“Gosh, you’re squeamish, considering the catastrophic damage his business inflicts on thousands of people every day of the year.”

“I’m merely protecting my employer’s interests.” She showed me her teeth. “Almost as though I’m a mercenary.”

I sighed and folded my arms. “What if I only took Torelli’s and Marcone’s samples?”

“Then you would still be capable of using that against Marcone in the future.”

“If I want to hurt Marcone,” I said, “all I need to do is sit down with a six-pack of beer and a bag of pretzels and let him twist in the wind.”

“Perhaps,” Gard admitted. “Swear to me that you will use none of the samples but Torelli’s and Marcone’s, that you will use neither of them for harm of any kind, and that you will return both to me immediately upon my request. Swear it by your power.”

Oaths in general carry a lot of currency among the preternatural crowd. They’re binding in more senses than the theoretical. Every time you break a promise, there’s a kind of backlash of spiritual energies. A broken promise can inflict horrible pain on supernatural entities, such as the Sidhe. When a wizard breaks a promise, particularly when sworn by his own power, the backlash is different: a diminishing of that magical talent. It isn’t a crippling effect by any means—but break enough promises and sooner or later you’d have nothing left.

As dangerous as the world had been for wizards over the past few years, any of us would have been insane to take the chance that our talents, and thus our ability to defend ourselves, might be hampered, even if that reduction was relatively slight.

I squared my shoulders and nodded. “I swear, by my own power, that I will abide by those restrictions.”

Gard narrowed her eyes as I spoke, and when I finished she gave me a single nod. She reached into her pocket, moving very gingerly, and withdrew a single silver key. She held it out to me. “Union Station, locker two fourteen. Everything is labeled.”

I reached out to take the key, but Gard’s fingers tightened on it for a second. “Don’t let anything you care about stand directly in front of it when you open it.”

I arched an eyebrow at her as she released the key. “All right. Thank you.”

She gave me a quick, tight smile. “Stop wasting time here. Go.”

I frowned. “You’re that worried about your boss?”

“Not at all,” Gard said, closing her eyes and sagging wearily down on the cot. “I just don’t want to be in the vicinity the next time someone comes to kill you.”

Chapter Twenty-two

Murphy’s car looked like it might have been through a war zone, and there were odd-colored stains in the snow underneath it. As a result we’d taken Michael’s truck. I rode in the cab with Michael, while Mouse rode in the back. Yeah, I know, not safe, but the reality of the situation is that you don’t fit two people our size and a dog Mouse’s size into the cab of a pickup. There wouldn’t be any room left for oxygen.