The blonde laid my coat on the counter and said, "Clear."
The door to the bathroom opened, and the woman I’d heard before came out. She now wore a knit fabric dress the color of dark wine, and a couple of combs held her hair back from her face. She wouldn’t stand out in a crowd but she wasn’t unattractive. "He’s not Gaston," she said, frowning at me.
"No," said the blonde. "He was here for the merchandise. He was just about to leave with it."
The dark-haired woman nodded and asked me, "Who are you?"
"Dresden," I said. "I’m a private investigator, Ms. Garcia."
Francisca Garcia’s features froze, and she traded a look with the gun-wielding blond. "How did you know my name?"
"My client told me. You and Ms. Valmont could be in a lot of trouble."
Anna Valmont kicked the wall and spat, "Bollocks." She glared at me, gun steady on me despite her outburst. "Are you working with Interpol?"
"Rome."
Anna looked at Francisca and said, "We should scrub this sale. It’s falling apart."
"Not yet," Francisca said.
"There’s no point in waiting."
"I’m not leaving yet," the dark-haired woman said, her eyes hard. "Not until he gets here."
"He isn’t coming," Anna said. "You know he isn’t."
"Who?" I asked.
Francisca said, "Gaston."
I didn’t say anything. Evidently Francisca could read faces well enough that I didn’t have to. She stared at me for a moment and then closed her eyes, the blood draining from her face. "Oh. Oh, Dio."
"How?" Anna said. The gun never wavered. "How did it happen?"
"Murder," I said quietly. "And someone set it up to point the police at Chicago."
"Who would have done that?"
"Some bad people after the Shroud. Killers."
"Terrorists?"
"Not that playful," I said. "As long as you have the Shroud, your lives are in danger. If you come with me, I can get you to some people who will protect you."
Francisca shook her head and blinked her eyes a couple of times. "You mean the police."
I meant the Knights, but I knew darn well what their stance would be on what to do with the thieves once any supernatural peril was past. "Yeah."
Anna swallowed and looked at her partner. Something around her eyes softened with concern, with sympathy. The two of them weren’t solely partners in crime. They were friends. Anna’s voice softened as she said, "Cisca, we have to move. If this one found us, others may not be far behind."
The dark-haired woman nodded, her eyes not focused on anything. "Yes. I’ll get ready." She rose and stepped across the cabin to the washing machine. She drew out a pair of gym bags and put them on the counter, over the package. Then she slipped into some shoes.
Anna watched for a moment and then said to me, "Now. We can’t have you running to the police to tell them everything. I wonder what to do with you, Mister Dresden. It really does make a great deal of sense to kill you."
"Messy, remember? You’d have that dreary day," I pointed out.
That got a bit of a smile from her. "Ah, yes. I’d forgotten." She reached into her pocket and drew out a pair of steel handcuffs. They were police quality, not the naughty fun kind. She tossed them to me underhand. I caught them. "Put one on your wrist," she said. I did. "There’s a ring on that bulkhead. Put the other through it and lock the cuffs."
I hesitated, watching Francisca slip into a coat, her expression still blank. I licked my lips and said, "You don’t know how much danger you two are in, Ms. Valmont. You really don’t. Please let me help you."
"I think not. We’re professionals, Mister Dresden. Thieves we might be, but we do have a work ethic."
"You didn’t see what they did to Gaston LaRouche," I said. "How bad it was."
"When isn’t death bad? The bulkhead, Mister Dresden."
"But—"
Anna lifted the gun.
I grimaced and lifted the cuffs to a steel ring protruding from the wall beside the stairs.
As a result, I was looking up them to the ship’s deck when the second Denarian in twelve hours came hurtling down the stairway straight toward me.
Chapter Thirteen
I only saw it coming out of the corner of my eye, and I barely had time to register the movement and lunge as far as I could to one side. The demon went by me in a blur of rustling, metallic whispers, carrying the scent of lake water and dried blood. Neither of the Churchmice screamed, though whether this was intention or a by-product of surprise I couldn’t tell.
The demon was more or less human, generally speaking, and disturbingly female. The lines of curvy hips swept down to legs that were oddly hinged, back-jointed like a lion’s. She had skin of metallic green scales, and her arms ended in four-fingered, metallic-clawed hands. Like the demon form of Ursiel, she had two sets of eyes, one luminescent green, one glowing cherry red, and a luminous sigil burned at the center of her forehead.
Her hair was long. I mean like fifteen feet long, and looked like the demented love child of Medusa and Doctor Octopus. It had seemingly been cut in one-inch strips from half a mile of sheet metal. It writhed around her like a cloud of living serpents, metallic strands thrusting into the walls and the floor of the ship, supporting her weight like a dozen additional limbs.
Anna recovered from the surprise first. She already had a gun out and ready, but she hadn’t been trained in how to use it in real combat. She pointed the gun more or less at the Denarian and emptied it at her in the space of a panicked breath. Since I was a couple of feet behind the demon, I flopped to one side as best I could, stayed low, and prayed to avoid becoming collateral damage.
The demon flinched once, maybe taking a hit, before it shrieked and twisted its shoulders and neck. A dozen metallic ribbons of writhing hair lashed across the room. One of them hit the gun itself, and metal shrieked as the demon tendril slashed clean through the gun’s barrel. Half a dozen more whipped toward Anna’s face, but the blond thief had reflexes fast enough to get her mostly out of the way. A tendril wrapped around Anna’s ankle, jerked, and sent the woman sprawling to the floor, while another lashed across her belly like a scalpel, cutting through her jacket and sprinkling the cabin with fine drops of blood.
Francisca stared at the thing for a second, her eyes huge and surrounded by white. Then she jerked open a drawer in the tiny galley, pulled out a heavy cutting knife, and lunged at the Denarian, blade flickering. It bit into the demon’s arm and drew a furious shriek that did not sound at all human from her throat. The Denarian spun, silvery blood glistening on her scaly skin, and ripped one claw in a sweeping arch. The demon’s claws sliced into Francisca’s forearm, drawing blood. The knife tumbled to the ground. Francisca cried out and reeled back, into one of the walls.
The Denarian, eyes burning, whipped her head in a circle, the motion boneless, unnerving. Too many tendrils for me to count lanced across the room and slammed into Francisca Garcia’s belly, thrusting like knives. She let out a choking gasp, and stared down at her wounds as several more tendrils thrust through her. They made a thunking sound as they hit the wooden wall of the cabin.