Crowbones

CHAPTER 74

Ilya

Earthday, Novembros 4

Ilya arrived early for this secret meeting between humans and Sanguinati, slipping through the narrow space at the bottom of the outside door before flowing up the stairs to the unoccupied apartment above Lettuce Reed. Once inside the main room, he shifted from smoke to his human form.

“I know you’re here,” he snarled. At this time of night, the heavy drapes Julian Farrow had over all the windows kept out every sliver of outside light—and made sure that no one outside would notice lamplight and wonder who might be up there above the bookstore and what they might be doing.

He didn’t think Farrow intended it as a bolt-hole. The human would have a better chance of escaping an enemy if he stayed on the ground floor of the building. But the couple of times Ilya had come up here to look around when Farrow was occupied elsewhere, he’d had the impression of a fiercely private place, as full of lies as secrets.

Julian Farrow wasn’t a fool, which was why Ilya had made it easy for him to purchase the bookstore in return for being the Sanguinati’s informant.

The quiet click of a lamp being turned on. Then Stavros Sanguinati stepped from behind the reading chair in one corner of the room.

“You knew.” Ilya spit the words. “You knew and didn’t tell me?”

“I told you why Grandfather Erebus sent me here,” Stavros replied.

“Not about that. About Nicolai being here.”

He saw the surprise on Stavros’s face.

“Nicolai is here?” Stavros stared at him. “Are you sure?”

“I saw him.” Ilya smiled bitterly. “He was wearing a cape made of black feathers and carried a hollow gourd full of bones. The warning rattle made us hesitate when Grimshaw, Farrow, and I went to investigate that flea market storefront. Probably saved us from being caught in the explosion.” He tried to push down the anger—and the feeling of betrayal—he felt for Erebus Sanguinati, who was the leader of the Sanguinati throughout the continent of Thaisia, and for the problem solver standing in front of him. “Nicolai has taken on the mantle of this Crowbones, hunting here, killing here, and you didn’t tell me!”

“He isn’t Crowbones,” Stavros snapped. “He isn’t the Hunter, and he wasn’t supposed to be here. When Tolya acknowledged that Nicolai would never fully recover from the injuries he received during the fight to hold on to Bennett, he told Grandfather that the shadow of Sanguinati in that town was too small and too exposed to properly take care of someone that damaged. Nicolai was supposed to be taken to Lakeside, but he slipped away from the Sanguinati who were sent to escort him to the Courtyard there. He just . . . disappeared. This is the first sighting any of us have had.”

The anger drained out of Ilya as he absorbed Stavros’s relief—and remembered that Stavros and Nicolai had lived in the Toland Courtyard for many years as friends and comrades before the terra indigene abandoned that city just ahead of the Elementals’ and Elders’ wrath and destruction.

“Did he know you were sending him to Lakeside?” Ilya asked.

Stavros nodded. “He enjoyed the stories about Broomstick Girl. More so after he was injured. Grandfather thought being in the same Courtyard might help him mentally. Emotionally. But . . . Tolya thinks Nicolai may have been shown a vision drawing done by Hope Wolfsong and that’s why he slipped away from his escorts. There’s no proof, and Tolya said his source of information, an Intuit woman who had seen the drawing, insisted that she didn’t recognize the woman in the drawing and can’t guess where the woman is located. But she said the woman in the drawing had curly brown hair and was holding a book.”

Ilya released a long breath. “Victoria is The Jumble’s Reader.” Was Nicolai here to find Victoria—or harm Victoria?

“Another human whose stories are entertainment and lesson,” Stavros said. “I don’t think your Victoria’s adventures have traveled as far west as the stories about Broomstick Girl, but they have reached Lakeside, Talulah Falls, and Great Island. She sounds . . . interesting. Definitely not a run-of-the-mill human.”

“She is an unintentional trouble magnet,” Ilya replied. “But the Elders and Elementals are curious enough about her to interact with her and a few other humans, so Victoria is a vital link between the human village and the terra indigene settlement.”

The two Sanguinati studied each other.

Finally Stavros asked, “How vital?”