hidden talents (14 page)

Her Converse-clad feet tapped restlessly on the floor. Adam caught them between his boots, stilling them. “It"s okay to be nervous.”

She nodded. Of course it was okay. Anyone who was hoping to be grabbed

by the Eunuch would be nervous. Nervousness was perfectly consistent with their cover.

Adam covered the hands she was using to ball up her napkin.

“If anything happens to you because of me ...” she said.

He smiled and leaned in. Suddenly, he was kissing her, his mouth sealing over hers as his tongue slid in. He kept the kiss going for a good half minute, his probing gentle but delicious. Ari was breathing quicker when he backed off.

“See anyone you know?” he asked.

It took a moment before she was able to move her eyes from his. She didn"t know how to be subtle, so she just looked around. “Maybe,” she said. “That guy sugaring his coffee seems familiar.”

Adam didn"t follow her gaze. “Okay. Time to put on a show. Drop that

crumpled napkin on your saucer.”

Ari put it where he asked. Adam stretched out one finger and set its edge alight. He extinguished it a moment later, but his action was enough to draw attention.

“Hey,” said the mother elf at the next table. “That"s not allowed in here.” She pointed sternly at the
No Flaring
sign hanging on the wall directly above their booth.

“Sorry,” Adam said, his wolfish grin undermining it. “My girlfriend is

making me hot. Love your ears, by the way.”

The mother elf slitted her eyes at him, then returned to scolding her two toddlers. Adam pushed his sexy horn-rim glasses farther up his nose, which caused the littlest elf to gape at him. The boy was about Ethan"s age. His miniature pointy ears were the cutest thing Ari had ever seen.

“All right,” Adam said, pushing up from his seat and digging in his jeans pocket. “It"s probably time to go.”

He dropped some wadded bills on the table beside their cups.

“You"re sure?” Ari asked, rising with him. “We -” She lowered her voice.

“We don"t know the right person saw.”

Adam put his arm around her and steered her to the door. “I paid our bill in US dollars. Trust me, the waitress won"t let that pass without setting up a stink.”

If there was a stink, they were outside before it broke. Adam snuggled her to his side, ambling around the corner to Chinatown as if they had all the time in the world. Ari dreaded seeing the skinned gnomes again, but Adam stopped in front of one restaurant"s window like his shoes had been bolted there.

“You"re right,” he said a bit more loudly than he had to. “These things are complete freakouts.”

Ari didn"t notice anyone watching them, but maybe Adam knew better than she did. There were a lot of windows to either side of them. Farther down the street, a shadow that could have been Grant the gargoyle changed the shape of one roofline.

“Want to go in there?” Adam asked, pointing toward an import store. “Maybe they"ve got something cool we can take back home.”

Ari discovered how effective obfuscation spells could be when a long white limo literally came out of nowhere. It squealed onto the sidewalk in front of them, bouncing slightly before stopping. The nearest door sprang open and a man with dark gray skin and tusks leaped out of it toward her. Dressed in a double-breasted gangster suit, he had to be eight feet tall.

Out of instinct, Ari grabbed Adam"s hand and ran the other way. Two more goons in suits blocked their escape from that direction. They were joined a moment later by the Eunuch himself.

Henry Blackwater was an elegant man - smooth-skinned, strawberry blond, with a partiality for cream-colored Italian suits. He was slender and not quite a six footer. He strolled toward her like a dancer, pulling thin tan gloves from his long-fingered hands. His sharp fox-like features kept him from looking completely effeminate.

Ari"s throat threatened to close. Their fishing expedition had worked faster than she was prepared for.

“Ari,” Blackwater said in his favorite slightly mocking tone. “I assume you"re looking for me. How silly of you to run.”

“How silly of you to bring your goons if you didn"t want me to.”

It wasn"t the greatest comeback, just the best she could do right then.

The giant gray guy with the tusks was holding Adam from behind by the

arms. Adam wasn"t struggling, but he jerked like he wanted to.

“Nice of you to bring a friend,” the Eunuch observed. “I"m always looking for new talent.”

Ari didn"t like the way he smiled at Adam. Adam was considerably bigger, but Blackwater wasn"t afraid of him. He didn"t even seem to view Adam as a person. He was ... speculating about him, like he might an item on a new menu.

