House of Cards. C.E. Murphy

all. Where is everybody?” Margrit glanced at the windows overlooking the empty, darkened casino on the warehouse’s bottom floor, then brushed the question off as she sat down again. “We’ve been through this. I trust you to keep your word, which doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate that you’re dangerous. You were also annoyingly cryptic on the phone. What’s going on?”

      “How much do you know about us?” The question, put forth bluntly and with none of Janx’s typical humor, made Margrit’s shoulder blades pinch. She felt as if she’d been called on by a law professor whose expectations outstripped her knowledge of the subject.

      “You mean the Old Races?” She hid an irritated moue, knowing she was stalling in order to come up with an adequate answer. Janx nodded, gesturing for her to continue with a fluid motion that sent smoke swirling around his head.

      “There are five of you. Five left, anyway. Dragons and djinn, selkies and gargoyles, and the vampires.” She listed them the way she’d first heard them named, with dragons and djinn woven together, wonderful to pronounce. “There used to be others. Mermaids, anyway, and Bigfoot.”

      Janx’s mouth flattened with vague insult and resigned acceptance. “Siryns and yeti.”

      “Siryns and yeti. Sorry. Anyway, I know the dragons came from some volcanic area and spread out because they don’t like company. I got the idea it was the Pacific ring of fire, but I don’t know why.” She wrinkled her eyebrows curiously, but Janx passed a hand across his chest, refusing the question.

      Margrit shrugged disappointment, but went on. “Djinn are from the deserts and selkies are from the sea, if there are more than one or two left. Gargoyles came from the mountains.” She hesitated, remembering Cara’s reluctance to say more.

      “You’ve left one out,” Janx said lightly. “The vampires. What do you know about the vampires?”

      Margrit smiled uncomfortably and shook her head. “That they say they don’t come from this world at all.”

      “And what do you believe?”

      “I wouldn’t even know where to start, Janx. I’ve seen a selkie change skins and a gargoyle transform in my arms.” Color suffused her cheeks as heat ran through her body at the sudden, shocking memory. More than just in her arms. Alban had transformed as she’d clung to him, arms around his neck, legs around his waist. The implosion of power had been an erotic charge lancing through the core of her, enough to make her blush even now.

      Curiosity lit Janx’s eyes to pale green, and Margrit forged on before he could speak. “Malik turned me into fog and hauled me through the city, and I’ve seen Daisani move so fast he looked like he was in two places at once. What I believe is you people aren’t human. Anything beyond that I just don’t know. Why?” she added warily. “Is there a vampire army congregating in the Hellmouth?”

      “Not,” Janx said, smiling, “as far as I know. Do you know how many of us there are?”

      “A countable number. In the thousands, maybe, not even tens or hundreds of thousands.” She wet her lips, studying the red-haired man across from her. “I got the idea there were maybe only dozens of dragons left, but I don’t know why. Fewer than anybody but the selkies, though. Maybe it just seems like dragons would be hard to hide.”

      “The dark ages were not easy on my people,” Janx admitted in short tones. “Your Saint George, to give an example.”

      “If there really was a Saint George and a dragon, or dragons, why don’t we have bones and fossils?” Margrit leaned forward, eager for the answer.

      Humor came back into Janx’s gaze. “You’ve been waiting to ask that, haven’t you? We know when one of ours has died, Margrit Knight. We come and take his body to the boiling earth he was born of. There’s nothing left for your scientists and tabloid reporters to find.”

      “Tabloids,” Margrit echoed. “So some of you have died recently. I’m sorry.”

      “Are you.”

      “Yeah. Yes, actually, I am.” She lifted her chin. “This world of yours, the world the Old Races belong to. A few months ago, I didn’t know it existed, but now that I do, despite everything, I wouldn’t go back to not knowing. You … make things possible, Janx.” Margrit heard the note of longing in her voice and cleared her throat, trying to modulate it. “I used to read stories about the Loch Ness monster. I never believed them, but I wanted to. I wanted there to be something incredible in the lake. It just wasn’t rational.” A smile curved her mouth until her eyes crinkled, honest delight flooding through her. “I’ve seen six impossible things before breakfast, now. I can believe in the Loch Ness monster if I want to. You—all of you, Alban and Daisani and even Malik—gave me that. You might see me as a pawn to be played in some enormous game I don’t understand, but you’ve made it possible for me to believe in magic. I regret the passing of anything that takes the magic out of the world, even if it’d bite my head off as soon as look at me.”

      Blue smoke sailed from Janx’s nostrils, paling his eyes to granite-green, making them unreadable. “I think I begin to understand you, Margrit Knight. Stoneheart was wiser than he knew, breaking centuries of silence with you.”

      “Why do you call him that? You call me by my full name and you give Alban nicknames. Why do you do that?”

      Janx smiled, revealing curved eyeteeth again. “Who’s to stop me? What you don’t know, or understand, about the Old Races is this,” he said abruptly. Ice skimmed over Margrit’s skin, reminding her that easy banter and Janx’s playful manner were not the reasons she’d come to an East Harlem warehouse at two in the morning. “We keep ourselves in line through a series of checks and balances. Everyone owes someone something. It keeps us honest, for the most part.”

      “God,” Margrit said involuntarily. “I’d hate to see you with free rein.”

      Something nasty happened to Janx’s smile, a reptilian coldness coming into it. “Yes,” he agreed. “You would. It begins to look something like this.”

      He stood with startling abruptness, scooping up the paperwork she’d shifted earlier. He flipped open a folder, dealing mug shots out of it as if they were cards from a deck. Each photograph landed with astonishing precision along the edge of the table before her. She touched the second one, frowning at it. “That’s … I know him. He’s the man you were going to have drive me home in January.”

      “Patrick. He’s dead.”

      Margrit jerked her hand back, her gaze skittering to Janx, then to the other two photographs he’d dealt. “They’re all dead,” he confirmed. “Patrick, to whom you showed so little trust—how shall I put it? He oversaw the day-to-day aspects of financial fecundity.”

      “He shook people down for the money they owed you,” Margrit translated.

      Janx exhaled, a sound laced with acid humor. “He oversaw that arm of my organization, yes. You ought to have trusted him,” he added petulantly. “Patrick never looked for trouble. He only hurt people when it was strictly necessary, and I can’t imagine you’d have made it so.”

      “How reassuring. What happened to him? Them,” Margrit corrected. The faces of the other two men were unfamiliar. One was extraordinarily good-looking, charismatic even in the unflattering light of a mug shot. “And who were they?”

      “I assume you’re more interested in their positions than their names. The handsome one ran one of my larger substance rings, and the third—”

      “I really shouldn’t have asked. I swear, Janx, all I need to do is wander in here with a tape recorder sometime and you’d talk yourself right into a jail cell.”

      “Electronic devices tend to come to a short end around here, Margrit. You know that. Besides, you wouldn’t really put me in jail, would you?” Janx’s eyes widened, a protestation of hurt innocence that belied any care for the dead men whose photographs lay on the desk.

      Margrit