Gods and Swindlers (City of Eldrich Book 3) (19 page)

“From what you’re telling me, my money’s on Cian.” Meaghan shook her head. “You know, maybe I’m cynical, but magic has turned out to be a lot less magical than I thought it would be. Like fairies—they turned out to be filthy little cavemen.”

Steph laughed. “And then you blew up fairyland.”

Meaghan laughed along with her. “Yeah, right, I did. And fairyland was a dump, let me tell you. Now it turns out elves are narcissistic parasites—”

“Who like to pretend they’re gods. Except for the Norse pantheon, who are grifters and swindlers.”

“Reformed grifters and swindlers,” Meaghan said through her laughter. “Now Thor’s a coffee-drinking handyman and part-time Santa Claus, and Loki’s a venture capitalist.”

She and Steph began laughing so hard they couldn’t speak for a few moments.

“Oh, Meg,” Steph said when she’d regained her composure. “I’m so glad you’re taking it like this.”

Meaghan wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “Russ is in there staring at Terry like he’s Superman. I guess I’m harder to impress. What about you? How do you fit into all this?”

“Hang on. You’re sniffly.” Steph got up and rummaged in a storage cabinet on the far wall. She came back with a box of tissues. “Here.”

“Thank you.” Meaghan blew her nose. “Don’t try to dodge the question.”

“Thor got himself a wife named Sif. She didn’t do much except have long golden hair.”

“Is that your original name?”

Steph shook her head. “No, Sif basically means wife. She doesn’t even have a name in those stories. I also got mixed up with a couple of Teutonic goddesses. Long blonde hair again.”

“You do have nice hair. What did these goddesses do?”

“Oh, they were your basic weather, farming, and homemaking goddesses. Generally benevolent, except when they were being scary.”

Meaghan nodded. “Yeah, for somebody who supposedly doesn’t have much magical power, there sure are a lot of folks afraid of you.”

Steph sighed. “Yeah, well, I do have a temper. And if I’m really pissed off, I sometimes make the wind blow.”

“And? You don’t get a reputation for being scary because you stir up the occasional breeze.”

“Says the woman who’s hated and feared as a world destroyer.”

“It was just the one,” Meaghan said.

Steph nodded. “Well, there you go. Mostly I’ve always had a big mouth and strong opinions and no problem with fighting dirty. Add a few anger-induced windstorms, simmer for a few hundred years, and you’ve got Holda of the wild hunt.”

“The what?”

“Old myth. Oh, there’s the Valkyrie thing, too.”

“You’re a
Valkyrie
?”

“Again, one simple skill and hundreds of years with nothing to do on the long cold evenings but tell tales that keep getting taller, and next thing I know, I’m the gatherer of the slain. You know I volunteer at a hospice, right?”

“Yeah,” Meaghan said. “You aren’t a medium like Annie, are you?”

Steph shook her head. “That girl has a real gift. And I think she and Russ are great together, don’t you?”

“Yes. Annie’s awesome. Get back to the Valkyrie thing.”

Steph made a face. “Fine. The hospice. It’s not a big thing I do, but for people teetering on the brink, I can give them a little nudge, I suppose, to help them get to the other side.”

“Nudge?” Meaghan asked, trying to keep the suspicion out of her voice. “What kind of nudge?”

Steph scowled. “Psychic, of course. What do you think? I walk around with a pillow, looking for people to smother?”

Meaghan rolled her eyes, trying to hide her relief.
That’s exactly what you were thinking, dummy, weren’t you?
“Of course not.”

“Needless to say, I suppose, but back in the day we didn’t have hospices.” Steph paused for a long moment, staring at the floor, then said, “Mostly I used it on battlefields.”

“To ease their suffering?” Even in the dim light, Meaghan could see Steph’s face flush.

“Yeah, let’s go with that.” Steph wouldn’t meet Meaghan’s gaze. “It also made it easier to steal their stuff. We weren’t good people, Meg.”

Meaghan reached out and touched Steph’s arm. “We all have shit in our past we’re not proud of and you’ve had a lot more time to accumulate those bad moments. You’re good people now, right?”

Steph sighed. “We’re trying to be.”

