The elevator’s door slid open, they ducked in, and a moment later I was alone in the hallway, holding the door open like an idiot. Peachy.
I stepped inside and shut the door. A faint spark of magic shot through the metal box of the card-reader lock. I touched it. The lock was a sham. The door was protected by a ward. I pushed harder. My magic crashed against the invisible wall of the spell and ground to a halt. An expensive ward, too. Good. Made my job a hair easier.
I slid the dead bolt shut and turned. I stood in a huge living room, big enough to contain most of my house. A marble counter ran alon
g the wall on my left, sheltering a bar with glass shelves offering everything from Bombay Sapphire to French wines. A large steel fridge sat behind the bar. White, criminally plush carpet, black walls, steel-and-glass furniture, and beyond it all an enormous floor-to-ceiling window presenting the vista of the ruined city, a deep darkness lit here and there by the pale blue of feylanterns.
I stayed away from the window and trailed the wall, punctuated by three doors. The first opened into a laboratory: flame-retardant table and counters supporting row upon row of equipment. I recognized a magic scanner, a computer, and a spectrograph, but the rest was beyond me. No client.
I tried the second door and found a large room. Gloom pooled in the corners. A huge platform bed occupied most of the hardwood floor. Something lay on the bed, hidden under black sheets.
“Saiman?”
No answer.
Why me?
The wall to the left of the bed was all glass, and beyond the glass, far below, stretched a very hard parking lot, bathed in the glow of feylanterns.
God, fifteen floors was high.
I pulled my saber from the back sheath and padded across the floor to the bed.
The body under the sheets didn’t move.
Step.
Another step.
In my head, the creature hiding under the sheets lunged at me, knocking me through the window in an explosion of glass shards to plunge far below. . . . Fatigue was messing with my head.
Another step.
I nudged the sheet with my sword, peeling it back gently.
A man rested on the black pillow. He was bald. His head was lightly tanned, his face neither handsome nor ugly, his features well shaped and pleasant. Perfectly average. His shoulders were nude—he was probably down to his underwear or naked under the sheet.
“Saiman?” I asked softly.
The man’s eyelids trembled. Dark eyes stared at me, luminescent with harsh predatory intelligence. A warning siren went off in my head. I took a small step back and saw the outline of several chains under the sheet. You’ve got to be kidding me. They didn’t just chain him to the bed, they wrapped him up like a Christmas present. He couldn’t even twitch.
“Good evening,” the man said, his voice quiet and cultured.
“Good evening.”
“You’re my new bodyguard, I presume.”
I nodded. “Call me Kate.”
“Kate. What a lovely name. Please forgive me. Normally I would rise to greet a beautiful woman, but I’m afraid I’m indisposed at the moment.”
I pulled back a little more of the sheet, revealing an industrial-size steel chain. “I can see that.”
“Perhaps I could impose on you to do me the great favor of removing my bonds?”
“Why did Rodriguez and Castor chain you?” And where the hell did they find a chain of this size?
A slight smile touched his lips. “I’d prefer not to answer that question.”