In the past, when the assassin had rung me out of the blue, someone had been dead or bleeding. Here’s hoping this call ended with a tale of puppies and flowers or something equally nice – answers.
I swiped to speak to the griffin. ‘Bastion. How are you?’ I put the call on speaker and set the phone down beside the sink. My fingers found my PNB by reflex, flipping it open to a fresh page, then grabbing a pen.
There was a long beat of silence. ‘People don’t ask me that,’ he said finally.
‘Well, I do. How are you?’
‘I am … well.’ Pause. ‘Are you?’
I began to doodle on the blank page. ‘I’m okay. We’re trying to get into Wraithmore, which doesn’t make me excited, but it’s necessary.’
‘Let me know if you get an in. I’ll come with you, if I can. You might need my skills.’
‘All right.’ Having a griffin along could only be a good thing. At the very least he was excellent at intimidation. ‘Have you found any information on the vampyr that attacked me?’
‘Yes. I have two pieces of news, and neither of them is good.’
I sighed and pinched thebridge of my nose. ‘I’m braced. Hit me.’
‘I hate to be the bearer of bad news,’ he began.
‘No you don’t!’ I objected. ‘You’re an assassin. You’re the bearer of bad news all the time.’
‘The deaths aren’t bad news to the people who hired me to kill them,’ he pointed out. ‘That’sgoodnews. Contract fulfilment. Besides, I hardly ever kill people for money now. Amber gets weird about it.’
‘Now you just kill evil witches instead,’ I muttered.
‘Exactly. Now, do you want your news or do you want to philosophise on the morality of my situation?’
I winced. Griffinshadto kill to survive. If they quashed the homicidal urges for too long, they exploded, killing everything in sight in a horrific massacre that took generations to recover from. Therefore, the Connection, in their wisdom, had formed an assassins’ guild, deciding that the griffins taking the occasional contract kill was a far better solution than them murdering vast numbers of innocents.
Particularly since the Connection got a cheaper rate.
‘Right. Sorry. You’re right. I didn’t mean to preach. What have you got for me?’
‘I’ve got the name of your vampyr attacker. Jasper Cathill.’
For a second my brain refused to translate the syllables into meaning. Then it did, all at once, and heat rushed up my neck. My fingers tightened around the pen until it bit into the pad of my thumb. Loki went still again, feathers subtly lifting.
‘Oh fuck.’ I sat heavily on my dining-room chair. The chair scraped the floor with a harsh squeal that set my teeth on edge.
‘Indeed,’ he said drily.
Jasper Cathill was the son of Lord Cathill, the recently true-dead Lord of the Cathill Clan, who used to be the vampyr Symposium member. He had died recently, following a literal deal with a daemon that granted him extra powers but ultimately led to his dramatic demise.
My pen moved faster, scrawling Cathill’s name twice, once for him, once for his father.
Volderiss had stepped into the power vacuum in the Symposium, becoming the new vampyr member, but word on the street was that Jasper Cathill had been preparing to formally take over his father’s clan.
Having all of eternity, vampyrs moved slowly with such things, and as such the Manchester clan was currently leaderless. But Jasper had been widely touted as the next leader.
And I’d killed him.
Why the hell had Jasper Cathill, the bloody Lord apparent, attacked me?
I stood and paced to the window, phone still on speaker. Outside, the street looked normal, wet tarmac reflecting a streetlamp, a neighbour’s telly flickering through curtains. I pressed my forehead to the cold glass and forced myself to think like a cop: cool and emotionless.
I hadn’t known Cathill, so the attack hadn’t been personal. Wizard blood made vampyrs go absolutely bananas – it made them feralandit was addictive – so the attack hadn’t been because he was feeling snackish either.
