While I’d never spotted said chemicals in my time living here, I had no doubt he did possess them. He wasn’t one to make a threat like that without having the means of following through. Once upon a time, the knowledge would have appalled me, but I’d seen a lot—done a lot—in the last few months, and that haddefinitely broadened my horizons when it came to the gray areas between right and wrong.
“You can’t do that. No matter what you think I’ve done, I have rights?—”
“Rights don’t matter a damn when you get on the wrong side of a Ljósálfar.” I crossed my arms and leaned a hip on the counter while the machine did its thing. “Look, we believe you’re going after the woman who killed Jarvil, and that means we’re on the same side. So cut the crap and just answer our damn questions.”
He glared at me. “Why should I believe you? You fucking kidnapped me?—”
“The woman you’re hunting,” I cut in, not wanting to hear his tirade, “killed my mother, so believe me when I say I understand your need for revenge. But there’s more at stake here than that. Help us, and we’ll hand you over to Cynwrig Lùtair. Obstruct us, and we’ll forcibly extract the information we need, then hand you over to the IIT and let you take your chances.”
He snorted. “I like my chances more with the IIT than I do with you lot or Lùtair.”
“Then you are a fool,” Mathi said. “For your information, the woman you hunt successfully murdered four men in IIT’s securest cells only a few weeks ago. You’re obviously aware she’s a face shifter, so do you really think she could not get to you if she wished?”
The young elf scowled at Mathi for a few seconds, then slumped back in the chair. “Fine. What do you want to know?”
“First up, your name.” I walked over with the two coffees and handed Mathi one. “Are you one of Jarvil’s sons or grandsons?”
“Macsen Maehdon. Grandson.”
“And you worked with your grandfather?”
He nodded. “He was teaching me to take over the antique selling portion of his business. That’s how I knew about thatbitch, isn’t it? Saw them together, but when I asked Pa about it, he acted like he didn’t know what I was talking about. So I started keeping tabs on them, like, when she visited him.”
If Jarvis was training him, he obviously wasn’t as useless as Carla had seemed to think, even if he wasn’t as worldly as some young Myrkálfar I’d come across in the past. “And on the day he was murdered? What did you see?”
“I didn’t witness her attacking him, but I saw her go into his house and someone else come out. By the time I got in there, he was dead.”
“Where were you when you saw all this?” Mathi asked.
“I was driving up to his place when I saw her enter—she must have had the security code, because she let herself in. I parked opposite and waited. She was there for fifteen minutes, if that.”
I took another drink. “Who did you report his murder to?”
“The IIT, of course. Some wanker called Bryan Jonson. Didn’t take me seriously at all. Hell, even the fucker in charge of the division didn’t.”
“The fucker in charge of the day division is my father,” Mathi said mildly. “You will accord him due respect.”
“Like he respected me?” Macsen snorted. “My pa was murdered, and he makes out like I’m an idiot?”
“I’m no fan of Ruadhán,” I said, “but one thing he would never do is treat a witness like an idiot?—”
“Even if he did think him one,” Mathi murmured.
“—so it’s possible you were misreading him.” I frowned. “Why are you so positive it was Carla Wilson you saw, when she’s a face shifter? Did your grandfather ever introduce you to her?”
“No, but he didn’t need to. He left me an ‘open in case of death’ envelope that contained her image—which was a photograph taken from a person of interest report issued by the IIT—and the brooch you stole from me. Which I want back, by the way. It was my grandfather’s and?—”
“Itwas part of the Éadrom Hoard, which was stolen more than six months ago,” Mathi said, even though he was aware the pectoral never had been. “Unless you want your whole family implicated in that theft, I would forget it ever existed if I were you.”
Macsen’s scowl deepened and, despite the seriousness of the situation, amusement twitched my lips. He might look close to forty or fifty in human terms, but he definitely had the mentality of a teenager. Maybe that was why Carla had thought him an idiot, even though no idiot could do what this young man had been doing so successfully.
“Did your grandfather leave any specific instructions with those items?” Mathi asked.
Macsen nodded. “Said if he died suddenly, or under mysterious circumstances, then the brooch would help me find his murderer, and the first place to start would be the box.”
Meaning that while Jarvil had had no immediate memories of Carla, his long-term ones were working just fine.
“What did you find in the security box? Anything specific?”
