Interlude

LAWTON

Earlier that morning

If Lawton’s irritation could manifest into physical form, it would look a lot like the massive gorilla he’d once seen at the Central Park Zoo. Huge and hulking, with rippling muscles and deep brown eyes that glared at anyone who came too close while it paced in its enclosure.

He hated waiting.

“If you tap your foot one more time, Mr. Adler, I will find cause to have you escorted from this room.”

Lawton bit the inside of his cheek and huffed, but he did as the mage instructed. “Well, then I shall tap no more.”

“Excellent.” The older woman didn’t look up from the jade-green bowl into which she gazed. She likely couldn’t, Lawton assumed through his limited understanding of divination, but he did know that Irene Blau was one of the best trackers in the city. He’d used her for far more piddly things than tracking his dearest friend, and Irene had been correct every time. Lawton fully expected the very good money he was paying her now would turn up results.

“Hmmm. Well, he hasn’t gone home,” Irene said as a flash of light came from the bowl. Or her hands. Perhaps both. Lawton couldn’t quite tell, but the light was bright enough that it made little sparks dance before his eyes.

Lawton averted his gaze as he said, “Strange. Calix is a creature of comfort. He’s not been home at all?”

“I said he hasn’t, so he hasn’t,” Irene replied. Her voice was snarled from years of cigar smoking and living near the factories that churned out machine parts and sent black smoke billowing over the rooftops of Queens. It made her sound angry even when she wasn’t. Lawton wasn’t quite sure if he’d tipped her past the point of irritation, but then again, she’d kept him waiting for almost half an hour while she stared into her little bowl.

Half an hour, and no results yet other than to find out that Calix hadn’t been home.

Lawton sighed, then immediately clamped his lips shut when the guard in all black who hovered just inside the door made a move forward.

“No need, Samson,” Irene said, waving a hand at her bodyguard. “He’s just being a little shit.”

Lawton bit the inside of his cheek harder, then winced as his incisor sank into the sore he’d worried there over the last day or so. All because of fucking Calix.

Godsdammit, Calix, where are you?

“You need to think a little quieter, Mr. Adler,” Irene said as she held up a finger. “I understand you believe your thoughts should stand out above all others, but I can guarantee you aren’t the only pissed-off Englishman writhing around in my bowl. But most of them have real reasons to be angry, like hunger or uncertainty about where they may sleep tonight. Now, be quiet, or I will let Samson escort you out, despite my words a moment ago.”

Lawton hid his smile behind a cough. He liked the old bat even when she was testy, and Irene usually gave half of a fuck on a good day. If she hadn’t ripped into him, Lawton would have wondered if she was ill.

So he sat in the red leather wingback chair in the corner, crossed his legs, and waited.

And waited.

“Ah, there he is.” Lawton’s moment of jubilation at Irene’s exclamation instantly shifted to something more concerning when she added, “No wonder I couldn’t get a bead on him. Whoever he’s with is quite good at Sight warding. They even managed to block me for a time. But I also wasn’t expecting…that.”

Something in her tone made Lawton’s blood cool. “Expecting what?”

Irene leaned back from the bowl with a deep inhale, then she slowly turned in her chair to lock him down with her steel gray eyes. The light from her divination Sight was fading, but bits of it still glowed within those cold irises. “Your Calix has not one, but two people in quite close proximity who reek of desire. Practically coated in it. I’m almost jealous.” She eyed him closely. “Two men, complete opposites in appearance. One is coated in patterning magic, the other is…colder, somehow. I only get a glimpse of a walking cane and strange eyes.”

Lawton’s mind whirled, a dandelion seed on a vicious wind.

“I take it you know at least one of these men,” Irene said with a smirk.

Lawton got to his feet, feeling unmoored, as if the very floor were shifting under him. Like when he and Calix had taken ferries around the small port near their boarding school. Thirteen years old and every day seemed new, bright, bold. He’d looked at Calix one day and saw someone new in his friend’s place; someone devastated by his mother’s death and void of himself. Lawton had wanted to comfort Calix but didn’t know how until Calix had leaned into him, sighed into Lawton’s neck, and cried silent, shaking tears.

The wind had been brutal that day, and the ferry had bobbed. No more than a toy to the wind, something the ferry driver had no power over. He had no power over Calix’s sadness. And the ferry had bobbed on.

Somewhere along the way, it had all gotten twisted up. And somehow that damn museum curator was involved in all of it. The man was close to Calix, lusting after him. Taking up the spot that Lawton had rightfully won so many years ago.

“Where is he?” Lawton bit out.

The tall, burly man at the wide wood and steel door stopped Lawton with a hand. The door hadn’t been the easiest to locate, even with Irene’s rather specific directions. So Lawton’s barometer of ire for the day was high already, and now this massive man was saying so insouciantly, “No entrance.”

Lawton was having flashbacks of just a week before, when he and Calix had been stopped from going into that blasted salon in Acadia. But this man was well-dressed and coiffed, whereas the salon guard had been some thug hired off the street. He might not be so easy to buy off.

