He nodded and gestured for me to go on. I did, my heart lightened somewhat by his presence, even if it was an insubstantial presence. We couldn’t take a taxi, since it would be impossible to follow Cyrene’s trail, which meant we had to cover a lot of ground on foot. About an hour after we started, we finally ran the trail to earth at a grimy hotel hidden in a back street in King’s Cross. We’d lost the trail a couple of times because Cyrene had evidently gotten into a car at some point, which made the little splotches of water that dropped off her scarce, but it helped having two of us to follow possible leads.
‘‘Do not go in, little bird,’’ Gabriel told me as I examined the outside of the hotel. It was more of a hostel than a hotel, obviously one used by people whose minds were more absorbed with where their next trick, fix, or bottle was coming from rather than where they laid their head at night. ‘‘It could be dangerous, and I cannot help you in this form. You wait outside until I can come to you in bodily form.’’
‘‘One of the perks of being able to shadow walk is the ability to take a look around without anyone knowing,’’ I told him as I finessed the lock on the door. It gave way with even less resistance than was normal, as if the lock itself had absorbed the miasma of hopelessness that hung so heavy in the air it left an oily taste upon the tongue.
Gabriel wasn’t happy, but he said nothing as we slipped through the door and up a narrow flight of stairs. There was a small room off to one side that served as a lobby and reception, although the room was barren of life. The detritus of people who had lost all hope lay scattered on the floor and stairs— empty bottles, fast-food wrappers, crushed cigarette packets and butts, torn fragments of lurid magazines . . . we picked our way around all of it as we crept up the first flight of stairs. The air in the hotel was foul, stale with smoke and urine and rodent droppings, and other, less-palatable scents that I refused to identify or acknowledge. Cyrene’s trail here was sporadic as well, as if she’d been dragged up the stairs. Two clear sets of her footprints stood outside one door on the second floor, however.
I glanced at Gabriel. ‘‘Can you go through walls?’’ I whispered.
He shook his head. ‘‘I can’t interact with anything, nor can I travel through solid substances. Doors have to be open for me to go through them.’’
‘‘Then I’ll just have to open this one.’’
‘‘May . . .’’ He frowned. ‘‘I do not like this. You should wait until I can come to help you. This blackmailer is clearly dangerous. You could be harmed.’’
His words washed over me with a warm, comforting sensation. No one had ever worried about me when I was out on a job—it never seemed to occur to Cyrene that I could be harmed, and Magoth . . . well, Magoth didn’t particularly care what happened to me so long as I succeeded.
‘‘If you were here, I’d spend all my time kissing you and we’d never get Cy rescued,’’ I told him with a smile. ‘‘Don’t worry, I’ll shadow as soon as the lock is open. This hallway is dim enough to hide me if anyone is standing on the other side of the door.’’
He didn’t react to my light flirtation, just stood watching me with worried eyes as I persuaded the lock to open.
‘‘Well, I guess we were worried about nothing,’’ I said a few moments later as Gabriel straightened up from where he had been kneeling next to the crumpled form on the floor. ‘‘Is he dead?’’
‘‘I believe so. I can detect no signs of life, although I would have to be able to touch him to know for certain if he could be resuscitated.’’
Unwilling to touch the body, I used my foot to nudge it over onto its back. ‘‘
Agathos daimon!
It’s Porter.’’
‘‘The thief taker?’’ Gabriel asked, frowning down at the twisted face of the dead man on the floor. The handle of a knife emerged from his chest.
I avoided looking at the grimacing face and examined the handle as best I could without touching it. It was silver, carved with runes I couldn’t identify. Something about it tickled the back of my mind. ‘‘I think I’ve seen this before.’’
‘‘Where?’’
‘‘I don’t remember. It just looks . . . familiar.’’ I steeled myself and laid two fingers across the man’s neck. The body was cool to the touch. ‘‘No pulse.’’
‘‘If he’s dead, then where’s your twin?’’ Gabriel asked.
I rose and looked around the room with him. One corner held a grimy bed, a chair, and a three-legged table. A filthy, rust-stained sink hung crookedly off the wall on the other side of the room, below a mirror that was missing most of its glass. ‘‘That is a very good question.’’
I had come out of the shadow world to examine the body of the thief taker but slipped into it again to look for signs of Cyrene.
‘‘There,’’ Gabriel said, pointing at the window.
