Vicious Villains (Ruthless Villains Book 4)

She was smiling when we walked back out onto the street many hours later. Actually smiling. And her eyes glittered in the multicolored light from the glass domes above. The sight of it eased the tightness in my chest.

All afternoon, I had felt as though I was ruining this new strange thing between us before it could even get started. Not only because I didn’t really know how to act around her anymore, but also because I had dragged her right into the bloody history I had left behind in Malgrave. But now we had talked. We had realized that both of us were unused to this new situation and had decided that we were going to figure it out together.

That was why I had brought her to the Red Maze tonight. So that we could just be us for a few hours. To just take a breath and remember that we were in this together now and that we would figure everything else out.

“I can’t remember the last time I did something like that.” Audrey laughed and drew her fingers through her long black hair, smoothening it back, before she looked up at me. “But I quite liked it.”

“Yeah, I might not have missed a lot about Malgrave, but I have missed that.” I shrugged. “People don’t judge. At least not on this side of the river.”

“I noticed. Did you see that woman in the red dress? Three guys.” She laughed again and shook her head. “And on the table.”

I studied the side of her face as she no doubt replayed that scene in her mind. “Yeah, I saw.”

“It looked like she was enjoying herself.” A possessive glint crept into her eyes as she looked up at me again. “But I don’t like sharing.”

Relief flowed through me. With a satisfied smirk on my face, I draped an arm over her shoulders and pulled her closer to me in an equally possessive move. “Neither do I.”

She let out a dark chuckle.

The street around us was full of life even though it was the middle of the night. Or rather because it was the middle of the night. A group of women poured out of a red door farther down. Joy shone on their faces as they talked and gestured excitedly. On the other side of the road, two men staggered out of the green door of a gambling den. The one with the fancy hat pointed towards a bar across the street, and they started towards it.

With my arm still around Audrey’s shoulders, I led us down the street and towards a small stall that I knew would be waiting there. We weaved expertly through the cheerful throng, but neither of us spoke. I was watching the crowd for old enemies. Audrey, on the other hand, looked like she was just watching. Taking everything in. Everything from how the colored glass lamps swung in the night breeze, to the brightly painted doors, to the way people moved and interacted with each other.

And as I noticed the look on her face, I realized that from this angle, when I didn’t have to bow and scrape to a certain metal mage, Malgrave actually wasn’t half bad.

“Do my eyes deceive me?” an old woman’s voice said, cutting through the pleasant chatter like a blade. “Is that Callan Blackwell I see?”

“Why don’t you shout it a little louder, Maggie?” I replied, but a smile tugged at my lips. “I don’t think those two people walking home on the other side of the city heard you.”

The old lady at the food stall up ahead crossed her arms over her chest and shot me a pointed look. “Bah. You know I’m hard of hearing.”

“You have the sharpest hearing on this entire continent.”

She glared at me for another two seconds before her wrinkled face split into a smug grin. “Well, I’m glad you at least haven’t forgotten how to compliment old ladies in the five years you’ve been gone.”

Audrey and I closed the final distance to the small wooden stall and came to a halt in front of it. A flat metal frying table, complete with flames fed by lamp oil underneath, took up most of the space. The rest of her booth was full of containers with various ingredients in it. I shifted my gaze from the very familiar space to the very familiar woman who owned it.

Maggie was shorter than I remembered. But other than that, she looked almost exactly the same. Her gray hair reached almost to her shoulders, and it curled around her face during normal days, and even more when it was hot. The sweet smile on her face was meant to distract from her wickedly sharp blue eyes that missed nothing. And regardless of what she claimed about her hearing, I knew that it was far better than that of people half her age.

As I looked at her, I couldn’t help but smile. Had it really been five years since last time?

“It’s good to see you, Maggie,” I said.

She waved her ladle in front of her face, but a blush pinked her weathered cheeks. “Bah. You should have come sooner then, if you missed me so much.” Before I could reply, her eyes zeroed in on Audrey. “And who is this?”

I slid my arm off her shoulders and took a half step to the side to give her some space before I turned and motioned towards her. “This is Audrey, my… uhm…” I trailed off a bit awkwardly when I realized that I had no idea what to call her.

“Partner,” Audrey filled in.

“Partner, huh?” Maggie said, and mischief glittered in her eyes as she looked between the two of us. “What a wonderfully ambiguous answer. Is that partner as in business partner or partner as in romantic partner?”

A knowing smile curled Audrey’s lips. “Both.”

“Ha!” Maggie grinned back at her. Then her gaze slid to me, and she gave me a nod. “I like her.” Straightening, she returned her attention to both of us. “So, I’m assuming you haven’t come back here after five years just for the food.”

“No,” I answered. “But we’ll take two of those too.”

“Of course you will. Did you really think I would let you leave here hungry?”

I chuckled.

