whole fucking hotel…” I was startled by something that flickered across her face-something like shame. “Wait,” I said. “You knew that already. You must have. Caz, what are you doing here?”

“Oh, Bobby…” But she was looking over my shoulder now, and the shame was replaced by something else entirely.

“Well, well, well!” said a voice I knew. It lifted the hairs on my neck, which were just starting to relax, right back up again. “Two of the most interesting people I know!”

I spun. The Grand Duke was only a couple of yards away, leaning on the bar, dressed in his Kenneth Vald best, a linen suit and expensive moccasins that made him look like a rich colonial-which, in a sense, he was. Eligor wasn’t from here, but he definitely owned a lot of it.

I wasn’t in any condition to play his game. I didn’t reply, but I didn’t reach for my gun, either. Once I found out he owned the place, I had decided there was a good chance I would bump into him. I had just hoped it would be somewhere I felt safer, like when I was sitting next to General Hard-Ass Karael, Scourge of All Hellspawn.

“Oh, sorry, am I interrupting?” The Horseman was the very soul of graciousness, that blond lord of Hell, cheerful and charming. Now the people in the bar were definitely watching. Eligor swung a lot of weight and not just in San Judas. “Oh, that’s right, I forgot-you two already know each other.” His smile was cold and clean as a surgical blade. “I’m not surprised. You’re both very…enterprising.” He turned to Caz, whose face had gone dead as a doll’s. “But I’m afraid I really do have to interrupt. We have a meeting, Countess. People are waiting for us.” He didn’t beckon or even raise his hand, but she rose from her bar stool and went to stand beside him, obedient as a dog. I met her eyes again, but there was nothing there for me, her expression so empty that I began to wonder if everything else I had seen on her face tonight and those other, more intimate times had just been more of her masks.

“A pleasure to see you, Mr. Dollar, even briefly,” Eligor said. “I hope you’re enjoying your stay.”

“It’s a very nice hotel.” I was determined not to spend the entire conversation in stunned silence. “But, honestly, Vald, some of the people you let in here…!”

Again the smile, meaningless as the grin on a great white shark. “Ah, but the duty of a host is to find a way to accommodate every guest. That’s why I’m so happy to have the Countess back. She is very good at finding what people need and giving it to them.” He started to turn, then paused. “Please, don’t let me rush you off, Mr. Dollar. The lady and I have to go, but I hope you’ll stay and have a drink on me.” He looked up, made eye contact with the bartender. “I’m sure you have lots of old friends who’d love to find you here and catch up on old times.”

He walked away then, graceful and self-assured as a cat, with Caz at his side. I half thought she might turn to look back at me but of course she didn’t.

I sort of collapsed onto the stool Caz had occupied, because at the moment I didn’t trust my legs to carry me across the room. I had been shot in the heart without anybody even pointing a gun at me.

The bartender came to take an order, but after the eye contact between him and his boss, I couldn’t imagine letting him pour me anything so I shook my head. I felt like someone was waving a big magnet around near my internal compass: I suddenly didn’t know where to go next, what to do. Why was Caz here? Why had she gone back to him? And why had Sitri wanted to send me down here, unless it was just to provoke his rival, the grand duke. Caz had told me she’d stolen the feather and that Grasswax had done something with it, so why would Eligor take her back? Did she have it all along and now had used it to buy her way back into safety? Or was the truth something worse? Had I been played like a sucker from the start?

A heavy hand fell on my shoulder. “Fancy meeting you here,” said another voice I recognized and wished I didn’t. Just the thought of having to go through something like this now made me so tired I almost didn’t answer, but I forced myself to turn and face the unibrow and the nasty little eyes beneath it.

“Howlingfell,” I said. “It’s so nice to see you that I’m even going to say please when I tell you to take your hand off me.”

