secretary, or executive assistant, or whatever you’re supposed to call them now, and letting someone else decide if I was supposed to be there. And Ms. Evelyn Derek’s assistant was just as clearly out to lunch, which was the point of showing up during lunch hour. “Who shall I say is here?”
I produced Vincent Graver’s business card and passed it to her. “Please tell her that Vince has acquired some unexpected information and that she needs to hear about it.”
She pushed a button, adjusted her headset, and dutifully passed on the message to whoever was on the other end. She listened and nodded. “Straight back down the hall, sir, the second door on the left.”
I nodded to her and walked through the door behind her. The carpet got even thicker and the decor more expensive. A nook in the wall showcased a small rock fountain between a pair of two-thousand-dollar leather chairs. I shook my head as I walked through a hall that absolutely reeked of success, power, and the desire for everyone to know about it.
I bet they would have been seethingly jealous of the Ostentatiatory in Edinburgh.
I opened the second door on the left, went in, and closed it behind me, to find a secretary’s desk, currently unoccupied, and an open door to what would doubtless be an executive office appropriate to the status of Evelyn Derek, attorney at law.
“Come in, Mr. Graver,” said an impatient woman’s voice from inside the office.
I walked in and shut the door behind me. The office was big, but not monstrous. She probably wasn’t a full partner in the firm. The furnishings were sleek and ultramodern, with a lot of glass and space-age metal. There was only one small filing cabinet in the room, a shelf with a row of legal texts, a slender and fragile-looking laptop computer, and a framed sheepskin from somewhere expensive on the wall. She had a window, but it had been frosted over into bare translucency. The glass desk and sitting table and liquor cabinet all shone, without a smudge or a fingerprint to be seen anywhere. It had all the warmth of an operating theater.
The woman typing on the laptop might have come with the office as part of a complete set. She wore rimless glasses in front of the deepest green eyes I had ever seen. Her hair was raven black, and cut close to her head, showcasing her narrow, elegant features and the slender line of her neck. She wore a dark silk suit jacket with a matching skirt and a white blouse. She had long legs, ending in shoes that must have cost more than most mortgage payments, but she wore no rings, no earrings, and no necklace. There was something cold and reserved about her posture, and her fingers struck the keys at a rapid, decisive cadence, like a military drummer.
She said nothing for two full minutes, focusing intently on whatever she was typing. Obviously, she had something to prove to Vince for daring to intrude upon her day.
“I hope you don’t think you can convince me to rehire you, Mr. Graver,” she said, eventually, without looking up. “What is it that you think is so important?”
Ah. Vince had quit already. He didn’t let much grass grow under his feet, did he?
This woman was evidently used to being taken very seriously. I debated several answers and decided to start things off by annoying her.
I know. Me. Shocking, right?
I stood there treating her the same way she had treated me, saying nothing, until Evelyn Derek exhaled impatiently through her nose and turned a cool and disapproving stare toward me.
“Hi, cuddles,” I said.
I’ll give the lady this much-she had a great poker face. The disapproval turned into a neutral mask. She straightened slightly in her chair, though she looked more attentive than nervous, and put her palms flat on the desktop.
“You’re going to leave smudges,” I said.
She stared at me for a few more seconds before she said, “Get out of my office.”
“I don’t see any Windex in here,” I mused, looking around.
“Did you hear me?” she said, her voice growing harder. “Get. Out.”
I scratched my chin. “Maybe it’s in your secretary’s desk. You want me to get it for you?”
Spots of color appeared on her cheeks. She reached for the phone on her desk.
I pointed a finger at it, sent out an effort of will, and hissed, “Hexus.”
Fouling up technology is a fairly simple thing for a wizard to do. But it isn’t surgical in its precision. Sparks erupted from the phone, from her computer, from the overhead lights, and from something inside her coat pocket, accompanied by several sharp popping sounds.
Ms. Derek let out a small shriek and tried to flinch in three directions at once. Her chair rolled backward without her, and she wound up sprawled on the floor behind her glass-topped desk in a most undignified manner. Her delicate-looking glasses hung from one ear, and her deep green eyes were wide, the whites showing all around them.
Purely for effect, I walked a couple of steps closer and stood looking down at her in silence for a long moment. There was not a sound in that room, and it was a lot darker in there without the lights.
I spoke very, very quietly. “There are two shut doors between you and the rest of this office-which is mostly empty anyway. You’ve got great carpets, solid-oak paneling, and a burbling water feature out in the hallway.” I smiled slightly. “Nobody heard what just happened. Or they would have come running by now.”
She swallowed, and didn’t move.
“I want you to tell me who had you hire a detective to snoop on me.”
She made a visible effort to gather herself together. “I-I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I shook my head, lifted my hand, and made a beckoning gesture at the liquor cabinet as I murmured, “Forzare,” and made a gentle effort of will. The door to the cabinet swung open. I picked a bottle of what looked like bourbon and repeated the gesture, causing it to flit from the opened cabinet across the room to my hand. I unscrewed the cap and took a swig. It tasted rich and burned my throat pleasantly on the way down.
Evelyn Derek stared at me in pure shock, her mouth open, her face whiter than rural Maine.
I looked at her steadily. “Are you sure?”
“Oh, God,” she whispered.
“Evelyn,” I said in a chiding voice. “Focus. You hired Vince Graver to follow me around and report on my movements. Someone told you to do that. Who was it?”
“M-my clients,” she stammered. “Confidential.”
I felt bad scaring the poor woman. Her reaction to the use of magic had been typical of a straight who had never encountered the supernatural before-which meant that she probably had no idea of the nature of whoever she was protecting. She was terrified. I mean, I knew I wasn’t going to hurt her.
But I was the only one in the room who did.
The thing about playing a bluff is that you have to play it all the way out, even when it gets uncomfortable.
“I really didn’t want this to get ugly,” I said sadly.
I took a step closer and put the bottle down on the desk. Then I slowly, dramatically, raised my left hand. It had been badly burned several years before, and while my ability to recover from such things was more intense than other human beings, at least in the long term, my hand still wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t quite horror-movie special effects anymore, but the molten scars covering my fingers, wrist, and most of my palm were still startling and unpleasant, if you hadn’t ever seen them before.
“No, wait,” Evelyn squeaked. She backed across the floor on her buttocks, pressed her back to the wall and lifted her hands. “Don’t.”
“You helped your client try to kill people, Evelyn,” I said in a calm voice. “Tell me who.”
Her eyes widened even more. “What? No. No, I didn’t know anyone would get hurt.”
I stepped closer and snarled, “Talk.”
“All right, all right!” she stammered. “She-”
She stopped speaking as suddenly as if someone had begun strangling her.
I eased up on the intimidation throttle. “Tell me,” I said, more quietly.
Evelyn Derek shook her head at me, fear and confusion stripping away the reserve I’d seen in her only moments before. She started shaking. I saw her open her mouth several times, but only small choked sounds emerged. Her eyes lost focus and started flicking randomly around the room like a trapped animal looking for an escape.
That wasn’t normal. Not even a little. Someone like Evelyn Derek might panic, might be cowed, might be
