26.
I killed my headlights a block before my final destination, coasting in slow and careful along a back-alley strip. I pulled in behind the Scrivener’s Nook and killed the engine, leaving the sedan’s door cracked when I got out; shutting it would make too much noise. Then I padded across the dirty asphalt, shoes rustling on loose gravel, to the back door of the shop.
I had my own set of keys. They jangled softly, one sliding into the reinforced lock, the tumbler thunking as it rolled over. Too loud. I put one hand on the door, silently counted to twenty, then pushed it open.
It yawned onto a darkened stockroom. I felt my playing cards pulse against my chest, ready for a fight, as I stepped inside. I shut the door behind me and bathed in pitch darkness. That improved my odds, if somebody was lurking in here, assuming they couldn’t see in the dark. I knew the layout of the back room by heart. I sidestepped to my right, figuring I’d follow the perimeter all the way around to the shop door. Then I held a breath and braced myself.
The lights flooded on and nearly a half dozen people shouted, “Surprise!”
Bentley, Corman, and Mama Margaux were in the middle of the room, flanking a folding table with a cake frosted in white and scarlet. Jennifer came in from the opposite door, toting two magnums of champagne, while Pixie popped a party noisemaker between her lips and blew a celebratory raspberry.
I had a half smile, half grimace pasted to my face, frozen while a burst of adrenaline rioted through my body. “What…what is this? It’s not my birthday yet.”
“Given recent events,” Bentley said, “we just thought it would be good to pause and celebrate everything we—especially you—have been through these last few months.”
Corman leaned back and jammed his thumbs in his pockets. “Lotta shit and gunfire. Sometimes you just have to take a few minutes and eat a slice of cake.”
“Also,” Margaux added, “we wanted to remind you what side you’re on.”
Bentley slashed his hand across his throat. “We weren’t going to say that—”
“What? Danny’s not stupid. He knows what this is.” She shot me a look. “I wanted to do an intervention. They said, bring cake and booze, he’ll be too distracted to figure it out.”
I had to laugh. I held up my hands in surrender.
“Guys. C’mon, it’s me. Same old Dan. I’m not plotting in cahoots with Prince Sitri to take over the planet.”
Margaux folded her arms. “Mm-hmm. Yet.”
“I’m pretty sure this entire knighthood thing is the setup for an epic practical joke. Once Sitri springs the gag—assuming I survive it—he’ll probably yank the job right out from under me.”
I played it off, but deep down I was as worried as they were. Not long after Caitlin and I hooked up, Prince Sitri had played another one of his games, forcing her to choose between me and her sworn duties. The entire mess, starting with his challenge for me to kill a supposedly innocent priest, was a giant setup. It was a labyrinthine scam that the prince had under his complete control from start to finish, and no matter what choices I made along the way, the outcome would have landed in his favor.
Sitri could give lessons in the art of the con. Only problem was, it was impossible to tell if I was his student or his mark. Knowing him, the answer was probably both.
Jennifer held up a knife. “Can we distract you with cake?”
“Absolutely not, and I’m offended that you would think so.” I nodded at the bottles. “You can distract me with cake and some of that bubbly.”
The cake was butter cream with chocolate filling. It was also labeled “Happy Birthday, Maurice.”
“Okay,” I said between bites, “who stole this cake?”
“Who says we stole it?” Corman asked.
“I’m just saying, whoever Maurice is, his birthday is ruined.”
“Then he should have kept a better eye on his stuff,” Jennifer said.
I couldn’t argue that. The cake was too good. We got to drinking, and we got to talking, and fell into pockets of comfortable conversation. On my second flute of champagne, I pulled Bentley aside. I needed some fatherly advice. I would have grabbed Corman, too, but he and Margaux were busy arguing about tarot symbolism on the other side of the stockroom.
“So, about Melanie—” I started to say.
“She asked, I presume?”
“You knew?”
The crow’s-feet crinkled at the corners of his eyes. “I did more than teach her a few card tricks that night you asked Corman and me to watch her. We sniffed out her magical potential. And she has potential.”
“Did you tell her that? Because she’s pretty dead set on rolling her sleeves up and diving in.”
“Is there any reason she shouldn’t?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “Let’s look at the last few months. I’ve been thrown in prison, broken out of prison, fought a mummy, fought a mob war, got drawn into an ancient cosmic conflict waged between endlessly reincarnating fictional characters, traveled to another dimension and almost died there, and that’s just a small sample of the joys a life of magic has laid upon my doorstep.”
“And all of that would have knocked upon your door anyway, ready or not. When we first found you, before you’d had a lick of training, you’d fallen in with that vile little cult. Their leader, what was his name?”
“The Shepherd,” I said. The word felt dirty on my tongue.
“He sensed your spark and set out to plunder it. You didn’t choose a life of magic, Daniel. Magic chose you. What you did was learn, and study, and grow strong, so you could face the challenges it threw in your path. Melanie has the same spark, and if anything, she’s twice as headstrong as you were at that age.”
“That’s a terrifying thought.”
