Owl and the Japanese Circus (23 page)

“Hey, how’s it going? You guys out of the catacombs yet?”

He paused. “No, your trap was well set. We are still, how do you say it, killing time.” Hmm . . . even better. He didn’t realize there’d been two of us. Only Charles knew that, and he was upstairs.

“Hunh. You guys are slow.”

“Much as I am enjoying this impromptu chat, I hope you didn’t call simply to mock me.”

“As much fun as that would be, no. I want to cut a deal.”

“Interesting. I would need to speak with Charles first.”

“No can do. I don’t make a habit of kidnapping vampires. He’s upstairs in the temple, tied up. He let me borrow his phone though.”

“How do I know you are not lying? That you didn’t just execute him.”

“You don’t until you go upstairs and find him and the murdering Bobbsey Twins tied up in a room. You know, Alexander, you guys are really slipping with your flunkies. That girl is a real piece of work. I expect more from you.”

“Don’t insult me, she isn’t one of mine.” Hmmm, that had pissed Alexander off—yet another useful tidbit. The vampire was losing his edge; he was letting all sorts of stuff slip. “What is it you wish to barter?”

Alexander was trying to sound aloof and bored. It was an act.

“I’m not going to waste time playing games, so here it is. You tell me everything you know about Sabine and why the hell she has it in for me. In return, I’ll leave you out of my report to my boss, the dragon who threatened to eat all of you if you touched a hair on my head. I’ll even leave out this lovely little cell phone, with all the names, numbers, and addresses of all your associates. No one will ever know you betrayed the Contingency.”

“A generous . . . offer . . . but what you ask for is impossible—”

“Did you know that I can triangulate the location of all these numbers? I mean, a friend was just telling me yesterday. Who knew?”

“Owl, you are not being fair, what you ask is impossible because—”

“Or I could just start dialing random numbers. I think this one means ‘boss’ in French; shall I try that one?”

“
Merde,
will you listen to me, you reckless sewer rat? What you ask is impossible because I do not know.”

“How the hell can you be working for a woman—vampire—you
don’t even know? You’re not that stupid . . .” I started to laugh. “Holy shit, first you let me get away, then you let some vampire chick blackmail you? You’re losing it. Damn, maybe I should just screw all this and head back to my apartment in Seattle if this is what your standards have dropped to . . .”

“Listen, you worthless piece of peasant trash, I don’t know who she is, but I am willing to tell you what I do know. Will that satisfy you?”

“Tell me what you know and I’ll tell you if we have a deal.”

There was a tirade of French expletives—or I think that’s what it was—on the other end. I hung up the phone.

Nadya stared at me with her mouth agape.

“He needs a minute to think about it,” I said.

“You enjoyed that.”

I took another sip of my coffee. “Damn straight.” The phone started to ring with Alexander’s number.

“Aren’t you going to pick that up?” Nadya asked me.

I shook my head and let it go to voice mail. “He’ll just yell some more.” The phone rang three more times. After it fell silent, I picked up and dialed.

“Owl.” Alexander’s voice strained with forced control.

“Hey asshole, you ready to deal yet?”

There was a sharp intake of air on his end. “What I should do is wring your neck and hand you over to a meaner vampire—”

“Wrong answer.” I went to hang up the phone, but Alexander stopped me.

“
Since
you leave me with no other choice, I will tell you what I know. She goes by the name Sabine, and she appeared on the vampire club scene roughly three months ago. She is old, older than I. She has a need for other vampires to help with daylight tasks. She also has a perverse pleasure in making the kind of human companions you saw.” He sniffed. “She uses them up quite quickly. Very distasteful.”

I rolled my eyes. Leave it to an aristocratic vampire to try and
justify making thralls. “
Right
. Controlling the doses you give your thralls somehow makes it all OK.”

Alexander ignored my snide comment. “Sabine approached me about an archaeological site in Romania. I connected her with an archaeologist I know, and we did some mutual business. She had a connection in Florida, and I had a buyer for Caribbean artifacts.”

Sebastian, Sabine’s old flunky. I’d jumped to the conclusion that he’d been selling forgeries, like the news articles had reported, but if he’d been selling pieces to Alexander, what were the chances he’d been running supernatural pieces? If the IAA had gotten wind, they would have made it look like forgeries. Same downward end to Sebastian, different and more complicated cause.

