need to see the bodies. I know they’ve been gone over, but I want to see them again—”
“Lady Basarab—”
“—along with anything they were wearing, and that includes—”
“Dory!”
I paused, because the volume had just missed a shout. But he was looking a lot less prim and proper, suddenly. For the first time since I arrived, he looked like the man I’d seen at our senate. For the first time, he looked like the assassin instead of the teacher.
I immediately liked him better.
“Do you know why I help you?” he demanded.
“Because we’re friends of the court?” I deadpanned.
His eyes flashed dangerously, and Louis-Cesare tightened the hand he’d placed on my arm. I didn’t need the warning. I could almost feel the consul’s power, his anger, from here, and he was in his office almost a block away.
But I didn’t think the anger was for me, something he confirmed a second later.
“I lost ten Children in the assault on this court, killed not in combat, which would at least have been an honorable end, but by a coward’s weapon, a missile that tore through my shields and incinerated them where they stood. I lost six more in the fight that followed, chasing thieves and murderers through the streets, and another seven in the temple below us, battling the ancient curse they unleashed upon me. Twenty-three, young one. Twenty-three who drank of my blood, who shared my trials, who lived in my heart. Twenty-three whom I shall never see again.
“Someone will pay for that.
“Someone will bleed for that.”
“Fuck, yeah,” I whispered.
“But these are enemies I do not understand, who come from a land I do not know. I have only one card against them, and I am playing it. Find them for me. You know all that we do, and you know her better than any of us. And she knows you. You are two halves of one soul, yearning to be reunited. You will find her.
“And you will call me when you do.”
“I’ll call you,” I said. “If she’s left any of them alive.”
And for the first time, Hassani and I shared a look of perfect understanding.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Dory, Hong Kong
Supernatural Hong Kong was looking a little worse for the wear these days, having been through a major battle recently. And by worse, I mean half tumbled down skyscrapers with mostly missing windows, other buildings blackened and burnt out, and large swathes of land chewed up as if a gigantic mole had been tunneling. It honestly didn’t look that much better than it had during the battle itself, except that the fires had been put out.
Largely put out, I corrected, noticing flickering red light staining the inside of an already charred hulk. Of course, that could have been somebody making dinner. Housing was at a premium these days, and squatting was rampant in anything that was remotely structurally sound.
Although some people had been more creative than that.
“What the—what is that?”
Bahram, the big, bearded vamp from Hassani’s court, grabbed my shoulder and pointed at something off to the left. I had no idea what, because I was driving, which in Hong Kong meant piloting a repurposed rickshaw around the skies. And because the skies were so full, he could have been pointing at anything.
“Don’t grab me,” I said, shrugging off his hand.
He turned in his seat to stare at something behind us, and Rashid, the big, bald vamp on the other side of the backseat, frowned. “Shouldn’t Louis-Cesare be driving?”
“Why?”
A crazy-ass vehicle comprised of a couple smallish fans and someone’s living room sofa dipped down almost on top of us. Once upon a time, that would have been illegal. You couldn’t merely slap a levitation charm on something and call it a day. There were rules; there were laws; there were standards.
Right up until the city got the crap blown out of it, along with half of its vehicles. Now, it seemed that anything worked, only it didn’t. It didn’t at all! I grabbed a broom stick off the floorboard and beat on the bottom of the couch.
“Mm goi jeh!”
A small child’s face appeared over the back of the sofa, and stared down at me curiously, before someone whom I assumed to be her grandmother pulled her back so she could stare at me instead.
“Mm goi jeh!” I repeated. Which was the polite way of saying “move your ass” in Cantonese. At least, I assumed so, since it had been yelled at me a few dozen times now.