Getting back to the house was a little more plicated than before. versatioween myself and Voltar had stalled after the sed kick, and so I found out moments after we arrived that there was a small tunrao Voltar and Dawes’ house.

  Finding out that the exit was in the room I’d talked to both earlier was discerting. Lifting the hatch led right into the middle of it. I hadn’t spotted any signs at all talking to them in here before.

  “Well, Voltar is limping. Do I even want to know?” Dawes asked, putting down the neer he was reading.

  “Things have gone well, Doctor. We are a step closer to solving the case!”

  “I’m a step closer to running for the hills and hoping I outrun whoever the gover sends after me,” I told Dawes. “It’d be less stress on us all at this point.”

  “She exaggerates.”

  “I do not! He has volunteered us for a ball and appointed me as his apprentice,” I informed Dawes. “Without my, or I assume, your, permission.”

  “Not going,” Dawes replied. “Not unless I bring someone along, which, if this is Lord Montague’s event, is unlikely.”

  “No one appreciates when I secure them io parties,” Voltar pined. “While I uand the reluce, doctor, this is reted to the case at hand.”

  “The st party reted to a case involved both of us nearly drowning from a punchbowl elemental,” Dawes said.

  “That will probably not be the case here,” Voltar said, settling down in a chair. “But if you wish to give up your spot as vanquisher of the elemental, Miss Harrow substitute in instead.”

  “Miss Harrow is sidering whether I get away with kig you again,” I said. “Apprentice? What oh possessed you to say that?”

  “That you’ll be dealing with us the most after this, and I don’t sider you airely lost cause?” Voltar answered. “You hardly think that you’ll go back to being a disreputable alchemist after all this, do you?”

  I had been sidering that, in fact, but in the end, that was a rather foolhardy hope.

  “Still, apprentice? tractor would be fine.”

  “Maybe a discussion for aime. Well, since we are here at home, perhaps we should discuss the rest of what was discovered at Lord Montague’s estate. You tested his heir for other toxins?”

  “Yes. And as far as I determine, without more invasive procedures, he’s not afflicted with anything else. At this stage of the Angel’s Sorrow, it might be impossible to poison him with anything else. The poison is built around a metaphysical cept of purity from a celestial viewpoint. The only reason Draic substances work as an antidote is they have the sheer strength not to be obliterated by the Angel’s Sorrow.”

  “About what I expected. Also, not something that expins why you took several hours to find me or why I was hearing one of Lord Montague’s guards whispering to him about you passing out.”

  “Gregory Montague knows who I am,” I told him.

  “A potential issue. He slipped past your mask?”

  How to ahis one? Be ho about the fact I’d gone on a rant in front of him, fessing to it as I tried to stab him with Diabolism? Not a ce, but from the look on Voltar’s face, I didn’t have a choi that matter.

  “How badly did you give yourself away?” he asked, tone morbidly curious.

  “I..” I weighed my words. “In hindsight, him being a cleric of Tarver might expin a few things about how easily he made me open up.”

  He’d said he hadn’t drugged the tea, and I believed that if only because it had tasted none different from normal tea. But divine magic reted to a god of bards? There could easily be something in the arsenal that god would grant to make me loosen my tongue. Believe things I shouldn’t.

  Voltar nodded. “Indeed. Something to keep in mind for the future.”

  That had been too nont.

  “You knew and didn’t tell me,” I said. “And now you wao know, or you would have beeer about c that up.”

  “Or maybe I just assume that, given what happened, you aren’t perceptive enough to cat?” Voltar asked. “But to answer your line of thought, clerics of Tarver do not deal with mind-altering magics. Any fhtness you dispyed is on you, Miss Harrow.”

  “I still should have known,” I said. “Even if he couldn’t coerformation magically, there’s a world of differeween how I’d treat a clerid a non-cleric.”

  “Which is why I didn’t tell you. I’m presuming your attitude wouldn’t be friendly, and I don’t need Gregory Montague w how you knew. I gave you a hint to be careful about him, but he’s reversed what you said about him being one suffitly voluptuous woman away from fatal distra.”

  I stared bnkly at Voltar, sidering my options. Kig wasn’t doing much to dissuade him, and engaging him in versation wasn’t a winning strategy either. Perhaps a suddeion would serve me better?

  “Please stop looking at me like you’re two seds away fr to knife my throat?” Voltar asked.

  “Please don’t injure him,” Dawes said. “ing the blood out and waiting for him to heal is such a spot of bother.”

  I frowned. “I wasn’t serious earlier about you being an incubus, but if you regee-”

  “I am not an incubus,” Voltar said irritably. “Nor am I a fey. I am a human, and I’d ask you to stop ing up with increasingly exotic possibilities for what I am.”

