Page 50 of Soothsayer

Naturally, once Sören knew about the looming confrontation, he insisted on being there. I figured it would be easier without him, but he thought, probably correctly, that since he was the one we were fighting over, he should have a say in our negotiations.

“Fine,” I said. “But keep your mouth shut for the most part, okay? Please? Because you’re not good at defusing these sorts of situations, and I think you know that.”

“Defusing such situations would be boring.” He smirked. “I much prefer when you fight over me.”

“And I much prefer to survive the negotiations, so don’t push it, okay?”

“I will think about it.” Which meant he was probably going to be a little shit. “Which of my brothers is coming?”

“Jakob.”

Sören’s expression immediately perked up. “Really? That’s a compliment to you, Cillian. Jakob is Ólafur’s best negotiator. Itmeans he’s moved beyond just threatening you into trying to reason with you.”

I snorted. “Before he kills me regardless, you mean?”

“Obviously.”

“I’m flattered.” I was more than a little relieved, actually. I had no desire to see hide or hair of Art?r again, especially since he was probably still very put out over taking all those shots to the junk. And Rolf… “Why not the other brother?”

“Oh, Rolf is just a year older than me—he’s too young to have much influence with Ólafur. Plus, he doesn’t speak very nuanced English. Jakob has a law degree from Oxford.”

Great. I got to bargain for my life with a lawyer. I’d never considered myself stupid, but occasionally I felt the weight of my lack of a formal education. The prospect of facing down a lawyer was a uniformly distasteful one. The second he brought up, I don’t know, probate or something, I was going to kick him in the face.

No, I wasn’t. But it was a nice thought to get me through the evening.

Jakob Egilsson pulled up in front of the La Quinta in a black SUV—naturally—an hour and a half later. He had two other men with him, both of them discreetly armed. Jakob himself was dressed in khakis and a nice button-down shirt, nothing that would stand out in the Southwest. He went through the rigamarole of getting a hotel room, speaking with barely a trace of an accent, and then came to meet me in the foyer not far from the front desk. If there had been an open meeting room, I would have taken it to keep things more private, but there wasn’t, and there was no way I was going to a bedroom with these people. Besides, I needed to be able to see outside.

Jakob looked between me and Sören as he sat down across from us. “Little brother,” he said conversationally. “You look like you’re doing well.”

“Passable,” Sören replied. “It certainly has been far more interesting with Cillian than it ever was with you.”

“That’s a shame. If I’d known how discontented you were becoming, I would have taken steps to alleviate it. You know we only want the best for you.”

“So I’ve been told. And yet you were not able to keep me, not even in the finery to which you’ve become accustomed. That is no way to win a battle, Jakob. Certainly no way to win a war. It is laziness, and Ólafur cannot afford to become lazy, not with regards to me.”

“As you’ve so clearly demonstrated. However—”

“Hi,” I interjected, because that little game had gone on for long enough. “I’m sitting right here. I think you should probably talk to me at this point.”

“I’m not so sure of that,” Jakob replied, but he did at least look at me. “If Sören felt free to make a bargain with you, then he is also free to bargain with me, as our father’s second. I’m merely cutting out the middleman.”

“You can’t.” That was Sören, and he sounded more than a little gleeful. “Because I am the object you both desire, and bargains have been struck that gainsay neither of the original agreements. I am free to make new choices, but not with you, unless Ólafur is indisposed. You are restricted to your father’s bargain, which means you cannot cajole me into coming with you. You must deal with Cillian.”

“You’re enjoying this way too much,” I told Sören. He smiled at me and preened.

“It isn’t every day that wizards fight over a simple landvættir. I feel I should enjoy the moment.”

Jakob looked at me, reallylooked, and for a moment, I felt a weird kinship with him as we both briefly agreed on the fact that Sören was a complete and utter drama queen.

“Fine,” he said. He resettled to face me, crossed his legs, and pulled out his phone. “If you would take a look at this, please.” He handed it over to me, and I felt my breath catch in my throat as I took in the picture he had pulled up. It was a brick building on a very familiar corner in Denver, and it was completely gutted by what had to have been a very fierce fire.

“You—”

“As I understand it, three bodies have been recovered so far. They’re still being identified, but at least one was female.”

I stared for another moment at the picture, getting my initial burst of fear and outrage under control, and then took a deep breath. “Well, arson is never nice, and I can’t say I approve, but I also happen to know you haven’t accomplished what you’re implying. Nice try, but I call bullshit.”

“You can’t know that.”

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