Dream Thief, page 11
A sort of Kabuki ensued, wherein the creature conveyed to Augustus a fourth-floor room with a southwest facing. The evening sun, and thus darker in the morning.
He nodded, thanked the thing, and unraveled him. For now.
Having a demonling around risked others noticing. And perhaps taking umbrage. If they could.
Now was not the time to get into an argument with one of those Papist chaps. They were usually so utterly clueless as to be irrelevant. And the others would be a tad upset.
Later.
The time was too early to make any move, as she would have barely returned herself, and he would wish her to be asleep.
Or absent. Either would do, though the latter would be more beneficial.
He found a comfortable space from which to watch the front of the hotel, wrapped himself in an esoteric cloak that should be sufficient against even directed divinations, and settled in to wait.
Chapter
Twenty-Three
Darkness. And then some. The night sky had remained glorious, every star seemingly standing out against the black velvet of the darkness.
Augustus approved, even though a hint of drizzle and clouds would have probably made things easier.
He’d brought the demonling back, setting it to wide circles of the surrounding block once he’d ascertained that nobody near seemed able to detect it as anything but a chill up their spine when it passed.
He was one man, and thus unable to watch every possible avenue of egress from the hotel. It was wise that he spent the effort because Marie-Rose departed some two hours later, well into the depths of darkness but not so late as to stand out.
France did not keep farmer’s hours once you got into the big city. Not even banker’s, unless your banker enjoyed a jazz club until perhaps dawn.
He had considered pursuing the woman, if only to see what might draw her out on a night when she had considered and discarded a central seduction.
The demonling returned with the news.
Augustus considered.
“Stalk her softly,” he ordered his enthusiastic subordinate. Worse, the creature appeared smart enough to make such a distinction, as it nodded. “Report back if she approaches my hotel. Otherwise, remain safe and watch where she goes, that we might stalk them later.”
Again, the look that might be a snort of derision that the woman might be a threat to a demonling such as that one, and the creature was gone.
Augustus grinned to himself, stretched once as he took a deep breath, and emerged from his hiding hole to begin his own stalk. Marie-Rose was far more dangerous than she seemed, but he didn’t feel like conveying that to the demonling. Instead, he moved. Down and across, before circling back once and entering the front door and the lobby as a man on a mission. A hotel guest or a visitor.
He wound about himself a glamour that would cause most people who saw him to assume he belonged here. Something similar to what had allowed Digby and him to approach the Dudley manor house in the spring.
One did not skulk, because a guilty man acts guilty. Instead, he walked with a faux smile on his lips and an intent firmness to his stride.
The doorman tipped his cap as Augustus entered. The folks at the desk perked up, but he nodded to them and immediately attacked the grand staircase that led up to a mezzanine balcony, well-carpeted and with various paintings on the walls.
Guests descending the steps met his smile and nod without speaking, ignoring him otherwise as all the others had. Augustus vanished from sight and mind together, circling to the next set of steps and then up to the fourth floor.
Orienting himself, he paused, as though enjoying a landscape in watercolor. In truth, he took the moment to reach out with metaphysical senses enhanced for that southwest corner on his right.
Barriers on an esoteric plane, but nothing drastic nor powerful. Defensive sorts of things that most metaphyscians learned early in their training. Tripwires intended to notify one of burglars and prowlers. In this case, while Marie-Rose was away.
He nodded and let his senses explore. The ring’s power allowed him to maintain the conjuration of his associate while working here, but he refrained from a second such conjuring, as the headache could be inordinate later.
It helped that this was a hotel. The door lock would be pedestrian. It would be any of several things she might have hung from the door itself. Hidden from casual view, as it were.
Those would represent a problem, if she was an esotericist of any mettle.
Nobody bothered him, so Augustus approached the door. From a pocket he withdrew a set of metal bits that got inserted into the lock, with a slight esoteric push to align things briefly.
The lock surrendered with an audible click.
At the same time, Augustus returned the picks to his pocket and reached out with his mind. There. There. And there.
Simple, each of them. Defensive. Passive. At least until someone wasn’t paying attention.
Marie-Rose had much to learn from the Canadians.
Augustus severed the lines, rather than take the time to weave threads that would allow him to safely access without leaving any trail. It was a public space, and someone coming along might notice him acting strangely in front of a closed door for that long.
Hue and cry would likely ensue.
Best then to take other chances.
He opened the door, exactly far enough to slip inside, one hand dropping into his pocket and withdrawing the orichalcum blade from its sheath.
Inside, he closed the door without looking, eyes into the room itself.
Bland. White paint on walls. Hardwood with a few throw rugs underneath. Middle-class furnishings, with a bed, a chester, an armoire, a table, and two chairs. No restroom, so presumably one shared with others down the hall, boarding house style. No other doors save this one, plus windows on south and west, currently closed.
Nobody present.
