“Lieutenant Reynolds. Colonel Willard gave me your notes to translate.”
“Oh?” I hadn’t expected to hear from anyone in her office, not after she’d snubbed me all through our meeting.
“The one in ogrish is an address.”
“One Cave Misty Loop Lane?” I was curious if Big Mama had been honest with me.
“That’s right,” he said with surprise.
If I had known he would call me, I wouldn’t have needed to spend eighty dollars on meat or tramp through the park this afternoon. At least I’d gotten an extra tip from the male ogre.
“And the other note?”
“I’ve confirmed that it’s written in one of the dragon languages. We have some notes in our linguistics library here with examples of their writing, and one of the symbols matches up.”
“One? Does that mean you couldn’t translate it?”
“We don’t have a dictionary for any of their languages. We’ve been trying to piece together our own Rosetta Stone from examples we’ve found in the language books from other species, but… we’re not there yet. May I ask where you found the note?”
“In a sack with a glowing silver tiger cub.”
Judging by the silence, that also surprised him. “Maybe it’s from a species that dragons originally found and named.”
“Do dragons keep tigers as pets?”
“I don’t know. I was kind of joking.”
I wasn’t in the mood to be joked with, but I kept from saying something sarcastic. This guy was being a lot more helpful than his colonel.
“We know very little about dragons,” he added, “except that they’re rulers on many of the other worlds in the portal network. They’re often the ones the refugees who flee here say that they were escaping.”
“As long as they don’t come to Earth, I will go on pretending that they don’t exist. Is Willard still going up to Bellingham?”
“She already left. We have an agent missing up there.”
I took the James Street exit and headed west. “Did she go alone?”
“She took Captain Rodriguez. Don’t worry about the colonel though. She’s armed and very capable. She studies martial arts, shoots Hawkeye at the range, and outruns most of the rest of us on any of the unit runs that go over five miles. She’s really fit for someone that old.”
That old was probably only a few years past forty, but to a twenty-five-year-old lieutenant, that might be ancient. At least he believed Willard could still kick ass and didn’t need a walker and soft foods.
“There’s someone up there who’s scary and dangerous by ogre standards, so tell her to watch out.”
“Is that someone at that address?”
“Might be.” I decided not to mention that my sources were two sausage-obsessed ogres.
“I’ll let her know. I think she’s checking our agent’s hotel and investigating the murder sites today.”
I almost told the lieutenant that I would drive up in the morning, but Willard hadn’t wanted my help and might not appreciate an assassin butting into her investigation. I would go on my own. Maybe entirely on my own if I could talk Nin into watching the cub. That encounter at the ogre cave could have turned into a disaster if one of them had caught her. I didn’t need her stealing chickens from Mr. Scary and Dangerous.
“I have one more thing for you, Ms. Thorvald.”
“What?”
“The colonel said to look up Michael Kwon, formerly Sergeant Kwon.”
My fingers tightened around the steering wheel. “Did you find something?”
“I had one of our moles—a werewolf who works for us from time to time—go to Rupert’s and drop a few bucks here and there. One of the trolls pulled out a rumpled, poorly photocopied wanted poster with his face and name on it. Someone is offering five thousand dollars for his delivery. The poster says he has to be alive.”
“Someone? Did he get a copy of the poster? Where’s he supposed to be delivered?”
“The guy who had it wouldn’t give it up, but the werewolf took a photo. The person offering the bounty isn’t named. It says to bring Kwon to the castle in Bellingham for payment.”
“A castle in Bellingham located at One Cave Misty Loop Lane by chance?” Could a castle be in a cave? Maybe something had been lost in the translation to ogrish.
“There wasn’t an address, and we don’t know of anything up there that would constitute a castle. Our mole didn’t either, but he said he would try to find out. For a price.”
“I’ve got money.” Not a lot of it, but if I could afford sausages for ogres, I could afford to pay a werewolf for information.
“Willard said our office would cover the mole and his bribes because Kwon was former army.”
“Oh.”
I hadn’t truly expected Willard to help out, not after she’d made it clear she didn’t approve of me or my methods.
“Thanks,” I made myself add, though the idea of being indebted to Willard was distasteful. I would swallow that distaste if the army helped me find Michael.