“So how did she become interested in Mr. Kurosawa’s egg?” I asked.

“I do not know. Initially her interest was mostly with you. She has a personal grudge. She approached me about it, since I have some knowledge of how you . . . work.”

“You mean you’ve been hunting me like a dog for the past year.”

“You always have to be so crass.”

“Get to the point. How’d she rope you into this mess after the truce? You’re slimy, but you aren’t stupid.”

“None of your business—”

“Ah, ah, ah—I’m going to start calling through the contacts, one by one, alphabetically. Tell me, who is Anajoulie? Is she important? ‘Cause I can give her a call—”

Alexander swore. “Through our dealings, Sabine uncovered how one of my elders met with the true death. The one from Ephesus I paid you to bring to Paris.” There was a hell of a lot of venom in his voice.

Shit. I’d have felt bad for Alexander—if he wasn’t evil. He’d hired me a year back, and at the time I’d had no idea he was a vampire—I’d just thought he was some hot, rich French kid obsessed with the occult and in possession of more money than sense. I really do suck at
spotting the supernatural. Maybe that’s why I keep bloody well tripping into it . . .

I’d had a sinking suspicion Alexander had lied to his bosses about what happened to the vampire I was supposed to deliver to Paris from Ephesus, the one I’d sent up in flames—accidently, I might add. I had no doubt the ancient vampire would remain “missing” until Alexander could drag me in, the proverbial lamb to slaughter. It’s a shame our working relationship had gone south after that, because his checks always cleared.

“Alexander, I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again. That was an accident. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to kill your Grand Poobah vampire. If I had known there was an actual real vampire in that case, I never would have opened it.”

“I told you explicitly it was a vampire—”

“And I thought you were nuts!” Actually, I’d thought there’d been treasure he’d been trying to hide from me. When someone tells a budding antiquities thief, “Don’t open a box, there’s a monster inside,” surprise, surprise, the first instinct is to open the box. “All right. So Sabine has you by the short and curlies. If she tells them you were responsible for the fuckup, they punish you.”

“It’s a far cry worse than punishment—”

I rolled my eyes again. There was that indignant tone I’d grown to hate. “
And
if they find out you’re working for a rogue vampire, you’re just as screwed.”

“
Correct
.”

I let out a breath. “All right, out of the goodness of my heart—and the fact that I feel really sorry just how pathetic you sound right now—I’m going to give you advice.”

He snorted. I continued anyways. “Either way, you guys are fucked. If you get out and Sabine keeps you going after me, my boss will find out, and either he’ll eat you or you’ll be on your boss’s hit list.
If
you get out and don’t work for Sabine, she’ll tell them exactly what happened to your Grand Poobah vampire.”

“
He was not a Grand Poobah—
”

“Then,
the Contingency will call you in for a ‘fate worse than death.’ ” I didn’t add that under those circumstances I’d still get off scot-free because the Contingency wouldn’t want to piss off Mr. Kurosawa. I have a remedial understanding of when to pull my punches. “Am I right?”

“Correct.”

“All right, so here’s my advice. Stay buried a few days. Say there was a cave-in and it’ll take some time to dig yourself out. I’d head upstairs though and grab Charles. A bit of good faith advice here, Sabine is making some twitchy thralls. I wouldn’t want to leave him with that girl too long.”

The other end was silent for a moment, then I heard, “An interesting assessment of my predicament.”

“You’re welcome.” I went to hang up the phone, but Alexander chimed in.

“A good faith piece of advice, Owl. Sabine has a rat in Tokyo. And, if you go back on your end of the deal, even one breath—”

He hung up.

“Son of a bitch.” I hate vampires; they always have to get the last word in.

Nadya caught my expression. She’d been listening the whole time over speakerphone. “You know who she is?” she said.

I shook my head. “I’ve got no clue, but I do know what she is. She’s an old vampire, older than Alexander. That puts her over three hundred, and she’s interested in antiquities, with at least a partial archaeology background.”

“You stepped on her toes,” Nadya said.

