Circle of Enemies

“To accomplish what?”

His head quirked to one side. “To live forever, man. Well, I know it’s not forever, but it’s what, five hundred years?”

Great. Now the society wasn’t just hunting down people looking for magic and power, they were recruiting them. I took a deep breath to ease the anger building in my gut.

Talbot laughed a little at himself. “That was the wrong answer, wasn’t it?”

“Pretty much, yeah.”

“Well, I figured the whole ‘I’m happy to be saving the world’ thing was a given. Guess not.”

I started toward the doorway. The balcony felt very cramped. “You’ll meet some of the people we’re going against, and you’ll see why it’s not a given at all.”

“Hey.” Talbot caught my elbow. “You don’t have to tell me. I was there. I saw it. Some guys, you take away all consequences, and they turn into monsters. Like being a human being is just a mask for them. I saw it.”

“I believe you.”

“Listen.” There was a hunger in his expression that I didn’t trust. “I just want you to know I’m committed. If these guys”—he tilted his head toward the inside of the suite—“do things the smart way, they’ll make you a DI, and I want you to know where I stand.”

“I don’t even know what a DI is.”

“DI? It’s a drill instructor.”

Goose bumps ran down my back. I yanked the door open and went into the hotel suite. No way was I going to teach anyone anything, least of all a roomful of Talbots. Let the society make them into a useful part of the crew—it would be easy to find people who knew more about hunting, fighting, and killing than I did. The only real difference was in what we cared most about, and I’d spent too long in prison to think I could change that part of a person.

Annalise stood across the room, holding the fancy silver phone to her ear. She held up her hand to signal for me to wait a moment. The platter in front of Csilla had a long hunk of salami on it, and I had a sudden craving for it. I cut it in half and began eating it like a bread stick.

Annalise hung up the phone. “Gear up, both of you,” she said. “The plane is prepped and ready, and we’ll have a boat waiting for us at the other end.”

“Okay. Where are we going?”

“Your friend Wally said he was skipping town, didn’t he?”

“Boss, don’t call him my friend. But yeah.”

“Well, thanks to you, we know where he’s going.” She pointed to a wallet on the corner of the marble tabletop.

I walked toward it. It was brown leather and stuffed with paper. It was also singed at the edges. I felt I should remember it, but I had no idea where it came from.

“It’s Wally King’s wallet,” Talbot said. “We took it out of your pocket when we brought you here.”

I suddenly remembered snatching it off the dresser in his room. “I forgot. I was distracted by being on fire.”

Talbot laughed. Annalise picked it up and dropped it into an envelope. “He had a punch card from a lunch cart in there. It belongs to a little place on Slostich Island. If King left town, it’s likely that he went there.”

“Boss, how big is this island? Because I never heard of it.”

“It’s in Canada,” Talbot said, as though it was something shameful.

Annalise added: “Thirteen months ago a cabin on the north end was bought by a man named Walter Roi. With a wire transfer.”

“That’s it? You have an address and a name?”

Annalise shook her head. “There isn’t time for anything else. We don’t even have time to send an investigator. We’re going to follow up on it ourselves. You know that roi is French for king, don’t you?”

I didn’t know that. Something about this felt wrong. Wally knew he was being hunted, and although the guy was no genius, he wasn’t entirely stupid, either. Was he stupid enough to use a comic- book alias?

“Gear up,” Annalise said again. My jump bag was still sitting on the floor by a bed at the Best Western, but it had nothing I needed, except maybe a toothbrush.

Someone knocked on the door and pushed it open. Talbot started talking about the drapes. He thought we should take them on first, then move on to the next target. His back was to the door and he was blocking Annalise’s view, so neither noticed the housekeeper as she entered. She looked to be middle-aged and of Southeast Asian ancestry, maybe Vietnamese.

Talbot’s voice was loud; I couldn’t hear what she said to Csilla. From her body language, she appeared to be asking if she could come in to clean up.

Csilla stood without answering and walked around the corner of the table. The maid stood politely with her hands folded in front of her. Csilla didn’t move fast, but it didn’t take more than a few seconds for her to stagger up to the woman.

In one quick move, Csilla clamped her small hand over the maid’s windpipe. The woman’s face twisted in sudden pain and shock as Csilla twisted.