“It’s mine, actually,” Patrick said.
Franklin and Reed both looked at him. Reed took a hit off his cigarette before flicking ash into the glass.
“Go on,” Reed said, waving his hand holding the cigarette at Patrick.
“A deep-cover agent isn’t going to work here, no matter what identity you build. These are the kinds of people who will assume anyone they or their contemporaries don’t know is a threat. We risk them issuing new invites and rescheduling the auction if we send in an agent.”
“What makes you think they haven’t done so already?” Franklin asked.
“If they have, and your agency has no intelligence on that, then we’re back at square one,” Setsuna said mildly.
Franklin leaned back in his seat and eyed her with a faint grimace. “Don’t place your mistakes in my house.”
“I’m cleaning up what was in mine when I took over the directorship.”
“And your agent is here by the grace of nepotism.”
He wasn’t wrong, in a way, but it still rankled. Patrick swallowed against the knee-jerk response he wanted to spit out and forced himself to abide by the one Setsuna expected him to give.
“I’m here because I have a job to do, and I get it done,” Patrick got out after unclenching his teeth. “Agents won’t work, even with a deep cover. Not for this. You need someone who has lived their entire life in the shadows, preferably a couple of centuries, at least.”
“You think we haven’t vetted any of those options?” Franklin asked.
“I’m pretty damn sure you don’t have the person I’m thinking of who will get us into that auction and get us a chance at taking back the staff.”
“Then enlighten us.”
Patrick dug his fingers into his thighs. “Lucien.”
Franklin leaned forward and jabbed his finger in Patrick’s direction. “Not on my fucking watch.”
“It’s all our watch, and I stand by this choice,” Setsuna said.
“Your choices haven’t been the best,” Franklin snapped. “You want to let a mass murderer, one of the world’s most wanted monsters across more than a hundred countries, get unfettered access to an auction filled with artifacts? He’ll run off with anything he can get, including the staff.”
“He won’t,” Patrick said.
“You don’t know that.”
Except Patrick did, because Lucien, the master vampire of the Manhattan Night Court and head of a worldwide criminal empire, owed him a promise of safety, one bound by Lucien’s oath to the mother of all vampires. If saving the world from the creation of a new god and a new hell didn’t fulfill that promise, Patrick didn’t know what would.
“If we make it worth his while, he won’t,” Reed mused, blowing smoke out of his nose that was thicker than cigarettes alone could account for. “We’ve done it before.”
Franklin leaned back in his chair, brows furrowed. “When?”
“During the Thirty-Day War.”
“I thought news of the vampires aiding our side were rumors at the time.”
“They weren’t, but the classification level involved with that information meant the rumors could never be acknowledged as fact in a public setting.” Reed smiled thinly, but his gaze was hard when he looked at Franklin. “Lucien and his Night Court were one of the first to partner with us and our allies at the time. For whatever reason, the vampires have no love of the Dominion Sect.”
“They can’t eat the dead or demons. Letting the Dominion Sect win means they’d starve,” Patrick said.
Some days, he didn’t think that would be a bad thing if Lucien went first.
“Do you honestly believe the president will let us strike a bargain with an international criminal?” Franklin asked.
“She did it before and it didn’t cost her winning reelection. She’ll have nothing to lose this time if we ask,” Reed said.
