Chapter Four.

In which I am a very small bottle of cream of tartar and Weasley is not that creative.

This would, I suppose, be the appropriate time for some sort of foreshadowing dream. Unfortunately, I didn't have any. I slept like a brick until very late in the afternoon and woke up feeling like a single large muscle cramp. It was several minutes before I could bring myself to roll over, much less get out of bed. I probably wouldn't have bothered getting up at all if not for the horrific noises emerging from the other side of the odd curtains. I stretched myself out, grabbed my wand and prepared to locate whatever was making the noise and hex it to death.

It turned out the curtains concealed a pair of French doors I hadn't noticed before, which connected my room with the bedroom next to it. That bedroom was currently occupied by the source of the noise—Weasley. He was sprawled on his back, snoring like hell, and, like me, he had not bothered to put on pajamas before collapsing into bed. Unlike me, he had not bothered to pull up the sheets, either.

I am only mortal, and this was my first opportunity to get a good look at Weasley since, well, since I'd realized he was Weasley. He'd certainly changed a great deal since our school days, when he'd looked as though he'd been partially and inexpertly transfigured into a giraffe. Now he was lanky, but in an athletic sort of way, and the muscles in his arms and chest had some definition to them. The wound on his side had closed, though it was still a smear of ugly bruises; I could also make out a surprising number of old scars. He slept spread-eagle, with one leg dangling over the edge of the mattress, and really, if he was going to lie like that it was only natural that my eyes should be drawn to his crotch.

All I will say is: would that we all were so fortunate.

I shut the curtains again and set about pursuing the nearest possible approximation of my morning routine, given that it was now approaching teatime. The closet of my bedroom contained a variety of clothing, some of which was actually wearable, and while the toiletries seem to have been selected for cheapness rather than quality, I was too stiff and tired to actually complain about them. Thankfully nothing was wrong with the hot water supply; I simply leaned back and let the warmth work out the twinges in my back, legs and buttocks, at least until Weasley started pounding on the door and shouting.

"Honestly, Weasley, one would think you'd never had to share a bathroom before," I said when I opened the door, and even managed not to stutter when I saw that he was standing around in nothing but a pair of frayed, graying y-fronts.

"You've been in there for over an hour," he growled, and pushed past me. "Go make breakfast or something, I want to talk to you."

"Yes—" The door slammed in my face— "sir."

At least Weasley had been waiting productively: there was a full pot of coffee to which I availed myself immediately. I was ravenous, but an inventory of the kitchen turned up nothing immediately edible but a package of muffins. I took the whole thing into the dining area and contemplated various lines of questioning that might provide a graceful segue into a full explanation of exactly what the hell was going on, without Weasley screaming or threatening me again. Weasley came out of the bathroom ten minutes later, drippy but, thankfully, fully clothed. "Is that all you're eating?" he asked when he spotted my muffins.

I shrugged. "There's nothing else in there, is there?"

He blinked. "You idiot," he declared, stole the rest of my muffins, and stomped into the kitchen. I heard a clatter of metal, the opening and closing of doors, and shortly thereafter the hiss of something frying. The smell of meat and hot oil began to pervade the flat. I stayed exactly where I was; if Weasley wanted to play house, it his prerogative.

Weasley eventually came back with two plates loaded with eggs, sausages and what appeared to be fried tomatoes. He all but threw one at me; the other was already drowning in ketchup. "What's this?" I asked.

"Breakfast." He took a seat. "Some of us can survive on our own in the wild."

I glared at him, but he didn't notice because he was busy stuffing his face. I dared attempt some of the eggs; they were, surprisingly, palatable, though swimming in grease. The tomatos were rather more questionable.

Weasley eventually swallowed, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "So," he said, "I think we can safely stay here for another day or two, but when we do leave, we can't take a direct path to New York."

"Why are we going to New York?"

"That would be where the Confederation's headquarters are."

"No," I said flatly, poking the puddles of grease on my plate with my fork. "I meant, why are you taking me to your headquarters in the first place? What compelled you to kidnap me? Why is Dies trying to kill me? Who the hell is Dies? And Kidd? And Greenplate? And O'Guin? What, exactly, the fuck is going on?"

So it wasn't exactly the graceful; it still worked. Weasley stared at me with his fork hovering halfway to his mouth, dripping egg bits and grease onto the table. "You really don't know, do you?" he said, as if he'd just discovered the Philosopher's fucking Stone.