“You’re welcome, ma’am.” The lieutenant hung up.
A bounty poster that had been distributed among the magical community. Whatever had Michael gotten himself into?
I glanced over at the tiger. “And how are you involved?”
She appeared to be asleep. Had my treasure-hunting best friend stolen the tiger cub from someone? Someone who wanted her cub back?
That didn’t make sense now for the same reason it hadn’t made sense before. If someone had been on Michael’s boat to kidnap him—and the dead ogre outside suggested it had happened right there in the marina—they couldn’t have missed the cub. Yes, she had been under the covers, but the ogres would have sensed her the same way I had.
“Unless you hid yourself from them,” I mused, “and you didn’t hide yourself from me. Because you could tell I would be a friend? Or Michael told you about me, and you were able to understand him?”
I didn’t know how much intelligence to ascribe to the cub, but I also wasn’t prepared to call it chance that she’d lured Big Mama out of her camp where I could talk to her one on one.
The cub mewed plaintively. Her wrist and tail hung limply over the front of the seat.
“I sure hope you’re just tired because you had a big day, and not because you’re waning away from lack of nourishment.” My throat tightened at the thought of the cub dying because I couldn’t figure out what to feed her.
This gave me another reason to find Michael as quickly as possible. Whatever he’d gotten himself into, he ought to know what the cub was and how to take care of her. He had better.
8
Fog blanketed Pioneer Square, curling around the totem pole and trees near Nin’s food truck and muting the streetlamps. This late, there was parking nearby, and the meters weren’t running. Since the cub was sleeping, I left her inside the Jeep.
The Crying Tiger food truck was closed for the night, but I sensed Nin inside and rapped out the secret knock on the door. She was only one-quarter gnome, so her aura was much diminished compared to a full-blooded magical being, but I had no trouble detecting her from so close.
Even though she could probably detect and recognize me, too, she slid open her peephole before opening the door. Every time I visited, her black hair was dyed a different color. Tonight, it was pale green and pulled back into a spunky ponytail wrapped by a forest-green Scrunchie. Her dark eyes were warm as our gazes met—when she stood in the truck and I stood on the bricks of the square, we were the same height.
“Come in, Val,” she said in her clear, formal English, her accent barely noticeable. “Do you need ammunition?”
“I do. And some of your special grenades too.” I stepped into the cubby in the back of the truck, counters, racks of tools, and boxes of parts and ammo to either side of the narrow aisle. Completed weapons hung on pegboards, everything from wavy kris daggers to purse-sized pistols to automatic rifles, all of them altered from their originals or made from scratch. She’d built my own Fezzik based loosely on the Heckler & Koch MP7.
“You will go into battle?”
“That seems more and more likely with each passing hour, yes.” I laid a couple of hundred-dollar bills on the counter and tried not to think about my dwindling reserves.
“Excellent. I always keep ammunition for you in stock. You are one of my most frequent customers.”
“Does that mean I get a discount?”
“No.” She swept the hundreds into a cash envelope. “But I will throw in extra grenades.”
“That seems fair. I’ve got something in the Jeep that I’d like you to take a look at, too, if you don’t mind.”
“Certainly. It is dark out there, yes?” She pulled a compact flashlight out of a drawer stuffed to the brim with tools.
“Yeah, but its fur glows.”
Nin blinked at me. “You wish me to look at something… furry?”
“It’s not a weapon. Except to plucked chickens.”
“You are confusing me, Val. I am not a veterinarian. I do not know about animals.”
“Come look, anyway.” As I turned toward the door, I sensed another magical being outside. A goblin? My first thought was that he must be one of Nin’s customers, but he had stopped out in the street. By my Jeep?
Alarm flashed through me, and I flung open the door and ran toward the vehicle. I’d locked the doors, but goblins had the mechanical aptitude and propensity for taking things faster than practiced car strippers.
A short green-skinned figure in a trench coat stood on the running board of my Jeep as he peered through the tinted window on the passenger side.
I drew my gun and asked, “Lose something?” in a hard voice.
Goblins were rarely involved in anything more nefarious than theft, so I didn’t plan to shoot him, even if it turned out he’d been trying to break in, but a surge of protectiveness coursed through me. If he had been planning on stealing the cub, I would do my best to scare the little hoodlum.