We passed another room with very expensive antique furniture; a circle of ladies practiced needlepoint and spoke quietly among themselves. Their garb ran from Victorian-era gowns to modern-casual. The matriarch of the circle was an old woman, easily in her nineties with giant moth wings of dusty gray twitching at her back as she jabbed a bony finger at a young girl who was looking down, admonished and blushing.
Burris opened a glass door that led to a narrow corridor, also of glass. The corridor, like an airlock, opened into a large conservatory through a door at the other end. The glass walls and ceiling were buttressed with ornate beams of what appeared to be silver. The sunlight flashed off a few of the lower beams. There were plants everywhere, mostly orchids, and the floor was dark, rich soil. I saw a few plants, I was fairly certain, that were not native to Earth. The air was hot and moist to accommodate the flora, and sweet smelling, almost to the point of being cloying.
Burris led me along well-worn dirt paths through the foliage until we reached a clearing that contained a small rattan table and four high-backed rattan chairs. A man sat in one of the chairs, sipping a cold, sweating glass of white wine. He was an average-enough-looking fellow, with slightly prominent front teeth, big ears, and a mop of curly brown hair. His clothes cost more than most cars back in the States ran you. He regarded me and Burris with a look of practiced disdain, reserved for “the help,” I’m sure. The man standing at the opposite edge of the circle was tall; he wore a white linen suit. I didn’t recognize the tailor from the cut, but it made the other guy’s clothes look like he shopped at Goodwill. He had a powder-blue dress shirt and no tie. He had his back to me and, for a moment, when I first looked at him, he seemed … larger, too large to fit in this space, too large for my mind to fully comprehend. Imagine getting a glimpse of the ocean, the whole ocean, all at once. He seemed to squeeze the enormity of his being back into a human-sized space my monkey brain could wrap itself around. He turned to look at me with dark eyes flecked with silver and a warm smile. His hair was brown, straight, and fine, and fell to his collar. He had a widow’s peak. He had the kind of real tan only the rich can afford to cultivate.
“Laytham Ballard,” the cosmic force pretending to be the tan man said. “Please have a seat. You stay as well, Burris.”
“Yes, sir,” Burris said and sat in one of the rattan chairs. I joined him in another. The tan man sat down as well and crossed his legs. As if on cue, Carmichael appeared with a tray of drinks, refreshing the wine of the guy who had been sitting when we arrived. There was a chalice of something for the tanned man. The cup was covered in what I was pretty sure were real jewels. For Burris, it looked like ice water, and for me a double bourbon on the rocks. When I sipped it, I was surprised to discover it was more of the Van Winkle Reserve.
“How do you say it?” the tan man asked. “The hair … of the dog? Yes?”
I tipped the glass at him and nodded. “That is exactly how we say it, Mr. Ankou.”
The tan man smiled and nodded as he sipped from his million-dollar pimp cup. “I am Theodore Ankou, Lord of the Isles of Albion, Baron of the Black-Light Realms, High-Minister to the Court of the Uncountable Stairs, and Patriarch of the Ankou clan. I trust you understand all that?”
“I do,” I said. “You left out a few, I assume for brevity’s sake. I am honored to be a guest in your realm, Lord Ankou.” That last part I said in the slippery-sounding liquid language of the Fae that Burris and I had spoken on the stairs. My Fae was rusty, and it probably sounded weird as hell with a Southern accent. Ankou smiled and raised his cup in salute.
“So it’s true; you know our ways and customs.”
“You knew I did,” I said. “You knew all about me before you ever sent your men to fetch me. The Ankous are well known for their … thoroughness.”
Theo laughed. “Thank you for the compliment, Mr. Ballard. We found out as much as we could,” he said. “Most of it is urban legend and well-promoted myth. There is very little hard data in this world about you, Mr. Ballard, a remarkable feat in this age of digital scrying. Humans seem only too eager to lay every detail of their lives out for the world to see. But men like you, Mr. Ballard, you understand the power and currency of secrets.”
Ankou withdrew a Diamond Rose iPhone from his jacket pocket and pulled something up on the phone’s screen. “‘Laytham Ballard,’” he began. “‘Born in Welch, West Virginia, United States. The exact date and time of birth has been obscured through both technology and ritual.’”
“I had this Coptic horoscope assassin on me for a bit,” I said, “trigger man for the Followers of Montanus. If he knew your date and time of birth, you were dead. ’Sides, birthday parties get kinda lame. After your twelfth, it’s all downhill.”
Ankou continued reading.
“As for your childhood, both parents are reported deceased. Names and locations unknown. A persistent rumor is that you raised the dead at
