“You mean those two who just left?” Falk raised his brows. “Because I got it from one of their colleagues that they’d rather kill Jason than chance him falling into Greine’s grasp. So you’d be doing him no kindness there. Or did you mean that you tried to sell him back to the mother who hid him away in the first place?”

Phipps pulled a pained face that made Jason want to slap him. “It wasn’t as if I were spoiled for choices, was I? I contacted the princess first but heard nothing back. Then I found out that she’d been locked away, sleeping in a tower for the last decade. Shortly after that I was approached by that gruesome brownie about locating the Stone of Fal…And, well, I’d already located it, hadn’t I?”

“I—” Jason barely caught himself; he felt so betrayed—and not just by Phipps but also by his revelations. By the fact that some tyrant had claim over him as his father while the man Jason had known and loved…Jason didn’t even know who he had been. And his mother— if possible, he knew even less of her.

“I read that Jason Shamir had only been working for you for seven weeks,” Jason ground out. “Did you start looking for buyers the minute you hired him, you ghoul?”

“Yes. I knew he was something rare and valuable the moment I laid eyes on him and such commodities are what I deal in.” Phipps drew himself up straight as though there was some dignity to be claimed by the admission. He narrowed his gray eyes at Jason. “But don’t pretend that you Irregulars are just going to pat that boy on the head and turn him over to his daddy. We all know that’s not the case. Your people want the stone just as badly as anyone. Unless Cethur Greine acts very fast, your so-called Research and Development people will have carved the stone out and slapped together some zombie patch job to fob off on him.” Phipps sneered at Jason. “You Irregulars like to claim that you’re defending us all from ourselves, but isn’t it just so convenient that to do so you have to seize every talisman and charm you can impound?”

Jason fought to maintain a neutral expression. He didn’t know anything about the Irregulars as an organization, but he trusted Falk and didn’t believe Phipps.

Falk scowled but denied nothing.

“For all you know I’ve done the boy a favor.” Phipps took another drink. “At least his own father might not be quite so keen to strip him to the bone.”

At that, Falk gave a derisive snort.

“Yeah, Greine’s well known for his decency and compassion,” Falk replied.

Phipps shrugged, but something like melancholy showed in his expression. He took another slow, measured drink from the tin cup.

“I would have preferred it if Jason had ended up with his mother,” Phipps admitted. “I did like the boy, actually. He was the best employee I ever had.”

Jason glared at Phipps. Clearly he hadn’t liked him enough to resist the temptation to sell him.

“You’re such a hypocrite,” Jason snapped. “You auction someone off to the highest bidder and then sit around looking morose and making accusations about other people’s evil intentions! What utter bullshit!”

“I did what I could for him,” Phipps snapped back. “But it wasn’t as if I could have kept him a secret! That anonymity spell placed on him may have hidden him through his childhood, but it wasn’t going to last much longer. And especially not if he kept singing. I could see it wearing away day by day. In a week’s time it would have burned out completely. In place of a plain-faced nobody for an employee, I would’ve had a shining sidhe prince working my till and enchanting half the city with his songs. How long do you think it would have taken the revolutionaries or Greine to notice him after that?”

“Who knows,” Henry answered. “But you didn’t try, did you?”

“Oh, go to hell,” Phipps replied. He glowered between the two of them, lifted his cup, and then set it down without drinking. “I did try, actually. Not that it’s any of your damn business.” Phipps sounded almost defeated. “The day after he started working for me I cast a second anonymity spell over him. It should have lasted three years, but he seared through it like a flame through paraffin. An hour after I cast it, the spell had burned off. Even if I’d decided to, I couldn’t have kept him.”

“I’m pretty sure he wasn’t meant to be kept,” Falk replied. “Did you provide Greine with means to verify Jason’s paternity?”

“Blood. He cut his hand once while restringing a harp for me. I lent him my kerchief but didn’t wash it afterwards. Blood like his always has a use.”

Jason remembered that afternoon. At the time he’d been embarrassed about letting his hand slip and then bleeding all over Mr. Phipps’s work table. He’d also been touched by Phipps’s concern for him.

God, he’d been a pathetic sucker.

He had to look away from Phipps’s self-satisfied face to keep from giving this whole charade away with a furious tirade of obscenities and accusations.

Not that he wanted to keep standing here, listening to Phipps recount all the ways he’d been deceived and used. What an idiot he’d been. What a fucking idiot.

He didn’t want to stay in this dank little room one more minute.

He stole a quick glance to Falk only to catch Falk considering him in return. Whatever Falk read in his expression, it seemed to displease him. He dropped his flask back into one of his deep pockets and stood.

“I think that’s about all we need to know for now,” Falk told Phipps. “Can’t say it’s been a pleasure, but you were certainly informative.”

Phipps gave a wave of his hand as if he were shooing away flies.

“Don’t let the door hit you on the way out,” he replied.

Falk smiled and replied, “If I were you I’d be more worried about trolls hitting me on their way in.”

***

Henry saw it coming, though it impressed him that Jason got all the way to the Elysian Fields before he blew his lid. He possessed a remarkable level of restraint for such a young man, particularly one of sidhe heritage.

Though right this moment he looked mad enough to chew nails and spit rivets. The muscles of his jaw worked like flexing fists.

He kept silent and still while Henry called the glamour of Agent August’s guise off him; Henry drew the illusion into his own lungs like he was taking a deep drag from a clove cigarette. He swallowed the slight burn, tasting both the sting of faerie dust and the natural spice of Jason’s body.

Watching Jason as the glamour receded, Henry wondered how he’d previously failed to notice the subtle bronze luster of his skin or the gold gleaming through his dark eyes. The anonymity spell shielding Jason must have once been truly powerful to render such a presence unremarkable.

But Phipps hadn’t been lying about the speed at which the spell was degrading. Little to none of it would be left by the day’s end.

Even scowling and bristling with anger, an unearthly grace permeated Jason’s motions. The hint of a hot, sweet spice perfumed the air around him.

Jason shoved his battered glasses into the pocket of his red sweat jacket and then wheeled back from Henry, scattering the creamy white butterflies fluttering on the flowers all around them.

“That son of a bitch!” Jason kicked at the ground hard. Clods of soil and miniature lilacs went flying. “Just sitting there looking sorry for himself while he fed us that bullshit about how much it pained him to sell me out! Literally—fucking—sell me out!”

Henry kept his trap shut. No doubt, Jason had been screwed over. Offering him some lip service about how things could have been worse or counseling him to take a philosophical view would only further insult his justifiable anger.

He had a right to blow off some steam. In his position Henry would have probably loaded a pistol and blown off much more.

“And this Greine asshole is not my father!” Jason growled. “I don’t give a shit what some blood test says. My father was Levi Shamir—the man who raised me. The man who died—” Jason’s voice broke and he sent another clump of earth and flowers sailing through the air. “I don’t care if he wasn’t my biological father. He loved me and that’s all that matters.”