“Yeah, he is.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you smile like that.”
I felt myself blush.
“I recast those wards,” he continued, “and hid the rubies inside the door frames,” he said. “What was the fourth one for?”
“For you. It’s probably a good idea to have it set in some kind of jewelry you can wear.”
“Thank you. How many of those things do you have?”
“Roisin sent me twenty before she retreated into the mound. Bob and Lizzy came by and gave them to me yesterday. I gave one to Steve and figured I’d give a couple to Frankie, for her and her dad, one to Dan Bailey, one each to Josh and Trevor. If you know people who should have one, let me know. I wish I had enough for every mage in town, but harvesting them is bloody work.”
He nodded. “I’m sure it is. But if the spells work this time, at least we can provide a sanctuary here at Rosie’s.”
McGregor came in for dinner and sat at the bar.
“What do you think about the ley lines?” I asked him when I brought him his beer.
He shook his head. “Never felt anything like that, and I’ve never heard of such a thing. It feels like the whole world is going crazy.”
Carefully watching his face, I asked, “What do you think about the Knights Magica?”
His expression froze. “Why do you ask?”
I waited, not saying anything.
After a few moments, he blew out his breath and said, “That’s who destroyed our building in London. It wasn’t reported in the press, of course, but they also launched an assault on our main headquarters outside of Windsor that same day. With the lines going crazy, it was a massacre.”
“How did you manage to escape?”
“I was in Belfast.”
“You’re a Hunter.”
He hesitated, then said, “Yes.”
“And you came here to find me?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I assumed you were the one who killed Rudolf Heine. That was the report we received, anyway. If anyone could have killed that devil, it would have to be someone as strong as the Scorpion. There is strength in numbers, even if that number is two. I told you, I need an ally. If I’m going to survive, I need help.”
I shook my head. “There are still other Illuminati you could turn to.”
He sighed. “Why did you run? You could have found Illuminati to shelter you when the Knights destroyed the City.”
I tucked that away. Heine had also believed the Knights destroyed the City of the Illuminati.
“The Illuminati lied to me. I thought they were a force for good, but I discovered they are a force for evil. I do care about my immortal soul.”
“As do I. I’m not that much older than you are, and it took me a long time of trying to reconcile the inconsistencies in what I was told and what I saw. About two or three years ago, I finally figured out what the Illuminati truly were. I’ve been trying to find a way out since then.”
He seemed sincere, but I wished I had a truth spell. I wondered if Jolene or Sam knew one, but many magic users thought such a thing was a myth. I did know that was a lie, since the artifact that destroyed the City of the Illuminati revealed Truth in all things. I decided that while I wouldn’t trust McGregor, I would play along and let Sam and Oriel know about him.
“My landlady says she has an apartment for rent,” I said. He looked surprised. I wrote down Eleanor’s address. “She said for you to go by and talk to her.”
McGregor hung around at Rosie’s for a few more hours, and actually tried to socialize with some of the other customers. He played darts for a while, flirted with a few women, then said good night around ten. As he was saying goodbye to me, Oriel came in. From McGregor’s reaction when they passed each other, it was obvious that he could tell that Oriel was not human.
“I might get jealous,” Oriel said with a grin as he sat down. “Every time I come in here, that guy is chatting you up.”
“Talking to people is part of my job. Should I get jealous if you talk to other women?”
He shrugged. “Humans have some strange concepts. Fidelity, chastity, virginity. The Fae have never understood why humans get so wound up over sex.”
I brought him a beer and a shot. “So, it wouldn’t bother you if I slept with someone else?”
“I might kill him, but I wouldn’t be angry with you. It’s in women’s nature to take many lovers.”
“Not in men’s nature?”
“We serve women. It can be dangerous to spurn a woman. Women don’t take rejection well.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. I wished Lizzy was still around so I could ask her about Fae relationships. I’d never thought about whether they were different than humans in such matters. And for all I knew, Oriel was simply pulling my chain.
