11

DIGRESSION IS THE BETTER PART OF VALOR

As part of his ongoing campaign to make us more manageable, Simon wanted to split up my group. “I’ve given you some names related to the transformees to check out, Charming. You and Kasia and Mr. Childers can start doing whatever it is you think you can do that normal knights can’t. I want to take Sig and the holy woman with me.”

Hard, swift-moving men in nondescript clothing had finished securing prisoners into the box truck. It looked like the inside of the truck bay had side rails with manacles looped around them, with some items hanging on the walls that belonged in a hardware store or an S&M parlor. An interrogation room on wheels. Did I mention that I don’t like Simon?

Several young males—maybe squires—dressed like tag artists were covering blood spatters on the pavement and walls by spray-painting over them. Sometime in the next day or two, another team of Templars would come in and use the graffiti as an excuse to sandblast the pavement and walls. One of the spike strips was hissing and winding over the pavement while someone in a boiler room reeled it in. It was time to get out of there.

Sig is more used to working with others than I am, and she said, “I don’t like it either, John, but I really do think Simon wants to get this over with as fast as he can, and me checking things out with my gift makes sense. Separating Kasia and me and you and Simon does too. You wasting time hanging around just to protect me and Molly doesn’t.”

As if to rub salt in my suspicions, Simon was exaggeratedly polite when he added, “This isn’t a conspiracy, John. Molly is an exorcist. Sig is a medium. You and Kasia are hunters. I’m just trying to utilize each of you the way that you’re best suited for.”

The problem was, utilize is just a polite way of saying use. Sig had her own reservations. I think she didn’t want Kasia running around unsupervised, and she didn’t like me partnering with Kasia, and she didn’t trust anyone else to handle her. At any rate, Sig tilted her chin at Kasia: “Kasia has a kind of honor, John. But if her job is to screw you over for Simon, she’ll lie, cheat, steal, torture, and kill to do it.”

Neither Simon nor Kasia seemed offended by this warning. In fact, Kasia gave a half-nod.

“Good to know,” I told Sig. “Meet me by seven at the contact point we had the last time we were in New York. Or at least let me know why you can’t.”

Sig held out a fist for me to bump, and I obliged. “I won’t tell you to be careful,” she said. “But keep surviving.”

“Sounds like an ’80s song,” I said.

“For God’s sake, don’t sing.”

When my group got to the van, I held the front passenger door open for Kasia. She accepted the courtesy with a tilt of her chin and a faint smirk. Maybe she realized that it was my way of making sure she didn’t try to sit behind me.

The inside of the van was a little too heated in more ways than one. The thin pants I had borrowed from Simon didn’t offer much insulation from the hot plastic seat cover, and I felt as if I were getting the backs of my thighs grilled. The mood was a bit uncomfortable too. Maybe it was because there were only three of us now, or maybe it was because the adrenaline was wearing off, or maybe it was because we were back in a familiar environment and it made the crazy stand out, but it was suddenly obvious how odd and awkward Kasia’s presence was. Choo turned on the AC and his police scanner.

I called Sarah White. “I want to see you, but I’ve got a dhampir who works for the kresniks with me, and I can’t guarantee she won’t tell the Templars about you.”

Sarah wasn’t thrilled by this information. “What’s going on?”

I told her some of the basics.

“Goddess,” Sarah said.

I guess that about summed it up. “She’s not a psychic, if that helps. The dhampir, I mean.”

“Go ahead and bring her along.” And then Sarah told me how to find her. It was a little complicated.

“Are we going to check out the names on Simon’s list?” Kasia asked.

“I want to make a stop first.”

“You seem to think you are in charge of our little trio here.” Kasia drummed her nails on the dashboard. Maybe it wasn’t a coincidence that this positioned her to lash out with her elbow. “I did not agree to that.”

Meaning part of her job was to keep me coloring inside the lines.

“Are you working for the kresniks or Simon?” I asked.

