'No,' Daisani said after a moment. 'No, you certainly are not. Very well, Miss Knight. You may return to your family.' Mocking came into his eyes and he produced a flourish, an elegant bend and dip of his hands so elaborate Margrit half expected a prize to be pulled from his sleeve. Instead he held his thumb and forefinger a delicate fraction of an inch apart and extended his hand. 'Take this rose, and return to me before the last petal falls. If you do not-'
Margrit reached out and plucked the intangible rose from his fingertips, so sure and swift it felt as though there was no make-believe in the gesture at all. 'Then when I do return the castle will have fallen and the Beast will have perished. Thank you for my freedom, my lord.' She ducked her head over the illusory flower and inhaled.
The scent of roses lingered in the back of her throat as she left the building.
Work was quiet chaos. Margrit moved from one task to another with mindless efficiency, accomplishing more than usual in order to prevent herself from thinking about the yellow police tape cordoning off Russell’s office. An entire section of the department was closed down to make room for police work. Tony, back on duty, gave her a grim nod when she came in, as if promising to come talk to her when he could.
Her coworkers-those who were there; a noticeable number were out-seemed to be caught in the same web of necessity Margrit was, silently focusing on work for extended periods. Caseloads were shifted around, no one objecting when they might have normally. The quiet was interrupted in waves, sudden bursts of conversation that faded away into new flurries of activity. Once someone laughed, then cut it off in a gasp of guilt. Margrit got up after that, abandoning paperwork to hurry downstairs and out to the street, where city sounds drowned out the uncomfortable pall of the office.
A woeful Sam leaned against the building, studying the sky. Margrit went over to lean next to him. 'Couldn’t take it anymore, either, huh?'
'This wasn’t how the first week of work was supposed to go. I couldn’t take watching people make a break for the door when they couldn’t take it anymore. I’m right there at the front. Everybody had to go by me and nobody’s looking at anybody today.'
Margrit nodded. 'I didn’t make it to the office yesterday. Was it bad?'
'Yeah.' Sam knuckled his fingers over his mouth. 'A lot of people went home. Pretty much anybody who didn’t have a court case to argue or something major to prepare for. Cops were all over the place, interviewing everybody. How’d your case go?'
'I lost. I just hope he doesn’t get an appeal based on my incompetence.'
'I’m sure he won’t.' Sam gave her a wan smile, then tilted his head at the street. 'I’m going to get a cup of coffee. Want to join me?'
'No, thanks. I just needed a minute outside. I’m going to head back in.'
'Okay.' He pushed off from the wall and disappeared into sidewalk traffic. Margrit took a deep breath, straightened away from the wall and turned, to nearly collide with Tony.
'Whoa.' He caught her shoulders, then pulled her into a hug. 'Sorry. You okay?'
'Better now.' Margrit held for on a moment, breathing in his scent. 'How’s it going?'
'Different degrees of crap. You got a couple minutes? I can tell you what I know. Well, you know what I mean.'
'You can tell me what you’re allowed to.' Margrit crooked a smile at the tall cop, feeling a sudden surge of confusion. Their jobs both precluded telling each other everything and always had. Her inability to talk about the Old Races seemed abruptly normal, as though it were simply another obvious part of the constraints of their jobs, and she found herself wondering how it had created the schism it had between them. As she’d told Cameron, it was almost impossible not to like Tony, and it seemed as though she was remembering that for the first time in months. 'I love you, you know that?'
Surprised pleasure lit Tony’s face. 'Haven’t heard it for a while. What brought that on?'
'I don’t know. Finding my feet on the ground all of a sudden, maybe.' There was no pang of regret at the idea. The months she’d spent disbelieving Alban’s absence had kept her untethered. Now that he’d distanced himself from her so sharply, it seemed she might be able to get on with her life. She could find a way to manage both worlds, if she thought of the Old Races as a client whose confidentiality couldn’t be breached. 'I’ve got a few minutes. What do you know?'
'More than I ever wanted to about Russell.' Tony sighed and tugged Margrit up the building’s outside stairs, sitting down with her and lacing his fingers through hers. 'Did you know he used to be a stockbroker?'
'He said something about making money in stocks the night before he died.' Margrit shook her head at the awkward construction of her sentence. 'I mean, not that he made money the night…you know what I mean. I was giving him a hard time about how well he dresses. Dressed.'
'Yeah.' Tony squeezed her hand and smiled. 'Anyway, yeah, he worked for Global Brokers Incorporated way back when and made a killing. There was some talk about insider trading, but nothing ever got proved. I guess we’re going to have to look into it if we don’t find anything closer to home.'
Margrit straightened, surprised. 'GBI, that’s my mother’s company. I wonder-no, she couldn’t have known him. She never mentioned it. Small world, though.'
'I swear, if you get me singing that song….' Tony bared his teeth threateningly. 'Anyway, he went to law school after striking it rich. We’ve had people working on his case histories and comparing them to recent parolees.' He hesitated so long that Margrit frowned.
'You found a link, didn’t you.'
'Not…no. Not like you’re thinking. Nobody handy who just got out of jail and came to repay the piper. But you wouldn’t-I’m not telling you this, Grit, you know that, right?'
'Telling me what?' She made a moue of innocence.
Tony nodded. 'Okay. I know cases get overturned on appeal all the time.'
'Yeah…?'
'Yeah. So you wouldn’t believe the number of overturned cases where Russell was the first line of defense for somebody who worked for Janx. He lost so many cases it can’t be coincidence, Grit. Something like ninety percent of them got overturned on appeal.'
Cold ran down Margrit’s spine and chilled her hands until Tony’s felt like a furnace. 'Janx?'
'There’s no way I’d be telling you this if…' Tony exhaled. 'If you hadn’t met him in January. If I hadn’t gotten you into that. But I did and you did, and I’m kinda freaked out seeing a connection between your boss and a pretty major crimelord. I don’t know what enemy of Janx’s Russell was working for, but man, that’s what it looks like to me, Grit. So I gotta ask. Do you know anything that could help us out?'
Every heartbeat sent a new wave of ice splashing over Margrit’s skin. Two minutes earlier she’d thought she could manage the split between her ordinary world and the Old Races. Now the two crashed over her again, leaving her with no way to answer Tony without potentially betraying an entire people. She pulled her hand from his and hid her face, hearing a laugh that bordered on a sob break from her throat. 'Are you sure? How do you know these guys worked for Janx?'
'Some of them have turned up dead recently,' Tony said grimly. 'People we’ve seen associating with him. But more of them-Grit, I’ve been working the Janx angle for years. I know that guy’s organization better than he does. I know all the arrests that’ve been made in conjunction with him. There’s probably only three guys on the force who would see a pattern here, but I’m seeing it. It’s one of those detail things that’s more gut instinct than logic.'
'Russell used to say somebody had to keep track of the details, and he was the best man for the job. Somebody else said that to me, too…Oh.' Margrit raised sightless eyes to stare over the street, a host of trivial moments cascading together and forming a picture.
Eliseo Daisani had used the same phrase the first time she’d met him, infusing it with humor and self- deprecation. One point didn’t make a line, but there had been peculiar notes in Daisani’s conversation the morning before. Shock and grief had wiped it from her mind, but he had said 'you came here to ask me that?' when she’d asked if he’d known about the murders, and then said, 'Yes. Of course. I see why you would, under the circumstances.' It had been meaningless to her then, but thrown against the context of Russell losing court cases for Janx’s people, it now stood out.
'I know that look, Grit. What’re you thinking?'
She pressed her lips together until they ached. 'What I’m thinking could be a huge embarrassment to the