“Trying to be what?” Luka walked into the room.

“Good people.” Steph patted the sofa next to her. “Lou. Sit down.”

“Lou?” Meaghan asked.

“Original name,” Luka said. “Spelled L-u-g-h.

“I don’t know much mythology,” Meaghan said. “But aren’t you supposed to be kind of evil?”

Luka grimaced. “Bad press. I mean I was a crook, yes, but I only scammed jerks who deserved it.”

“Are you a crook now?” Meaghan asked.

Luka smiled. “Not for a long time. I don’t need to be anymore.”

“Why not?” Meaghan heard Steph snort with suppressed laughter.

“Because I’m filthy rich for one thing. But the real reason is Owen and I got to America and realized we’d come home.” Luka chuckled. “We turned into capitalists.” His look turned serious. “I’ll tell you all about it when we have time, but now we have to figure out what happened. I’m not even remotely strong enough to dismantle the dampening magic Terry had in place. All I did with Dustin’s hex bag was harmonize it so the spells wouldn’t conflict. That much I can do. It’s standard maintenance and I’ve done it before—so has Owen—and we’ve never had a problem.”

“Somebody set this up,” Meaghan said. “Whoever had that damn carpeting installed. That fly-by-night design firm the mayor brought in.”

“Dustin told me about that. Something Italian?” Luka asked.

Meaghan nodded. “The only reason Tony could hire them outside of the city bid process was because he was using your money instead of city funds. When I was on vacation in Arizona . . .”—
when you fled to Arizona, you mean—
“Tony gave them the go-ahead to install it.”

“Sigil-covered carpeting,” Luka said. “You know that wasn’t an accident.”

“Yeah, I do now.” Meaghan felt the anxiety rush back into her gut. Natalie was still on the other side of a locked door. “So, the fair folk did this?”

Luka, chewing on his lower lip, stared at nothing for a long moment and then shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

“If they want to destabilize Terry, this is a good way,” Steph said.

“Yeah,” Luka said, “except when they had him in the past, they threw up their own dampening spells. They couldn’t control the lightning any better than we could.”

“But he was drinking then,” Steph said. “Maybe now—”

“He could control it,” Luka said, nodding. “Except he won’t try.”

“Now he’s got to try,” Steph said. “That strike was like the old days, the thunder god days. When he still had a handle on his drinking.”

“Yeah, but even then, he didn’t really have much control over it.”

“He had enough to keep the fair folk at bay,” Steph said. “Imagine what he could do now, when he’s drinking coffee instead of mead.”

Steph and Luka stared at each other for a long moment, then Luka began to nod.

“If it’s not the fair folk, then who’s responsible for that damn carpeting?” Meaghan asked. “And what do we need to do to get that gateway opened and get Natalie back?”

Chapter Twenty-Four

A
S SOON AS
Meaghan asked the question about the carpeting, the answer came to her.

The Order. Cooper and his band of evil wizards.

The bitch needs to learn her place
 
.
 
.
 
.

She shoved the fear down. No time for it now. “You guys ever deal with the Order?”

“Those guys from Labor Day?” Steph asked. “The wizards?”

“Yeah.”

Steph shook her head. “No. They’re new kids on the block, or so I’ve heard.”

Luka jumped to his feet and moved to the fireplace. “We need another log on the fire.”

“Luka,” Steph said, “you ever deal with them?”

Luka poked at the embers until the new log began to smolder. His voice tight, he said, “Not with the Order.”

Meaghan could see the poker trembling in his hand.

He’s scared.
“Interesting way to answer the question,” Meaghan said. “If not them, then who? Cooper, maybe?”

Luka flinched.

“Who’s Cooper?” Steph asked.

Why am I not surprised?
“The leader of the Order,” Meaghan said.

Steph looked at Luka, her eyes narrowing. “You know this guy?”

Luka poked some more at the fire. In a tight voice, he said, “We’ve crossed paths before.”

“When?” Steph said. “Who is he?”

Luka stared at the fire for a long moment before answering. “Remember when we left London and headed to Norwich? When you left Terry again and we got into the relics business?”

