“Call the mage,” Marlowe snapped. “Get a location.”
“She already did,” Louis-Cesare said. “His phone is off.”
“Ping him, then! We have contacts—”
“Which we’ve used. It’s not that simple.”
And no, it wasn’t. Cell phone tower records weren’t that reliable, despite what TV cop shows liked everyone to believe. In a rural setting, a single tower might service several hundred square miles, and even in New York City, where they clustered close together, you were still talking two or more. Not exactly a small area in a place as crowded as this one.
And that was assuming your call was routed to the closest tower. Which it often wasn’t. So all we really knew for sure was that James was still in the city.
Well, and one other thing.
“James was frothing at the mouth to get his hands on Blue,” I told Marlowe. “Probably because he kept drawing attention to the people who had those weapons—”
“So?”
“—so he gave me a two-day window to track him down, and it’s up tonight. Why two days? And, if he was expecting to hear from me, why not take the call?”
Marlowe frowned.
“Perhaps he retrieved all the weapons,” Mouthy said, “and no longer cares what the troll attacks.”
“Maybe. Or maybe whatever is happening, is happening tonight.”
“What do you mean, happening tonight?” Marlowe demanded. “The consul was already attacked!”
“Using only a small portion of the weapons,” Louis-Cesare pointed out. “What is Alfhild doing with the rest?”
“And nobody knows where James is,” I added. “I called war mage HQ, but they said it was his day off—”
“Check it,” Marlowe snapped, and one of his boys moved out into the hall, a phone to his ear.
“—so I called his wife, who said he hasn’t been home in five days. He told her he was working a case, but she’s worried. Being gone this long isn’t like him—”
“Map!” Another of the guys pulled one out of a pocket and laid it on the flour.
“—so I called his father, but Rufus hasn’t seen him, either—”
I cut off, because Marlowe wasn’t listening. He’d bent over the map, so Louis-Cesare could show him where the cell phone tower had pinged. I tried to concentrate on it, too, and on where James might
be in all those crisscrossing streets, but I wasn’t seeing it. I was seeing him, with that crown of flowers his little girl had made for him, laughing at something his wife had said.
That’s why Alfhild needed to die, I thought. Because of James. And all those other Jameses she’d crushed under her heel through the centuries: the poor bastards back in Faerie, the hundreds or maybe thousands of baby vamps in Venice, the Dark Fey . . .
She’d destroyed countless lives, thoughtlessly, carelessly, on her climb to the top, because they didn’t matter to her.
They just didn’t matter.
Marlowe and Louis-Cesare continued the debate, but I’d had enough. There was a minuscule opening in the crowd and I went for it, elbowing my way through to Coffee Lover, who was still patiently waiting. The fey were better at that sort of thing than I was.
“Tell me some good news,” I said, before he even opened his mouth.
He arched an eyebrow at me. “You have a visitor.”
I scowled. “Who is it this time?”
He didn’t answer. Just stepped out of the way to show me another doorway filled with vampires. And, in the middle of them, Curly Abbot, looking like Porky Pig with his shirt rucked up over his fat little belly, and his blue eyes huge. And Ray, standing beside him, appearing unbelievably smug.