“The kresniks do not give me rules.” Kasia sounded amused at the thought. “They give me money and objectives, in that order.”

“So, what’s your objective?”

“To keep whatever is happening here from getting worse. That means working with Simon. It might even mean working with Sigourney. It does not mean letting male egos and alpha-male bullshit slow me down.”

“Fair enough,” I said. “But sometimes, you have to take time to save time.”

“That is true,” Kasia agreed. “But only because you said sometimes. I will need something less vague, or we can stop the van and settle this outside.”

That sounded pretty tempting after watching her mess with Sig, and I knew Kasia could smell the desire to fight coming off me, but we weren’t wolves establishing dominance. I doubted Kasia would handle losing well, and I knew I wouldn’t. And one of us would have to lose. Even if I killed her, I’d just wind up on the kresniks’ shit list again. The only reason they hadn’t come after me after I killed Stanislav Dvornik was that the knights were taking care of it at the time.

So I strung together an argument. “The assumptions we make at the beginning of a search do more than anything else to define its outcome. There are probably a thousand knights running around this city right now, and they’re all working on the same basic set of assumptions that Simon just gave us. The person I want to see might be able to give us a different perspective on what’s happening and how it’s happening.”

“He’s saying it’s a party, and everybody is bringing lasagna and Jell-O,” Choo put in. “We want to get some banana pudding.”

“Yes, thank you for explaining that to me.” Kasia put her elbow away and things went awkward and quiet again, which was okay by me. Silences are a good way to get people talking, and I wanted Kasia to show some more of her cards. Unfortunately, she didn’t mind the silence either.

It was Choo who finally asked Kasia, “So, you’re still holding a grudge against Sig after all this time, huh?”

“Do not be so dramatic.” Kasia settled back into her seat without explaining what that meant.

“I hadn’t been surrounded by dudes with guns and bad attitudes back there, you’d have seen dramatic,” Choo grumbled.

I put it mildly: “I didn’t like the way things went down back there either.”

Choo’s laugh was bitter. “Yeah, but at least you got an invitation to that party I was talking about.”

Huh. “What do you mean?”

“This Simon only wants me along so he can get his hands on the rest of you,” Choo said. “I don’t like being a token.”

“I don’t think it’s about ethnicity with Simon,” I said.

Choo smiled without humor. “It’s not always a black thing.” Then Choo looked at Kasia. “Even if I am stuck here driving Miss Crazy.”

“Simon uses people like tools,” I said. “He probably doesn’t think you can do anything for him that his knights can’t do better.”

“Isn’t that true?” Kasia drawled, again not putting much emphasis into it.

Choo gave her a glare, but it was only mildly hot, not extra spicy. Kasia was baiting him, and Choo’s not stupid.

“Maybe for Simon,” I said. “Simon already has access to all the weapons he needs. But Choo isn’t just a weapon supplier. He’s an innovator. He’s also someone I trust.”

“Ah,” Kasia said dismissively. Maybe she saw trust as a liability.

“John keeps me from being outnumbered by the women too,” Choo commented.

I wasn’t sure why Choo felt a need to say that. Trying to make sense out of another man’s behavior when his pride has been stung is problematic at best. Trying to make sense of his behavior around an attractive woman assumes that there’s sense to be made. Trying to figure out his behavior under both those conditions? Forget about it.

Kasia took the comment as sexist, at any rate. “Men talk about being logical and unemotional, but even the softest woman has to make decisions every day that would shrivel a man’s testicles.”

“It’s true,” I told Choo. “Would you say I’m a spring or an autumn?”

Kasia directed a scornful glance at me over her shoulder. “It is too late to act stupid. I have been listening to you.”

“That was your first mistake,” I said.

“Yeah, and it’s a doozy,” Choo chipped in. “I made it too, and I’ve had to listen to him ever since.”