When Blackwater had first found Ari, he"d at least pretended to care for her well being.

“Put them in the limo,” he instructed his cohorts. “We need to get out of here.”

Ari couldn"t stop herself. She didn"t want to be shut up in that car. She lifted her hands to fight. Maybe she could take him out here and now. She drew up power from the ground so fast her feet went numb. It wasn"t fast enough. Before she could release her gifts, one of Blackwater"s men slapped her in the same silvery-gold handcuffs the police had used.

“None of that,” their boss reproved. “Not if you hope to strike any sort of deal with me.”

Because she had to, Ari controlled herself. His men shoved her and Adam in the limo. They weren"t too careful about it. Ari would have fallen on her face if her hands hadn"t been cuffed in front of her. Adam fared a bit better. He only got a bonked elbow.

“Watch the goods!” he protested to the gray skinned man.

Tusk Man bared the rest of his teeth and pulled a gun from a side holster. He sat on the seat opposite with it trained on them. Blackwater slid in beside him, followed by a hunk of more ordinary muscle in a suit. Ari thought he was human, though she couldn"t be sure. Ordinary Goon shut the door, then rapped on the partition for the driver to pull away. As they rolled into motion, he set a small brown rock on the limo floor. He closed his eyes, extended his hands, and muttered a foreign word.

A shock wave made of light burst out from the rock. Ari"s brain went

completely fuzzy for a second. When it cleared, the rock was gone and a slick of wavering brown light clung to the outer surfaces of their vehicle. It could be seen through from inside, though she doubted the reverse was true.

Huh
, she thought, intrigued in spite of herself. That"s what an obfuscation spell looked like. She wondered if Adam"s team would be able to track them when it was on. Their plan didn"t depend on them doing so, but it would make her feel better. Possibly Grant would be able to if they couldn"t, given his Level Eight mojo.

That thought ran through her brain in a twinkling. It occurred to her the ordinary looking goon wasn"t that ordinary after all. She didn"t recognize him, so maybe he was Resurrection-only staff. When he noticed her attention, his mouth curved like he wanted to do not-very-nice things to her.

“You wish,” she said, at which both Adam and Blackwater laughed.

Their masculine amusement was a tad disturbing. Blackwater"s elegant legs were crossed. He flapped the strangely supple gloves he"d removed earlier on his upper thigh.

Shit
, Ari thought. She just bet those things were gnome skin.

She couldn"t keep her muscles from tightening. As they did, Adam"s arm

shifted beside her, not an actual gesture of reassurance so much as a hint of one.

She realized she was glad he was there. She didn"t like depending on other people, and she didn"t want him getting hurt on her account. That said, she couldn"t deny one important fact.

Adam knew what he was doing.

Willing though Ari was to go to the mat for her friends, the Eunuch had her outclassed. While she might have more power here in Resurrection, so did her enemy.

∞

The limo carried them north and east for about forty minutes. The reason Adam knew this was because his wolf side had an innate sense of direction, one he didn"t think the obfuscation spell could mess with. Looking out the window was less informative. Presumably, the driver could see clearly. From the back of the vehicle, the brown tinged landscape was fuzzy and confusing.

The strength of the spell impressed and concerned him at the same time. He doubted his team would be able to track the car. Maybe Grant would, but that wasn"t a sure thing. For certain, the Eunuch wasn"t pinching pennies when it came to security.

Resurrection"s foremost criminal kingpin sat flanked by his men, calm and relaxed as the drive drew out, a sleek golden-haired serpent without a care in the world. He fondled those poncey gloves of his now and then, but that seemed pretension rather than nervousness. One of the few things they knew about Henry Blackwater was that he"d been born to the owners of a tiny cleaning supply store, the sort where people could rent equipment to get stains out of their carpets. He doubted it was coincidence that they"d died in suspicious circumstances soon after Blackwater established his first cross-border trafficking enterprise.

The Eunuch had wanted to erase his humble beginnings.

He’s a drug dealer
, Adam reminded himself.
He may strike terror
everywhere he goes, but he isn’t anything fancier than that
. Magic-wise, he wasn"t much of a power. Barely a Level Two - and who knew how weak he"d been before doing his alleged demon deal? He bought the spells he needed with his profits from exploiting other"s weaknesses.

