“Then we need proof to that end,” White Wine said. His voice was exactly what I had thought it would be, nasally, like he was afraid to smell air contaminated by commoners.
“This,” Ankou said, sounding a little pained, “is Lord Weerasethakulakkinuoye, of one of the most prominent of the Equinox houses. He is Caern’s betrothed.”
“Ah, okay,” I said. “So this new urgency in finding your daughter wouldn’t have anything to do with an arranged marriage agreement between your house and Lord Snuffleupagus’s here, right?”
“The girl is of age now,” Weerasethakulakkinuoye said. “The agreement must be fulfilled or dismissed. I need proof if she’s dead.”
“I don’t work for you, pencil neck,” I said to Prince Pinot. I looked over to Ankou. “I’m not even sure if I work for you. You want me to chase down a girl and drag her back here for some bullshit marriage she had no say in”—I jerked a thumb at Weerasethakulakkinuoye—“and I’d lay good money on her not wanting any part of it.”
“You may not believe this,” Ankou said. “But I love my daughter very much. We Fae do not conceive many children. Caern is our only one. My wife, my love, is gone. Caern was all I had left of her. The happiest I’ve ever been in this world, or any other, was when the three of us were together.” I saw some emotion pass behind those dark eyes; it was a mystery to me what it was. Ankou’s perfectly modulated voice cracked a little as he spoke. “I want her home safe, Mr. Ballard. I promise, I will listen to her wishes about the wedding and abide by them.” Weerasethakulakkinuoye didn’t like that; he started to open his mouth to say so, but Ankou shut him down with a stern look. “I just want to know that she’s safe. I’d like her home, but I won’t force her.”
“What’s in all this for me other than a huge pain in the ass?” I asked.
“I could threaten you,” Ankou said, “tell you how every person you’ve ever worked with or cared for would be dead in twenty-four hours if you refused.” I leaned back in my chair.
“Fuck ’em,” I said. “You go on and kill ’em. See if I give a damn.”
Ankou smiled. “You mean that, don’t you? I heard that about you too. Quite the mercenary, quite the loner. Many of those tales about you seem to end with you being the only one still alive. You really don’t care if I were to kill every single one of your associates and loved ones, do you?”
“Only one way to find out,” I said. “Folks who run with me and don’t end up dead may be harder to grease than you think, Theo, and anyone stupid enough to love me gets what they deserve.”
“I see,” Ankou said. “Well then, of course there’s money, but I know men like you acquire and lose it with great rapidity, and it is really more of a means to an end for your lot. So I won’t insult you with an offer.”
“By all means, insult away,” I said.
“Name a price,” he said, “I’ll triple it.” The look I gave him must have made him realize he shouldn’t have.
“Well, lastly,” he said, slipping his hand into his jacket pocket, “I can offer you this.” He produced a small black glass bottle. The bottle had a rubber dropper–style cap, like you might see on eye- or eardrops. I sensed power off the bottle without even trying.
“My grandmother told me never to accept potions from fairy folk,” I said. “Those could be magical roofies for all I know.”
“If I had wanted you glamoured, Mr. Ballard, you would be licking my shoe right now. No, I need you with your somewhat odious personality and faculties fully intact. What do your perceptions tell you about this bottle?” Ankou said as he unscrewed the top of the bottle. I opened my third eye to a tiny slit and felt the waves of the energy in the bottle sync perfectly with my own aura. What the hell?
“It feels like it’s mine,” I said. Ankou squeezed something out of the bottle by way of the dropper and moved the dropper and pipette over my palm. A drop of a glowing blueish-white liquid shivered at the mouth of the pipette.
“May I demonstrate?” he said. I nodded. He released the rubber bulb, and the glowing liquid dropped from the glass pipette. It fell toward my palm, and then stopped and hovered, then drifted downward lazily, like a dandelion seed. The light was brilliant blue-white like an arc of lightning at the instant it strikes. It flashed like a firefly, and I slowly raised my hand toward it. This … belonged to me … it was part of me, somehow.
I gently touched the drifting, flaring light with the tip of my index finger and felt … I felt … the emotion connected with the memory of my pa sitting me on his lap in his old, worn leather recliner. I could smell his hair tonic and his English Leather, the stale scent of tobacco—his coffin nails, he called them. He was reading to me from the Encyclopedia Britannica. Every night he’d let me pick a volume and then we’d randomly read an entry. It was the only good, solid memory of my pa I had, and it filled me with warm feelings of security and belonging, love and … joy. Joy, it was something I hadn’t felt in a very long time, was incapable of feeling anymore. The tiny lightning droplet sizzled against my fingertip and was gone; the emotion faded just as quickly.
“That’s … my joy,” I almost whispered. Ankou nodded. The twist of a smile had returned to the corners of his lips again.
“Yes,” he said. “It certainly is. This tiny sample of it was expensive, even for someone with my considerable