Kasia made a scoffing sound. “Words, words, words.” Was that a Hamlet reference or a coincidence? “You act like a fool, but I think you are more like a doctor, tapping and poking away at people’s reflexes and tender points to see where they kick and twitch.” She took her index finger and jabbed it at the dashboard of the van several times. “Poke. Poke. Poke. You will have to do better than that to sound me out.” Then she smirked. “Or try to poke me with something bigger.”

Yeah, right. Like her “penis flytrap” routine wasn’t at least half an act too. I looked at Kasia and thought about how she wanted to hurt Sig, and the idea of it traveled through my entire body like ice water. “Just so we’re clear, I’m not interested in being your revenge sex.”

Kasia aimed a flawlessly plucked eyebrow at me, then returned her eyes to the road. “Never is a long time for people like us.”

Choo intervened. “I thought you were pissed off about Stanislav.”

Kasia shrugged one bare, sleek shoulder. “Pissed off is not the right way to put it.”

“You seem to speak English pretty well,” I nudged. “Put it another way.”

This time she didn’t smile, ironically or otherwise. “I speak English better than most Americans, but it does not have enough words for complicated emotions. The Brits think those are best left unspoken, and you Americans like to pretend everything is simple.”

“All right, all right,” Choo said. “But you didn’t go to Clayburg to check out Sig because you were in a good mood.”

Kasia smiled faintly. “That is true. It does not mean I am one of your cartoon supervillains.”

“Are you sure about that?” I challenged. “You wanted to have the obligatory pointless fight scene a moment ago.”

Kasia moved that shoulder again. It was a nice shoulder, and I didn’t want to notice stuff like that. “Fighting is how I poke.”

I leaned forward in my seat. “How about we take an am-I-a-supervillain quiz? True or false: I got superhuman strength from a lab accident or brush with the supernatural.”

This time Kasia didn’t bother to look at me. “Ha-ha.”

“We’ll count that as true,” I said. “True or false: My idea of anger management is making sure that everyone who ever laughed at me writhes in unspeakable torment for the rest of their pathetic little lives.”

Choo cracked up in his mouth a little bit, and Kasia finally decided that talking was better than listening to me. “There are not many things that I still have strong feelings about, bad or good. Stanislav is one of them.”

“And the feelings are bad and good?”

“Most of my strong feelings are,” she said. “I want to know why Stanislav died. I want to know why Sig is sleeping with the man who killed him. I want to know if I am obligated to kill any of you for old times’ sake when this is all over.”

Choo grunted. “I can tell you that.”

Kasia disagreed. “It is not something anyone can tell someone else. I will figure it out.”

“I never did nothing to the man, and he tried to feed me to vampires just for knowing Sig,” Choo said. “Figure that out while you’re at it.”

“We are going in circles.” I don’t think Kasia meant just the conversation.

“That’s what my friend said to do,” I told her. “Maybe she’s making sure that we’re not being followed.” I didn’t think so, though. Sarah’s driving instructions had been very precise about how many times we were supposed to cross a Y-shaped intersection, and I had a feeling that our route was sketching out some kind of sigil or symbol on the canvas of the New York City streets.

Choo finally came to a stop. “I’m dropping you two off. Whoever attacked that Chinese restaurant staked it out first. This van has a target painted on it now, and I want to get a new ride, or at least some new plates and a paint job. Some more burner phones, too.” Choo still has a lot of contacts from his days as an army supply sergeant, and his contacts have contacts.

“Try to get an ice cream truck. It’s the perfect cover.” I leaned forward to look at Kasia. “You don’t mind dressing up like a clown, do you?”

Kasia gave me a look of almost lazy contempt. “Or you can just dress the way you usually do.” The look she gave Choo was considerably harder. “If you try to run, you will not get very far.”

“He knows that,” I said.

Choo didn’t need my help. He ignored Kasia just fine on his own. “You going to be all right for wheels?”

I waved him off. “We’ll figure something out.”

Sometimes, I think I should have those words made into a coat of arms.