He smirked and stepped back. He was wearing a shiny new suit that made him look every inch the jumped-up punk he was. That didn’t mean he couldn’t kill me, of course. I know lots of people who were killed by punks. In fact, punks with a grudge are probably the most dangerous type to deal with. Give me a crazy-ass, violent drunk any day.

“You look a little depressed, Dollar,” he said. “Found out your girlfriend went back to the guy with the power and the money, huh? Isn’t that too bad.”

“Howly, do me a favor and fuck off, will you?” I stood. “I don’t need you, and since we’re under truce I can’t do anything useful to you, so why don’t you go back to pissing around the edge of your tiny little territory and leave everything else to the grown-ups?”

His lip twitched back. He was in a mortal body, of course, but he still looked like his first impulse was to go for my throat with his teeth. “You think you’re something special, Dollar, but you’re not. You’re just dog shit to someone like Eligor.”

“And that’s your job, huh? Cleaning up the shit? Nice resume-builder.”

He stared at me. His eyes, which at first had looked brown, now caught the light and gleamed deep red like a Sangiovese Grosso. “You wait, you little snot,” he said, just quietly enough to make sure everyone in the bar was trying to hear. “As soon as this conference ends, you’re mine. I’m going to eat your liver. And even your fancy girlfriend will forget you. She probably already has.”

It took every bit of self-control I had not to shove my fist right into his bushy-browed face. “Glad to hear you’re getting serious about your diet, Howly. But there’s no organ meat in the world with enough vitamins to wipe away all that ugly.”

I thought he might jump me as I walked off, and I almost wouldn’t have minded. There’s a certain therapeutic value in getting bloody (as long as you make sure the other guy gets bloodier). But all Howlingfell did was let out a snarling breath that sounded like a lion imagining the day the keeper would forget to lock the cage door.

By the time I got back to my room my phone was vibrating. All I really wanted to do was find out what would happen if I mixed all the little bottles left in the minibar together and downed the results, but out of long habit I dragged it out of my pocket to check the number, then answered.

“George, what’s up?” I’d almost forgotten I’d called Fatback. After seeing Caz I barely cared.

“Well, my fees, for one thing, if you keep leaving me these hurry-hurry-need-it-now messages.”

“George my friend, after Porky and the one in Lord of the Flies, you are the funniest pig ever.”

“I’m calling because you said you needed help.” He sounded hurt. Why is it that every time I feel like I’ve been gutshot by life, everybody else suddenly decides to get sensitive?

“Sorry. Rough evening. Thanks for calling back. Find anything yet?”

“I’m sending you specs on the Ralston. Yes, it’s another Vald Credit property. At least there are plenty of fire escapes.”

“That’s good, because right about now I wouldn’t mind burning the place down.” I flicked through the files just to make sure they’d all arrived. Schematics, emergency information that looked like it had been lifted straight out of the San Judas FD main server, all kinds of goodies. “Seriously, great work, George. That’s just what I needed.”

“You’re welcome, Mr. D.” He sounded cheerful again. “Any time.” Sometimes George seemed almost pathetically grateful for any kindness. I guess when you spend your entire thinking life in the body of a Majestic Large Black boar hog you’re going to have a bit of an inferiority complex. But even though Fatback was a good guy, I didn’t want to be talking to him or anyone just then, I wanted to be drinking myself unconscious.

“Anything else?” I prompted him. “About Leo, maybe?”

“Nothing other than what you already know, Bobby. There was a big stink at the time, in your circles, when he died, if you know what I mean. Lot of scuttlebutt, loose talk, folks who thought he’d been bumped off for asking too many questions or knowing things he wasn’t supposed to know. But I can’t find anything new. Oh, but speaking of dead guys…?”

I could almost hear the minibar calling to me-Oblivion, Doloriel, sweet oblivion-but I did my best to pretend patience. “Yeah?”

“That Habari guy you asked about? The one with the what’s-it-called society?”

I immediately became more focused. “Magians. Yeah? What do you mean, speaking of dead guys? Did he turn up in a morgue or something?”

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