Playing With Fire - Katie MacAlister [63]
I shook my head as the man carefully took my arm, escorting me toward a small parking area next to a restaurant that sat on the river. ‘‘Thank you, but there’s nothing wrong with me that a gallon of disinfectant and a long shower won’t cure. Er . . . by any chance, have we met? I normally have a good memory for people, and something about you is very familiar, but I can’t seem to recall just where it is we’ve met.’’
‘‘We haven’t met. I’d have remembered if we had,’’ the man said with absolute conviction, but despite that, there was an oddly unplaceable note in his voice that had a little warning bell going off in my head. ‘‘Here; wrap yourself in this. I don’t mind being a Good Samaritan, but this is my employer’s car, and I don’t think he’d appreciate waterlogged leather seats.’’
Numbly, I accepted the blanket he took out of the trunk of a car and thrust into my arms. I knew I should just walk away, but the events of the evening had left me feeling more than a little bit out of it. I touched my head, wincing when I found a huge lump on the side. I must have hit my head on the ground when I’d gone out the window, knocking myself out for a few seconds. ‘‘Well . . . if you’re sure. I don’t want to be any trouble.’’
‘‘No trouble at all; it’s what I’m here for!’’ He held open the passenger-side door, carefully tucking the blanket around me (no doubt more to protect the upholstery of the car than to warm me), snapping me in with the seat belt before going around to the driver’s side.
‘‘I’m May,’’ I said as he started up the car.
‘‘Savian.’’ He shot me a quick look, which changed into a smile. ‘‘You look like hell, May. You need something hot to drink.’’
‘‘I’ll be fine, thanks. I’m staying in Marylebone, on Wimpole Street. It shouldn’t be too long a drive from here.’’
‘‘That’s a nice area,’’ he said agreeably.
I tried to think again why he seemed so familiar, but gave it up as being a lost cause with my wits so apparently scrambled from the fall. I closed my eyes for a moment, reliving the last hour of the evening, and wondering what it was I’d found in Kostya’s lair. I didn’t feel the least pang of guilt at stealing from him, not when he so basely attacked Gabriel. I had no doubt the phylactery was locked in the chest with the wards, which made Kostya’s attempt to shift blame to Gabriel all the more reprehensible.
A police siren passing by us jerked me out of the doze I’d fallen into. I sat up, looking around confusedly at the bright lights of the area in which we were driving. ‘‘Savian? This . . . er . . . this appears to be the airport.’’
‘‘That’s right,’’ he said, flashing a smile as he whipped us into an airport parking lot.
Suspicion took its own sweet time dawning, but at last the warning bells went off in my head.
‘‘You led me on quite a chase, let me tell you, Mei Ling. I can’t name the number of times you slipped away just as I was about to nab you, and I have to admit, you’d probably have gotten away from me again this time except you seemed to knock yourself silly jumping out of that window. Still, all’s well that ends well. If you would come this way, please?’’
‘‘What . . . ? Who . . . ?’’ My brain was still sluggishly processing his words when he unbuckled my seat belt and pulled me out of the car, his hands hard around my wrists.
‘‘Sorry, didn’t I introduce myself properly earlier?’’ he asked with a little chuckle. He kept ahold of my wrists with one hand, the other going to his chest as he bowed in the elegant manner that only the people of the Otherworld seemed to be able to master. ‘‘Savian Bartholomew, L’au-delà thief taker, at your service. And you, fair thief, are my prisoner.’’
Chapter Fourteen
The members of the Otherworld, in general, get along well with the mortal world. We all have to live in it, after all, so it makes sense we’ve learned to adapt to mortal foibles and whims, but the people of the Otherworld who bear an official capacity tend to take