Circle of Enemies

I let myself out. The stolen Viper was still parked in her drive, and there were no cops clustered around it, checking the plates. There was only one place to go. The thermos and I went back to the supermarket.

I parked the Viper a block away, making sure I overlapped the marked fire-hydrant zone. The car would collect tickets until someone ran the plates. I tossed the keys under the seat. Even if I couldn’t find Annalise, I didn’t want to drive it again. I didn’t feel sporty.

I wandered out to the bus shelter where I’d called the society and spoken with Mariana. No one was there. I sat on the bench and waited.

It took about five minutes for Annalise to pull up in her van. She must have been nearby, watching for me.

She opened the driver’s door and climbed into the passenger side. I got behind the wheel, adjusted the mirrors and seat, then started the engine. The thermos went into the cup holder beside me.

“Where have you been?” she asked me.

“Finishing a job.”

“Tell me about it when we get onto the freeway.”

“What about Csilla? What about Talbot?”

“Csilla is gone, back to wherever she goes. And we’re not going to see Talbot again. He’s out.”

“Out?” I couldn’t hide my surprise. “I don’t understand. Why is he out? Because he ran?”

“No,” Annalise said. “Because you said he was useless.”

That wasn’t how I remembered it.

I didn’t much like Talbot, but I hoped whoever caught up with him killed him quickly. “I don’t know, boss. The guy probably needs a little training. Hell, he could probably design the training. He might still be useful.”

She grunted as though I’d made a good point. And that was all I could do for Talbot. Maybe she’d send word not to kill him. I hoped so.

Annalise hadn’t told me where to go, so I got on the 10 heading east. She didn’t object. Maybe she didn’t care. As we rolled along with traffic, I told her everything that happened after she went through Lino Vela’s front window. The only thing I left out was finding the Book of Oceans inside the statue, the vision I had, and the fact that it was sitting in the thermos between us.

By the time I’d finished, we were northbound on the 15, heading for Barstow. She told me briefly about her time with the cops. They’d been gentle with her from the first moment they’d fished her out of the bushes. She told them that she was trying to reach Steve Francois to convince him to donate to her foundation, and within half an hour they’d received confirmation that she did exactly that with her time. She gave them a statement and asked to be released. They let her go.

I shook my head in disbelief. Even with her tattoos, she still got the middle-class white-woman treatment. Or did she have help from one of the spells on her body?

“Boss,” I said. “What would you have done if we had found the Book of Motes? Or one of the other original spell books?”

Her response surprised me. She sighed heavily. “That’s a hard question. The long-standing rule of the society is that anyone who finds one of the three original spell books is to bring it to the peers directly without ‘reading’ it first. All the peers would gather together and decide what to do.”

“You wouldn’t want to check it out before you turned it over? Become a primary yourself?” She didn’t answer right away. “Boss?”

“You’re damn right I would. I want to finish the job in Hammer Bay myself. I want to … We’re falling behind in this fight, Ray, because we’re losing focus and power by the year, while the predators are as dangerous as ever. But the peers want to decide as a group who should have access to it.”

“I’m guessing you don’t think they’d let all the peers have a turn.”

“I know they wouldn’t. A few of them don’t even think a woman can become a primary. They’re sure the visions would corrupt her and maybe damage the book. Also, aside from me, one Brazilian, and one Arab, the other peers are all white Europeans; they don’t trust the rest of us with that kind of power.”

“What if you read it anyway, then gave it to them?”

She sighed again. “Civil war? Again? The problem is that I believe in the work the Twenty Palace Society does. I couldn’t live with the terrible things I’ve done otherwise. But the society itself has become a nest of serpents. If I could do this work without them, I’d kill them all.”

“I saw the letter you gave to Captain.” Dammit. I didn’t want to go there next, but the words had slipped out.

“Who? Oh, our friend who took us to Canada? Is that why you’ve been such a crabby bastard? The letter was for her protection in case we were arrested, genius.”

“Okay.”

“I know this is leading somewhere, Ray. Get on with it.”

“When I asked you if you wanted to become a primary …” You blinked. I wasn’t sure how to ask Annalise if she was frightened or uncertain, and it turned out I didn’t have to.

“I hesitated. I know. Ray, what was that guy’s name? You know the one I mean.”

I did. “Lino Vela.”

“Lino Vela. As apprentices, we’re trained to attack rogues at the first opportunity. No matter where we are, or who’s in the line of fire, we go. Becoming a primary, having all that power, well, that would make things easier. But there’s a part of me that doesn’t think what happened to Lino Vela should ever be easy.”

Well, damn. I knew she trusted me enough to share information, but not that she was ready to share this.