[M__M 03] Misery Loves Company (13 page)

I gritted my teeth and shook her hand. Cold power brushed my skin and slithered up my wrist. Since I wasn’t immune to the sheer blast of magic caused by a pred’s touch, that brief contact was enough to stir up my need to learn more. My greed for knowledge.

What could possibly be in those files that she wanted so badly as to waste her debt with me on them? What damning secrets had I turned over?

Gunthra made a move to dismiss me, but I kept my butt planted on the sofa. “Is there more?” she asked.

“Actually, yeah. Are you aware that three more addicts had their souls sucked away? And those are only the ones we’re aware of.”

The Dom’s eyes fluttered wide for a half second, then she regained her composure. “I was not, although I was aware of the commotion that you and your Gryphon allies created this morning. I assume the two events are connected, and since you went breaking into the homes of two sylphs, I also assume the addicts in question had nothing to do with me or my people.”

Good deflection, I thought grudgingly. “Two of the addicts were connected to two sylphs. As of this morning, the third addict’s master hasn’t been identified. It could be another goblin, possibly the same one who drained Eric Marshall. If you—”

“If you had proof of that, Miss Moore, you’d either be telling me about it or the Gryphons would be dragging me downtown for one of their entertaining chats. So how does this concern me? I already told you I’m investigating what happened to Mr. Marshall.”

“I’m starting to think we have an epidemic of magical attacks going on, all stemming from Shadowtown, and the first-known victim was a goblin’s addict. That’s how it concerns you, and frankly, that concerns me, as well.”

To my surprise, Gunthra didn’t counter immediately. Her long, slender fingers grazed the hems of her sleeves. She appeared to be considering things, but what? At last she stood, and there was no question that she wished me gone.

“People are on edge, Miss Moore. And when people are on edge, they do questionable things. It’s as true of humans as it is of goblins or sylphs. Or satyrs,” she added after a heavy pause.

I stood, too, because I disliked the Dom staring down at me. “And because they’re on edge they’re attacking their own addicts?”

As I said it, I realized that didn’t make sense. Preds needed their addicts. So why would they attack them? Answer: they wouldn’t. They
weren’t
. Our theory that Eric’s master had drained him in revenge had been shot to hell last night.

My jaw fell open as I put it together. “They’re on a bender, aren’t they? They’re nervous, so they want to feed.”

Referring to humans as food bugged me, but from a pred’s perspective, that was exactly what they were—an emotional banquet. That left me with another question. Were the preds stealing and gorging on their stolen emotions like a type of anxiety eating, or were they stealing them and hoarding the power because the cause of their anxiety was something big. Like apocalyptically so. Were the preds acting like humans who stocked their survival shelters for the end of the world?

Gunthra didn’t deny it, and her large brown eyes flickered to the books on the table. Or maybe not to the books at all. To the thumb drive.

I wet my lips. “This has something to do with why you want that information on the furies, doesn’t it?”

She must have realized she’d given something away because her back straightened and she walked stiffly toward the door. “Our deal has been fulfilled, Miss Moore. If you want to make another deal for additional information, we can discuss terms at a later date. I have a busy day ahead of me.”

Yeah, I bet. Going through that thumb drive. “Fine, but I want those souls back and those people’s lives restored before it’s too late. If you know anything, I will be back and with reinforcements. This isn’t over.”

“No, I very much fear it’s not.” Then she shut the door on me.

Bitch.

Chapter Fifteen

The addict support group met in a drab, white function room near Mass General’s sprawling complex. A patient liaison pointed me in the right direction with a pitying expression. I wanted to explain that it wasn’t nice to openly pity pred addicts—or any addicts—but I held my tongue.

About twenty people were mingling in the room when I arrived. Most hung out in groups of four or five, drinking coffee in paper cups and talking about last night’s TV shows or their families. They were a diverse bunch—men and women, old and young. I counted addicts of every affliction, but only one rage addict. That itself could be interesting given that something might be up with the furies, or it could simply be that rage addicts needed more intensive interventions than a support group. Having met a couple, that was easy to believe.

But the most interesting part at all was that when I closed my eyes, they disappeared. I could hear them, but emotionally they were dead to me. Addicts could only feed their masters, so this wasn’t a surprise, nor something I hadn’t encountered before. Yet I’d never been around so many addicts at once. It was like losing one of my senses.

As I clung to the doorway, acclimating to their lack of presence, one of the men approached me. He held out a hand. “Hey, first time here? I’m Justin. Welcome to the group.”

I took the hand warily. “Jess, and yes.”

Was this the time to explain that I wasn’t an addict, or would that make people uncomfortable? Would it be better to lie? Unlike me, these people couldn’t tell if I was or wasn’t. I’d asked Bridget for advice, but she’d had none. In retrospect, I should have asked someone like Andre. My ex-partner was a people person. Bridget was no more of that than I was.

