C.E. Mutphy - Hands of Flame

“You going to share that thought with me?” Tony folded his arms over his chest, brown eyes dark with anticipation of disappointment. Margrit’s answer caught in her throat and Tony’s expression shuttered further. “You said al-Massrī could disrupt electronics, Grit.”

Margrit tilted her head back, swallowed and reversed her gaze. “He could. He had one of those weird electric fields you read about. He fritzed my cell phone out.”

“That’s not what you said.”

“Oh, come on, Tony, I said a lot of crap that night. I was upset.” In frustration on both her own behalf and Tony’s, she’d laid out the alliances and natures of a group of gathered Old Races amongst whom she and Tony had been the only humans. That every word she’d spoken had been true made no difference in Tony’s ability to believe her.

Tony shook his head. “You think fast, Grit, and I know you’re a good liar. But you’ve never made things up.”

Margrit eyed him. “Isn’t that what lying is?”

Sour humor quirked his mouth. “Technically, yeah, but I’m talking about the kinds of things you said that night. Dragons and vampires. That’s not the kind of lying you do.”

Alarm rooted Margrit to the floor, making her feel heavy. Tony was right: it wasn’t the kind of story she told, but she’d never dreamed he might invest himself in considering that. Pursuing what she’d said in a moment’s heat could far too easily cost the detective his life. “So I was telling the truth? Tony, that puts at least one of us up for some new and exciting kind of lunacy charges.”

“Does it?” He studied her for long moments, eyebrows drawn down before he sighed, shrugged and looked away. “I guess it does. But there’s something wrong when you spouting fairy tales is the only way to make sense of anything, Grit. I want to know what’s going on, and you’re the only piece I’ve got access to.”

“So why aren’t you arresting me for obstruction of justice?”

Tony’s mouth soured further. “Because you’re about to go work for Eliseo Daisani and there’s no point. He’d get you walked out of there and the stupid son of a bitch who walked you in would be busted to traffic duty for the rest of his career.”

“I wouldn’t let him do that.”

“You volunteering to be arrested?”

Margrit ducked her head. “Not when you put it that way.”

“So help me out here. Anything. There’s got to be something.”

“Nothing that’s going to help you understand.” Margrit pressed her lips together. “But if things haven’t settled down at the docks in forty-eight hours, I’ll give you everything you need to settle it yourself.”

Tension lanced through the detective, bringing him to attention. “Like you handed me Janx’s bust?”

Margrit wrinkled her face, unwilling to argue her place in the House of Cards’s downfall. “A little like that.”

“If you can do that, Grit, why not do it now? Why wait another two days? People are getting killed out there.”

“Because I made a promise.” Margrit winced again, far too aware of how little weight her promises carried with Tony now. “It’s the best I can do.”

Tony, jaw knotted, turned toward the door. “Fine. Two days. Just remember, any deaths between now and then are on your head.”

A careful study of the calendar told Margrit it was Thursday afternoon. She’d gotten up at four in the morning on Wednesday and hadn’t gotten any meaningful sleep since. She thought regretfully of the calendar her coworkers had made, with only nine or ten hours left on it. Responsibility told her to go in to work, to do what little she could, but instead, burdened more by Tony’s curse than fatigue, she showered and crawled into bed.

She woke up what felt like only minutes later when her phone blared. Feeling unexpectedly invigorated, she glanced toward the clock, discovering it was after seven, and answered the phone to hear Daisani, with a hint of Bela Lugosi in his voice, say, “Good evening.”

Margrit laughed. “Are you drinking, Mr. Daisani? Never mind. What’s up?”

Daisani was silent a moment before saying, “You recall how you accused me of showing off, Margrit?”

“I do.” Margrit threw the covers back and climbed out of bed to look for running gear. “You said it wasn’t that hard to resist, most of the time.”

“It’s far more difficult to resist replying to that line with the appropriate response,” Daisani informed her dryly. “Yet somehow I can never quite let myself do so. It seems like such a cheap shot.”

“It is, but sometimes they’re worth it. Did you call to discuss vampire movies with me?”

“I did not. I called to ask if you were aware that Alban’s trial is tonight.”

Margrit’s throat constricted around her previous good nature. She dropped her running tights and sat on the bed, staring across the room. “Tonight? They got here that fast? It’s only been one night.”

“The nearest and largest enclave that I’m aware of is in Boston, which is hardly an insurmountable flight.”

“But somebody would’ve had to go tell—” Margrit stopped her own protest, seeing its flaws. “Alban carries a cell phone. I suppose they all might.”

“And if not, they have more esoteric ways of communicating.”

“Not Alban. Iron stops the link to the memories. Someone else would have had to have called, or gone to get them. The sun hasn’t set yet. How do you know they’re here?”

Daisani’s pause was interested. “It breaks the link? Are you certain?”

“Forget I said that. Are you sure they’re here?” Margrit switched the phone to speaker and got up to pull regular clothes out of the closet, wiggling into jeans and a light sweater.

“Chelsea Huo just called to inform me, so yes, I am.”

Margrit stopped with one sock on. “Chelsea?”

“She suggests that we make haste.”

“We?” Margrit pulled her other sock on and found a pair of boots as she eyed the phone.

“Alban Korund is an old friend of mine, Margrit. You don’t expect me to stand by and let his trial go unattended, do you?”

“Somehow I doubt you’re volunteering out of the goodness of your heart. What interests are you protecting?”

Caution clamped her lips together as memories of Sarah Hopkins surfaced again. She and her child were the secret Alban bore for Janx and Daisani, and she would be the reason Daisani was concerned with Alban’s trial. Hidden stories could too easily be revealed in the midst of such proceedings.

But Daisani dismissed her suppositions with a soft answer of, “Nothing that has any importance any longer. The best and only reason I have for attending Alban Korund’s trial is friendship. Once upon a time, and not so long ago, that might have been different, but you’ve changed our world so much. Give me some credit, Margrit. Time makes relationships complicated, but we rarely forget where we began. Now,” he said after a moment’s silence, “shall I come around to pick you up?”

“Please.” Margrit’s voice scratched, throat too tight for words. It was too easy to forget the Old Races weren’t human, at least for brief spaces of time. They moved too fluidly, but the eye became accustomed to that, and in their human forms, that was the only thing to truly mark them apart. The only thing, at least, until age and regret and pain showed in a vampire’s gaze, undoing all his humanity with a glance. Daisani had cut her open with honesty more than once, and Margrit doubted she would ever learn to stand against the inhuman depth he could show. “Please,” she whispered again. “That would be nice. Thank you.”

“Not at all. We should be there in good time for the awakening.”