“Ignis ceram audieritis me hostem feriunt,” I said, staring at the cigarette. A gout of flame roared from the instantly disintegrated cigarette and covered my hand. I visualized Vigil and the chair he was standing in front of and used my visualization like the sight on a gun. A streamer of flame shot over the bar and flashed toward the Elf.
“Shit!” I heard him mutter, and then I heard the hiss as the bolt struck, the flame crackling hungrily as it devoured the leather chair. I made a gesture like tossing a ball from one hand to the other, and now both hands were wreathed in flame. I popped up, ready to shoot again. Vigil was on the floor on his stomach, in front of the blazing chair. Fire alarms were squealing all over the mansion. Vigil was holding his pistol in both hands. He had me, dead-bang, an easy shot to the head. The fire danced and frolicked between my hands.
“Drop the spell,” he said.
“You drop the gun,” I said.
“I can kill you, easy, right now.”
“And you can enjoy your brief victory with a barbecue,” I said. “I ain’t dropping shit.”
A team of security men, some with guns, others with fire extinguishers, appeared at the archway to the room. Sarge was at the forefront. “Sir Burris?” he asked.
Vigil didn’t take his eyes off me. “Well?” he asked.
“After you,” I said. Vigil lowered the gun and holstered it as he stood. I dismissed the working. The fire sputtered and was gone.
“Put out the fire,” Vigil said to the detail. He walked over to me, he on one side of the bar, I on the other. “That was pretty good,” he said. “If I had waited for you to have a few more drinks, I’d have tagged you in the arm like I wanted to.”
“But you were in too big a hurry to show me how right you were.” I looked over to the smoldering skeleton of the chair that the security detail had sprayed. “I’ve been handling magical hit men, monsters, and worse my whole life, on my own. I don’t need backup; I don’t need a fucking babysitter. I don’t need you.”
“I have my orders,” Vigil said. “I’m not any more thrilled by them than you are. I figure from what I’ve heard of you, you stay alive because of dumb luck and letting everyone around you die so you can live. I have no intention of being your latest victim, but I have a duty and I plan to carry it out. I don’t give a damn what you think.”
“Swell,” I said. “Well, let’s get this over with, then.”
* * *
We went to our rooms to freshen up before heading out. I sat on the edge of my circular bed, still damp from the shower, wrapped in a towel, and called Grinner on the Solarin smartphone.
“Got anything?” I asked.
“Ankou is a serious player,” Grinner said over the encrypted line. “Last couple of years, he fought a turf war with the Taliban over some key poppy real estate in Afghanistan and won. He’s cozy with the Russian mob and worming his way into controlling key choke points on the Silk Route, the northern distribution route for smack through Central Asia and the Russian Republic. That means the Triads are pissed at him and looking to cut the legs out of his business. His net worth is staggering, man, like GDP-fucking-staggering. Oh, and his enemies tend to just vanish. Keep this guy on your good side.”
“I’m working on that,” I replied. “Anything on his family, his kid?” I asked as I lit a cigarette.
“Wife died in a car crash in 2000,” Grinner said. I thought I heard a baby coo over the line. “Never remarried, never saw anyone else, as far as I can determine.”
“Touching,” I said. “Are you playing with Turing or something, ’cause I can hear the little future Anonymous member in my ear.”
“I’m changing a shitty diaper,” Grinner said. “I don’t fucking get how a kid that eats such a tiny amount of food can produce so much poo, so often.”
“Maybe he’s a prodigy,” I offered, “and did you just say ‘poo’?”
“Hey, go fuck yourself, Ballard,” Grinner rumbled. “Christine don’t want me fucking swearing so much around the kid, okay, so don’t go busting my balls.”
“I cannot wait until he starts saying ‘shit,’” I said. “Christine is going to fucking murder you.”
“Yeah, keep it up, and I won’t give you the good stuff,” he said. The baby giggled, and I heard a grunt from Grinner that I knew passed for a happy chuckle from him. “Caern Ankou drops off the face of the Earth in 2009; however, since you have employed a fucking data god—”
“Fuck is a swear word,” I interjected.
“So it is. Fuck you,” Grinner said. I heard the baby make a “ffffff” sound. “Shit,” Grinner muttered.
“Shit is a swear word.”
“Shut the fuck up before you corrupt my kid more!” Grinner bellowed. The baby laughed, and so did I. “What I was trying to tell you, dickhead, is that she has dual citizenship, British and American. I back-traced her passports and nothing, but I got a few hits on some credit card and bank activity with her Social Security number in several different Central American and Mediterranean countries. It was from back in 2010, and it looked like I wasn’t the first guy to find it.”
“Yeah,” I said, sliding on a clean pair of jeans. “Ankou had a ton of investigators and hackers looking for her for years.”
“Ah, but he didn’t have the best-endowed hacker in the universe and his rummy wizard sidekick on the case back then,” Grinner said. “Turns out it was all identity theft issues. That got me thinking…”
“Yeah?” I said. I picked a black T-shirt with the Black Keys logo on it from the crumpled pile in my bag.
