Tracking the Tempest (20 page)

“Ryu! This is important…”

Ryu came in from the kitchen, where he'd been ordering Thai food.

With another weird triumphant hoot that made both of us pause, I handed him the papers I'd pulled out of the files of each of Jimmu's victims. Ryu turned his body and leaned back on the edge of his desk while I avidly watched him read.

He went slowly through each piece of paper as my body thrummed with impatience. Finally, he looked up and shook his head ruefully.

“Jane, if I'd had any inclination you were such a genius, I would have gone right ahead and kidnapped you the first day we met.”

I blushed and then thought about what he'd just said. “Wait, what
did
you think of me the first time you met me?”

He laughed. “Honestly? I thought, ‘Nice rack,' and then, ‘
Really
nice rack.' In that exact order.”

I can live with that,
I thought, perversely pleased that he hadn't been thinking about the essence in my blood. Him having a moment of mammary elation seemed more… satisfying than him thinking of me in terms of feeding.

“Seriously, though, you are amazing. We would
never
have thought to look for this connection.”

“Well, you don't do human science,” I said. “Why would you think to look for what happened to the bodies?”

“It's so obvious, but so outside of our frame of reference,” Ryu acknowledged.

What Ryu and the others had failed to notice was that every single one of Jimmu's victims had their bodies donated to science. And none of them had been signed up to do so, until
right before
they were murdered.

“Here's my scenario,” I said, pulling out the piece of paper I'd been working on since we had gotten back to Ryu's and I'd seen “body donated to science” at the bottom of the first and second victims' autopsies. “We think, from what Morrigan said to me at the Compound, that someone floated to them the idea of using human science to figure out their fertility issues. It has to be someone close to the ruling pair, and who's closer than Jarl?”

“Jane—”

“Ryu, please just hear me out. You don't have to agree with everything I say, but hear me out.” After a few moments, he nodded. But he still looked unhappy.

“The next thing we know, we're discovering that Jarl's own second, Jimmu, has been murdering the halflings that Peter Jakes was sent out to catalog. Did you ever get an official reason for why Jakes was sent out?”

Ryu shrugged. “Orin and Morrigan don't answer to me, obviously. They did tell me that they were cataloging halflings to try to understand just how many there were in the Territory, how powerful they were, and why they hadn't been brought into the fold, so to speak.”

I thought hard, chewing on a hangnail as I stared at my jumbled notes.

“Well, what if they didn't really
have
a point to sending out Jakes? What if they did it just to placate Jarl? ” As I said it, it made sense. “Maybe they promised to act depending on what they found.”

Ryu nodded slowly. I knew he didn't like where I was heading, but I also knew Ryu loved a challenge, loved figuring out the games his brethren played with one another. He might not entirely believe what I was saying, but he might be willing to join in the fun of speculation.

“I'm not saying I believe you, yet, but if Jarl
was
the sponsor of that lab, he might even have given our monarchs the idea of using Jakes so that Jarl could take advantage of the situation. He'd have Jakes wandering around the country, cataloging halflings who weren't integrated into the community—which means they'd be weak, vulnerable, and off our radar.”

I nodded. “So Jimmu follows Jakes about until he leaves, and then Jimmu shows up and convinces the halflings to donate their bodies to science using his mojo. Once they've agreed, he later kills them. The bodies are funneled to a special laboratory. Either one Jarl's set up, or one that has some of his people on staff. Everything goes smoothly until Jakes realizes his catalog has become one of death, sees Jimmu hanging about, and puts two and two together. That's when Jimmu kills him.”

“How does Conleth fit in?”

I thought about that. “I don't see how he could be directly involved… except,” I said, getting excited again, “as an inspiration. Like I said, what if Jarl caught wind of some halfling rotting away in a human laboratory? He gets involved by taking over the lab. Later, he decides to expand operations.”

“Now you're just shooting yourself in the foot. If Conleth is the inspiration for Jarl, then why is he killing the halflings and using their bodies? Why not kidnap them and experiment on them like he's doing with Conleth?”

I frowned. That was a good point. But good points are like pencils; they wear down eventually.

“Well,” I replied, “let's think this through. First of all, Jarl already has a live halfling in his clutches. There are tons of experiments you can do only on living beings, presumably, but there
also
have to be tons of experiments you can do only on dead ones. Plus, look at all the resources it took to keep Con prisoner. There was, like, a full roster of employees running that lab, which must have been really expensive. Granted, Conleth is really powerful, but still. It's gotta be a pain in the ass to kidnap and hold people, right? Plus, most victims have friends or family or coworkers who notice when they go missing. But nobody notices a body funneled to a laboratory. They're already dead; you don't have to feed or guard them. As long as you don't get caught doing the murders—which you won't if you're a super-ninja magical snake-man trained to sneak and kill—it's sort of a perfect way to get test subjects, isn't it?”

