Fourteen
Patel made a complicated situation that much more intense, but Cass and I could handle it. As long as Boaz didn’t get any chivalrous notions, we could avoid Patel and beat him to the bounty. Of course, with Ari missing, this had become about so much more than that.
The list of people Cass cared about was short, but Ari was near the top.
“Any idea what brought Patel here?” Boaz kept pace with me. “He’s not the farmers’ market type.”
“He saw the Oracle.” I led the way. “I would bet my share of the bounty on it.”
“The Oracle?”
“She’s an information broker.” I cut him a smile. “A very exclusive one.”
“Who works out of a farmers’ market.”
“Out of a pickle stall, actually.”
“Will she sell you the same information she gave Patel?”
“She would sell the same information ten times over if it turned a profit.”
“Then why wouldn’t she give Patel everything she had to start with?”
I cut him a look and waited until he figured it out for himself.
“More money.” He chuckled. “Feeding him breadcrumbs will tempt him back for the whole loaf.”
“Exactly.” I flashed him a smile, more comfortable in my element than one on one with him. “We, however, are going to buy the loaf before he can take another bite.”
“The Oracle will sell it to you?”
“Anything for this.” I rubbed my fingers together. “Just like everyone else.”
To save us both the embarrassment of him asking if I had the cash for a bribe on that scale, I flashed him a debit card in one of Cass’s many aliases.
“Mina Harker.” He examined the card. “I don’t get it.”
“She was the object of Dracula’s obsession—”
“I got that part,” he said dryly. “Why do you have a debit in her name?”
“Cass foots the bill for bribes. She uses various cards with different aliases on them for different people/purposes so she can keep it all straight. This is the card for the Oracle.”
“You guys use her often enough she gets her own card?”
“No.” I put it away. “She’s just that expensive.”
Boaz didn’t say anything else as I led him to a stall selling a variety of pickled vegetables.
A girl who looked around fifteen sat behind her table of wares with her face glued to her phone.
“Mary Sue,” I greeted her by her preferred alias. “How’s it going?”
“Business is good.” She squinted at the screen. “The booth is really hopping tonight.”
We were the only ones standing around, and most of the jars had dust on them from how long she had used them as props. I didn’t think pickles could go bad, but I didn’t want to find out the hard way.
“Do you have a minute to talk?”
“Sure. Just let me finish this…” Her gaze flicked up and landed on Boaz. “Oh. Hey. Hi.”
“Hey hi yourself.” He grinned at her, full of charm. “What are you playing?”
“I’m addicted to crushing candy,” she confessed. “Mom won’t let me have the real thing.”
“How is your mom?” I doubted she remembered I was there after setting eyes on him. “Feeling better, I hope?”
“So-so.” She never took her eyes off Boaz. “Anyway, you’re not here to be neighborly. Come on back.”
The back was a tent pitched behind her table, the kind you saw at family reunions meant to seal out bugs and weather. The area was warded to prevent anyone from entering her space without her permission, and I got a zing down my spine when I stepped over the threshold.
“You’re the Oracle?” Boaz checked out the otherwise empty tent. “I thought your mother…”
“The gift hits hard, and it hits young in my family.” Mary Sue shrugged. “We only get a few good years after the onset before we start losing our minds. I have to earn enough for a comfortably padded room to hole up in for the rest of my life before that happens.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“It is what it is.” Her smile was sad. “Anyway, on to cheerier topics.” She stuck out her arm. “Addie?”
“What did Patel want?” I pulled out the card and slapped it onto her waiting palm. “How much did you tell him?”
“He wants to know who’s killing vampires so he can collect on the bounty. Same as you, I assume. He’s also interested in recovering Ari. Her mate is desperate to get her back, and the reward is through the roof. Have you checked in the last hour? Demaryius has doubled it.”
Cass hadn’t mentioned a reward for Ari’s return, but Demaryius would have known Cass would help for free. I had noticed there was a major reward, as in six figures, for any information leading to the capture of the killer. Or, of course, the body. Cass hadn’t breathed a word about that either.
As much as it felt like it when disconnect notices began piling up, money wasn’t everything.
“Patel is a brute, and he’s a cheap brute.” Mary Sue stuck a card reader into her phone and slid the card through the slot. “I told him the truth, but not much of it.”
Since I joined Gustav’s guild and Cass and I began working together, Mina Harker had bought hundreds of thousands of dollars in farmers’ market pickles. It was the only thing purchased with the card, which made me wonder if it left the card company scratching its head. They must not care so long as the bill got paid on time. Should that change, Cass would burn the identity and move on to a new one.
“Keep the meter running,” I told her. “I want it all.”
“That’s why you’re one of my favorite customers.” She flashed a smile. “I don’t know who the killer is, he—or she—is too murky for me to see clearly, but I can tell you they’re after rando vampires.”
“Oh?” Boaz leaned in closer. “Do tell.”
Flushing at his attention, she dropped a bomb on us. “They’re after one vampire. The others are all a means to an end.”
Boaz dialed his charm up all the way. “How do you figure?”
“They’re
