Nita, squished in between two people like a human sandwich, glared at Adair. She snapped her foot out and kicked his knee.
Adair yelped and toppled, but instead of toppling back into the other room like Nita planned, he fell on top of their pile and Nita grunted as the breath was crushed from her.
There was much swearing, death threats, and too many elbows as the four of them disentangled from each other and rose. Adair glared at them all when they were back on their feet. “Who kicked me?”
No one answered, they just turned in unison to glare at him. Diana stuck her tongue out and said, “You were being an ass about it.”
“And this surprises you because?”
“It doesn’t.”
Nita rolled her eyes at the two of them, and hesitated. Gold had just come to Adair for his connections. Adair took pay in information. If there was something Nita wanted to know, Adair was a good person to ask.
If she could pay the price.
She turned to Adair. “Can I talk to you?”
He raised his eyebrows and smiled slightly. “Me?”
“Yeah.”
He shrugged and gestured to the large dining room table in the center of the pawnshop.
Nita turned to Kovit. “I’ll be upstairs in a minute.”
He gave her a long, searching look, then nodded and climbed the stairs to their room. Diana looked at the two of them and sighed. “I guess I’ll take the trash out.”
Nita swallowed and made her way to the table as the others left the room. She sat down gingerly on one of the chairs, a hard, straight-backed Victorian thing that was ridiculously uncomfortable.
Adair sat across from her and leaned back in his seat, steepling his fingers and smiling slightly. “What can I help you with?”
Nita hesitated. “I want to know if you can find out about a vampire for me.”
He tilted his head to one side, eyebrow arched. “Oh?”
“My father was murdered recently.” A wry smile twisted her mouth. “Which I suppose you know, since you’ve been spying on me.”
Adair gave a faux-innocent face as if to say, Who, me?
Nita rolled her eyes, and he sighed.
“It was the mention of knowing Fabricio’s location, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Ah, bad move on my part.” But he didn’t sound angry, and his smile stayed firmly in place. “So, what about your father?
“I want to find his killer.”
“And you think I can help?”
“Yes. It’s a vampire. I figured you’d know who to ask to find out more.”
Adair considered. “How do you know a vampire killed him?”
“INHUP showed me pictures of him.”
“And you trust INHUP is telling you the truth?” An ironic twist of his mouth made clear what he thought of that.
Nita blinked. It hadn’t occurred to her that they might be lying. But after a moment of consideration, she shook her head. “I don’t think they’re lying. The same vampire came to ask me questions when I was in the market.”
Adair’s eyes darkened. “What kind of questions?”
Nita waved it away. “Not important.”
Adair snorted. “Do you think you can use that information to pay me for something later?”
Nita just shrugged. The truth was it was simple instinct now to protect her mother’s secrets, to hide who and what her mother was. She’d been doing it so long it was second nature. Though now that she considered it, information on her mother was probably valuable.
But that didn’t mean Nita was going to reveal it.
“So all you want is the name of the vampire?” he finally asked.
“Well, motive would be nice too, but I can find that out for myself when I catch him.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Going to kill him and avenge your father?”
Nita’s eyes narrowed. “Yes.”
Adair considered her for a long moment. “You do realize if INHUP knows he’s a vampire, he’ll be posted online so people can hunt him down and kill him.”
“I looked already. He’s not on the wanted list.”
That made Adair pay attention. He turned to her sharply, eyes narrowing. “Not there?”
“No.”
“Has he died?”
“I doubt it. Agent Quispe would have told me.”
He tapped a finger on the table slowly. “Interesting. I’ve never heard of them not putting someone on the wanted list after they’ve been confirmed.”
Nita shrugged. “I thought maybe he was part of another case. Perhaps they’re tracking him, hoping he will lead them to someone else before they eliminate him?”
“Perhaps,” Adair acknowledged, but his eyes were narrowed in thought.
Hook, line, and sinker. Adair liked knowledge, and she’d given him a mystery to solve.
Adair considered her. “This will cost.”
Nita crossed her arms. “I think I’ve already generously paid you from the information you’ve gleaned from that bug in our room.”
“Hardly. I’ve barely gleaned anything from that, and this may be tricky information to find.”
“How so?”
He shrugged. “If you ask the wrong questions to the wrong people, sometimes the answers get locked away and the keys thrown in the ocean. It’s a delicate art.”
She snorted. “You’re a kelpie. Since when has a key being thrown in an ocean been an impediment for you?”
“It was a metaphor.”
“So was mine.”
He laughed then, and smiled. “Fair enough. But the information from the bug won’t be enough.”
“What do you want?”
He considered, swampy eyes flickering for a moment, so his pupils almost seemed slitted. “I want to know about your family. About your father. About your mother. Vampire hit men don’t get on INHUP’s radar for killing regular folk. Normal mothers aren’t kidnapping powerful men’s children.”
Nita blanched. “No.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Then I suppose you won’t be getting that information.”
She swallowed heavily and looked away. “What, specifically, do you want to know?”
He laughed. “Trying to get out on a technicality?”
Nita rolled her eyes. “Well, I could tell you my mother doesn’t like dacts and my father’s favorite drink was ginger ale, but I doubt that’s the information you’re looking for.”
He snorted. “All right. What does your mother do?”
Nita hesitated a long moment. Protecting her mother’s secrets was so ingrained, so integral a part of her now she didn’t know if she could reveal them.
But she needed answers. Her mother wouldn’t give them to her, INHUP wouldn’t give them to her. Maybe Adair could.
“She sells unnatural body parts on the internet.”
“A black market dealer,” he murmured softly to himself. “What’s her username?”
Nita shook her head. “Get me answers, and I’ll give you answers. That’s all I’m saying until I have the name and location of my father’s killer in my hands.” She considered. “And a few other things.”
She listed a few more things, inconsequential to someone like Adair, but important for Nita’s plans.