"Yes, Weasley, that's only what I've been trying to tell since before the first bomb went off." I stabbed at my sausages; there were burnt, probably deliberately.

Weasley put his fork down. "This doesn't make any sense."

"Really, do you think so? I hadn't noticed...."

He shook his head. "Malfoy, you own Greenplate and Company. O'Guin was your Confederation liason. You've been passing us information on Dies for the past eight months."

You can well imagine the effect of this pronouncement. I dropped my fork and gaped at him. "You are joking," I said weakly.

"I'm not." He drained his coffee mug. "Linnet had copies of some of the documents in the car; I could've shown them to you if...well. You know."

"Why the hell would I be passing information to the government?"

"You think I know?" He leaned back over his plate. "I was actually hoping you'd explain it to me—when O'Guin briefed me on the case, I thought for a good half-hour he had the name wrong."

I racked my brains, search for any explanation. "Polyjuice?"

Weasley shook his head. "Believe me, being that it was—well, you, they did every possible check. No potions, no illusions, no imposters."

"...Imperius?"

"You'd still remember anything you did, though. And who would force you to buy an import-export company and then spy on them?"

I concentrated fiercely. There was nothing. Weasley kept eating with his brows knit; I stared at the plate, mostly, wondering if I had perhaps fallen into some sort of alternate universe. It was simply not possible, but here was Weasley explaining it, and as I said before he's just not this creative. What the hell?

Eventually Weasley set aside his fork and said, almost tentatively, "You haven't been having any weird headaches, lately? Disorientation, short-term memory loss—"

"I have not been Obliviated," I said the moment I realized where he was headed. "I would—"

"Remember it?"

I glared at him. "If my memory's been modified, who did it? Dies?"

"Of course not," Weasley said automatically, "if he could've gotten that close to you he would've just killed you there."

"Exactly. So who else could it have been?"

He drummed his fingers on the edge of the table for a few minutes, staring into the middle distance. I forced myself to eat; if I was going to confront a world gone mad, I wouldn't be doing it on an empty stomach. Suddenly, though, Weasley shoved his plate and mug aside and Summoned an assortment of spice jars out of the kitchen.

"What the hell are you doing?"

He grabbed the largest bottle, oregano, and put it in the middle of the table. "This is Dies," he announced. "And here's Kidd," the cinnamon, "Greenplate," the nutmeg, "and you."

I was a very small bottle of cream of tartar. "Why can't I be the oregano?"

"Shut up for a moment." He pushed the four named bottled around for a few moments. "So Dies has been shipping with Greenplate for who knows how many years, when you—" he brought the cream of tartar forward— "buy a controlling interest. What happens?"

This was news to me, but I thought I could follow along with it. When I realized the question wasn't rhetorical, I explained, "I would've audited the company's books, to see if there were any problems they'd been hiding from me and who I needed to shout at. Identify the important clients. That sort of thing."

"How far back would you go?"

"Four, sixth months, depending."

Weasley thought for a moment, twirling Cinnamon Kidd in his hands. "Right. Right, so if you noticed something fishy—"

"Fishy how?"

"Fishy like invoices for a company that doesn't exist."

I shrugged. "I wouldn't know whether it existed or not, unless I went looking for it, and I don't generally go checking up on clients unless they're not paying their bills."

Weasley gnawed his lower lip. "All right, forget that. The point is, you must've found something fishy, because you started sending copies of invoices to the Confederation Shipping and Standards Control Board."

"I did?"

He nodded. "Greenplate wasn't stupid enough to put Dies' home address on the things, of course, but they helped us track down the people he was supplying, and set the local Enforcers and Aurors on them. Busted up a lot of potions labs in Europe that way."

"What exactly does Dies supply them with?" I asked.

"All sorts of weird shit." Weasley fiddled with the cap on the oregano bottle. "He's a poacher, mainly on Indian land. Selling stuff like pickled chupacabra rectums on the international market. So," Weasley pushed the Cream of Draco to the other side of the table, "you start passing invoices to the Ministry, and then Kidd...does something to piss Dies off, we don't know what."

I winced as Weasley knocked the cinnamon bottle over. "Who was Kidd, exactly?"

"Calliope Kidd was Greenplate's chief bookkeeper. She was last seen alive crossing the Canadian border, and last seen at all on a farm field in Alberta. Well, the biggest bits of her were...."

I shook my head and tried hard not to picture that. "Why the hell would I try to piss off someone like that?"

