Grepper raised his thick eyebrows. “What kind of trade?”
“My father’s painting for information.”
“Such as…?”
Roux leaned against my leg, warning me. I ignored him — as well as anyone could ignore a five-hundred-pound tiger.
“Such as the fact that a band of vampires is approaching as we speak, determined to steal your Monet. And I meannow.”
Grepper reached casually for his glass. “I’m well equipped to deal with them, as your friends discovered.”
He spared us a smirk, but I closed my eyes, feeling more like a failure than ever.
“But perhaps there is something else you can offer me,” he mused, circling the rim of his glass with a finger.
Anything,I nearly blurted. But I’d learned a few lessons in the past weeks, so I held that back in favor of, “Such as?”
“Information about a mutual friend.”
My stomach dropped, and Roux’s tail slapped my leg in warning.
“Why not ask your friend directly?” I tried.
Grepper lifted one shoulder in a lazy shrug. “Unfortunately, our relationship has been strained for some years.”
This was probably how things had started for poor Claudette, I realized. An uneasy feeling, a bitter deal…
“No deal.”
Grepper looked up, surprised. “Don’t you want to know who it is?”
I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter.”
He motioned to the next room. “What if I offered you a look at the other painting?”
I gulped, tempted. “Manet painting in Monet’s Garden,by Claude Monet?”
He dipped his chin. “Quite. Though I must say, I’m surprised your godfather told you.”
I froze. “You know Gordon is my godfather?”
His lips curled. “I know many things.”
Two guesses who he wants you to spy on,Roux grumbled.
My eyes went wide. Gordon?
Feeling more unsettled than ever — as in eleven on a scale of ten — I shook my head.
“Gordon didn’t tell me. I figured it out myself.”
Grepper narrowed his eyes, and my scalp began to itch. Badly.
The warlock was trying to read my mind, wasn’t he?
I pulled an image of my father’s painting to the front of my mind and focused on one detail after another. The colors of the croquet mallets. The familiar lines of the château. The thick, flat strokes my father had used in a direct homage to Monet.
As suddenly as the itch started, it stopped, and Grepper murmured, “Well done, Miss Durand. Well done.”