Lawton narrowed his eyes, recalculating his attack. Claims of an issue with membership renewal slipped in between a few hearty handshakes stuffed with bills likely wouldn’t succeed here. So the next natural answer was the one that could lead to more problems, but he’d rather Calix be incredibly angry at him than cause a scene that could catch the attention of the Order.

Lawton thumbed the little golden circle pin under his lapel, gave the guard a sheepish smile, and said, “Honestly, mate, I’m not a member, but a friend is.” He held his hand a few inches above his own head. “Aubrey Lavigne’s his name. Rather tall bloke, close-cropped hair, impeccably dressed, pale green eyes?”

The man clicked his tongue, ran it over his teeth, and said, “Are you asking me about his features or describing them to me?”

What was it with doormen in this blasted city? Lawton bit back on his frustration. Today was going to end in spectacular fashion, whether he lost his temper or not. Truth be told, he didn’t have much of a plan outside of “find Calix, get the book back”, but the presence of Aubrey Lavigne and another man had mucked everything up. He had one idea, and it was a terrible, brilliant one. Lawton wasn’t ever in denial about his looks, or the heads he turned with regularity, and weaponizing those to get what he wanted was usually rather simple.

He didn’t suspect for a second that a man like Aubrey Lavigne — tall and proud and unbending — would be an easy target.

So Lawton smiled at the man, ignored his flat expression, and leaned in close to say, “Aubrey’s the kind of man with a bit of influence to fling around, and he tells me that this is the most premier club this side of the city. I want to join.”

The man shrugged. “Membership’s closed for the foreseeable future.” He sucked on his teeth and the sound made Lawton want to rip the man’s tongue out of his mouth and watch it wriggle. “There’s another place a couple of blocks over—”

With a snap of his wrist, Lawton had the man’s chin in his hand. The soft flesh under the man’s jaw puckered slightly where Lawton pressed a tiny blade against it. He sighed, knowing the claw ring was going to be hell to replace. The transforming spell that allowed the big ruby signet ring to slide down his finger and seamlessly become a hooked claw that fit around his fingertip was long lost to his family. But such was the risk with patterns, Lawton supposed.

“Walk with me,” Lawton said softly, making sure to lean in and block the sight of any passerby with his body. They were at the back of the building, off a long hall, where footsteps would echo loud and clear across the gold-veined marble. No one had yet walked by but Lawton wasn’t going to chance Fate at this moment. Silencing patterns weren’t uncommon, after all.

His hand clenched tightly, warningly, around the man’s beefy upper arm, Lawton steered them to a shadowed alcove he’d noted on his initial approach. Uncertainty on how he’d approach Calix was unique; he was always aware of his surroundings otherwise.

“There,” he snapped, giving the doorman a solid elbow to the kidney before rushing forward to press his claw under that fleshy chin once more.

The man’s eyes were backlit with defiance, but his brain must have caught up with him because he said, “Pass is in my pocket. Won’t work after today, cause they’ll notice the queer entrance patterns—”

With a vicious snarl, Lawton snapped his elbow up with a wide arc. There was no need for the blade to go into the man, after all. The doorman took the blow with a huff of air before he dropped to his knees, eyes rolled up in his head like a dime novel lackey. Lawton stepped backwards as the man’s unconscious form crashed to the floor, his lip curled as he stared down at the man.

“Well, lovely.” Lawton made quick work of patting through a finely cut jacket, finding a decent wad of bills, a gold pocket watch, and…ah. There. A thin metal wallet, no thicker than a few sheets of paper, and inside was a pass to the Minotaur Baths. The thing was likely enchanted up and down and sideways, but Lawton only wanted to borrow it. Really, if the idiot now out cold at his feet had listened to him, his wad of cash would have been a little thicker for no more work than the turning of a door handle.

Lawton snatched it all up before staring down at the man. Specifically at the strip of skin under his ear. Without any more measured consideration, Lawton split that bit of skin with his little gold claw, and before the blood could drip onto a starched white collar, he flicked the now-broken ring into a handkerchief and tucked it away, coming back out with a small, square compact. It was a pretty thing, pure silver and dotted with strange little runes Cassandra refused to explain to him. “All that matters is you use this on anyone you have to be…aggressive with,” she’d said when he’d first been recruited. The compact was a new invention of the Golden Order’s leader, Vincent de Laine, but apparently not everyone received it. Not everyone could be trusted with such a powerful tool.

Well, Lawton had never been someone with a strong moral fiber, but even he wasn’t going to run around wiping everyone’s memories. Morality was the stuff ginned up by the churches, and with so many of them now, suddenly, railing against the “fags and fairies”? A pox on their so-called “morality”. Everyone knew the priests were made of ill repute, too. He’d not yet had cause to use the compact, and now relished the feel of it in his palm, cool and serene like a springtime lake.

He flipped it open, then rubbed his thumb across the cobalt ink inside the compact, making sure to get it all on the cut he’d made. Instantly, the skin glowed with a sickly green light, then faded to reveal unblemished skin. He got to his feet, tucked away the compact, and headed back down the hall.

Job well done, me, Lawton thought as he used the door pass and followed the dark, steep stairs into air that lay heavy with humidity and the scent of salt and lavender. Now to figure out what the fuck to do about Calix.