“She’s going to find a teacher,” Bentley said. “If not you, she’ll find another. If she’s lucky, that teacher will be half as skilled as you are. If she’s not…well, she might find a Shepherd of her own.”
He was right. I hated to admit it, but he was right. That didn’t stop me from arguing.
“What about Desi?” I asked. “I couldn’t keep her safe.”
Bentley rested his hand on my shoulder. “And that’s the real issue, isn’t it?”
“Shouldn’t it be? I had an apprentice. Once. She’s dead now. I think that should disqualify me from taking the job again.”
“What happened wasn’t your fault,” he said. “And heavens above, even if it was…Daniel, do you know how many mistakes, blunders, and absolute disasters I’ve caused in my lifetime? If I let each one close and lock a door forever, well, I’d be all out of doors. There’s something to be said for getting back on the horse and trying again. If not for you, for Melanie’s sake.”
My resolve was a wall with a hundred cracks, the mortar crumbling with every strike of reason. All the same, it held fast, molding itself to the contours of Desi’s face.
“I’ll think about it,” I told him. That much I could promise.
He patted my arm and reached behind him, rummaging through one of the storage shelves.
“Good. Now then. I suspect you received a number of terrible gifts tonight.”
“How did you know about that?”
“I asked Caitlin if gift giving was appropriate, given your…recent elevation, and she told me about the custom. Sounds dreadful.”
“It was pretty bad, yeah,” I said. “I now own a tie bar that induces death pooping. I’ve also got a poppet that’ll come alive in the night and eat my eyes if I ever leave its box open. And those are just the good presents.”
“Allow me to offer a counterbalance.” Bentley handed me a black velvet pouch. I opened it and peered inside. My fingertip poked at a cluster of tiny balls, the size of marbles, rolled from chalky white clay. I felt a grin coming on.
“Alchemist’s clay? Nice.”
“I finally found time to whip up a fresh batch,” he said. “Thought you might appreciate having a few to keep on hand for emergencies.”
I put my arm around him and pulled him into a hug. Bentley’s creations had saved my life inside Eisenberg, covering an escape attempt with clouds of billowing green smoke. Purely defensive, as far as occult weapons went, but essential for those times when you absolutely, positively needed to live and fight another day.
On the far side of the stockroom, Pixie had set her laptop up on a packing crate. Jennifer, standing at her shoulder, waved me over. I was glad to see them hanging out together. Jen had carried a torch for Pixie for months, not too discreetly, until I found out Pixie wasn’t into the whole amorous-affection thing in any capacity. It didn’t make much sense to me; as far as I was concerned, sex was one of the four essential food groups along with alcohol, red meat, and whatever the fourth one was. Coffee, probably. But that’s the thing about your friends: you don’t always have to understand them, you just have to respect them and love them for who they are.
Jennifer agreed with that sentiment. She’d waved a white flag on the romantic pursuit and settled into a comfortable friendship, which seemed to suit them both just fine. I ambled over.
“Your girl’s a genius,” Jennifer told me.
“Well, I knew that.”
I squinted at the screen. Pixie was sifting streams of data between three different windows, juggling them back and forth with her mouse, tossing them underhand and doing tricks like a bartender in a tropical tourist trap.
“Okay,” Pixie said, the words rat-a-tatting as fast as she could think. I always knew she was onto something when she developed motormouth. “Remember how you put me onto Weishaupt and Associates, that phony lawyers’ office?”
“Sure,” I said. Weishaupt was a shell company with Network ties and fake employees straight from a stock-photo website. They’d been sponsoring the gladiatorial games at Eisenberg, among any number of other dirty deeds, but it was impossible to pin them down. I’d only met one of their alleged lawyers in person, a shyster calling himself Mr. Smith. He came and went like smoke, sticking around just long enough to murder a former drug mule and stage it as a suicide. I got the impression he did that kind of thing a lot.
“So far, I’ve gotten nada from their company servers. They’re like, Death Star levels of impenetrable.”
“The first Death Star, which blew up, or the second Death Star, which also blew up?”
Pixie glared at me over the rims of her Buddy Holly glasses.
I shrugged. “I’m just saying, as analogies go…”
She ignored me and typed with one hand, holding up a finger with her other. “But. I started digging into the computers you and Jen liberated from Donaghy Waste Management and probing their Internet traffic.”
“Liberated? You mean ‘stole,’” I said.
“No, I mean liberated. I used to go after corporate polluters and pharma companies that ripped off poor people. That was a crusade. By comparison the Network, as far as we can tell, is basically trying to take over the entire planet. That makes this a war. It’s not immoral to steal from the enemy in wartime. That’s called ‘liberation.’”
I didn’t argue. I was used to Pixie’s mental gymnastics, the moral calculus that let her feel righteous while hanging out with people like us, and I didn’t see a need to fight her on it. The mercenary hacker could wear any halo she wanted, as long as she was on our side.
“So what did you find?” I asked.
The columns of numbers froze on her screen. Two of them, framed in white highlights, matched. I knew enough about computers to recognize it as an IP address, the Internet designation that any given server called “home.”
“If I’m right,” Pixie said, “I found a way to spy on the Network.”