windows interrupted the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves along the west wall.
In the center of the room rested a huge, battered desk flanked by a pair of low bookcases. It held the usual sort of detritus, both electronic and traditional: computer, printer, calendar, a small scattering of papers. And at this end, a long library table held court. A single, half-empty packing box sat on it.
There was even a card catalogue. An honest-to-God, old-fashioned wooden card catalog claimed pride of place in a section of wall clearly reserved for it. “Priorities,” Cullen murmured. “Yes. You’re a man after my own heart, Fagin.”
Fagin beamed proudly at his domain. “I had the wall removed and the shelves added. It started out as a bedroom and dining room, you see. This suits me better.” He lumbered into motion. “I don’t have my entire collection in here, but I think I unpacked Papa Araignée’s journal. It should be in the Vodun section . . . ah, yes. Here it is.” He held out a tattered, leather-bound journal. “You can take it with you, if you like.”
Cullen’s eyebrows lifted. That was an unusual degree of trust—but then, Fagin wasn’t a practitioner himself. He tucked the slim journal carefully inside his jacket. “Thank you. And the Ars Magicka?”
“You’re drooling.”
“Hardly at all,” Cullen said repressively. “I have tremendous self-control.”
Fagin chuckled. “The original is in my safety-deposit box back in Cambridge. I recently acquired a safety-deposit box here, but I haven’t made the trip to Cambridge to retrieve the items from my Cambridge box. But perhaps my translation will work better for you anyway, since you have some difficulty with medieval German.”
“I’ve never seen anyone actually twinkle before, but damned if you aren’t doing it. An English translation, I take it?”
“Of course.” Fagin headed for his desk. “It’s a work in progress, mind, not finished, but I have a decent rough draft you can see. I’ll burn you a disc so—”
The front window shattered.
Without blinking or thinking or any of the things there was no time for, Cullen flexed into a deep crouch. A shiny glass shower cascaded into the room. He sprang. A second projectile followed the first as he slammed into Fagin, grabbing him and twisting so momentum would spin them sideways as they fell—the desk, the desk, it will shield us—
The ground reached up and smacked them as the air ignited in a wall of stink, heat, and flame.
TWENTY
THE woman’s gray hair frizzed around her face in an untidy halo. Her eyes were small and suspicious, her skin as scuffed and worn as an old suitcase. She smelled of baby powder, sweat, and the chicken concoction she shoveled into a small, pursed mouth with all the dainty greed of a cat enjoying a dish of tuna. Her hands were small and immaculately clean, even under the nails he suspected she trimmed with her teeth. They looked chapped.
She did not smell of alcohol, unlike the man on Rule’s right. He gave off fumes that should have robbed everyone in a nine-yard radius of their appetites. “But you do know Birdie, I think,” Rule said. He didn’t say the woman’s name because he didn’t know it. She wouldn’t give it to him.
“Everyone knows Birdie,” she said without looking up. “I ain’t seen him lately, but that don’t mean he ain’t around.”
“How long do you think it’s been since you saw him?”
“Well, now let’s see.” She stopped eating and mimed patting her pockets. “Sumbitch. I think I done lost my PDA, where I jots down all that important shit.”
Rule wasn’t sure why he didn’t give up and move on to someone else. She didn’t want to talk to him, and he couldn’t make her. But she was enjoying giving him a hard time. Why not let her have a few more minutes of it? “It’s hard to know who to trust, isn’t it?”
She snorted. “That’s easy. Don’t trust nobody. Do I know you from someplace?”
“I’ve been on TV now and then. I’m the Lu Nuncio of my clan.”
“Of your . . . shit, you’re that prince guy. The werewolf.” Her eyes narrowed even more and she pointed at him with her fork. “You’re a ce-le-britty.” The last two syllables sounded more like “bratty.”
Rule grinned. He was beginning to like her. “Of sorts, yes.”
“How come you’re here without the cameras? Ever’ time you goddamn ce-le-britties come around to feed the homeless, there’s a camera someplace. Marianne says it’s good publicity. Brings in donations. I say it’s a pain in the ass.”