Getting back to the house was a little more complicated than before. Conversation between myself and Voltar had stalled after the second kick, and so I found out moments after we arrived that there was a small tunnel entrance to Voltar and Dawes’ house.

Finding out that the exit was in the room I’d talked to both earlier was disconcerting. 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 newspaper 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 government 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 can bring someone along, which, if this is Lord Montague’s event, is unlikely.”

“No one appreciates when I secure them invites to parties,” Voltar complained. “While I understand the reluctance, doctor, this is related to the case at hand.”

“The last party related 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 can substitute in instead.”

“Miss Harrow is considering whether I can get away with kicking you again,” I said. “Apprentice? What on earth possessed you to say that?”

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

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

“Still, apprentice? Contractor would be fine.”

“Maybe a discussion for another time. 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 can 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 concept of purity from a celestial viewpoint. The only reason Draconic 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 explains 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 answer this one? Be honest about the fact I’d gone on a rant in front of him, confessing to it as I tried to stab him with Diabolism? Not a chance, but from the look on Voltar’s face, I didn’t have a choice in 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 explain 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 related 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 nonchalant.

“You knew and didn’t tell me,” I said. “And now you want me to know, or you would have been better about covering that up.”

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

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“I still should have known,” I said. “Even if he couldn’t coerce information magically, there’s a world of difference between how I’d treat a cleric and 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 wondering how you knew. I gave you a hint to be careful about him, but he’s reversed what you said about him being one sufficiently voluptuous woman away from fatal distraction.”

I stared blankly at Voltar, considering my options. Kicking wasn’t doing much to dissuade him, and engaging him in conversation wasn’t a winning strategy either. Perhaps a sudden escalation would serve me better?

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

“Please don’t injure him,” Dawes said. “Cleaning 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 can regenerate-”

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

“Kitsune?”

Voltar groaned and got up from his chair. He headed towards the small kitchen, 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 functioning 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 relatives with them as well? Shapeshifting fox creatures, tricksters. I think they might be fey-adjacent?”

“They are not,” Voltar said, coming back in with a tray of biscuits. “It’s a common assumption, but there is very little relation between the two. Listen, it’s not that you aren’t trusted, but-”

“I’m not trusted,” I said. “Honestly, if you are about to say this is all some test to see if I’m still working with Versalicci, I’m out. You put me in a room with a cleric with minimal sleep after making me deal with Versalicci and didn’t expect some kind of disaster to come from it? Or was this some attempt to get across to Gregory what was going on in the most volatile way possible?”

“If I answer that I honestly expected you to just run the tests, not engage with 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 consider becoming your apprentice.”

“Would you actually?”

“Consider? Yes. Actually be one? No.”

Voltar sighed, then changed the subject.

“We have a week to prepare for the ball, but we can 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. Can you handle that portion of this?”

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

“You won’t find me there,” Dawes said. “I have a date tonight I intend to keep, so I’ll be gone.”

“I have a similar engagement,” 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 last.

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

Then again, best not to draw her attention. It’s not like storms were uncommon and the less likely I was to attract an errant lightning bolt of divine retribution. Here was to hoping Veoria couldn’t detect errant blasphemous 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 guaranteed to be stuck on the outskirts or even in the rain itself.

It wasn’t too bad. There were few enough people under this 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 unpopular as the Purebloods came across to me, this was their turf, so someone would inform or be keeping track, especially of Infernals as of late, and a drawn-up hood could only do so much to protect one’s identity.

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

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

I didn’t need to fake the groan of frustration and dismay before I leaped out onto the street, splashing through the half-foot of water. Wind and rain whipped at me, the cold working 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 distinct enough 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 near the fish shop. There can’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 turned to my target. It clearly hadn’t been used for its intended purpose for months and instead had been converted 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.