Tony Pulcella was waiting on her doorstep when she got home.

Margrit slowed halfway up the block, unexpected cheer from the woman’s comment fading as she saw the detective. There was nothing she could say that would satisfy him. For a moment she looked around for an escape route, but by the time she looked back, he’d seen her and was rising to dust off his pants. Margrit sighed and joined him, itchingly aware she was still grimy from the encounter at the warehouse.

Tony looked exhausted, though he was cleaner than Margrit. For a moment they stood there looking at one another, before Margrit shrugged and tilted her head at the building’s front door. “Want to come up?”

He nodded silently and Margrit opened the door, and, out of consideration for his weariness, took the elevator to the fifth floor, neither of them speaking until they’d entered Margrit’s apartment. Then Tony said, “You’re okay,” and, “You know where he is,” as though the two comments—not, Margrit noticed, questions—were related.

“I’m fine. You look like hell.” Margrit toed her shoes off and padded into the kitchen to open the fridge so she could offer Tony a Coke. He accepted and drained it without speaking, then turned an expectant gaze back onto Margrit, who shrugged and addressed the other half of what he’d said. “I know he’s down below the city. I doubt I could find where he’s staying. I’m not much help there. Sorry.”

“How long’ve you known?”

“This is the first time I’ve seen him since you raided the House.” Both true and evasive, the same kind of answer she’d been giving Tony since she’d first encountered the Old Races. He’d been more than right to make a final break in their relationship. Margrit released her hair from its bonds and scratched her hands through it.

“So what were you doing there this morning?”

“Cara Delaney was hurt in a fight down there yesterday. She asked me to go reassure her people. I had no idea Janx would be there.” That, at least, was true.

“And you left with him because…?”

The corner of Margrit’s mouth turned up. “Because I didn’t want to sit through the third degree, I guess.” She hesitated, then admitted, “Because I figured you’d cover for me.”

“So you did see me.” Neither surprise nor anger colored Tony’s voice, cool professionalism in place instead. Regardless, recrimination stung Margrit as she nodded. “I thought you had. You’re right. I did cover for you. Maybe you can tell me why.”

Margrit drew breath to answer and Tony held up a palm, stopping her. “Better yet, maybe you can tell me why damned near every security camera we’ve found dockside is fritzed out and why on the handful that aren’t, the images are smeared.”

“Smeared?”

“Like in the cameras from the Blue Room.”

“Oh.” Vivid memory played up as though she watched the videos again. Pixels had stretched and distorted behind Alban, making shadows when nothing was there. Only later had she realized that the camera had picked up some hint of Alban’s true shape, and that she had been looking at his obscured wings. Janx would presumably generate such a blur of raw pixels that the man at their center would be rendered completely invisible. Then curiosity straightened her spine. Daisani did regular television interviews, and Kaimana Kaaiai had been filmed, neither of them with the distortion she’d seen in the dance-club camera recordings. She would have to ask the vampire how that was. Maybe something to do with converted mass. Though she’d only seen a baby selkie transform, Deirdre Delaney’s size had seemed comparable in both shapes. Perhaps vampires and selkies had less to hide, so to speak.

“You going to share that thought with me?” Tony folded his arms over his chest, brown eyes dark with anticipation of disappointment. Margrit’s answer caught in her throat and Tony’s expression shuttered further. “You said al-Massrī could disrupt electronics, Grit.”

Margrit tilted her head back, swallowed and reversed her gaze. “He could. He had one of those weird electric fields you read about. He fritzed my cell phone out.”

“That’s not what you said.”

“Oh, come on, Tony, I said a lot of crap that night. I was upset.” In frustration on both her own behalf and Tony’s, she’d laid out the alliances and natures of a group of gathered Old Races amongst whom she and Tony had been the only humans. That every word she’d spoken had been true made no difference in Tony’s ability to believe her.

Tony shook his head. “You think fast, Grit, and I know you’re a good liar. But you’ve never made things up.”

Margrit eyed him. “Isn’t that what lying is?”

Sour humor quirked his mouth. “Technically, yeah, but I’m talking about the kinds of things you said that night. Dragons and vampires. That’s not the kind of lying you do.”

Alarm rooted Margrit to the floor, making her feel heavy. Tony was right: it wasn’t the kind of story she told, but she’d never dreamed he might invest himself in considering that. Pursuing what she’d said in a moment’s heat could far too easily cost the detective his life. “So I was telling the truth? Tony, that puts at least one of us up for some new and exciting kind of lunacy charges.”

“Does it?” He studied her for long moments, eyebrows drawn down before he sighed, shrugged and looked away. “I guess it does. But there’s something wrong when you spouting fairy tales is the only way to make sense of anything, Grit. I want to know what’s going on, and you’re the only piece I’ve got access to.”

“So why aren’t you arresting me for obstruction of justice?”

Tony’s mouth soured further. “Because you’re about to go work for Eliseo Daisani and there’s no point. He’d get you walked out of there and the stupid son of a bitch who walked you in would be busted to traffic duty for the rest of his career.”

“I wouldn’t let him do that.”

“You volunteering to be arrested?”

Margrit ducked her head. “Not when you put it that way.”

“So help me out here. Anything. There’s got to be something.”

“Nothing that’s going to help you understand.” Margrit pressed her lips together. “But if things haven’t settled down at the docks in forty-eight hours, I’ll give you everything you need to settle it yourself.”

Tension lanced through the detective, bringing him to attention. “Like you handed me Janx’s bust?”

Margrit wrinkled her face, unwilling to argue her place in the House of Cards’s downfall. “A little like that.”

“If you can do that, Grit, why not do it now? Why wait another two days? People are getting killed out there.”

“Because I made a promise.” Margrit winced again, far too aware of how little weight her promises carried with Tony now. “It’s the best I can do.”

Tony, jaw knotted, turned toward the door. “Fine. Two days. Just remember, any deaths between now and then are on your head.”

CHAPTER 12

A careful study of the calendar told Margrit it was Thursday afternoon. She’d gotten up at four in the morning on Wednesday and hadn’t gotten any meaningful sleep since. She thought regretfully of the calendar her coworkers had made, with only nine or ten hours left on it. Responsibility told her to go in to work, to do what little she could, but instead, burdened more by Tony’s curse than fatigue, she showered and crawled into bed.

She woke up what felt like only minutes later when her phone blared. Feeling unexpectedly invigorated, she glanced toward the clock, discovering it was after seven, and answered the phone to hear Daisani, with a hint of Bela Lugosi in his voice, say, “Good evening.”

Margrit laughed. “Are you drinking, Mr. Daisani? Never mind. What’s up?”

Daisani was silent a moment before saying, “You recall how you accused me of showing off, Margrit?”

“I do.” Margrit threw the covers back and climbed out of bed to look for running gear. “You said it wasn’t that hard to resist, most of the time.”