“I’m working a job,” I said. “Missing person. Nothing to do with you.”
“Rubbish,” Gida said. “You have been leaving big, muddy boot prints all over since you arrived back in Los Angeles. In roughly a month, you’ve managed to infuriate MS-13 by assassinating one of their in-house brujas, rile up a Cambodian Yeak gang, bring a Fae Carnifex to my doorstep, and get two civilians murdered, one of them turned into bloody compost, all on my watch. So please, Laytham, spare me your innocent lamb routine. It only played well when you really were one, a million years ago.”
“In my defense,” I said, “I was in a near-death coma for at least two of those weeks.” Gida opened a drawer of her desk and removed a bottle of 1926 Macallan whiskey, her favorite, and two tumblers. She poured me a glass and slid it across the table to me, then poured herself a glass.
“Well, let’s hear it for effective time management,” she said. “Three times the cock-ups in half the time.” She raised her glass and I did the same. “I am glad you’re not dead, Laytham. Cheers.” We both drank. “So tell me about your missing person.”
“Daughter of Fae nobility, the Ankou clan, went missing in 2009. Dad may want her back for some kind of political marriage or a Mob alliance. I told him I’d look into it. If the girl doesn’t want to be found, I intend to let her fade away again. It looks like she may have been mixed up in Roland Blue’s grotto trade.”
“Blue, eh?” Gida said. “Nasty business there. You have a picture of the girl?” I handed her the photo that Dree had given me of the two of them at the concert, and then a printed still of her face from her last porn film, courtesy of Grinner. I kept the crumpled, torn photo I recovered from Elextra’s bloody den my little secret for now. The Maven studied them for a moment and then slid them across the table back to me and sipped her expensive whiskey. “And what is your percentage in this mess?”
“The dad owes me a favor,” I said. “A sizable one.”
“Favors,” Gida said as she casually scanned me with her bright, cold, diamond eyes, “the only currency any wizard worth his salt gives a damn about. That’s adorable by the way.”
“What?”
“The way you honestly think if you find her that you’ll just nobly let her stay hidden if she doesn’t care for a family reunion. You still want to be the samurai so badly, don’t you, Laytham?”
“That’s the plan,” I said and took another long sip of the whiskey. “No way in hell I’m dragging her back kicking and screaming to this guy if she doesn’t want that.”
“Oh, of course not,” she said. “You will convince the poor child it’s her own idea. As great a wizard as you are, and you truly are brilliant in the craft, you’re a savant in emotional manipulation. At that you are unmatched … except for me, of course.”
“Of course,” I said.
“You possess the aptitude to talk the knickers off a nun, dear boy.”
“I recall talking yours off a time or two,” I said. Gida smiled.
“You did indeed,” she said, “just like I wanted you to.”
“Okay,” I said. “It’s been a slice of peach pie catching up, but I’ll be on my way now.”
“Yes,” she said, “you will. I want you out of L.A. by tomorrow.”
“I want Salma Hayek’s digits,” I said. “We don’t always get what we want, Gida.”
“I usually do,” she said. “You were a … rare exception. I expected too much from you and you fell, hard. To call you a mercenary now is to be generously blinded by nostalgia and my past affection for you, Laytham. You are not one of us anymore, you really never were. I took a feral thing and tried to domesticate it. I failed. To put it in the vulgar but accurate parlance of the street, you’re dirty, and I don’t need a dirty ex-Nightwise—the only ex-Nightwise—wandering my town causing trouble and poking into our cold cases.”
“This is about the murders,” I said. “Just like it was back then. They are the real reason you pushed me until I left, back when there were only two of them; now you’ve got what, nine? Great progress, Maven.”
I saw Gida’s face shift slightly. If you didn’t know her as well as I did, you’d never see it, but I had spent countless hours kissing those lips, watching ecstasy and weakness, cruelty and joy shift behind those blue eyes. Now I saw anger, cold and sharp, but always controlled.
“You’re no better than Roland Blue,” she said, “a street-hustling criminal, a predator, a user. The only difference between you two is that Blue is honest enough with himself to admit what he is. You, Laytham, you cling to the delusion that you are a good man, a just man. You hang onto it like a drowning man clings to a life preserver. You failed as a samurai; you failed as a rōnin, even. You have no code, no honor. You do as you please and try to justify it later, and you have the audacity to sometimes call it doing good. Tell me, Laytham, can you still summon it? Can you?”
I said nothing. I looked at my empty glass. I knew what she was talking about. There is a working taught to each prospective Nightwise. A simple exercise for one trained in magic, to summon a three-dimensional symbol made of light and will—a five-pointed star, a pentacle of protection—the symbol of warding from the forces, agents, powers, and principalities of the darkness. We … they call it the Brilliant Badge. It is a secret ritual, taught only to those who wish to be Nightwise. To summon it you must believe, truly believe in the cause of the order, in protecting the weak and the innocent, to selflessly stand between the blind world and the things that
