attack on Hong Kong, the study and exploitation of its magical system, and the design of the super soldiers down there—all of it, had just been the day job to Jonathan. He was a necromancer; he specialized in studying the dead. He could give a damn about any of this, but as he’d admitted to us, he’d needed life magic, a huge amount of it, to sustain him, and so he’d been chained.
It didn’t make me feel sorry for him; I didn’t think there was anything that could do that. But I did understand him a little better now. I just didn’t know what to do about any of this.
“It’s above all our paygrades,” I said, throwing the army back on the desk. “But it fell in our lap. We have to decide this.”
“Easy for you to say,” Zheng snarled. He’d been doing that a lot. “I’m the one who’ll take the heat for this!”
“Is there another option?” I asked.
“Hell, yes, there’s another option! I turn it over to the consul and reap massive rewards. She could end the war with this. She could rule the world with this!”
“Exactly,” Louis-Cesare said, and said no more.
Zheng threw himself into a pathetically inadequate desk chair and glowered at us. “I hate you both.”
“We’re not trying to tell you what to do,” I began.
Zheng said a bad word.
“Okay, we are. But . . . you do realize that no good will come of this, right? Give the consul that much power—hell, give any vamp that much—”
“I have that much, right now, and yet I’m sitting here, listening to you.”
“But you can’t use it.”
“Like hell I couldn’t. I could . . . I could take over the world myself. I could run this shit!”
I looked at him. “Do you want to run this shit?”
“Hell, no. I have enough trouble running Lily’s, and she does most of it.” A huge hand pushed up the hair over his forehead. “I just wanted some respect. That’s how I got into this mess. I’m an ex-pirate and a gangster. I am not supposed to have to make these kinds of decisions!”
“You’re also a senator,” Louis-Cesare commented.
“Yeah, for a hot minute.” He picked up the bag and tossed it to him. “You deal with it!”
“We could destroy it,” I said. “Just burn the bag and destroy the gateway—”
Zheng grabbed it back. “Talk sense. We’re in the middle of a war. We need this.”
“Nobody needs this,” Louis-Cesare said, sitting forward. “You know that. This kind of power could unbalance everything.”
“And not having it could end up costing us the war. Not to mention the fact that I know it’s here, okay? I can’t unknow that. The first time someone like Ming-de scans me—or your father, or anybody else with mental abilities—you think it’s not going to get out? It’s getting out.”
“He has a point,” I told Louis-Cesare.
My husband frowned. “If your father were here, or Dorina—”
“But they’re not. And I wouldn’t trust Mircea with this, any further than I could throw him. He’s the general for this war. You think he’s going to throw away an advantage like that?”
Louis-Cesare frowned some more.
“Okay, so we turn it over,” Zheng said. “At least we know Aeslinn goes night-night—”
“And how many of his people?” I demanded. “How many of the fey in general? You’ve seen those things! We can’t turn them loose on anyone, not to mention that the only person who can control them is their maker—”
“We don’t know that!”
“—who is a dangerous dark mage!”
“He’s a dark mage.” Zheng hiked a thumb at Ranbir, who’d been sitting quietly all this time. “But he turned this over to us.”
“I’m more of a medium gray,” Ranbir said modestly.
“Why did you turn it over?” I asked. “And why did you leave us, anyway?”
“I had the map. It also serves as a communication device, and Jonathan texted me. He offered me a fortune to betray you—”
“But you betrayed him instead.”
He shrugged. “I know the type. This much power in his hands?” He shook his head. “I like money, but it doesn’t do you much good if there’s no world left to spend it in.”
Zheng scowled. “Tree hugger.”
“Pragmatist.”
“Whatever. Point is, I am not going to burn for this, okay?” He looked at Louis-Cesare and I. “You want it your way, fine, then pull my nuts out of the fire. And you might want to think about your own while you’re at it. The consul isn’t going to be any happier with either of you.”