“Where did you learn to dance like that?”
Audrey looked up from her glass of wine and met my gaze while a slight smirk played over her lips. Golden afternoon sunlight streamed in through the windows of the restaurant and set her green eyes glittering like emeralds.
“You’re still thinking about that, huh?” she replied, and gave me a quick rise and fall of her eyebrows.
I threw her a flat look. “How can I not?”
She swirled the wine in her glass for a few seconds and then took a sip. Since it was halfway between lunch and dinner, the restaurant was mostly empty. Only a few other couples sat at the tables a short distance from ours, and none of them were eating. Just enjoying a casual drink. Like us. Except we were here to see David too. Though the advisor and his eavesdropping waiter still hadn’t deigned to make an appearance.
“Like I told you before, my sister is very good at…” She waved a hand. “Well, everything. So she naturally got top marks in her dance class.”
“Let me guess…” Amusement pulled at my lips. “You wanted to show her up?”
“Naturally. But I knew I would never be as good as her at the classical dances, so I decided to win with strategy instead of hard work. There was a girl in my class who had moved to Eldar from one of the northern cities, so I persuaded her to teach me one of the dances that was popular in her city.”
“Persuaded?”
“I didn’t threaten her, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“So you bribed her.”
Her lips quirked up and she gave me an innocent shrug. “Maybe.”
I chuckled. “Alright, so she taught you how to dance like that.”
“Yeah. I did it as my mid-year exam.” She flicked her wrist. “Let’s just say that my teachers were… not impressed.”
My eyebrows rose. “Really?”
“Too… vulgar, I think was the word they used. They even called in my parents for a meeting. I still remember the look of disapproval on my father’s face.” She lifted her shoulders in a shrug again. “The steps stuck with me, though. Well, in general. I improvised parts of that dance last night.”
“I’d say your teachers…” I trailed off as the spying waiter at last approached our table.
“Is everything to your satisfaction?” he asked loudly enough for the closest table to overhear.
“Everything is fine,” Audrey replied in an equally loud tone.
While leaning forward to place a pitcher of water on our table, the waiter slipped me a folded up note and whispered, “The boss isn’t here right now. But I was told to give you this.”
It took an impressive amount of self-control to hide the irritation washing over me. David couldn’t even be bothered to meet with us this time? I had assumed that the blackmailing mission would be the last one before we would be brought into the real plan to locate Levi’s wife. Since no one in the city was breathing a single word about her, it would look incredibly suspicious if we brought up that we already knew that they were trying to track her down. So we had to wait for them to share that with us. But apparently, they still didn’t trust us enough for that.
Based on the coldness seeping into Audrey’s eyes, she shared my feelings.
Without waiting for us to reply, the waiter simply moved off to place another decanter of water on another table.
Paper rustled faintly as I opened the note and read through the message enclosed there in neat handwriting.
Exasperation welled up inside me again. They have got to be fucking kidding.
Forcing out a breath, I looked up to meet Audrey’s gaze. “Looks like we have our next assignment.”
I discreetly slid the paper to her and then waited while she read it. Her dark brows furrowed into a scowl. When she was done, she shoved it back to me so that I could stuff it into my pocket since the dress she was wearing didn’t have any.
“Come on,” I said as I stood up, leaving my still half-full glass on the table. “We need to get some supplies first.”
The sneaky waiter watched us while we weaved through the tables but said nothing as we walked out the door and into the busy street. The sun had been baking the city all day, and I could almost feel the air vibrate with heat when we stepped onto the cobblestones outside. I rolled up the sleeves on my shirt, thankful that I hadn’t been stupid enough to put on my leather armor this morning.
Audrey drew her fingers through her hair and then tied it up in a ponytail before rubbing a hand over the back of her neck. She was wearing a thin pale green dress, but I still spotted a bead of sweat sliding down her neck as she followed me down a series of streets.
“Who the hell does he think he is?” Audrey growled when we were a safe distance from the restaurant. “Thinking he can give us instructions for some petty hit on a fucking piece of paper? As if we’re some damn henchmen.”
“Yeah.” I dragged a hand through my hair. “We need to make sure that this is the last one. Not just because I’m getting sick of this being treated like underlings shit, but also because Levi’s losing his patience. You heard his messenger this morning. He’s not happy with the backlash from the blackmailing.”
Not happy was the understatement of the decade. The messenger who had sought us out this morning had more or less told us that if we didn’t get this plan moving soon, Levi would cover us in metal and drop our still breathing bodies in the River of Souls.
“I know,” she replied.