Pots and buckets clanked as she ducked down and began rooting through her ingredients.

“Have you ever had a stekta?” she called, still doubled over her containers.

When Audrey didn’t reply, I nudged her in the ribs. “She’s talking to you.”

“Oh.” She cleared her throat. “I don’t know what that is, so probably not.”

Maggie let out a satisfied laugh and then straightened, arms full of wooden bowls. “Then you’re in for a real treat.”

After setting them down on the small counter, she turned to her large bucket of batter. A faint hissing sound rose as she scooped up some of the pale batter in her ladle and spread it across the metal frying table. She did the same thing a second time before speaking up again.

“So, what are you looking for this time?” she asked, not taking her eyes off the food.

“A shadow mage,” I replied. “Preferably someone who is easy to… influence.”

Her blue eyes flicked up, and a knowing smile ghosted across her mouth. “Influence, huh? You really haven’t changed one bit, have you?”

“Nope.”

“Hmm.” She rammed her ladle back in the bucket, making a few drops of batter fly up in shock and splatter the ground underneath. Picking up a long flat utensil, she slid it under the first stekta and deftly flipped it over. Then she did the same to the other one. “A shadow mage, you say? Yeah, I think I have someone in mind.”

While she spread a thin layer of sauce over the now fried surface, she explained who it was and where I could find him, and also what kind of influence he would be susceptible to. After she was done, she put some shredded cheese and chopped scallions on the food. Audrey watched with a curious expression on her face as Maggie then moved some of the thin strips of beef that had been waiting in a pile at the corner of the frying table and dumped a generous amount on top of the melting cheese.

Then Maggie grabbed that flat utensil again and expertly folded up the thin bread-like base until two perfect rectangles were sitting there. Picking them up, she wrapped them in a bit of paper and then held them out to us.

I placed a good-sized stack of cash on the narrow counter before taking the stekta. Payment for both the food and the information. It disappeared into her apron before anyone could start wondering why our food was so much more expensive than everyone else’s.

“Thank you,” I said, and lifted the steaming stekta. “For this. And…”

“Always.” A wistful smile drifted over her face as she nodded. “It really was good to see you again, Callan. You’ll say hello to Henry for me too, won’t you?”

The fact that she just assumed that Henry was still alive and well, and was still with me, made a grin spread across my mouth. “Yeah, of course I will.”

“Good. Come back any time.” She gave Audrey a look full of approval. “Both of you.”

We nodded back and thanked her again before starting down the street. I could feel Audrey’s eyes on me, but I waited until we reached some stone steps a short distance away before I looked back at her.

“So…” she began, amusement dancing over her features. “Maggie, huh?”

I sat down on the steps and then huffed out a laugh. “Yeah. She may look like a harmless old lady, but back when I worked for Levi the first time, I realized that she’s probably one of the most dangerous people in this entire city. Everyone passes through this street at some point, and she sees and hears everything. I swear, nothing happens on this side of the river without her knowing about it.”

Audrey adjusted her skirt over her legs as she sat down next to me. Then she looked over at me and tipped her head as if impressed. “And you use her as an informant. Smart.”

“Yeah.”

“Does she ever sell information about you to other people too?”

“You know, I never really figured that out.” I glanced towards where Maggie was now serving three other customers. Then I shrugged. “But I’m still alive, so probably not.”

She glanced down at the wrapped food in her hand. “And this is…?”

“The best stekta in town. Eat it before it gets too cold.”

After peeling back the paper, I bit into the steaming food. The taste of spiced beef, cheese, and scallions, combined with Maggie’s special and very secret sauce, melted on my tongue. There were infinite ways of making stekta, different ingredients and sauces, but this was my favorite. That Maggie remembered that made me secretly happy.

“This is delicious,” Audrey said after swallowing a mouthful of food.

“Right?”

Another pang full of memories hit me in the chest. How many times had Henry and I sat on these steps, eating stekta after a long and bloody night? I shook off the emotions. We had a job to do.

“Alright, we have Winston and Mi-ri,” I said as I looked over at Audrey.

The sheer happiness in her eyes as she bit into the stekta made me momentarily lose track of what I had been about to say. She really looked like she was enjoying the food. And there was a crumb at the corner of her mouth that I really wanted to brush away with my thumb.

I gave my head a short shake. Focus.

“And now we know where to find a shadow mage,” I finished with great effort. “But we need to persuade him to help. Any ideas?”

She looked up from the food, and thankfully brushed away that very distracting crumb, before raising her eyebrows at me. “On how to threaten someone into submission?” She snorted and flicked her hair over her shoulder. “Please, have you met me?”

A dark chuckle escaped my throat.

And as I watched her eyes light up again, but this time at the promise of blackmail and torture, I realized just how lucky I was that I failed to kill this vicious little poisoner when I attacked her that first time. And every time in the five years since.