Augustus let out a breath. Then he stretched his esoteric senses to look for clues, nearly blinding himself in the process, as Marie-Rose had scribed a stepping circle between the table and the armoire, in a spot where most travelers would stash their steamer trunk when not in use.
It wasn’t a powerful one, as they went. But then, he’d been stalking a dream thief, and they only required the ability to open such a portal, then reach through with their minds and locate tunnels in the aether allowing them to walk in seven-league steps, as the old story went.
The chester and armoire had been ensorceled against someone opening either without a specific word or charm. The rest was fairly mundane. But then, how long has she been in Marseilles?
Not long, if she was the one that had been tracking him. A few days at most. And had only triggered the first bits of her confrontation less than twelve hours ago.
Hopefully, he’d still gotten ahead of her planning.
Or she’d laid her own trap for him or someone to blunder into.
He paused and fired a thought to his associate, but the demonling assured him that the woman was still walking and didn’t appear to be headed in the direction of his hotel. Or returning.
Hopefully, he remained hidden. At least for now. She would know that someone had been here, if she looked closely enough at her various wards, but in severing them, they were not going to retain his fingerprints.
Flipping a coin in his head, he moved to the armoire first. It took more effort to turn aside her protections without breaking them, but he hoped to be able to leave them intact when he left. And he had the time.
Mayhap a lesser burglar had gotten as far as the door, breaking everything like a bull elephant, then panicking when he realized it?
Thin cover, but as good as he could do at present. Time had been more important than subtlety, at least until it wasn’t.
Patience. Care. Deliberation. The door surrendered eventually, revealing two wardrobes, as he had suspected.
On the one hand, the clothes of a beautiful woman with a highly-developed fashion sense. Dresses, skirts, and blouses from the best fashion houses in France, where it was taken far more seriously. Only Saville Row came close to the French for that sort of attention to detail.
It was the other side that drew the eye. Dark clothes. Not tight, but rather meant to flow with the wearer and obscure silhouettes. Pants, sweaters, and shirts in browns, greys, and blacks. Rather like his spare closet at home, when he needed to do things without letting witnesses have a good description.
There was even rope and what appeared to be some sort of professional climbing harness, though he didn’t pull it out to inspect. She might notice, and the armoire door had not been opened. Not at all.
Satisfied at shoes, garments, and tack, he closed it back up and reset things as well as he could, taking the time to cover his tracks.
The chest of drawers held four. He noted a few bits and pieces of flotsam on the top. Coins, receipts, and pieces of paper. Nothing valuable.
Augustus focused on the things that would alert her if anyone even touched the knobs. Bright to his esoteric senses, though invisible to the mundane.
A woman with secrets.
He moved even slower here, pausing regularly to note any changes. And to check in with his associate.
Each drawer had a different lock, as it were, but they gave the impression, as with the man on the hill, of being somewhat perfunctory, save for the bottom one.
A thief would start at the top. A woman might keep her undergarments there, for ease of access. The bottom seemed doubly strong to the rest, so he disarmed it first.
And was rewarded when he opened it. Esoteric gear he recognized. Chalk to draw circles. Jars of certain dusts and materials. Ingredients for a stepping circle, however temporary and weak in itself. Even a book he dared not touch.
A few jewelry boxes called to him longingly, but Augustus withheld. Those would be items of power. And risk to him, when he wasn’t here to destroy the woman.
Only Lachance rated that sanction, presumably.
She was, however, far more than she seemed. Or had let on. That demon rated a Four would probably be too much for her to handle, but this gear spoke of a thief. Not necessarily a dream thief, though he had to wonder.
Was she connected to Lachance? An associate? A cohort? An employee? A competitor who had stolen a march on the man and located Augustus first?
Too much unknown. And he didn’t need to solve it today. Lachance needed to die, however unfortunate the circumstances.
He needed more information.
Fortunately, he knew where to look.
Augustus returned everything to whence it had come, then spent extra time resetting it.
At the door, he found the esoteric stubs and recognized the book they had come from. Rosenbaum. Not the best at the craft. Not the worst, either.
Middling sorcerer in his day, according to a few contemporaries who still spoke of the man.
Still, it gave Augustus an idea. He reached out and tempted those stubs to grow again, like an arborist grafting branches. Hopefully, she would not notice the difference, and if she did, she might put it down to someone seeking her and being turned away at these lines.
Were he to craft a blind divination, after all, that might do exactly that.
He even considered returning home and divining things he already knew, just for the advantage of further muddying the waters.
That sounded like an excellent plan.
He made it to the hallway and effected his retreat.
Chapter
Twenty-Four
Morning. Augustus had slept some, after sending something of an amateurish divination after Marie-Rose Guérin through a common mirror. The sort of thing that her defenses would brush aside, perhaps retaining his flavor.
And hiding his intrusion.
After a breakfast so early he might have woken the chicken to lay the eggs, Augustus had wrapped various enchantments around himself and out to visit Digby. Lady Claudette was unlikely to be awake yet, but the Captain should be at his breakfast around the time Augustus arrived.
