I shake my head. “You’ve been dancing around that since I met you.”
His lips curve into a smile. “You were right, Ace, about me not being sure if you actually have it. You see, throughout my years of collecting, I never lost sight of what got us started in this business. And as you know, there’s little money can’t buy. So I hired a historian to go through eons of records. And you know what they found?”
“That narcissistic assholes run in your family?”
He ignores me. “A report of winged creatures of the night plundering villages across Europe. But one thing was the same in all these reports: a pagan sorcerer was said to be behind them all. But that only went on for a few years and then the local legends stopped mentioning these winged creatures.” He waves his hand in the air. “Fast forward five hundred years or so and witches are being burned left and right at the stake. Four stone statues were offered as a trade to a small church in France in exchange for the lives of a coven of witches. That record was hard to find. It was almost a shame I had to kill the historian who dug that one up.”
I swallow hard, keeping my expression neutral.
“Another few hundred years later and the statues were moved, brought to America on a ship that was said to have sunk during a terrible storm while crossing the Atlantic.” He laughs. “My father wasted millions exploring the ocean floor and came up empty-handed. But me…I had a different approach.” He smooths out his tie and stands up again. “We’d been focusing on objects for so long. Spell books, elixirs, enchanted pens that would write the correct answer to any question asked.” He turns to me, eyes narrowed. “Why not go right to the source? If I have my own witch, I can have whatever magical item or cure I need.”
He’s not selling the children at auctions. He’s keeping them as his own personal slaves.
“You’re fucking psycho, you know that, right?”
“What you call psycho I call genius. Let’s skip the melodramatics. With my own team of witches, I was able to locate the statues. But when I went to your house, they were gone.”
He comes around the desk and stops just a foot in front of me. “I’m having a hard time believing you. There were four gargoyle statues on that house. I’ve seen the photos. Statues that large and heavy couldn’t be moved easily and would require a team of specialists who would have cost more than anything you could afford. The only way they’d be removed that easily is if they came down themselves.”
“Like I said, you’re psycho. And really, you think you can just go in and take fourcreatures of the nightor whatever you called them and they’ll be okay with it? They plundered whole villages. I don’t think any sort of anti-aging elixir can save you from the damage they’d do.”
He flashes a cocky grin. “That’s where you come in. The runes. You have them, and I want them.” He goes back around his desk and opens a drawer, pulling out a taser. “I’m going to get them from you one way or another.”
“Torture me, but it won’t change the fact that I don’t know where these runes or the statues are. Maybe you shouldn’t have killed your historian so fast. You could have tracked down who bought the statues before I moved into the house.”
Mr. Trent clicks on the taser and holds it up. Blue electricity jumps from one prong to the other, sizzling and zapping. I’ve been tased before as part of training. I can handle it…I think. But it’s still going to suck.
“I need those runes,” he goes on. “And you’re going to give them to me.” He comes over and, with no warning at all, shoves the taser against my arm. “Because once the runes are in my possession, I’ll be able to perform a ritual and bind them to me.” His eyes glint and his lips pull back in a sneer. “And then I’ll control the creatures.”
