Page 53 of Hex and the City
My eyes darted between the two of them. The cups of coffee were only warm in my fingers, but they felt like they were burning.
I took a half-step backward. “What’s going on, you guys? You’re starting to freak me out.”
“No, it’s okay.” Roscoe raised his hands to pacify me, but neither of them made a move. To them, I must’ve looked like a rabbit in a trap. I must’ve looked like a fool.
Johnny pursed his lips, exchanging a cautious glance with Roscoe. Something passed between them. Approval? Agreement? Finally, he answered.
“Didn’t he tell you? Maximilian Drake is an alias. His real surname is Brillante.”
24
MAX
Itrotted out of the patisserie, the top of the paper bag scrunched up in my hands, my nostrils filled with the richness of baking bread, my chest filled with sunshine. In the bag? Three chocolate croissants, in case Leon was extra hungry. And if he wasn’t, well, I could have a second one all to myself.
Things were going well with Leon. Not perfect, because perfect implied that the two of us had outrageous sex all night and still woke up with the mental and emotional fortitude to go about our days normally. No muss, no fuss, no drama. This was nice, our unspoken agreement, an opportunity to take things a little slower.
Not that I got that impression from Leon at all, but something about him struck me as so fragile. Not in the sense that I saw him as weak or frail, but from my quiet, private fear that saying or doing the wrong thing would send him running again, set him off on his endless circuit of California.
As I passed under the shade of a large tree on the sidewalk, I figured I really wouldn’t mind very much if he stayed, if it gave us the chance to get to know each other a little better. I bowed my head to duck under some of the lower branches, muttered a polite “Excuse me” to the person passing a little too close to me.
But they clearly had no intention of stepping aside. I stopped in my tracks, ready to glare them down, only to find myself staring into the alabaster white of a mask.
“Greetings, Maximilian Drake.” The Masque tipped his imaginary hat, as if he didn’t look enough like a pretentious ass already. “Out investigating the anomaly so early in the morning, are we?”
“Breakfast,” I grumbled, meaningfully rustling my warm paper bag. “And it’s getting colder the longer I stand here. Can I help you? Also, don’t you think it’s ridiculous standing out here wearing that thing on your face?”
He laughed, tapping the edge of his mask. “To anyone passing by, I’m just another face in the crowd. One of the perks of being a Masque, you see? A very sensible enchantment that they weave into these things. Of course, I can also tune it and make myself invisible, so that it looks to everyone else as if you’re speaking to a tree. Who would be the ridiculous one then?”
“Spare me the antics.” I looked around us, making sure he wasn’t tricking me already, checking to see that no one was giving me funny looks. “Now what did you want to talk about?”
“First, I wanted to remind you that my phone line is always open to any tips you may have as to the status of our good friend, the anomalist.”
I shrugged, averting my eyes and hoping he’d chalk it up to pre-coffee grumpiness as opposed to an Atomica-infiltrating admission of guilt. “Wish we had something to report, but all we have is jack squat.”
“Naturally. You are finders, after all, not professional investigators.”
I tried not to sass him about how this was his job, and how he was apparently pretty bad at it, too. The shorter our conversation, the better. I liked my chocolate croissants hot, right out of the bakeshop.
“And second, I wanted to apologize for being less than courteous during our initial meeting. Had I known that you were a member of one of the great families, I might have granted you a little more leeway — Mr. Brillante.”
The hairs on my arms stood on end. I glanced around as fearfully as if Leon was within earshot. It didn’t matter to me that basically everyone else in town knew who I really was. With Leon, it felt so much better to pretend.
“Let’s get this straight. That’s not who I am anymore. I turned my back on the family a long time ago.”
The Masque raised his hands. “Of course. If you insist. Far be it for me to question why one would walk away from a life of guaranteed comfort and excess.”
My hand balled into a fist. The paper bag of croissants rustled. I might have ripped part of it, too.
“Again, I’m not a Brillante anymore. I don’t have the stomach for what my family would consider work. You can put that in your records if you want.”
I’d almost phrased that in a far less polite way, but no sense burning bridges where I didn’t have to. I’d burned enough bridges in my previous life already.
“Noted, Mr. Drake. Naturally this means that the Masques will treat you as a finder, under the accord that we offer to your profession and your spiders. It’s much more restrictive than the one we hold with the great families, but such is your choice.”
To a certain degree, the Masques were willing to look the other way when it came to finders and spiders, as long as the artifacts and relics we traded weren’t of the world-ending, civilization-threatening variety. The implication that the great families were allowed to do pretty much as they pleased chilled me to the core.
“Right,” I said, standing with my spine straighter, taller. “I’m sure I didn’t stutter.”