Both of his friends were intentionally keeping a fixed sort of schedule, allowing Augustus to call upon them without searching. At present, they were the hidden elements on his game board. In the bullpen, if he had the Americanism correct, though he needed to inquire with a few friends to be sure.
As expected, the good Captain was at his breakfast, reading a local paper for the news. Augustus joined him and ordered coffee, having already consumed enough food to face what might be a busy day.
Digby greeted him with a smile and a grunt, but the man hadn’t had his fortification by a slab of ham and three eggs yet.
“I penetrated the woman’s hotel room last night,” Augustus began when they were alone, extending his protections to obscure the man, were Marie-Rose to seek him in her own mirror this morning.
Oh, the tangled webs we weave.
“Was that wise?” Digby asked simply, offering no emotions with his tones, but rather approaching it like a tactical exercise. Like the man had been trained for.
“There are only necessary actions and mistakes,” Augustus nodded, quoting a hoary old sage he’d known in a dockside tavern in Brighton. “This felt necessary, but hindsight is the only exact science.”
Digby nodded.
“Will she discover you?” he pressed.
It was Augustus’s turn to shrug.
“I attempted a variety of misdirections,” he offered. “Any of which should hide other things.”
“Like the sword the matador hides behind the cape?” Digby grinned.
“Not certain I would go that far, Captain,” Augustus replied a bit tartly. “At the same time, I cannot discount that as an outcome. We are here to locate Lachance, for the purposes of likely killing the man. If Guérin turns out to be an ally of his, she might also find herself forfeit.”
“Lucky the government brought you in, then, isn’t it?” Digby rumbled.
Augustus nodded. Most proper Englishmen would be chasing the Marquis of Queensbury now. All those silly rules about how to fight fair.
When was a better time to hit a man than when he was already down? Augustus wouldn't say he liked killing women, as he generally disapproved of killing humans in general. Demonic conjurations and the like were an entirely different matter, after all.
And nothing about the woman would still his blade, were she a friend of Lachance who got in his way.
Further conversation was stilled by the arrival of Lady Claudette. He might say unexpected, but the woman was obviously keeping a set schedule, to have arrived not all that long after Digby, and far earlier than was her usual wont back home.
He rose and seated her. Then got her up to date on what he had learned from Guérin last night over dinner and beyond.
“And from that, I suspect that we are moving to some sort of endgame,” Augustus concluded. “Why, I cannot say, save that the feeling is there. She is far more than she lets on, but to confront her on the topic is to give away too much myself. Have you had any luck in tapping resources in Paris or London in the short term that might be able to tell us anything about the woman? I intend to reach into the underground warrens of Marseilles’s mind, but I am an outsider, and she French, so they will likely throw up all manner of blockages in my path.”
Lady Claudette nodded.
“I sent a coded note yesterday after lunch,” she replied. “I expect some update mid-morning today, though it will be of necessity thin, given the limits of telegraphy here and the need to hide ourselves behind layers of ambiguity.”
Augustus nodded.
“Perhaps you might change hats then, my dear,” he offered. “Pretend to be a literary writer rather than a journalist and tell everyone you want to write all this up as the perfect mystery, or some folderol. Many will fall for that sort of thing and talk, wherein you might suggest a female cat burglar and see what interesting tidbits you might discover.”
“That sounds like a better use of my time,” she nodded. “And it allows me to move now.”
She turned to Digby.
“You will escort me as an employee brought from England,” Lady Claudette announced. “A big, hulking bruiser who speaks little French and pretends ignorance of the tongue, on the off chance some fool mutters in front of you.”
Digby smiled and nodded. His French was probably the best at the table, as Augustus didn’t do more than pass through on the way to more interesting locations, most of the time.
“Exercise extreme care,” Augustus warned them. “Digby, I would not leave your room unarmed until you return to London.”
The good Captain smiled and tapped a thumb on the handle of his pistol, concealed beneath his jacket. Yes, that lovely hand cannon of a .455 Webley Self-Extracting Revolver, loaded with special bullets that Augustus had caused to be created. Silver, with a smattering of other things that many fell creatures discovered allergies to, but only after Digby had shot them.
Food arrived just then, so Augustus withdrew, messages exchanged.
So much had happened in such a short period of time. Less than a day, even. And yet, it felt as though the campaign had been running for months.
He didn’t think it would go much longer.
Chapter
Twenty-Five
Augustus sat in the pleasant, polite sun of a sidewalk cafe and enjoyed a touch of coffee with a croissant. Exactly what he needed to break his day into two parts, with a morning spent contemplating any manner of scenarios, and thus allowing all the other players time to respond.
Hopefully, they were still catching up with him from yesterday, as he’d made many large maneuvers. With any luck, most of them were as mentally maneuverable as battleships, though he knew for deadly certain that Marie-Rose was better.
As good as him? That remained to be seen in the dance itself.
A stranger approached. They did that. This one had the Gallic hallmarks of a native.
