Eveth waited until they had returned Dankworth and Liamssen to the base, and then cleared that on their way back to town.
“Out with it,” Grodray said from the bench across from her. “You’ve been stewing for an hour, and too polite to say anything in front of those two. What’s eating you?”
“Is he ready?” she asked simply, compacting any number of arguments into those few words. Grodray was her boss, and a Prime Investigator, however secret that designation was. He made his own job, as he saw fit.
And the highest echelons of the Accord of Souls would back him. She could have opinions, but she was only a candidate to become a Prime Investigator herself, so she needed to be a team player right now, working within Grodray’s framework.
Grodray surprised her by smiling.
“Not really sure it matters, Eve,” he said. “I’m up to no good here.”
“How so?” she asked, a little lost.
Normally, Jackeith Grodray was deduction itself. Cold, calculating, logical. That was one of the reasons she had been given about why she’d initially been paired with the man, as her own approach was much more inductive. She could make fantastic, intuitive leaps, so he balanced her, so the story went.
Since the mask had come off, revealing that a well-respected Senior Constable, a simple Level Four, who was actually a Level Seven, she had seen a side of the man she had never really imagined.
“Playing a couple of hunches,” Grodray said.
“You?”
He laughed and leaned back into the chair with a twinkle in his eyes.
“One, Maximus has a deep and abiding hatred of Gareth,” Grodray said. “You’ve read the debriefing reports and the bio that Gareth helped assemble on the man.”
“Stalking horse,” Eveth replied, nodding with understanding. “Put him out in the open and see if you can draw Sarzynski out of the shadows to take a shot at him.”
“Correct,” Jackeith nodded. “But there’s a second element at play, and I want to see how that works.”
“What’s that?” Eveth pressed. What else could there be?
“I’ve watched a number of female officers and researchers around Gareth,” Grodray said. “Plus the original reports, and that young woman in the tea shop when he was first pulled through to Orgoth Vortai.”
“What about him?” she asked bluntly.
“And that’s the best part,” Grodray said with a dry chuckle. “You appear to be immune, but every other female Gareth Dankworth comes into contact with has a serious, visceral reaction to the man. And they did even when he was human, but becoming Vanir hasn’t changed it.”
“The fact that every woman wants to jump his bones?” Eveth asked.
“Except you,” her partner grinned.
“He’s human, Jack,” she snapped, finding a seam of coal underneath her words to ignite. “That’s disgusting.”
“They don’t know that,” he countered. “And if it works, I want to turn him loose in a few places, to see if that charm and magnetism can get us into a few areas where pure police work has failed.”
“And if it does?” she sneered.
“Then he breaks our case even further open, Eve,” the man turned serious. “I’ll get all the glory on this one, but you’re doing the hard work, and you’ll get credit in the right places.”
She liked that thought. On the one hand, that would be her ticket into the big leagues.
And maybe, if she was lucky, the two humans would manage to wipe each other out and save everyone else a lot of trouble.