House of Cards

Is this my dream or yours? Margrit demanded. Surprise coursed through her, then a wash of laughter rough as sand in water.

Neither, I think, he replied. I hadn't meant to think so strongly of you. Memory rides us. Forgive me, Margrit. Goodbye. A faint hint of wistfulness accompanied his final word: Again.

The dream turned to falling, a short sickening plunge. Margrit jerked awake, covers clenched in her fists, breath cold and harsh. A nearly inaudible click sounded, followed by her radio alarm increasing in volume as she lay on the bed, staring through darkness at the ceiling.

Irrational.

CHAPTER 2

"Margrit?" Her name came through the door, hoarse with sleepiness. "Hey, Grit? You awake?"

Margrit bundled herself in a towel, hair dripping in corkscrew curls down her back, and ran to yank the door open. Cameron, the taller of Margrit's housemates, leaned on the frame with the telephone pressed against her pink-robed shoulder. Her eyes, barely open, closed all the way as a huge yawn squeezed tears from their corners. A second yawn overtook her as she thrust the phone at Margrit. "For you.

"It's six-thirty in the morning." Margrit took the phone in astonishment, putting it against her own shoulder to block their conversation from the person on the other end. "Who'd be calling at this hour? What're you doing home?"

"My six o'clock client cancelled." Cameron yawned again, this time shoving away from the door to stagger back to the bedroom she shared with her fiancé. "I'm supposed to be sleeping in. G'night." She crashed into the doorframe, muttering a complaint as she reoriented herself and made it through the bedroom door on the second try.

Margrit watched Cam go, then brought the phone to her ear. "This is Margrit. Mother?"

"Oh dear," a pleasantly light-voiced man said, his voice infused with mirth. "No, I'm afraid not. I'm sure I could arrange to have her call, if you'd like, but it seems as though it would be rather melodramatic. To do it properly I'd have to kidnap her and make her call, angry and frightened, from the wa -"

"Janx." Margrit closed her bedroom door and slid down it, digging her fingers into her hair to hold her head up. "God forbid anybody should ever subpoena my phone records. Why are you calling the house instead of my cell? How in hell could I explain getting six o'clock phone calls from someone like you?"

She avoided more descriptive terms deliberately, though they danced through her mind. Crimelord was the only one she was willing to give voice to, but it didn't scratch the surface of what Janx really was. The handful of times Margrit had been in a room with him, it had been all she could do to keep breathing, his presence burning up the air. As well it should have: she'd gone in knowing he was of the Old Races, but not that she was dealing with a dragon. A red dragon, if ginger hair and flame-green eyes told the truth, though Margrit had no idea if it did, or if it mattered.

"It's six-thirty," Janx said in injured tones. "And I tried calling your cell, but you didn't answer. I thought young people today were co

"You may not kidnap my mother, Janx." The absurdity of chiding a man of Janx's position-either crimelord or dragonlord-struck Margrit, and she steeled herself to keep a trace of laughter from her voice. "What do you want?"

"Oh, Margrit, you hurt me. Can't an old friend call up to say hello after a few weeks' absence?"

"Old friend?" Margrit kept her voice down with effort. "Pit vipers would be safer friends than you, and old friends don't call at six in the morning unless they're in real trouble. You can't be in any trouble I could possibly help you with. The world's not that capricious." The accusation left aside the middling detail that Margrit, despite her better judgment, rather liked the fiery-haired dragon. "What do you want?"

"Capricious," Janx said with admiration. "Well done, for someone who protests she's just been wakened."

"I'm a lawyer. I'm supposed to be capable of conversing with an augmented vocabulary in order to obfuscate an argument without exerting myself. Besides, I was already awake. What do you want?"

"Better than a circus act," Janx said happily. Then his bantering faded, a note of tension replacing it. "I require your services, Margrit. A balance has changed."

Margrit coughed in disbelief. "You called me up at six-thirty in the morning to give me cryptic messages? 'A balance has changed'? What the hell does that mean? A balance changed in January when you had Vanessa Gray killed, Janx. Alban told me that you'd breached protocol by doing that. You're not supposed to go around murdering people's assistants, especially when they've been assisting for over a century. It's not playing fair, or something."

"Margrit, my dear, I would never murder Eliseo Daisani's assistant. That would be an inexcusable act of warfare." Teasing lightened Janx's voice again. Margrit groaned aloud and shook her head against the door.

"Right. You don't kill anybody yourself, right? You just hire people to do it." Janx had all but confessed to arranging Vanessa Gray's assassination, and it had been through his cell phone records that Margrit had helped the police track down the hired killer. The man had never gone to trial. Instead, shortly after his arrest, he'd been found spread in grisly detail across the Rikers Island prison courtyard. Rumor said the inmates were told he'd been arrested for child molestation, and had meted out their own justice. Margrit had no intention of asking whether Daisani had taken matters into his own inhuman hands.

"Don't be silly, Margrit. Of course I kill people." Janx sounded downright cheerful, enough that she pulled the phone away to eye it. Uncomfortable as she was with the thought of the Old Races facing the human justice system, Janx's bald-faced admission was beyond the pale.

"I am a lawyer, Janx. You shouldn't go around telling me you kill people."

"You're not recording this conversation, are you?" Thin tension came back into Janx's voice at the question, lifting hairs on Margrit's arms. The dragonlord had rarely been anything but ruthlessly chipper in her experiences with him. She was certain she didn't want to know what was making him cautious, and equally certain she would find out. "I don't usually record my home phone calls, but if you're going to be calling up regularly to make blanket confessions, I might start. What's going on?"

"We'll discuss it this evening. I'll send a car for you."

"Just as long as Malik's not driving." The dji

Too late, she grimaced at the implied consent in her answer. "Don't bother sending a car. I'll get there myself." Then impulse caught her and she asked, "Tonight?" with as much wide-eyed ingenuity as she could. "You don't think my boss would be okay with me cutting out for a few hours to visit the notorious House of Cards and rub elbows with a gangster?"

"If I'd gotten to him first," Janx said mildly, "I have no doubt it could have been arranged. The situation, I fear, is otherwise, and so I'll see you this evening. Goodbye, Margrit."