Page 163 of Long Way Down

She was familiar, a little.

As was Maverick, at the head of the table, Shepherd on one side, a stranger in a cut on the other. She spotted Toly perched in the window ledge behind the woman, stoop-shouldered and dark as a crow. A hulking man in a nice suit stood next to him.

And seated in the chair beside the woman was an equally striking man, long auburn hair glinting where it lay over his shoulders.

It was…an odd gathering.

“Good, you made it,” Maverick said. And then, since she was still frozen in the doorway, he smiled at her and said, “Hey, Missy. Glad you could make it.”

Swallowing was difficult. “Um,” she said, intelligently.

“It’s alright, baby,” Pongo murmured in an undertone. He herded her further inside, shut the doors, and then pulled out a chair from her across from the beautiful woman. “You’re fine.”

Sometimes, a person’s physical perfection was revealed to be an illusion upon closer inspection; not so with the brunette. Sitting a table-span away, Melissa was rendered grubby and small and inadequate in the face of her flawless skin, architectural nose and cheeks and brows, and the clearest, eeriest pair of blue eyes she’d ever seen.

She clucked her tongue, and in an elegant, British-accented voice said, “Good God, boys. Look at her: you’ve got her trembling with fright.” Toward the head of the table: “Have you been threatening this poor girl, Maverick?”

Maverick frowned, slightly. “Of course not.”

The woman clucked again, and turned back to Melissa. “You’ll be Melissa, then. The detective.” Every line of her was femininity and grace – save her eyes, shrewd and sharp. And her tone was all-business. “I’m Raven. You got my father to the hospital a few months ago. Your surgeon friend saved his miserable life – which, much to his delight, enables him to make all ten of his children quite miserable for the foreseeable future.”

Realization hit. “Oh. Devin’s daughter,” Melissa said, still feeling stupid and wrong-footed.

“Unfortunately,” Raven said with a sigh. “I rather like to think of King and Albert and Charles being ‘Raven’s brothers.’”

“There’s more than the three,” the man beside her – also British, also with a refined, affluent voice – said, smile teasing at the corners of his mouth.

Raven tossed her hair. “Those are the three that count most.”

“I shall tell Tennyson you said that.”

“He won’t care. He can be your brother.”

“Hm.”

Chair legs scraped, and Pongo sat down at Melissa’s right. “That’s Shaman,” he said of the auburn-haired man, whose blue gaze slid toward them. “He’s…dramatic.”

The man flashed perfect teeth in a wide, insincere smile. “Thank you for noticing, darling.”

“And that” – Pongo shifted so he could point down to the foot of the table, where a man in a (somehow tasteful) blue plaid suit and flashy tie sat smoking a cigar, rings winking on his fingers the same hard silver as his slicked-back hair – “is Prince. You know Kat.”

She blinked, but once her eyes adjusted to the dimness at the edges of the room, she saw that Kat was indeed standing behind Prince’s chair. He tipped his head in silent greeting.

Prince exhaled a coil of thick smoke. “She doesn’t look much like a detective,” he said, gaze half-lidded and bored.

Pongo tensed, and she knew he was about to hurl an insult back, fairly bristling at her side. Beneath the table, she laid a hand on his thigh, and in that single motion, her own nerves finally settled. She understood what this was, now, she thought. Or the picture was beginning to coalesce, at least.

To Prince, she said, frostily, “Have you found that a beer gut and receding hairline make a man a better fit for detective work? Or is it the cock and balls?”

The man was more than a little spooky, but there was something straightforward about the boldness with which he held her gaze, and took another long, slow drag off his cigar. “They make them less appealing to look at,” he said, at last.

Maverick cleared his throat at the head of the table, gathering their attention. He swept a gaze around the room, and then said, “Obviously, this isn’t a true church meeting. Unpatched and nonmembers aren’t allowed to sit in on church – save for prospects on certain occasions. So. This isn’t church.

“Honestly, it’s a meeting we should have had a lot sooner, in those first days after Abacus fell, when Knoxville was still in town. But, well, we’re having it now, and we’ll keep Knoxville in the know.”

“I’m calling Kenneth, later,” the man they called Shaman said.

Maverick nodded. “The truth is, the landscape has changed. Here in New York, definitely, but across the country, and across the globe, too. Abacus was massive, its reach was far, and its influence ran deep. All its major players are dead, but God knows how many minor players there are to deal with, now. We haven’t begun to see the turf wars that are going to play out, as the underworld rebalances.” He made a face. “It’s gonna get ugly, folks.

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