I grunted in affirmation, picked up a chocolate-covered jelly, and drew the symbol in the chocolate with a forefinger.
Forthill tilted his head, frowning. "Lasciel," he murmured.
"Lasciel?" I said. It came out muffled, since I was licking chocolate off my finger.
"The Seducer," Forthill murmured. He smeared his finger over the chocolate, erasing the sigil. "Lasciel is also called the Webweaver and the Temptress," he said, between licks. "Though it seems odd that Nicodemus would want to free her. Typically, she does not follow Anduriel’s lead."
"A rebel angel among rebel angels?"
"Perhaps," Forthill said. "It is something better not discussed, for now."
Susan stepped out of the little office, a wireless phone to her ear. "All right," she said to the phone, and walked past us, jerking one hand at us to tell us to follow her. Father Forthill lifted his eyebrows, and we went out to the Carpenter family’s living room.
It was a fairly huge room divided into several clumps of furniture. The television was in the smallest clump, and still looked about three sizes too small. Susan marched over to it, flicked it on, and flipped through stations.
She stopped on a local station, a news report, that showed a helicopter angle of a building being consumed by a raging fire. About a dozen yellow-and-red fire trucks circled around it, but it was obvious that they were only containing the fire. The building was lost.
"What’s this?" Forthill asked.
"Dammit," I snarled, and turned away from the television, pacing.
"It’s the building Shiro took us to last night," Susan said. "The Denarians were in some tunnels beneath it."
"Not anymore," I snapped. "They’ve left and covered their tracks. Hell, they’ve had what? Six hours? They could be a couple of states away by now."
"Nicodemus," Forthill said. "It’s his style."
"We’ll find them," Susan said quietly.
"How?" I asked.
She pressed her lips together and turned away from me. She spoke quietly into the phone. I couldn’t hear what she said, but it had that end-of-conversation tone to it. She turned the handset off a moment later. "What can we do?"
"I can go to the underworld," I said. "Call up some answers from there. But I can’t do it until the sun sets."
Forthill said quietly, "You mustn’t do that. It’s far too dangerous. None of the Knights would want—"
I slashed my hand through the air, cutting him off. "We need information or Shiro is going to die. Not only that, but if we don’t run down Nicodemus, he gets to do whatever badness he’s getting ready to do with the Shroud. If I have to go to Downbelow for answers, then that’s where I go."
"What about Michael?" Susan asked. "Couldn’t he find Shiro the way Shiro found Harry?"
Forthill shook his head. "Not necessarily. It isn’t something he can control. At times, the Knights are given that kind of discernment, but they can’t call it up at will."
I checked my watch, figuring up distances. "Michael and Sanya should be back here in what? An hour or so?"
"Barring further difficulties," Forthill said.
"Fine. We’ll see if the side of the angels wants to pitch in. If they don’t, I’m calling Chauncy up as soon as the sun goes down." I took the phone from Susan and walked out of the room.
"Where are you going?" Susan asked.
"To talk to Anna Valmont. And after that, I’m going to call my client. On the off chance I survive, I want to look like I at least tried to be professional."
Charity kept a guest room that had slowly been engulfed in a jungle of fabric. Clear boxes full of the stuff in every imaginable color stood stacked against one wall, and a small sewing machine sat on a table, barely visible among neatly folded stacks of more. More boxes of fabric had been stacked into a rampart around a single bed, which was occupied by a lump buried underneath several quilts.
I turned on a small lamp on the sewing table and hoped that the room wouldn’t burst into flame. "Anna. Wake up."
The lump made a mumbling sound and stirred before settling again.
I turned the phone on and let the dial tone sound in the room’s silence. "I know you’re awake, Miss Valmont. And you know that I saved your ass back at the Marriott. So if you don’t sit up and talk to me right now, I’m calling the cops to come pick you up."
She didn’t move. I punched in a number and let the phone start to ring.
"Bastard," she muttered. With the British accent, it came out bah-stuhd. She sat up, her expression wary, holding the covers to her front. Her shoulders were bare. "Very well. What do you want?"
"My coat, for starters," I said. "But since I doubt you’re palming it, I’ll settle for the name of your buyer."
She stared at me for a moment before she said, "If I tell you that, it could kill me."
"If you don’t, I’m turning you over to the police."
She shrugged. "Which, while unpleasant, won’t kill me. Besides, you intend to turn me over in any case."
I scowled at her. "I saved your life. Twice."
"I am aware of that," she said. She stared through me for a moment before she said, "It’s so hard to believe. Even though it happened to me. It seems … mad. Like a dream."
"You aren’t crazy," I said. "Or at least, you aren’t hallucinating or anything."
She half laughed. "I know. Cisca is dead. Gaston is dead. It happened to them. My friends." Her voice broke, and she started blinking very quickly. "I just wanted to finish it. So that they didn’t die for nothing at all. I owed it to them."
I sighed. "Look, I’ll make this easy for you. Was it Marcone?"
She shrugged without focusing her eyes. "We went through an intermediary, so I can’t be sure."
"But was it Marcone?"
Valmont nodded. "If I had to guess, I would say it was. The buyer was someone with a great deal of money and local influence."
"Does he know that you know?"
"One doesn’t mention to the buyer that you know who he is when he is taking precautions to prevent it. It’s impolite."
"If you know anything about Marcone, you know that he isn’t going to pay you off and let you walk away without delivering," I said.
She rubbed at her eyes. "I’ll offer to return it."
"Good idea. Assuming he doesn’t kill you before you finish offering."
She glared at me for a second, angry and crying. "What do you want from me?"
I picked up a box of tissues from behind a bunch of yellow cotton on the table and offered it to her. "Information. I want to know everything. It’s possible you’ve heard or seen something that might help me recover the Shroud. Help me out, and I might be able to buy you some time to leave town."
She took the box and blotted her eyes on a tissue. "How do I know you will deliver on that promise?"
"Earth to Larceny Spice, come in Larceny Spice. I’ve saved your life twice. I think you can safely assume goodwill."