I took my break, and we ate dinner together at a table in the back room. When I returned to work, he came back to the bar and ordered another beer. He told me about the work he was doing restoring the car he had bought partly with the money I paid him, and the rest of the evening went quickly. Later, he took me back to my place. Once we were alone, we had better things to do than talk, and I forgot to worry about what he said about relationships.
Oriel decided to keep one of the swords, and I stashed another one in my closet. I took the remaining two out to Gilles at the sword club.
“Ah,” he said when he opened the box. He pulled one sword out of its scabbard and made a few moves with it. “I haven’t seen one of these since I came to America.” He fixed me with a stern look. “Did you come by them honestly?”
“I took them from people who tried to kill me,” I answered.
He nodded. “That is good. Thank you. I think Michaela might like one of these, and I’ll add the other one to my collection.”
When I arrived at work later, the buzz was about the Knights Magica’s invasion of Westport. The rumors I heard said that between a hundred and three hundred Knights—depending on which person you listened to—were taking up residence in the city’s Universal churches.
Frankie and Jordan Blair came in for dinner.
“How are you doing, Captain?” I asked. He had taken a couple of bullets before New Year, and his recovery had been slow.
“Just about back to normal,” he answered. “The doctors say that I’m well ahead of schedule.” He winked. “I didn’t tell them about the potions Frankie gave me every time she visited.”
I mentioned the rumors when I brought them their drinks.
“I don’t suppose you’d care to share your sources of information,” Frankie said.
“Uh, like what information?”
“About world affairs. The Universal Church, Knights Magica, ley line disruptions, that sort of thing.”
“TV news, Google, listening to people talk. Why?”
They stared at me as though they might be able to see inside my head. Finally, Frankie said, “I get routine bulletins from the FBI’s Arcane Investigations Section, along with occasional alerts. I showed you a couple of them. But you tell me about stuff days or weeks before they do.”
I wasn’t sure what to say. “I just listen and put the pieces together. I mean, as far as the Church and the Knights, all you have to do is pay attention to see what they’re doing. When the Prelate was assassinated, the new Prelate had Knights for his security instead of the normal security personnel. Anyone who was paying attention would have noticed that.”
“To answer your question about the rumors,” Blair said, “a chartered plane landed last night with around two hundred men and women—mostly men—wearing those black uniforms with a cross on the breast. Then the six o’clock train from Portland brought a hundred more. Buses from the Universal archdiocese picked them up and took them to the churches here in town.”
“Lovely. I hope someone warned the vamps and shifters. The Knights don’t like supernaturals.”
Blair shook his head. “We know that someone doesn’t. The slaughter is worse than when the bounty hunters were here last fall.”
“Yeah? Well, don’t expect me to go undercover for you. The Knights already know who I am.”
“Stabbing one of their leaders probably didn’t win you any friends,” Frankie said.
“They started it. But what makes us so special here in Westport?”
“We’re not,” Blair said. “The FBI says they’ve brought more than ten thousand people into the States, all on Holy City diplomatic passports. New York City and Washington are flooded with them.”
“That’s not entirely true,” Frankie said, “about us not being special, that is. We’re getting as many Knights as Seattle, Portland, or San Francisco. The Order is setting up their Northwest Pacific headquarters here. The ley lines, you know.”
I took their orders, then went and got the bag with the stuff Oriel and I had stripped from the Knights we killed.
“What’s this?” Blair asked.
“Some of the Knights in town had these things in their pockets, but they don’t need them anymore.”
They peered into the bag, then Blair reached in and pulled out the packet of passports held together with a rubber band. He looked through them.
“Interesting.”
“Yeah. I thought so,” I said.
“Where are their swords?” Frankie asked.
“Do you know how to use a sword?”
“Well, no.”
“Trust me, they’ve been donated to people who do.”
“And the rubies?”
I held out my hand and dropped two of said rubies into her hand. “For you and your dad.” I pulled my pendant out from under my shirt. “They work. The Fae gave me some to distribute as I see fit.” I realized I hadn’t answered her question, but I wasn’t going to tell her about Oriel.
Chapter 12