“I've thought of something else,” Ryu said, after a second. I could tell he was nervous about voicing too much support of my idea, but, again, he liked playing the game. “We only know of the murders because Jimmu got sloppy and was caught by Jakes. If he hadn't murdered Jakes, we would never have known what the nagas were doing. What if there have been other kidnappings, or deaths, but they've not been discovered or connected?”

I shuddered, horrified at that thought. And yet, at the same time, part of me was excited at everything we'd speculated on. It wasn't nice, or pretty, but I'd always thought there was more to Jimmu's murders. So we might not have every detail correct, but what we'd talked about made a lot of sense, on a lot of levels. That said, I could tell Ryu was about to try to throw down the old kibosh.

“It's a good theory,” he said, using his “but” voice. “But we've only got proof of
Jimmu's
involvement. And it all could
still
be a really freakish coincidence. I admit, what you're theorizing does have some… merit. But we
would need real, concrete, irrefutable proof before accusing Jarl of anything.”

“I know,” I said, employing my
own
“but” voice. “But at least it's something. A connection. Even if we can't prove anything,
we
need to know who the real enemy is.”

What I left unsaid was my belief that the real enemy was Jarl. And what Ryu left unsaid was that he was unconvinced I was right. So we were at another impasse.

“If you are right, then the question is, Are there other laboratories? And where?” Ryu asked gently. My stomach dropped as he continued. “And what are they working on now if they're no longer getting bodies from Jimmu?”

“Shit,” I murmured as I realized the implications of Ryu's words. If Jarl had lost Con, been foiled in his use of halfling cadavers for experiments,
and
he wasn't the type to give up, I didn't want to ponder the evils to which he'd graduated.

“Yup.”

“Not good.”

“No.”

I was beginning to realize that this investigation was bigger than Conleth—and probably bigger than anything Ryu and I could imagine.

And I so did
not
want to get caught up in it.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

W
hen Anyan, Daoud, Camille, and Julian trooped in, Ryu got right down to business. He explained to everyone what we'd just found, but he didn't yet go into what we'd hypothesized. He probably wanted to see what conclusions they came up with on their own.

That's when I noticed the business-card holder. Supes didn't have last names; they just went by their factions, and so I was curious what Ryu used in his human incarnation. My eyes bulged when I read it.

“Ryu T. Tootie?” I demanded, but Ryu ignored me.

“Ryu T. Tootie?” I repeated, walking over to poke him in the stomach. “Are you serious? Tell me these are a joke.”

Ryu glowered at Daoud. “I lost a bet. For the next twenty years, I have to go by Ryu T. Tootie.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

I eyeballed Daoud, appraisingly. “That was a good bet,” I said.

Daoud inclined his dark head toward me, his dimples winking as he grinned. “Thank you. It
was
fairly inspired.”

“Ryu, this says you're a ‘private consultant.’”

“Yeah,” Ryu responded. “I always use ‘consultant.' It's perfect: vaguely meaningless, yet redolent of money.”

“I tried to get him to put ‘privates consultant,' plural, but it wasn't in the parameters of the original bet,” Daoud informed me, his voice serious, until we met each other's eyes and burst out laughing.

“Shit, is he gonna start charging me?” I started to joke with Daoud, but I was cut off by Anyan clearing his throat from where he was leaning against the doorway. He clearly wanted to put us back to the task at hand, but he also looked really grossed out by our banter.

Suddenly, I realized why. It explained why the barghest was always so gentle with me, why he'd done so much for me.

He'd known me all my life, seen me grow up. He'd probably been introduced to me as a baby, by my mother. I'd probably pulled his ears and drooled on his tail. When he was a dog, obviously. No wonder he looked uncomfortable.

He still saw me as a little girl.

And, to him, I
was
a child. I didn't know how old he was, but I knew he was older than Ryu, who was two hundred and seventy in human years. I don't know how the supes calculated their ages, but Ryu was
just
old enough to be taken seriously. In human years, he was probably the equivalent of, say, a thirty-year-old. Anyan was a whole different story. I had the impression he wasn't vastly older than Ryu, but that Anyan had lived just that much longer, during times that were just that much more interesting, to make a huge difference in terms of experience.

Not to mention, he was probably like a million and two in dog years.

So no wonder he didn't want to hear suggestions about my sex life with Ryu.

