Page 93 of Bought for Blood

Tonight there’s nothing under the bleach at all.

I stop listening for it and listen for them instead. The heartbeats. Twenty of them, give or take, stacked through the floors below, the sound I’ve counted on every visit since the first.

Silence.

Turn around.

The chandelier is lit for the first time since I’ve been coming here. There’s nobody at the desk. Nobody on the stairs. The corridor to the client floor has been cleared of the men who usually stand in it.

I keep walking. The woman behind that door is the only route anyone has found to the top of this trade. Her letter asked for a private word after the audit. It seems the audit is over.

The office with the false window is laid out for a meeting. Two chairs. A low table. A decanter and one glass.

The woman at the mantel is small and gray-haired and dressed like a solicitor.

“Seigneur de Val-Serein. Ecaterina Borza. Sit down.”

I know the voice. Level, unhurried, awake at an hour that should suit nobody. It’s the voice on the other end of the linethe night I bought Serenity. The voice that said my name before Vasile could, and added twelve percent to an already ridiculous number without hesitating.

She’s been watching me. I don’t know how long, and I don’t think I’m going to like the answer.

I sit. “I’m glad we could meet,” I say.

“You’ve made this house very profitable, Seigneur,” she says. “I wanted to look at you.” She takes the other chair. “Your account is open. That’s unusual. A client who buys an asset outright stops coming.”

“I found other reasons to come.”

“So I understand.”

She pours from the decanter and holds the glass out to me.

It isn’t brandy. I can smell it from where I’m sitting: iron, and under the iron a sharp green edge that only comes off blood with magic in it. Drawn within the hour.

The gate was open. The lights are off. There is nobody in this building.

But the man I’ve been playing all these months does not refuse this glass. Not from her. Not in this room.

I take it, and I drink it.

“There,” Ecaterina says. “Now we can be honest with each other.”

The heat arrives in my hands first. Then the backs of my arms. It doesn’t hurt, which tells me it was made by somebody who knew what they were doing.

“What was in that?”

“Something we keep for people our men can’t handle.” She sets the decanter down. “You’ll be able to talk for a long while. You won’t be able to do much else. It costs a fortune. I’ve authorized it four times in twenty years.”

I get a hand onto the chair beside me. My legs are numb.

“Fenwick,” I say. “Fenwick.”

Ecaterina waits, politely, until I’ve finished.

“Your coat is very well made,” she says. “Say it as many times as you like.”

“They’ll come.”

“They’re already here. On the access road and at the north fence.” She folds her hands. “And there are dragons in the trees on the east side, which I’ll admit I found alarming.”