“I don’t know what kind of deal you’ve got going on with the mayor,” he told me, “and I don’t want to know, but get this straight: do not show your face around here. The last thing I need is anyone seeing us together.”
“Sure,” I said. “Under present circumstances, especially.”
His brow furrowed. “Present circumstances?”
“You really are a hero. I hear you’ve been getting phone calls. Today wants to have you on the show. Might even get a five-minute spot on Jimmy Kimmel if you play your cards right.”
His smile was more of a smirk. Tiny and mean.
“Well, I did fight off a gang of terrorists and save the day. Hell, I’ve got people asking about the movie rights. Might have to hire an agent.”
“You know, it’s funny,” I said. “In the aftermath, once the smoke settled, I started thinking. And there was one thing, one…little detail that just didn’t ring right. You ever speak to a man named Mr. Smith? He’s a fixer for the Network.”
“Never heard of him,” Harding said. The sudden shift in his eyes told me something different.
“He’s dead now, so I can’t introduce you. But, see, when he told me I could trade my life for my brother’s, I asked him about trading for you and Mayor Seabrook too. And he told me that Seabrook was going to die, nonnegotiable.”
“Not surprised,” he grunted. “These people are crazy.”
“The odd thing is,” I said, “he didn’t mention you at all. Then this morning, one of my people found a paper trail originating in a Network-linked bank account. Ten payments over the last three months, four thousand dollars each time, to a newly formed political action committee.”
I leaned in and laid my hands on the edge of his desk.
“The Committee to Elect Mayor Harding,” I said.
His head tried to bury itself in his neck, and his eyes landed anywhere but on me.
“Can name a PAC anything you goddamn want,” he said. “Sounds like they’re trying to set me up.”
“Come on, Earl. Give it up. You gave the order to call away the police convoy. You were in on the entire plan. And who could blame you? You’ve got your sights on the throne, or maybe it’s just a step stool to even bigger ambitions, but we both know Seabrook’s welded to her seat. With her polling numbers, it’d take one of two things to get her out of office and out of your way: a massive scandal or a convenient death.”
He held his stubborn silence until it crumbled in his hands. I waited, patient as a spider.
“You want to know what’s funny?” he asked me. “This worked out even better than it was supposed to. Plan was, Seabrook would eat a bullet and I’d get some public sympathy points for losing my dear, sweet friend and colleague. Now? You said it: I’m a hero. Hell, I can probably run against her and win clean, if I keep my momentum.”
“You can,” I said, “but you won’t.”
Harding locked eyes with me, squinting hard. He might have had the law on his side, but he carried himself like a back-alley thug.
“Think real careful before you make any threats.”
I showed him my open hands. “Hey, quite to the contrary. I’m here to extend an offer. You want to be the next mayor? We can make it happen for you.”
His anger gave way to suspicion. And the tiniest sparkle of greed.
“You’d stab Seabrook in the back?”
“What’s she done for us lately?” I said. “I can’t even get her to put a little weight on the Board of Liquor and Gaming. Not even a phone call. If you’d be more willing to play ball, well…we can make things happen for you. Fast.”
I had him now, a fish on a line. “How fast?”
“One well-timed tragedy, some backroom pressure in the right places…you could be Mayor Harding by this time next year.”
He made a show of taking his time. He drummed his fingers on the desk and licked his lips.
“Ground rules,” he said. “I’ve built my entire career on being a hardliner. Integrity, you understand? You never come here again, and we never meet in person. When we have to talk, we use third-party cutouts.”
This wasn’t his first tango. I wondered just how many dirty little secrets the commissioner had buried in his backyard.
“Of course,” I said. “And hey, just to prove my friendship and good intentions, I’d like you to accept a small token of my regard.”
I slid a gray velvet box across the desk. He took it, suspicious again, and popped it open.
“A tie clip?” He turned the box from side to side. The diamonds along the platinum glittered in his eyes. “These real?”
“Absolutely. Go on, try it on. Live a little, Earl. You earned it.”
He fumbled with the gem-studded clip, prying it from the case, and clipped it onto his tie. It looked garish on him, but he nodded with smug approval.
“Not bad,” he said. “I could get used to this kind of thing.”
Then he winced. He pressed one hand to his belly.
“You okay, buddy? Doing all right?”
“I just—” He shook his head and pushed his chair back. “I think I ate something I shouldn’t have.”
He stumbled to his private bathroom as beads of sweat broke out on his ruddy cheeks.
“Breakfast burritos, Earl,” I called after him. “They always seem like a good idea at the time, but one hour later—”
The bathroom door slammed shut. I shrugged and circled his desk, jotting a note on his legal pad. Then I ambled out of his office, pausing just long enough to have a word with his receptionist.
“Hey, Commissioner Harding says not to disturb him for a little bit. He, uh—” I pitched my voice low. “He’s got some intestinal issues.”
She slapped her pen down on her desk. “He ate dairy again, didn’t he? I tell that man, every single time—”
“He did,” I said on my way out. “Terrible. Do not go in there, and when you do, bring air freshener.”
Technically, I was misusing my cursed gifts from the knighting party, and I was probably committing some gross breach of court etiquette. Tough. Sitri knew I was a rebel when he hired me. Besides, I could always steal the tie clip back later. It’d be with the rest of Harding’s personal effects, down at the morgue.
I needed to send a message, and a simple bullet wouldn’t have done the job. Harding had been working for Elmer Donaghy, directly or through a middleman, and eventually his gruesome fate would filter up the ranks. So would the discreet note I left on his desk, the one that simply read, “Your move.”
I had one more job to take care of today, and it didn’t involve killing anybody. I was actually going to do something nice for a change and make somebody happy. So of course, I was sweating bullets.
*
“Don’t make me regret this.”
Emma punctuated her words with a hard poke at my shoulder. Then she stood, a stony sentry at the edge of the conference room. The lower floor of Winter wasn’t all fun and dark games; the nightclub sported a pair of meeting rooms—sleek, modern, with warm lighting and ergonomic chairs—for handling court business.
When someone like Melanie ended up in here, it was usually to have a chat with Caitlin. Not the good kind of chat. The two of them were sitting at the end of the beechnut table, Caitlin silently staring, Melanie looking like she was about to slide out of her chair and try to tunnel to freedom.
“I really don’t know what I did,” she said.
“Are you absolutely sure about that?” Caitlin asked her.
Caitlin’s lips curled in the faintest of smiles. Then she giggled, the sound coming out in a tiny sputter.
“I can’t,” she said. “Melanie, you have this delicious frightened-rabbit affect that makes me want to terrorize you, but I just can’t keep a straight face.”
Melanie looked from her to her mother to me and back again.
“What is going on here?” she whispered.
“What’s going on,” I said, “is that the three of us had a long talk, about you and…things, and…so, uh, did you still want to learn magic?”
I was not prepared for the scream of joy. Or for Melanie to bound from her chair, race at me, and jump. I suddenly had a hundred and twenty-five pounds of teenager hanging around my neck and squeezing for dear life.
“There are rules,” her mother announced, but she was glaring at me when she said it. I gently extricated myself as best I could.