  “Kitsune?”

  Vroaned and got up from his chair. He headed towards the small kit, presumably to fix something.

  “It’s why I asked you to stop guessing earlier. He hates the idea he’s some kind of powerful magical being instead of just a ‘person with a very funing brain’, as he puts it. Also, Kitsune? I’m not familiar with that word.”

  “My great-grandmother killed one. And may have also had some of my retives with them as well? Shapeshifting fox creatures, tricksters. I think they might be fey-adjat?”

  “They are not,” Voltar said, ing ba with a tray of biscuits. “It’s a on assumption, but there is very little retioweewo. Listen, it’s not that you aren’t trusted, but-”

  “I’m not trusted,” I said. “Holy, if you are about to say this is all some test to see if I’m still w with Versalicci, I’m out. You put me in a room with a cleric with minimal sleep after making me deal with Versalicd didn’t expee kind of disaster to e from it? Or was this some attempt to get across tory what was going on in the most votile ossible?”

  “If I ahat I holy expected you to just ruests, not eh him, and for that to be all, would you believe me?”

  “No. Just from prior behavior, I wouldn’t. So how about a deal?” I suggested. “You stop needling me and leaving me in the dark, and maybe I’ll sider being your apprentice.”

  “Would you actually?”

  “sider? Yes. Actually be one? No.”

  Vhed, then ged the subject.

  “We have a week to prepare for the ball, but we hardly be idle during this time, of course. The first order of business, I’ve decided to agree to the offer you made to Varrow about the location of the Pure Bloods hideout. you hahat portion of this?”

  “To your satisfa?” I questioned back. “I’m not going to break into this pd find you and Dawes in the front room, sipping tea and critig my teiques for breaking in, am I?”

  “You won’t fihere,” Dawes said. “I have a date tonight I io keep, so I’ll be gone.”

  “I have a simir e,” Voltar said. “Not necessarily romantic, but definitely personal.”

  “Ah. So while I’m out sneaking around the used-to-be headquarters of a gang so racist they think even other humans are inferior, you two will be enjoying personal time?”

  “That about sums it up, yes.”

  ***

  I should have known the dry spell wouldn’t st.

  Standing just barely under an , yet another of the hundreds of pedestrians trying to escape the torrent currently trying to swallow the road I’d o travel, I pondered something. Would it be more proper to pray to the Veoria, goddess of the wind and the rain, for a blessing to get past it, or curse their name for sending us this storm.

  Then agai not to draw their attention. It’s not like storms were unon and the less likely I was to atta errant lightning bolt of diviribution. Here was to hoping Veoria couldn’t detect errant bsphemous thoughts from down below.

  As an Infernal, I was enjoying the privilege of my kind. That privilege was that when a storm was going on, and there was limited space, you were guarao be stu the outskirts or even in the rain itself.

  It wasn’t too bad. There were few enough people uhis storefront that I was mostly protected. The only rain falling on me was from the whipping force of the rain.

  Which meant rain drenched every inch of exposed skin and even my coat was being soaked through as the chill wind blew past.

  I was only stuck here till enough time had passed so my leaving wouldn’t be suspicious, so just a few minutes more. As unpopur as the Purebloods came across to me, this was their turf, so someone would inform or keeping tracks, especially of Infernals as of te, and a drawn-up hood could only do so much to protee’s identity.

  A couple more miil I could step out into the water, currently threatening to reach above the storefront and swallow everyone’s shoes. I should have brought an umbrel.

  Then again, as an errant umbrel swooped by in the wind at the speed of a pigeon, perhaps not.

  I didn’t o fake the groan of frustration and dismay before I leaped out onto the street, spshing through the half-foot of water. Wind and rain whipped at me, the cold w its way through my coat into flesh and bone.

  If it’s this rainy tomorrow, I am dragging Voltar out into this.

  I could only see a few feet ahead of me, relying mostly on the buildings on the side of the street for an idea of where I was. That ran out once I got to the docks, the riverside piers, warehouses, other buildings and even the moored ships not looking distinough to make out.

  It took nearly two hours to find the fish shop, marked by the sign of two crossed swordfish.

  Varrow said it would be a moored ship he fish shop. There ’t be too many of them around.

  There weren’t too many. There was, in fact, only one. I knew because I checked five times, in desperate hope a ship would appear between the raindrops.

  Sighing, I turo my target. It clearly hadn’t been used for its intended purpose for months and instead had been verted into some kind of floating apartment building from the looks of it, but I would never be excited about trying to sneak on board a garbage scow.