That’s right. It was.
“I’ve found your murderer. Guess that means my task for you is done.”
“Not so fast,” he said.
I didn’t think it would be that easy. But I had hoped.
“You may have found ‘what’ has been committing these murders, but you haven’t found the ‘who’ or the ‘why’. The ‘what’ is only a faint possibility at this point. One that hasn’t been confirmed. I’m not entirely convinced you encountered a draugr. The thing you described sounds similar but doesn’t act in the typical fashion. Not to mention you still have to recover my items.”
“About that. You never said what those items you wanted me to recover were.”
He studied his nails. “That’s right. I didn’t.”
I gave him a get on with it look. He failed to take the hint.
“Okay, so, how about you do that now? I can’t get you this item if I don’t even know what it is.”
“It’s what the draugr—if that’s what he turns out to be—is searching for.”
My eyebrows snapped down. No. There was no way. He couldn’t be that dumb.
“Are you crazy?” I asked. “Have you not heard about what it’s doing to people? If we’re correct and it’s hunting people down that it thinks has its treasure, what makes you think it won’t come after you next?”
That was only half my worry, the half he would care about. The other part, the one that I was personally invested in was what the thing would do to me if I tried to get between it and whatever it was after. It’d turn me into an oil slick on the pavement.
“I’m counting on it.”
The way he said that made me pause. There was something else. Something he wasn’t telling me. He hadn’t known the killer was looking for something until I told him, and he seemed determined to make me believe that he could be wrong about what was killing people.
It led me back to thinking he might have some hand in these events.
And just when I’d decided he was just an interested bystander.
Damn.
“What’s so important about whatever it is?”
“That’s for me to know.”
And me not to.
I really wanted to smack that smug look off his face.
I had to play the game instead.
“Do you have any idea what it’s after?” I asked.
“Some.”
Sigh. I wondered if all sorcerers were like this or if I’d just gotten lucky with this one.
“Would you care to share?”
I could tell by the stubborn look on his face that he didn’t. I needed to convince him. Flying blind was a good way to fail and if he frustrated me this much after only a few nights, I could only imagine what a hundred years of service would be like.
“My chances of recovering the object would be much greater if I knew what to be on the lookout for.”
“Very well,” he said, grudgingly. “I can do some research on the likely suspects. It will be something the draugr greatly valued in life. If we can find out who he was before he died, we can narrow the focus.”