‘‘Why does no one ever use doors to exit rooms?’’ I grumbled, moving over to the window to examine it. It was pushed down, but not latched from the inside. Sure enough, there was a footprint on the windowsill. ‘‘Looks like we’re going out onto the fire escape.’’
‘‘I hate to contradict a lady, but alas, there are times when duty must take precedence over manners,’’ a voice said from behind me.
I spun around to find Savian the thief taker in the doorway. His gaze swept around the room, pausing on the body of Porter for a moment before continuing its perusal. ‘‘I see you’ve had a bit of excitement, Mei Ling. Why don’t you step out of the shadows so we can have a little chat about it.’’
I froze. Although it was daytime, the room was dark enough that unless I moved, Savian wouldn’t see me.
Before I could think of how to respond, he leaped across the room, straight for the window . . . and me.
‘‘What’s this? Leaving? You wound me, Mei Ling, you truly do,’’ he said, grabbing at me. This close, he could no doubt see a shadowy image of me. ‘‘I thought we had something special between us.’’
I deshadowed, snarling something rude under my breath as I jerked my arm away from him.
‘‘Take your hands off my mate!’’ Gabriel bellowed. He rushed at Savian, forgot he was insubstantial, and zipped right through the thief taker.
Savian looked momentarily disconcerted. ‘‘What was
that
?’’
‘‘I am not a what!’’ Gabriel snapped, stalking over to Savian to stand before him, glaring. ‘‘I am the silver wyvern, and you have just touched my mate.’’
I raised my eyebrows a smidgen at Gabriel’s show of possession. For some reason, it amused rather than annoyed me. ‘‘I didn’t know you were so volatile when it concerned me.’’
‘‘Volatile?’’ Savian repeated the word, his brows scrunching up together. ‘‘Was that intended to be a compliment about my virility?’’
My gaze shifted from Gabriel to his. ‘‘You can’t hear him?’’
‘‘Hear who?’’ Savian asked.
I looked back to Gabriel. ‘‘How can I hear you if he can’t?’’
‘‘You are my mate. He is not,’’ he answered with a growl, his eyes burning as they fixed on Savian. ‘‘Who is this man?’’
‘‘Savian the thief taker, meet Gabriel Tauhou, wyvern of the silver dragon sept,’’ I said, gesturing toward Gabriel. ‘‘Don’t let the fact that you can’t see or hear Gabriel confuse you—he’s in the shadow world, but he’s very much here. Er . . . sort of.’’
Savian’s gaze rested on me with speculation. ‘‘A dragon in the beyond? Didn’t know it could happen.’’
‘‘This seems to be the day for impossible things,’’ I said, crossing my arms tightly. ‘‘What is it you want? Other than to haul me back to the committee, that is?’’
‘‘Well . . .’’ He smiled. It was a particularly charming smile, one that held a good deal of humor in it, and I thought for a moment or two that if I’d never met Gabriel, I might have followed up on that smile to see what sort of a man was behind it. ‘‘There is the matter of that little offer you made me.’’
I froze again, this time horrified as the memory came back to me. ‘‘That has nothing to do with anything,’’ I said, glancing at Gabriel.
‘‘Oh, really?’’ His gaze flitted around the room, and I knew for certain what he was going to say before he said it. ‘‘You don’t think propositioning me in order to get me to let you go has any pertinence to this situation?’’
‘‘You’re a rat,’’ I told him. ‘‘That was downright mean.’’
‘‘I know,’’ he said, his smile widening. ‘‘But you have to admit, as rats go, I’m fairly charming.’’
Gabriel’s silver-eyed gaze shifted from Savian to me.
‘‘I don’t suppose you’d believe me if I said that I didn’t actually proposition him in order to get him to let me go?’’ I asked him.
‘‘I believe you,’’ he said without hesitation. ‘‘You are my mate. You would not be so if you did not respect and honor me as I do you.’’
An odd sort of constriction gripped my heart. His words were so heartfelt, they touched deep, dark parts of my soul.
‘‘I did proposition him,’’ I said, needing to admit the truth to him. ‘‘And he took me up on it, but I couldn’t go through with it.’’
Gabriel was silent for a moment, his eyes shadowed. Finally, he nodded. ‘‘I would expect you to try to use whatever method you had available to free yourself. That you did not betray me to do so does not, however, surprise me.’’
‘‘It was a close thing,’’ Savian said with a wicked grin.
‘‘Oh, it was not! I never even unbuttoned so much as one button! I couldn’t! Not when I thought of Gabriel.’’
