“A pleasure.” Adair grinned at her and gave a half bow while sitting. He didn’t extend his hand, and neither did Nita.
“Yes, I’ve heard a lot about you,” Nita responded.
“Oh, has Kovit been talking?” Adair grinned. “It’s been what, three, four years?”
Kovit shifted uncomfortably. “Around that.”
Adair nodded sagely, closing his eyes slightly to give himself an aura of thought. “Yes, and such circumstances last time! Why, your friend had made himself quite a mess. I eat people, and even I didn’t know that three bodies could have so much blood in them.”
Nita turned to Kovit slowly, but he was avoiding both of their gazes. “Yeah,” he muttered. “Me neither. You always discover new things when Matt’s temper is involved.”
Nita mentally readjusted her image of Kovit’s friend. Again. She never wanted to meet him.
“But I hear there was some trouble in the Family. That temper get away with him again?” Adair asked, expression sly.
Kovit shrugged. “Something like that.”
Adair’s lips curled, and his eyes shone. For a moment, Nita thought they flickered too, no longer the round human shape, but tilted and elongated, like a cat’s eyes had been stretched too long and thin in Photoshop. They were also yellow and slitted, like a crocodile’s.
But then they were back to normal and Nita was once again left wondering if she’d seen it at all.
“You’re staring,” Adair said.
Nita blinked, and swallowed. “Sorry.”
“Do you not like this face?” he asked. “I can change it.”
Before Nita could protest, his skin began to ripple, like waves on the water, like someone had thrown a pebble in the chest of a hologram, and the changes spiraled out. For a moment, his skin was clear, almost translucent, and caught the low light and sent rainbow patterns spinning around the room.
And then Nita was staring at a completely different person.
A middle-aged man with a too-large nose, sallow skin, and bushy eyebrows looked back at her with the same smile as before.
“Is this better?” he asked. It was disconcerting, because it was still the same voice coming from a totally different face.
Nita wanted nothing more than to reach over and touch his skin and see if the illusion held, or if he skin would feel like water, or scales, or something else entirely.
Then he rippled again, and he was a pretty girl, around Nita’s age, with long blond hair and blue eyes. Piercings ran up one ear. Her face was pale, with rosy cheeks and plump lips, but her expression was all sly Adair-ness.
Kovit flinched away, and Nita wondered if this was a face he knew. “Change it back, please.”
Adair pouted. “Why?”
“You know why.” Kovit raised his eyebrows. “Besides, if you keep changing features, I’ll never recognize you.”
Adair laughed and changed back to the elderly man. “This the one you wanted?”
“You know it’s not.” Kovit rolled his eyes. “And besides, you look old now.”
Adair grinned and whispered, “How do you know I’m not old?”
Nita thought about that. He could look any age he wanted, and no one would ever know the truth. He could be anyone. But then she remembered that it had still been the same voice, young and masculine, coming from each of the bodies. It was nothing more than a surface illusion of some kind.
She’d love to figure out how he did it.
Kovit sighed. “Who cares how old you are?”
Nita nodded. “Your age has no impact on whether you can help us or not.”
He turned to her. “Of course I can. The more important question is, will I?”
His skin rippled again, and Nita paid close attention this time, increasing the concentration of rods and cones in her eyes as much as possible to try and see beneath the watery surface. She thought she caught a glimpse of something black and multi-jointed, covered in leathery hide, but she couldn’t be sure.
Then the Adair of before was sitting in front of them, wavy black hair in exactly the same style as before, not even tousled.
“So, Nita, will I?” He tilted his head. “Kovit says the two of you need a place to stay incognito for a few days while you figure out how to get out of town. Is that right?”
Nita nodded, and Kovit said, “Yes.”
“Good!” Adair stretched like a lazy cat before a nap, eyes half lidded as he watched them. “So, what do you have to offer?”
Kovit leaned forward. “Information.”
“What kind?” Adair steepled his fingers on the table.
“I can tell you about my break from the family,” Kovit offered.
“Boo.” Adair made the whistling sound of a bomb falling and crashing to the ground. “I know alllllllllll about that already.” He looked at Kovit with something like sympathy. “Sorry about Matt, by the way. I know you were close.”
Kovit looked away. “It’s fine. I’ll see him again one day, when the heat’s cooled off and it’s safe to reach out.”
“Mmm.” Adair eyed Kovit. “That sounds nice. But you still don’t have any information for me.”
Nita sighed. “I have a list of corrupt INHUP agents.”
That got Adair’s interest. “Oh?”
“One name a day for as long as we stay.” Nita crossed her arms.
He shook his head. “Names alone are no good. For all I know, you’re making them up.”
“I’m not. The list was stolen from Reyes. Also known as the Queen of Parts, a player in—”
“El Mercado de la Muerte, yes, I know who she is. Was.” He considered, then shook his head. “Again, it’s just names I can’t verify.”
Nita hesitated again, then took out the two pieces of Reyes’ phone. “This phone had conversations and text chats between Reyes and some of the people on the list. But I can’t put it back together without setting off the GPS locator on it and bringing black market hunters down on us.”
Adair took the phone from her and turned it over in his hands. It took Nita a moment to realize he was doing what she’d done, looking for physical bugs.
Satisfied, he put it down, then tapped a finger on the table. “I have someone. She might be able to retrieve the information without setting off the tracking. I’ll bring her in tomorrow.”
Nita leaned forward. “Does that mean you accept my deal?”
Adair drummed his fingers on the table and nodded. “If we can get the information off the phone as well, I accept.”
“No. You can’t kick us out if your hacker turns out not to be good enough.”
Adair traced a finger over the phone and looked over at the two of them. Then he nodded. “Fine. You can stay here.” He leaned forward, and hissed. “But if you bring the black market hunters to my shop, I swear to God I will hunt you down wherever you run, drown you in Lake Ontario, and eat your rotting corpses.”
He leaned back, and his perfect smile returned. “Deal?”
Nita swallowed. “Deal.”
Fourteen
ADAIR LED THEM to the back of the pawnshop, into the “staff only” area, which consisted of a stairwell up and a stairwell down.