2

Dean had fetched the message packet. “Go in your office. Figure out what this is. I’ll bring tea and biscuits, then get breakfast started. I was thinking those little sausages and soft-boiled eggs.”

“A real treat.” I gave the old boy the fisheye. “What are you up to?”

“What do you mean?”

“What I said. You’re up to something. It might include that kid-who the pixies say is really a girl.” The red-blooded Karentine boy inside me had sensed the truth. “If you turn polite and start acting like a real housekeeper, you’re up to some villainy. There’s no need for a show of wounded dignity, either.”

The old-timer needed to polish his act. He was as predictable as me.

I settled behind my desk, in the glamorized janitor’s closet I use for an office. I turned sideways, blew a kiss at Eleanor. She’s the woman in the painting hanging behind my chair. She’s fleeing a brooding mansion on a really stormy night. A light burns in one window only. She’s terrified. But she was in a good mood at the moment. She winked.

I opened the message wallet. A sheaf of documents fell out.

They were from Harvester Temisk. A lawyer. The kind who is at home in lawyer jokes. But with a perpetually dumbfounded look on his clock.

Harvester Temisk has just one client. Chodo Contague, erstwhile emperor of TunFaire’s multiple kingdoms of crime. The king of kings of the underworld. The head crook.

These days Chodo snoozes along in a coma while his beautiful, criminally insane daughter runs the family business. Belinda pretends she gets instructions from the emperor’s own lips.

Dean brought orange tea and sugar cookies. “The sausages are cooking. And there’ll be stewed apples instead of eggs. Singe wants stewed apples.”

More proof Dean was up to no good, serving specialty tea and sweets. “She’d live on stewed apples if she could.” Pular Singe has weaseled herself into an apprenticeship and is angling for junior partner. She’s good people and good company. She keeps me from turning into a disgusting old bachelor.