I nodded and pulled out my laptop. “All we have to do is go through my jobs list and figure out where we missed the supernatural clue. Once we find out what I took from her, maybe we can arrange some kind of barter—”

Nadya nodded. “At the very least we’ll be able to open a dialogue. It’s worth a shot.”

“Any dialogue is going through the dragon. You heard Alexander. Sabine is some kind of pheromone sadist, and coming from Alexander, that’s a new crazy kind of scary.” I turned my attention back on Bindi’s computer. “I’m hoping we can get something off this. I haven’t been able to crack into it yet. It’s got some pretty hefty encryption.”

Nadya opened the laptop and frowned at the start-up screen. “Let me take a look at it.”

“Be my guest. If you can’t get anywhere, I’ve got someone online who can do it, but they might be busy.” Or in jail.

She took the laptop into the club office and shut the door.

My phone rang.
DRAGON LADY
flashed across the screen. I swore and answered. “Lady Siyu? Good news. I’ve got copies of both the tablets. As soon as I get a translation up and running, I’ll be able to figure out more about this language and where to look next—”

“
Stop
.
Babbling
.”

I shut up and listened as she drew in a deep breath. “You are to be on a plane tomorrow afternoon back to Las Vegas. Oricho will meet you at the airport. You will
not
miss that plane. You will not make
any
changes to the reservation. If anything arises, you are to call myself or, preferably, Oricho immediately.
If
you do not follow these directions to the letter, you will have me to face, and you do not want to see me angry. Do I make myself clear?”

“Crystal.”

“Your travel arrangements are in your inbox,” she said, and hung up.

I finished my coffee and checked my email.

I opened the one from Oricho first. It was a warning that Lady Siyu wasn’t used to dealing with individuals who deviated from her plans, and also asked what my progress was. I drafted a quick letter and gave him a heads-up about Sabine and the translation. A minute later he replied, telling me that he would contact Rynn concerning my safety.

I’d have to have a talk with Oricho as soon as I touched down about keeping me in the loop on things like Rynn from now on.

I checked the clock. 11:00 a.m. Still plenty of time. I opened up my emails from Carpe next. There were four.

You’re late.

This isn’t funny.

OK, now I’m worried. There is some strange stuff going on with your account—get in touch.

Byzantine. Please call me when you get this.

This last one was followed by a phone number. I looked at it, trying to decide whether I wanted to break my World Quest tradition.

What the hell. Everything else had gone out the window lately. I dialed.

“Yeah, who is this?” The male voice that answered was familiar but lower than the one that came over the mic—lower than I’d expected for a computer geek—and slow, as if he’d just gotten out of bed. Shit, I probably should have checked the time zone.

“Hi, Carpe. Wow, so you’re actually a guy. What’s up?”

“Byzantine? Is that you?” The groggy tone vanished. His voice was hesitant; I’d say scared if there hadn’t been a confidence behind it.
Wary
might be the best description.

“Yeah. Listen, I hope I didn’t catch you at a bad time. Your message just said call.”

“It’s fine, I’m up.” A pause. “Your voice is different than I expected.”

Hmmm, maybe this hadn’t been such a good idea. “Look, Carpe, I just wanted to give you a shout and let you know I was OK—your message sounded worried . . . and you said something about my account . . .”

“Please don’t get me wrong. I just expected the voice of Owl the antiquities thief to be more . . . refined.”

I went cold. OK, calling strangers you meet over the internet is in fact a bad idea. “Nice talking to you. Bye.” And I hung up. And blocked his email address. I was about to block him on my World Quest chat, when my phone rang. Same area code, different number. I ignored it and fired off a chat message.
Leave me alone.

The phone in Nadya’s office rang next.

“Don’t answer it, Nadya,” I yelled.

“Yes, one moment,” I heard Nadya say.

Too late.

Nadya stuck her head out of the office, confused, phone in hand. She passed it to me, frowning. “It’s for you.”

I jumped off my barstool and grabbed it. “Look, I don’t know who you are or what you want—”

“Relax, will you. I’ve been watching your account since after you disappeared. I thought you would want to know about some strange worms being dropped in. I chased them down, but they were pretty high-tech—not cheap. When you didn’t get back to me, I did some searching. You cover your tracks pretty well. Tell your guy he needs to cover manually scanned reports and images better than he has.”