Adam"s eyes had gone hard. Blackwater noticed and lifted his brows at him.

“Just admiring the apps on your ride,” he said, tapping one knuckle against the clouded brown window.

“Resurrection does offer a special brand of wonders.”

“So I"m seeing,” Adam said.

The Eunuch"s smile was small but satisfied. Adam had just given him

something he wanted: implied credit for the mojo his money bought. This might be one reason he collected his entourages of Outsiders. Insiders wouldn"t be so easily misled.

Insiders knew a lot of things, including that the difference between Talents and sorcerers was that talent was natural. Sorcerers forced magic to behave in a certain way. Thanks to their training in rituals and spells, they could pull off amazing things - precise, powerful, dangerous things most Talents couldn"t dream of. Sorcery was the closest humans came to wielding the power of the fae. The downside was that sorcerers paid a price.

A big spell - say if someone wanted to recreate the Washington Street Bridge disaster on purpose - would cost a sorcerer a year of his life. Activating the obfuscation spell for the limo probably stole a week from the Eunuch"s sorcerer-goon. Whoever created the rock that contained the spell likely gave up a month.

With only so much life to spend, sorcerers charged a premium for their

services. To do everything he needed, Blackwater probably kept a dozen on retainer.

Adam revised that estimate upward as the limo approached its destination. He was relatively certain they"d entered Clifton Bluffs, a wooded and affluent area overlooking the wilder reaches of the North River. Here every house was a compound, and the neighbors didn"t invite each other to barbecues. Some faeries kept residences here, or simply maintained the forest version of no man"s land.

You wouldn"t want to stroll through those spooky trees at night, not unless you were high up in the fae yourself. Adam might be a big bad wolf, but the thought of it was enough to make him suppress a shiver.

If Grant had managed to follow them, Adam hoped he"d be all right out there.

“Home sweet home,” Blackwater said as they rolled through an automatic

gate that resembled something out of Versailles. The last of the obfuscation spell dissolved, revealing a large white block of a house with narrow Moroccan style windows.

Adam wasn"t at all surprised to see every one of them was electrum barred.

The tall gray spink demon with the tusks took charge of Ari, ushering her from the vehicle with more care than he"d initially shoved her in. Spinks could be aggressive, but as demons went, they were reasonably self-controlled. Many worked as bouncers in clubs, a career track that could lead in less savory directions. The human sorcerer-goon looked like he wanted to take Ari into his personal custody, but didn"t dare ask his boss for favors. As the spink demon pushed her forward, Ari shot Adam a wide-eyed look over her shoulder.

Adam hated her fear more than he could afford to show. At least he"d warned her they might be separated. From what he knew, the Eunuch was a divide-and-conquer boss. On the semi-bright side, Ari was no burned out Talent like the ones who had disappeared. Her potential usefulness to Blackwater ought to keep her safe for a while.

“Where"s the weird guy taking her?” Adam thought it appropriate to ask.

“Oh, no worries,” Blackwater said, facing him on a roundabout paved with shiny obsidian stones. “Your girlfriend will be taken excellent care of. We just want her to be ... secure.”

Adam grunted, pursed his lips, then met Blackwater"s amused violet eyes.

“How come you don"t care if I"m secure?”

“I"ve yet to decide your value. Or the risk you might pose to my operation.”

“I won"t let you hurt her,” he said, but not like he was passionate about it.

Blackwater"s thin lips curved up, the idea that Adam had the power to defend her ridiculous to him. “I"m Henry Blackwater,” he said, offering his hand.

“Adam,” he returned, shaking it. He wasn"t going to offer his last name. Full true names could be used in too many spells. Blackwater didn"t push. Perhaps he assumed Adam had a history in New York he didn"t want him researching.

“You strike me as a sensible man,” he said. “Why don"t we go inside and discuss your prospects over a drink?”

Adam"s touch of Sight allowed him to spot more magic being used inside.

The halls of the compound were white and still, their marble floors as shiny as hockey rinks. Here and there, the walls showed glimmering signs of spy runes and magical alarms. He knew they were searching him for weapons and surveillance devices.