Steph nodded. “Yeah, I remember. You cut off all my hair to sell to pilgrims.” She looked at Meaghan. “It was down to my waist. I told him he could have a foot of it and instead he cut it all the way to my ears. While I was asleep.”

Luka shrugged. “You needed a different look, we needed the money, and hair grows back. But the night we left, we were supposed to sell a sword. Tyr’s sword—”

“Right,” Steph said. “Terry made a pile of those,” she explained to Meaghan. “We ran that one scam for over a thousand years.” She turned back to Luka. “Didn’t you sell one of those to Attila the Hun?”

“No. We only said we did, to build up the legend. Guys like Attila don’t need magic swords.” Luka sighed. “The mark that night was a young would-be wizard. Scary, but in a conventional psychopath sort of way. I couldn’t feel any power from him, and if he’d any training at all, he wouldn’t have fallen for the magic sword bit.”

“Why?” Meaghan asked.

“Because there’s no such thing as magic swords.” Terry stepped into the room.

“There isn’t?” Meaghan asked, as she surveyed Terry. He looked a lot calmer than he had in the kitchen. She tried to picture him as a mead-swilling, Viking thunder god, but even with as many times as she’d seen him with a hammer in his hand, she couldn’t do it. Despite what she’d seen and heard in the last half hour, Meaghan was relieved to discover to her at least, he was still Terry.

“Of course not. Steel’s impervious,” Terry said as he walked over to the sofa and sat down beside Steph, who reached over and took his hand. “You can make a sword out of other metals, but—even with magic—it won’t stand up against a well-made steel blade.”

“But put a simple spell on the slag in a cheap blade,” Luka said, “and make it throw sparks or shine like a rainbow and presto, magic sword.”

“Slag?” Meaghan asked.

“Everything in the ore that isn’t iron and didn’t get processed out in the forging,” Steph explained.

“Your so-called magic sword is a piece of crap that will shatter in your hands,” Terry said. “It’s inferior steel. It’s only special effects.”

Luka smiled. “But a certain type of man will fall for it every time.”

“Like Vitellius.” Terry nodded. “What a sucker that guy was.”

“Vitellius?” Meaghan asked.

“He was a Roman prefect,” Luka said. “Somehow he got himself named general of the army up near the Rhine and then got himself proclaimed emperor in the chaos after Nero died. But his position was shaky at best, so I convinced him I had a special sword, imbued with magic that would keep him in power. A sword I was willing to sell for a reasonable price so the great Vitellius could protect the empire.” He shook his head. “Some marks are so easy. A little ego stroking and some mystic dazzle and you’re in.”

“What happened to him? How long was he emperor?” Meaghan wanted to get back to Cooper, but it was hard to resist the urge to question people who’d been on speaking terms with ancient Romans.

“For like five minutes,” Terry said.

“Eight months actually,” Luka said.

“Seven and half of which he spent drunk. He was an even bigger lush than me,” Terry said. “Anyway Luka spun some bullshit about the sword originally belonging to Tyr—”

“The Norse god they named Tuesday after,” Steph said.

“Really a god?” Meaghan asked. “Or a cousin I haven’t met yet?”

Steph chuckled. “The god Tyr already existed in the belief system. Cian made up stories about him, but they were based on a bunch of different people.”

“Who are we talking about?” Owen walked into the room.

“Tyr and Vitellius,” Luka said. “I was telling her about the sword.”

“Let me guess,” Meaghan said, looking at Owen. “You stole it back.”

Owen grinned. “Yup. And replaced it with a rusty piece of shit right after Luka sold it to him, so we could get Vitellius to pay us to steal it back or pay a ransom for it. But the old sot was so drunk he didn’t notice the switch.”

Terry nodded. “Meanwhile, Vespasian rolls into town at the head of the eastern army and takes charge. The story goes that Vitellius finally discovered his magic sword was gone and he was so freaked out from losing it, he hid in his palace until he was dragged out and executed.”

“Did you try to sell it to Vespasian then?” Meaghan asked.

“Hell, no,” Terry said. “We were long gone by then. Besides, Vespasian was a real soldier, a good one. He wasn’t the type of guy who believes in magic swords.”