Three Slices by Chuck Wendig, Kevin Hearne, Delilah S. Dawson Read Free Book Online

think. I concluded that the potential payoff was too great to ignore. If it turned out to be nothing, I could pursue other methods of raising money. “Ask this: What is Werner Drasche and/or the vampire known as Theophilus hiding in Toronto and where?”
    “Technically, that’s not a single question,” she replied, “but that should be manageable. I will ask.”
    “How long until sundown?” I asked, unable to tell in the depths of the basement. Mekera glanced at her wristwatch, an antique windup number on a worn leather strap.
    “Three hours,” she said. “Or thereabouts. I won’t be able to give you anything significant for at least another hour, maybe more.”
    “Okay, thanks for the warning.”
    “You’re going to have to stay awake. I report what I see as I see it and I don’t repeat.”
    “Understood.”
    “Okay. Then I’ll begin.”
    She turned back to her small industrial mixing vat, which had an automatic mixing arm spinning around in it, and poured in a beaker of rennet as the cream spun. Then she began speaking in Amharic, a musical Semitic language still spoken today, and which I did not speak. The closest language to it that I knew was Aramaic. Presumably, she was asking my question, binding it to the curdling of the milk, and catalyzing the divination.
    
    I imagine it’s something like that, but I don’t know for sure.
    
    I know, the one with Chihuahuas.
    Oberon gave a mental snort of amusement.
    As Oberon drifted to sleep and Mekera continued her work, chanting and staring into the vat, I brooded on the news. I hadn’t been in Toronto since 1953 and I hadn’t planned on ever returning. I had chosen to go by the alias of Nigel then, which, when coupled with a tragic coincidence, turned out to be one of the worst decisions of my life. Drasche could not know the reason why, but forcing me to return there would reopen an old wound, and I could already feel my stomach churning with acid at the thought.
    Shakespeare provided me solace as he so often did. In many ways, Hamlet is not a good role model, but once he’s aware of his uncle’s plans to have him killed in England with the aid of his erstwhile friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, he determines to outwit them: “And ’t shall go hard, / But I will delve one yard below their mines, / And blow them at the moon.”
    “It’s somewhere in downtown Toronto,” Mekera suddenly said in English, and then amended it. “A sort of financial district.” She squinted. “Do the letters R, B, and C mean anything to you?”
    “Yes. That would probably be the Royal Bank of Canada.”
    “There you go.” A pause of fifteen minutes, and then she said, “Okay, these are numbers I’m seeing related to the bank: 5, 1, 7.”
    “What’s that for?”
    “A safety deposit box is my guess. It’s not long enough for a PIN number.”
    “All right. What’s in there?”
    Mekera stared at the swirling cauldron of curds for another half hour and finally shook her head, grimacing. “I can’t get a grasp on any specifics. But it’s not money or anything like that. It’s just…paper. A big stack of it. Information of some kind, maybe a list.”
    “Werner Drasche is storing a written list in a safety deposit box in the RBC and that’s what he doesn’t want me to find? That’s what would hurt him?”
    “It’s both him and Theophilus. They’re in this together, so that was a good call, but the answer is yes.”
    “Is that all?”
    She pointed at the swirl of curdling milk and sighed. “It’s trying to give me names and addresses, but this isn’t that kind of cheese. We don’t have enough time to get that specific, you understand? Because this cheese will be finished in a few minutes and it doesn’t have the time to give