Sebastian chuckled as Nessa trailed the pliers up the mage’s stomach and rested them against his chin.
“My, what pretty teeth you have, grandmother,” she said softly, tilting her head as she surveyed him. She skimmed the tool along his cheek. “What pretty eyes you have. I might like them for my collection.”
“Should we offer him a deal first, Captain?” Sebastian said as Edgar slunk in, scampering to the corner across from Tristan. “We do love a good mole, don’t we?”
“Oh yes we do.” She thunked the tool onto the mage’s chest, making him flinch, before pushing off his lap. “I don’t see how we could, though. If he let slip that Elliot Graves is mixed up in this shifter’s humble territory, it would cause all sorts of changes to our plan, don’t you think? Delays”—she picked up a wrench—“spies, assassins. It would be a whole thing.”
“I won’t mention anything, I swear,” the mage said, trembling. “I can get you great intel. I really can. I know some of the higher-ups. They trust me. They trust the information I give them.”
“Three-minus T minutes,” Edgar announced.
Nessa paused in her perusal of the garage as the mage continued to babble. She was the only one who could understand Edgar’s countdowns, probably because she was the one who’d taught him how to incorrectly use them.
“What’s happening in five minutes?” she asked him.
“Jessie will be here. Ulric, Jasper, and Nathanial with her. I wasn’t sure if…you know.” Edgar rolled his finger through the air. “If you needed to hurry up and torture him before she shows up. She is mostly against that sort of thing, if you remember correctly. Except when she loses control and does something awful, but usually she frowns upon medieval-style emasculation or castration. I’ve seen it done a time or two, though, should you need some help. I just barely escaped from getting my own penis and testicles sliced off. It was a situation of lucky timing. The female in question wanted to kill me herself, you see. Instead, she was killed and I was turned into a vampire.” He frowned, looking downward. “Or was the vampire part a different time? I’m losing track—”
“What is that?” The mage was looking at Edgar now. “What is that thing? It’s not natural!”
“Well now…that hurt my feelings,” Edgar said, squinting at the mage. “But you know what they say, sticks and stones might break your bones, and surely get your penis and testicles chopped off…”
Sebastian started laughing again, definitely a defensive reaction.
“Edgar, you go stall her,” Nessa said, looking at the shelves in the back of the garage now.
“Tristan, you wait here and guard him. I’ll put a little duct tape on his mouth… Where is the duct
tape? Every garage in the history of the world has a half roll of duct tape lying around.”
Edgar took off at a lope.
“Ah-ha! Here.” Nessa snatched something from a peg on the wall. “Never been used.” She stalked across the garage and slapped it against Tristan’s chest. “Put that on him. Elliot, a word?”
She dragged him outside and then around the corner, out of earshot of Tristan. Still, Sebastian applied a sound-deadening cone over them to make sure. Nessa stood at the edge, one eye trained on the side door.
“We’re up shit creek if that mage gets back to Momar,” she told Sebastian. “This guy isn’t sleek enough, suave enough, or arrogant enough to be one of the elite spies. He’s a middle-range runner, that’s it. When he goes back, he’ll get a dose of truth potion. They’ll torture him for more information once they realize he was caught here, Sabby. They cannot know we are here. They cannot know you’re the mage rumored to be helping Kingsley.”
“Nessa, I’m not stupid, just tired. I know all of that.”
“Really? Because you’ve just randomly started laughing multiple times tonight and occasionally powered down to drool. I don’t think your mind is online. Which leads me to my second point. We need information from this guy, and while I’m pretty sure we could get Jessie and her people to lower their standards enough to get it, I don’t think Kingsley is going to allow it. He doesn’t even want us cleaning out the border towns, for God’s sake. He’s a Boy Scout, and Austin is hesitant about pushing him. We can’t take the chance of this guy getting away alive, for any reason.”
“So what are you thinking?”