‘‘You’re not going to start making declarations of eternal, undying love now, are you?’’ Savian asked, glancing at his watch. ‘‘I’m afraid I can only give you fifteen minutes, and then we’ll need to be on our way to catch the plane to Paris.’’
‘‘Do not leave this room,’’ Gabriel ordered.
I turned to him, surprised.
‘‘I will be with you in ten minutes,’’ he said. ‘‘Do not leave the room unless the authorities come. And do not proposition that . . . that . . .
mortal
again!’’
I couldn’t help but smile at the indignant look on his face, which faded along with the rest of him.
‘‘I take it that’s a ‘no’ on the declarations of love?’’ Savian asked.
I took the sole chair in the room, unfolded a bit of discarded newspaper onto the stained seat, and gingerly sat down on it. ‘‘I think I’ll pass, thank you.’’
‘‘Ah? The dragon’s gone?’’
I nodded.
‘‘Well, then.’’ He moved across the room and closed the door, giving me a come-hither look that was almost as good as Magoth’s. ‘‘Perhaps you’d like me to show you how I can make you forget your precious wyvern?’’
‘‘I’ll pass on that, too. Why don’t you spend the few minutes it’ll take Gabriel to get here telling me how it is you were lurking around outside the room of a murdered colleague?’’
He leaned against the wall next to the window. ‘‘Oddly enough, I was curious about how you ended up here as well. Shall we exchange stories? I can give you fourteen minutes.’’
‘‘And I can give you . . .’’ I pursed my lips as I thought. ‘‘I’d say you have about eight minutes before a very angry dragon is going to break down the door, so why don’t you go first, just in case Gabriel gets here before you have a chance to talk.’’
I have to give Savian credit—he didn’t appear to be too worried about having to face Gabriel, although a couple of faint lines appeared around his mouth.
‘‘Although it isn’t the gentlemanly thing to do, I will go first since you so obviously desire it. I am here because I was pursuing a line of investigation, and it led me to this room.’’
‘‘A line of investigation concerning one of your colleagues?’’ I asked.
He shrugged. ‘‘Porter wasn’t so much a colleague as a rival. Thief takers . . . well, we tend to be a solitary lot, minding our own business and not mingling with one another too much. And Porter was . . . different.’’
‘‘I’ll say he was. Do you know that he was blackmailing my twin?’’
‘‘No, but it wouldn’t surprise me,’’ Savian said. He rubbed his chin for a moment. ‘‘That might explain some things.’’
‘‘What things? Were you investigating Porter himself?’’
His smile was as cheeky as ever. ‘‘Let’s just say that I was following up a sense of Porter being involved in something he shouldn’t have been.’’
‘‘Would you happen to know whom he was working for?’’
‘‘Alas, I hadn’t uncovered that,’’ he answered, his smile fading. ‘‘To be perfectly honest—something I normally try to avoid, but I’ll make an exception since I like you—I hadn’t found out much about what Porter was up to. He had something going on, and it was something big, but that’s all I could tell. Perhaps you have more information?’’
‘‘Perhaps, but like you, I prefer to play things close to the vest.’’
‘‘Now, now, I showed you my hand—the least you can do is show me yours,’’ he said with a cock of his eyebrow.
‘‘There’s really not much to my hand—he blackmailed me into trying to get something for him, but he didn’t tell me why he wanted it, or if it was for himself, or the dreadlord he said he worked for.’’
‘‘Dreadlord, hmm?’’ Savian chewed that over for a few minutes. ‘‘Interesting. Could be a demon lord, could be someone else.’’
‘‘Exactly. And now he’s dead, which means there’s someone else involved. But why kill him?’’
Savian shrugged again. ‘‘It would be foolish to speculate until we had some answers to our questions. And now, if you would not mind, perhaps you’d care to clarify how it is I found you with the not-at-all-lamented Mr. Porter?’’
‘‘Porter kidnapped Cyrene in order to get me to do something.’’
‘‘Ah.’’ His glance slid down to the dead man.
‘‘He was dead when we got here, and no, I don’t think Cyrene killed him. She couldn’t have.’’
‘‘That’s right, your twin is a naiad,’’ he said, nodding. ‘‘Although it is within the realm of possibility, I agree that it would be unlikely an elemental being such as she would harm a mortal . . . even one as reprehensible as Porter. It certainly is a puzzle.’’
We stood in silence for a moment before I was driven to say, ‘‘Gabriel isn’t going to let you take me into custody, you know.’’