldar about fifteen minutes to explain about Magdalene and Ed Yonker.

“I may be overstepping myself,” George said, “but why don’t we just steal the invitation?”

“It won’t work,” Audrey told him. “First, we don’t know where it is.”

“Second,” Kaldar continued, “if we steal it, she would let Morell know we have it. We’d walk straight into a trap.”

“I thought she hated him,” George said.

“Hate doesn’t mean ‘doesn’t do business,’ ” Kaldar told him.

“He’s right. It’s a very costly mistake to make,” Audrey said.

Kaldar turned to his nephew. “Gaston, did you get anything on Yonker?”

Gaston flipped open his notebook. “Ed’s a local. Born and bred in the Edge. His parents still live about six miles east of here. The Edge here looks like Swiss cheese—you know, the one with holes. Bubbles of the Edge pop up all over in the Weird and in the Broken. The boundary is very thin, and the Edge itself isn’t that wide, but there are a lot of people living here, and there are several powerful merchant families. The families keep the peace.”

“Makes sense,” Kaldar said. “Conflict is bad for business.”

“Ed’s not too well liked. The expectation was that when he made it big, he’d hire his buddies, but he brought in outside talent instead. The locals aren’t getting any crumbs of his pie. Magdalene isn’t that well liked, either. She isn’t exactly trustworthy. Here’s an interesting tidbit: Magdalene and Yonker almost had themselves a feud a couple of times, and they were seriously warned that if they started any sort of fighting, the families would squash them. All their fun and games would be over.”

“So they have to play nice,” Audrey said. “And Magdalene is using us to walk around the rules.”

“Pretty much. Yonker’s got a compound in the Edge, about twenty acres, fenced in, and guarded like there are state secrets inside. There are a lot of guards, and they’re well trained. That’s where his Wooden Cathedral is.”

Audrey rolled her eyes.

“The scam works like this.” Gaston checked his notes again. “He invites wealthy people into his church, flirts with them for a while, and if they’ve got the dough, he invites them to his private retreat, to the Wooden Cathedral. They go in normal, and they come out thinking he’s a prophet. Whatever gadget he’s got in there, it works.”

Kaldar looked at George.

George frowned. “Crowd-control devices are illegal except in Gardens of Bliss, and there you have to sign a liability form.”

“Is a Garden of Bliss as bad as it sounds?” Audrey asked.

“No, but when I first heard the name, I thought it was a brothel,” Kaldar said. “It’s a last resort for people who are depressed and suicidal. You sign a consent form and splash around in a garden with pretty flowers and ponds of warm water while good feelings are being pumped into you by magic.”

Audrey blinked. “Oh.”

“It could be a Vilad Lantern,” George said. “Or some sort of emotional emitter. I’d have to see it to say for sure.”

“Anything more about Ed?” Kaldar glanced at Gaston.

“Not much. Ed’s greedy, and he likes nice things: expensive cars, good clothes, bling—that’s apparently something to do with flashy jewelry. He likes women too, but all those are collateral vices. Ed ultimately gets off on crowds worshipping his every footstep. He wants to be a big shot. He actually gives money to the San Diego Children’s Center, and he attends the charity dinners and all that.”