back, Wells had been browsing for someone to help him with a domestic problem.”
“The problem of a wife who wanted to leave him, and a son who didn’t want to listen to dear old dad,” Venec interjected, his voice still low and bitter.
“And he found an Old One?” Most people, Talent or Null, who ran across one of the old races, would have backed away as fast and as quiet as they could, and prayed that it didn’t follow. But it was better than an Old One actively trolling for humans.
“Wells has no idea who the source of the original spell was,” Stosser went on. “He only spoke with a magician.”
In other words, Wells was an idiot. But if nothing else, we knew now who had sold Wells his so-called magical protections. “Magician” was a damning phrase, in the Cosa. It meant someone who was still using old magics more than current, relying on tricks, and supplementing their own natural core by deals with the fatae, just like the old tales. A magician couldn’t shape or form a transformation spell; it was totally beyond their capabilities. Had he made a deal with an Old One for power? Wow, talk about a classic Bad Idea. And then to turn around and deal with Nulls, who had no idea what they were doing or getting into? Lovely.
“The spells were maintained on a regular basis, with a payment due every season-change.” Traditional old magics ritual bullshit. “Wells... defaulted on the payments. Several of them, in fact.”
I went still. I’d once had passing contact with a cave dragon, the loan sharks of the Cosa Nostradamus. It had been a misunderstanding, and he’d been only pleasant to me, all things considered, but just the memory of that glare directed at me was enough to make me pay my bills on time even now. Cave dragons were short-tempered when it came to breaking your bond. How much worse...
“What happened?”
“What do you think?” Ben’s voice was way too calm. “The magician came, with what sounds like a hell spawn pet, jaws like a sabertooth, and demanded payment. Wells refused – he felt that he had paid long enough.”
Wells was damn lucky he was still intact and breathing. The Cosa Nostradamus wasn’t exactly invisible – we were part of the day-to-day world, and enough people knew about us, interacted with us on a daily basis, so I guess I’d gotten used to them knowing enough to stay out of trouble. It wasn’t difficult. Like I’d told Nick more than a year ago – read your fairy tales; everything you need to know to stay clean is right there.
Nobody ever read Wells fairy tales when he was a kid, clearly.
“I assume the goon was what tore the place up.” You did not fuck with hell spawn. Ever. They were the badass creatures hellhounds had been bred down – way down – from.
“The magician... ?” I let the question trail off, not sure how to phrase it.
Venec answered me. “The name went to an empty storefront. Whoever and wherever our guy might have been, he’s in the wind, now.”
Or gone, in a more permanent fashion. No loss whatsoever to the world. And whoever, or whatever he had been working for would now be impossible to find; that went without saying. I wasn’t sure even Stosser was angry enough to go after an Old One, no matter how many claws it had in the modern world. If we didn’t bother it, maybe it would go bother someone else.
Even the Big Dogs knew there was only so much we could bite off at a time.
I tried not to think about the scrapings in the conference room, and refocused on what we could handle. “And Wells called us to investigate, when he already knew damn well what had happened?”
“He’s used to being in control,” Stosser said dryly. “He thought he could still control the game, get his toys back without admitting anything, and without having to pay the fees, in the future.”
Venec’s dark eyes looked at the far wall, his face expressionless. “Yeah. He knows better now.”
I was surprised and a little alarmed by the surge of vicious satisfaction I felt at those words, until I realized that it was coming from Venec, not me. All right. My Dog was a fierce bastard. I knew that.
And yeah, I knew what I’d just thought, and how possessive it sounded, and I’d deal with that later, when the walls were all the way up and