Justin had been talking, but I’d been paying more attention to my thoughts, so I smiled politely and tried to catch up. He was in his early fifties if I had to guess, dressed in dusty jeans and a dustier jean jacket. A lust addict, smelling faintly of cigarette smoke. I wondered if I knew his master.

“So what’s your sin?”

“Sorry?”

“Your sin. You know, which demon’s got your soul by the balls?”

Soul by the balls? I gave up trying to form a mental image to make that figure of speech work. “You could say I’ve had my troubles with a lot of preds.”

“Ah, I’m sorry to hear it.” He clasped my hands in his, and the clunky ring on his left hand hit my knuckle painfully. “Well, we come together here to support each other. Sometimes that means sharing information on magic or what’s happening in Shadowtown. Sometimes it means helping each other deal with family issues that arise because of our conditions. Other times it’s helping each other cope in general, or hell, sometimes we just sit back and shoot the shit. I’m sort of the informal leader around here. Why don’t you grab a cup of coffee and I’ll introduce you to people? First names only. We want everything confidential, or barring that, anonymous. Get me?”

“Got you,” I said, taking my hand back.

If this guy was in charge, then he was the one I should talk to, and I got the sense from him that honesty would be my best policy. Just as well. Laying everything out upfront was more my style than sneakiness. “I’d better explain. I’m not an addict, but I have a friend who is. Or was, I should say. I don’t want to be here under false pretenses or make anyone uncomfortable, but I am looking for help for that friend. I’m not a Gryphon, but I work with them as a consultant. If it’s okay, I’d like a few minutes to speak to the group about what’s happening. I think this would fall under news about Shadowtown.”

Justin scratched his chin. “I see. Well, I don’t know how well we can help with anything—”

“The friend I’m talking about used to attend these meetings. His name is Eric.”

Recognition brightened Justin’s green eyes. “I know who you mean, yeah. Something happened to him?”

“To him and to others. Addicts are being attacked.” I didn’t like that I might need to repeat myself before the whole group, but if Justin was in charge, I had to impress on him why I was here.

“Jesus.” He refilled his coffee cup from the carafe. “You talking like those murders the other month?”

I grimaced.
You mean the ones I was framed for?
Dragon shit on toast. I hoped he didn’t recognize me. My face had been plastered on TV a couple times in the aftermath, and I did not feel like answering questions.

“Not quite like that. Worse in some ways because everyone is at risk this time.”

“All right, Jesus. You don’t mind speaking first and then leaving?” Justin glanced over his shoulder. “So we can talk about other stuff with just the group?”

“That’s fine. I don’t need to take up your whole meeting.”

Justin spoke to me a bit longer, pressing for information on the attacks, until I explained it made more sense for me to talk to everyone at once. After that, he called the group together.

Metal folding chairs had been laid out in a rough circle in the middle of the room, and everyone grabbed one. I took a seat next to Justin and scanned people’s hands. I had no guarantee that the mysterious Shawna was an addict or that she attended these meetings, but it struck me as a good possibility. And if Eric left these meetings with her to go to Vine, they must be cozy. She was my best bet for finding the goblin’s name, assuming no one else here knew it.

Tall and thin, the waitress at Vine had said of Shawna. With rings on every finger. That one detail was precious and narrowed down my search to a single candidate who sat directly across from me. Her height was difficult to judge while seated, but she was—as promised—model thin with long brown hair, and each of her fingers were covered in silver rings.

Perfect. I only had to hope she had useful information.

As people got settled, Justin welcomed everyone then introduced me. “Jess is friends with Eric, who I see isn’t here tonight, and she might know something about that. She also has some news from the Gryphons that we should hear.”

I couldn’t sense a trace of surprise from the group, and it was weirding me out to be so blind among so many humans. To hide my awkward fidgeting, I folded my hands together. Twenty-plus pairs of alarmed eyes focused on me.

I thanked Justin and explained yet again what had happened to Eric, reminding everyone that they might have heard parts of the story on the news. “What the news hasn’t gotten around to reporting is that there were three more similar attacks. Any information you can provide on the pred who addicted Eric would be extremely useful. As of now, we believe everyone could be in danger. The sooner we find the culprits, the better for all.”

That was probably exactly the sort of thing Bridget hadn’t wanted me to say. After all, she’d sent me because she thought sending a Gryphon would freak these people out. But screw that. If I were an addict, I’d want the truth. And as someone trying to bring down the goblin, I wanted to provide incentive for people to give me information.

“Do you know which kind of preds are doing this?” a woman with graying hair asked.

The man two seats down from her crushed his coffee cup. “What kind of problem did Eric have? That would tell.”

Several others grumbled or jumped in with guesses. I kept an eye on Shawna before answering, waiting to see if she would volunteer information. Her head was bent and hair shrouded her face, but her fingers played with her rings.