That said, I wasn't a little girl anymore, and I hadn't been since I held Jason's cold face in my hands and tried to kiss him back to life. And Anyan, along with all the other supes, needed to understand that I might be young by their standards, but I was no child.

Now I just had to figure out how to prove it to them. Partly so I could convince them that Jarl was a genuine threat, something no one but Anyan seemed to believe.

I came back to attention as Camille outlined what she thought our discovery meant.

“Either this is all coincidence, which I doubt, or Jimmu was murdering these halflings in order to stock laboratories.” Ryu nodded, clearly wanting more.

“But why?” she asked. “And where are these labs, and who was running them?” she continued.

Julian spoke before either Ryu or I could.

“ ‘Why' is relatively straightforward, Mother. Humans can do all sorts of experiments on tissues and organs. But they're tissues and organs you need to live, so…”

“Ah,” Camille said, nodding at her son. “Of course.”

Ryu nodded. “And as for your other questions, we have no idea. Julian can begin tracing those records as soon as possible. But something tells me we're going to find the same sort of shell organizations that ran Conleth's lab.”

“Basically, then, what you're saying is that there may be a connection between whoever took over the running of Conleth's lab and these other labs, if they exist,” Caleb rumbled in his bass voice from across the table.

Ryu nodded. I noticed that no one had yet said the name “Jarl.” Interesting.

As if reading my mind, Anyan spoke from the half-shadows of the doorframe.

“The real question is, how much did Jarl know about his nagas' activities.”

“Exactly,” I said, as Ryu winced.

“We can't assume that Jarl is involved,” Ryu insisted. “We do need to keep an eye on him, yes. But we can't assume he's this sponsor.”

Everyone at the table exchanged glances. I knew that all the supes didn't want Jarl involved. It made everything too big, too portentous. But I could also see the suspicion in their eyes. They trusted their king's second little more than I did.

“Phaedra and her group's presence here does seem…
odd,” Julian said, as he cleaned his glasses nervously.

“But the Alfar did save Jane last night,” Daoud pointed out.

“There will be no love lost between Jane and Jarl, or Jarl's minions,” Anyan interrupted, touching on the secret he and I shared: that Jarl had attacked me and that he blamed me for his foster children's deaths. I looked to the barghest, but his eyes were shadowed. Was he intimating that we should tell Ryu what had happened?

“At this point, we need to trust Phaedra,” Ryu said. “Capturing Conleth has to be our first priority. And Daoud's right; she did save Jane.”

I'd seen the look on Phaedra's face, like she'd been surprised to find me under the tree. I wasn't entirely convinced she'd saved
me
so much as she'd reflexively stopped the tree.

“We'd be fools to trust the Alfar,” Anyan said, moving into the light. “Or any of their suggestions. And I've been told what she
has
suggested, Ryu, and the answer is no.”

Ryu straightened up, setting his shoulders. I had no idea what was going on, but I got the distinct impression that everybody else was suddenly studiously avoiding meeting my eyes.

“I wasn't going to bring that up until I could talk to Jane in private,” Ryu said to the barghest, his voice low and angry.

“Because you knew she would agree before anyone else could talk sense into her. But I will not put her life in Phaedra's hands.”

The two men were facing one another, and the energy generated by their shields was so intense it was practically sparking. It was going to be like the showdown at the O.K. Corral in a minute.

“C'mon, both of you,” I said, standing up and putting myself between the barghest and baobhan sith. “This obviously involves me, so spit it out. What did Phaedra suggest, and why don't you want me to know about it?”

Anyan raised an eyebrow at Ryu, who turned toward me with a sigh. “Phaedra has suggested we use you to trap Conleth, Jane. That we take advantage of his obsession with you, and use you as bait.”

“Wow,” I replied, as Anyan growled. Like, really growled. I didn't realize he could still do that in human form.

“Okay,” I said, turning toward the barghest. “This is complicated.”

“It's out of the question, Jane,” Anyan said. “We can't allow this. You
know
we can't trust Phaedra—”

Ryu interrupted by rounding off on Anyan.

“There's nothing to
allow
, Anyan. Jane'll be up for it. I
know
her. Far better than you do.”

“Of
course
she'll do it; that's not the point.” Anyan was furious; he was snarling again. Meanwhile, I was getting tired of being discussed in the third person. “The point is that she could get killed. She's strong but she has no offensive training. Yet you keep thrusting her into these situations where she can't defend herself.”

“She's got to learn, Anyan. You'd keep her in Rockabill playing with gnomes for the rest of her life.”