"Really." Weasley spun the cream of tartar bottle. "From what I was told, two weeks ago, you met your S.J.F. contact and started demanding cash compensation."

"You mean I wasn't getting any before? How stupid of me."

"We don't make a policy of paying informants." He pushed Greenplate away. "When you stopped talking, though, the S.J.F. turned the case over to the American authorities, who raided Greenplate's office. They found him swinging from the rafters."

"He'd hanged himself?"

Weasley laughed a bit. "Stupid git tried, but he didn't get enough of a jump—he was just swinging there, choking to death, when the Enforcers busted in." He tapped the nutmeg bottle on the cap. "Thing is, he won't talk—grabbed himself a lawyer and refuses to cooperate with the authorities."

"And where do you come in?"

He drummed on the table a bit more, then began talking softly. "O'Guin sort of reckoned that what had happened to Kidd put the fear of Dies into you, and you were asking for money for another disappearing act like you pulled in South Africa. You were put under surveillance—"

"I was what?"

"—for your own protection," he said over me, "but you didn't seem to be making any moves, so the watch was scaled back after just a few days. But when Greenplate's office was raided, they found a letter that implied—heavily—that Dies knew what you'd been up to was planning to get a very messy revenge. About the same time, some of his goons started staking out your office and your house. So the S.J.F decided you were safer in our hands than his, and O'Guin put together the whole tunnel scheme, to get you of there and throw Dies off the scent." He paused. "And he called me in from Hungary to help, because he's under the impression that we were old mates from school."

I laughed out loud, and pushed a bottle of paprika towards him, next to the cream of tartar. "What about this O'Guin, though? What's his role in this aside from making very bad decisions?"

"Hmm?" Weasley grabbed a bottle of lemon pepper and set in next to the paprika. "I don't actually know much about him—he's a veteran agent, spent years working with Shipping and Standards Control."

"If we're supposedly such good friends, why didn't he come kidnap me himself?"

Weasley pulled an unpleasant face. "Seniority has its perks. He got promoted to the agent in charge of the whole Dies case and doesn't have the time for field work. Meaning he doesn't get to deal with it personally when his brilliant scheme goes all to shit."

We both stared at the artfully arranged bottles of spices. I wished one of them would've just raised its hand...well, cap...and explained what had been done to me, because, having heard the story from end to end, it still didn't make sense. Why would I have looked deeply enough into this Greenplate's finances to uncover the smuggling scheme? Why the hell had I gone to the Confederation with it? Who could've possibly Obliviated me, and why, if Dies was already planning to kill me?

"I don't suppose," I said slowly, "that there are grounds to assume that this is all one big misunderstanding?"

He sighed. "There's one more question—how the hell did Dies figure out our plan for extracting you?"

"You make me sound like a rotten tooth."

"O'Guin, Linnet and I were the only ones who knew all the details," Weasley said. "Dies obviously didn't know where in the ballroom the tunnel was hidden, or he would've bombed the bar instead of the lav—"

"That was what blew up?"

"—but if he got Linnet he must've known where the exit was located."

"Maybe Linnet's a traitor?" I suggested. "Told Dies where to find us and then sped off with the company car?"

"I suppose it's not completely impossible..." Weasley looked alarmed at the idea, but then he shook his head and redirected attention to what was left on his plate. "Either way, I sent a message to O'Guin this morning, letting him know it's all gone pear-shaped. And, like I was saying, I think we should probably take an indirect route to New York."

"How indirect?"

He shrugged. "Not sure. Dies hasn't got the money or manpower to search every city in America, but if I were him I'd certainly have someone here in St. Louis, and probably on the watch in Chicago, too. We definitely have to stay out of the wizard neighborhoods..."

"Why?" I asked.

"Because," he said, "that's where they'll look first, isn't it? And they can't be stupid enough to attack us with magic if we're in the midst of a crowd of Muggles."

As I've said repeatedly, Weasley is not the most imaginative of wizards. I pushed my breakfast plate out of the way and leaned forward. "Weasley, here's a little hint: the only people who worry about doing magic in front of Muggles are the people who care about Muggles at all. If Dies' men want to hex us, I don't think they'll give a damn about where we're standing or who's around us."

"So what do you think we should do?" he asked, scowling.

"Well," I said, "where is the easiest place to hide something?"

He stared at me for a second, and I hoped to spring my rather brilliant idea on his overawed little mind; but then he grinned, and looked at me as if he were judging something. "In plain sight."

"Exactly."

.............................................................................................................................................................................................................................