She knew something, or maybe she was just upset. Without being able to read her, I was helpless. Body language was one of those things I’d stopped paying as much attention to over the last ten years. What was the point when I could sense how most people felt?

“There have been multiple types of addicts attacked so far,” I said, cutting off the various debates. “Goblins and sylphs have been implicated, but there might be others involved.”

A couple people groaned.

I answered a few more questions. No, there wasn’t any known pattern with regard to the victims. This wasn’t like Victor Aubrey’s murders in which he’d targeted a certain type of woman vanity addict. And no, so far the Gryphons had no theories about motive.

Before I left, I wrote my name and phone number on one of the tablets I found by the coffeepot. “If anyone has information they’d rather share anonymously, here’s where you can find me. I’m especially interested in talking to Shawna if she’s here.”

The woman I thought was Shawna hadn’t said a damn thing. Maybe she’d do it over the phone.

I thanked Justin again and left, frustrated. Between the travel to get here and back, and talking to people without learning anything, this had been a colossal waste of almost two hours. It wasn’t just two of my hours gone either. It was two hours slipping out of Eric’s hourglass of unknown duration. Bridget had set a minimum of five days. Tonight marked day four. I did not want to be there in person when I told Steph our leads were turning into dead ends.

Halfway to the exit, a door down the hall opened and heels clacked on the linoleum. I thought nothing of it, then a woman’s voice called out to me.

Keeping my hope in check, I turned around. “Shawna?”

“Yeah. Hi.” She pulled her long hair off her neck, twisting it into a facsimile of a ponytail. She had a good several inches on me, willowy and delicate, and she dressed to show off her lithe frame. Her shirt merely grazed the waist of her low-cut jeans, and the jeans themselves could have been painted on. No wonder Jenny described her as looking like a model. “You said you wanted to talk to me?”

“You’re friends with Eric, right?” I asked.

Shawna continued wrapping her hair around her hand. “Sort of. We’ve spent some time together, but I wouldn’t say I knew him well. Did he mention me? Is that how you knew my name?”

Vanity addict. She’d like to hear that Eric had been talking about her. Yet even if I lied and said yes, it wouldn’t make her feel all that great. The sylph Shawna answered to had seen to that. Just as I couldn’t sense her emotions because of her addict bond, Shawna’s ego couldn’t be appeased by anyone except her master.

So I hedged. She might be more likely to say something useful if she thought herself important. “Sort of. I wanted to talk to you because it seemed like, of all the people at these meetings, Eric was closest to you. I was hoping he might have mentioned the name of the goblin who addicted him.”

Shawna’s face fell. “I wish I could help, but I can’t. We talked about other things, you know? Our careers and art and, you know, fun stuff. We tried to leave the heavy topics at the meeting.”

“Did he ever mention anything about the goblin at all?”

“No. We weren’t really supposed to talk about
them
. It’s part of the group rules to help people chill. I knew he was a goblin’s addict, but that’s it. This is so upsetting, you know. He was such a great guy and so talented.”

Shit. I studied Shawna carefully. The way she played with her hair was like the way she’d played with her rings. It could simply be a quirk, or it could a nervous tic. My gut told me she knew more than she was sharing, but there could be a hundred reasons for that. Without being able to read her emotions, I was out of luck.

“Okay, well, thanks for that. But it’s really important, so I’d appreciate if you would continue to think on it. If Eric ever said anything that could point us in the right direction, it would be a help. Not just for him, but for you. Two sylphs’ addicts were attacked. You could be in more danger than most people.”

That did seem to register with her because she let go of her hair and wrapped her arms around herself. “I will. Do you want to give me your information again?”

Shawna handed me a piece of scrap paper from her purse, and I rewrote my name and number. “Thanks, and be careful.”

Maybe that wasn’t a total waste of time, I told myself as I left. But I didn’t easily believe it.

Deflated, I stopped by The Lair on the way home to see Lucen, but the place was more crowded than usual for a Thursday. He gave me a heart-stoppingly hot kiss behind the bar, and that improved my mood significantly until he let go of me and I saw one of his addicts staring at us.

Mood. Killed. I left and told him I’d see him tomorrow.

Since it had been a long day, I made dinner, had a glass of wine and typed up my notes from my conversations with Gunthra and Shawna so I could share them tomorrow with Bridget. Then I treated myself to more of Eric’s latest book and went to bed late because I couldn’t stop reading.

When my phone rang at six thirty the next morning, I was prepared to curse Bridget for it, but it wasn’t her voice I heard. It was Lucen’s.

“Check the news,” he told me before I could finish with hello. “Buenos Aires is the new Boston. This is bad.”

I threw off my blanket. “Why are you awake? What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about war. Check the news, little siren, and you’ll figure it out. Then can you be here at eleven? Dezzi’s calling a council meeting.”