“I wouldn't ‘keep' her anywhere. She's living her life. Training. Learning. She'll be stronger than either of us one day. But she's not going to live long enough to get there if you don't stop playing your stupid games.”

“Damn it, Anyan!” I shouted, fed up with their fighting. The fact was that they were having two different conversations. Anyan was talking with me about our Jarl secret, while Ryu thought we were talking about Phaedra and Conleth. We were getting nowhere fast, and I was tired of being argued
about
rather than
with
. “Ryu, stop! Right now. This is pointless.”

I looked between the two men and shook my head. This was gonna suck.

But the truth will come out,
my brain reminded me as I asked if we three could be left alone.

Everyone obligingly filed out of the office and then out the front door. Anyan, Ryu, and I followed them into the main room. After I'd locked the main door behind everyone, Anyan immediately started arguing.

“Jane, I know you want to help, but this is too dangerous.” If I didn't know better, I'd think the barghest was begging.

“I know you want us all safe, but this is not about me,” I replied, keeping my voice calm and collected. “I know that, in terms of experience and ability, I'm the weakest link. But I'm also our best chance. I don't want to rule out the idea of using me to trap Conleth. As long as he's out there killing, then
we're
responsible for all those deaths.”

“I get that, Jane. I know.” The barghest was barely holding his frustration in check, and his long nose was twitching like crazy. “But think about what you're saying. You're asking me to sit back while you walk into a trap set by
Phaedra
. Don't forget who she works for.”

Anyan and I stared at each other in a silence broken only by Ryu clearing his throat.

“I really don't understand why you're
so
opposed to this, Anyan,” he said.

I looked at my lover and then looked at the barghest. He nodded. We had to tell Ryu what had happened all those months ago.

“Ryu, we have to tell you something, but you can't freak out.”

Ryu blinked at me in surprise. He thought he knew all my secrets, and he did. Except for this one.

He was
so
going to freak out.

“What on earth could you have to tell me?”

I looked at Anyan. He shrugged his massive shoulders, letting me know he was willing to take one for the team. But this was definitely my cross to bear.

“Something happened when I was at the Compound last November. And I didn't tell you about it because if I'd told you, you would have gone loco and gotten yourself killed.”

Ryu's eyes narrowed, but he waited for me to continue. I took a deep breath.

“Remember when Jimmu killed that man Nyx had brought for supper, and was about to kill me, but you jumped on Jimmu?” I could barely follow what I had just said, but Ryu nodded.

“Well, I ran down this hallway.”

“And?”

“And Jarl caught me. He tried to kill me. He was saying all this stuff about how it was all my fault and I'd killed Jimmu. He was strangling me. Anyan hauled him off.”

Ryu's fists clenched, and he stared like I'd been caught shagging a football team and the photos would be in tomorrow's tabloids.

“I was pretty beat up. Anyan took me out to the pool to heal me, where you found us.”

“And you didn't tell me?”

“I couldn't, Ryu.” It was my turn to plead. He had to understand. “You're an investigator; you go after the bad guys. I know you would have tried to take on Jarl. And who am I to them? They would never have believed me.”

“They would have believed Anyan Barghest,” Ryu said, a bitter edge to his voice.

“Not in this,” Anyan responded gently. “You know this would have been too big.”

Ryu sat quietly, while I fidgeted.

“
You
took on Jarl,” he said finally, but not to me.

Anyan shrugged. “He wasn't expecting me. And he was distracted. He
really
wanted to see Jane dead. Which is why I think this is such a bad idea. Phaedra is Jarl's second, now that Jimmu's gone. You know how she resented the nagas, how she did whatever she could to gain Jarl's favor. Even if she wasn't ordered to get revenge, which I think she probably was, she's got to see killing Jane as a free ticket to Jarl's affections. So even if Jarl hasn't actually ordered her to try to kill Jane, Jane is
still
not safe around her.”

Ryu stayed silent. He was staring at me again. I flushed, squirming beneath the accusatory weight of his gaze.

“You're right, Anyan,” he said finally, in a heavy voice. “We shouldn't risk Phaedra's trap except as an absolute last resort.”

Oh, gods,
I thought.
Why does he have to be all reasonable about this?
I wanted Ryu angry, arguing, not sounding like…

Like I've just stuck a dagger in his heart,
I realized.

“Babe,” I said, “I'm willing to do it. I am. We can keep an eye on Phaedra. We can make sure she doesn't pull anything—”

“I know, Jane,” Ryu said, not meeting my eyes. “I know you're willing. But only as a last resort. And in the meantime, we should keep you away from Phaedra—”