Magic Shifts (Kate Daniels 8)

Eduardo would do well at the Guild. He fit the type. When people called the Guild, they wanted to be reassured, and a six-foot-four man muscled like an Olympic medalist wrestler provided a lot of reassurance. Some of the regulars would screw with him because they didn’t like competition, but the Guild zoned the gigs. Each merc was assigned a territory within the city and if a job fell into that territory, they automatically got it, so while the rest of the mercs could run their mouths and hassle Eduardo, there wasn’t much they could do to keep him from earning money.

“I think Dad figured us out,” George said. “Last week Patrick came to talk to Eduardo.”

I mentally riffled through the roster of Clan Heavy shapeshifters for Patrick. He was Mahon’s nephew, a carbon copy of his uncle with a matching attitude and size.

“He told Eduardo that what he was doing was wrong and that if he cared about me, he’d leave me alone and not tear me away from the family.”

Curran grimaced.

“Would Patrick do something like that on his own?” I asked him.

Curran shook his head. “No. When Patrick opens his mouth, Mahon speaks. Patrick is an enforcer, not a thinker. That’s why Mahon hasn’t been grooming him for the alpha spot.”

“Eduardo told him he had no idea what he was talking about. Patrick left. On Monday, Eduardo didn’t come back to his house. I waited all night.”

I grabbed a notepad and a pen from the built-in shelves. “When was the last time you saw or spoke with Eduardo?”

“Monday morning at seven thirty. He asked what I wanted for dinner that night.”

Today was Wednesday, just barely, since we were just past midnight. Eduardo had been gone about forty hours.

“He didn’t call me at lunch,” George said. “He usually does. I thought maybe he got held up. I went to his house Monday evening. He never showed. He didn’t call and didn’t leave a note. I know there are some bullshit rules about how long a person has to be missing, but I’m telling you, this isn’t like him. He doesn’t just leave me hanging. Something bad happened.”

“Did you talk to the Guild?” I asked.

“I went there this morning and asked about him. Nobody told me anything.”

That wasn’t surprising. Mercs were cagey.

George’s voice trembled with barely contained rage. “When I came out, my car was gone.”

Curran leaned forward. His voice was iced over. “They stole your car?”

She nodded.

That was scummy even for the Guild. “They thought she was an easy target,” I said. “Young woman, alone, one-armed, doesn’t look like a fighter.” They didn’t realize that she could turn into a thousand-pound bear in a blink.

I got up, walked over to the phone, and dialed the Guild. If Eduardo took a job, the Clerk would know. When someone called the Guild with a problem, the Clerk figured out which zone it fell into and called that merc. If the merc was busy or couldn’t handle the job, the Clerk would then call the next person in “the chain” until he found someone to take the job. If he failed to find anybody, he’d pin the gig ticket to a board, which meant anybody could grab it. Some jobs went to select people because they required special qualifications, but the majority of gigs followed this pattern. The gig distribution ran like a well-oiled machine and the Clerk had been there for so long, nobody remembered his name. He was just Clerk with a “the” in front of it, the guy who made sure you had a job and would get paid. If Eduardo had taken a gig on Monday, the Clerk would know when and where.

The phone rang.

“Yeah?” a gruff male voice said.

“This is Daniels. Let me talk to the Clerk.”

“He’s out.”

Odd, the Clerk usually worked the night shift during the first week of the month.

“What about Lori?” Lori was the Clerk’s standby.

“She’s out.”

“When will either of them be in?”

“How the hell should I know?”

Disconnect signal.

What the devil was going on at the Guild?

I turned back to George. “We’ll go by there first thing in the morning.” Even if the Clerk wasn’t there now, he or one of his subs would be there in the morning. “I know this is a hard question, but is there any way Eduardo could’ve gotten scared off and left?”

George didn’t hesitate. “No. He loves me. And if he left, he wouldn’t have abandoned Max.”

“Max?” I asked.

“His pug,” she said. “He’s had him for five years. He takes his dog everywhere with him. When I came there on Monday, Max was in the office with just enough water and food to last through the day.”