A group of young men walked past within earshot, and we fell silent for a while. They laughed and shoved each other and dared someone to ask someone else out while casting not-so-subtle looks over their shoulders. Another group, this one of mixed men and women, who most likely contained the object of their discussion, walked a short distance behind them. They were whispering and giggling too.
None of the oil lamps had been lit yet, but the light from the afternoon sun shone through the colored glass domes and painted the whole street in a patchwork of shifting hues. I studied the way the colors played over Audrey’s dress while we waited for the two groups to pass.
“I know we technically only have to kill Trevor Gale to hold up our end of the deal,” Audrey said when the street around us was relatively clear again. “But I want David dead before we leave Malgrave.”
“Agreed.” I placed a hand on her back, steering her towards a blue door that had finally come up on our left. “In here.”
No bell tinkled as I pulled open the door and strode into one of the drug dens. Not that I had expected it to. Most establishments like this usually avoided things that made unnecessary noise. People came here to disappear into a dreamland, after all.
“Welcome,” said the blond woman behind the counter as we entered.
The small room at the very front was bare except for the pale wooden counter she was standing at and the paintings on the walls. A doorway opened up to a corridor behind her, which I knew would lead to secluded rooms where guests could ingest the drugs in privacy.
I hadn’t personally used any of these establishments, but various missions for Levi had taken me to them more than once so I knew the basic layout and procedure.
“I’d like to buy ten grams of dreamcore,” I said as we came to a halt in front of the counter.
There were several different kinds of recreational drugs sold in places like this, but dreamcore was one of the most popular ones. All of the drugs were created by dark mages with powers similar to what Harvey Grant possessed. He could infuse his emotion magic into food and other things that could be consumed, and so could the ones who made these drugs. But rather than influence emotions, they could create things that affected a person’s state of mind. Dreamcore was a drug that created fun illusions. I had never tried it myself, but given how popular it was, it had to be a pretty fun experience.
“Of course,” the owner replied. “For here or to go?”
“To go.”
“And to smoke or to drink?”
“To drink.”
The drug was a fine powder that could either be put into a pipe and smoked or poured into alcohol or whatever drink the user preferred. Regardless of the form, the powder looked the same. As far as I knew, the only difference between the two was that the powder used for smoking had a taste to it while the other one was both tasteless and completely colorless, so as to not ruin the drink.
The woman gave me a nod in acknowledgement. “One moment, please.”
Audrey had drifted over to inspect the paintings on the walls, and I turned to watch her while the owner went into a back room to collect my order. With her head slightly cocked, Audrey studied a drawing in pink, orange, and purple colors that depicted some kind of whimsical landscape. As I watched her, I wondered if she had ever tried dreamcore. Like she had said last night, there were a lot of things I still didn’t know about her.
Something moved at the corner of my eye. I turned back, expecting to find the owner returning with my order. Instead, I was hit in the face with a thick white cloud that tasted like sweet apples.
I coughed violently as the smoke made it into my lungs.
A goofy laugh filled the room.
While waving the white cloud aside with one hand, my other shot out to grab the person who had blown it. Unfocused brown eyes looked back at me when the smoke cleared. They belonged to a thin man in a rich blue shirt who was clutching an expensive-looking pipe in his right hand.
Tightening my grip on his collar, I yanked him forward while pressing out through clenched teeth, “The fuck do you think you’re doing?”
He just laughed and patted my arm as if we were good friends.
The door that the owner had disappeared through earlier opened in the corridor. I glanced between the blond woman stepping back out through it and the brown-eyed man before me. He was high as a fucking kite so he wouldn’t even feel it if I beat him up. And I was pretty sure that the owner wouldn’t be very pleased if I did that either, so instead of giving him the beating he deserved, I just used my grip on his shirt to throw him towards the door. He stumbled a few steps before managing to grab the handle.
From her place by the painting, Audrey looked at me with raised eyebrows. I just shook my head at her in silent reply that it was nothing to worry about.
“Alright, here you are,” the owner said. “Ten grams of dreamcore made for drinking.”
I passed her a stack of paper bills that she put somewhere behind the counter before she handed me the small leather pouch she had been holding.
“Just pour it in, wait about a minute for it to dissolve completely, and then drink away,” she said.
Sliding it into my pocket, I asked, “Any upper time limit? From when I pour it in to when I have to drink it?”
“Oh, uhm… Maybe five hours? Give or take half an hour or so.”
“Alright. Thanks.”
When I turned around, the idiot with the pipe was gone. I jerked my chin at Audrey, who gave the painting one last look before following me towards the door.
Warmth washed into the store as I pushed open the door again. Behind us, the owner’s voice drifted through the air.
“Come back anytime!”
