Getting Wilde Read Online Free PDF

it?”  
    I sensed the pressure of his touch against my mind, my own lips thinned. So he wasn’t fooling around on this question. Once again, however, I didn’t want to find out how good my blocks were, not for something so basic. “The Mercault family. Specifically the patriarch, Jean-Claude.”  
    Armaeus leaned back in his seat. Not to be outdone, I leaned forward. “And for the record, the council had better have restitution in mind, or you can kiss any further work from me good-bye. I could have gotten eighty thousand euros for that little hunk of gold, especially with the ninjas in the hunt.”  
    He nodded. “That amount will be delivered to Father Jerome at Saint-Germaine-Des-Prés upon his return from Chartres. If”—he raised a finger as I perked up —“ you take on a new assignment immediately. And reconsider my offer to permanently relocate to Las Vegas.”  
    I hesitated, sensing a tidal wave of crazy coming my way. I was developing a sixth sense for it. There was no way I was going to dignify Armaeus’s Vegas offer with a response, but the first part… “A new assignment doing what? And for how much?”  
    “Back to the pertinent questions, I see. You should take better care. If I hadn’t been there tonight, you would have been trapped.”  
    I resisted rolling my eyes a second time, but it was a close thing. “In case you haven’t noticed, I was doing this for quite a few years before you showed up. I expect to be doing it for quite a few years after our little arrangement has ceased to provide any value.” Which was going to be sooner rather than later, if he didn’t back off. “You want to keep me on retainer, you’re going to have to put up a lot more cash than what you have been.”  
    He lifted a long, lazy brow. “That’s all it would take, Miss Wilde? Money?”  
    “It’d be a heck of a start.”  
    “And with the money, you think you might have reached the young boy in Toulouse more quickly, I suspect?” His words dripped mockery, and I stiffened.    
    “You…knew about him? You knew about him and you didn’t do anything to stop it?”  
    “If you took even the slightest amount of time to understand the council’s work—”  
    “Don’t talk to me about your work , Armaeus. You’ve got more money than God. You apparently also know everything that’s going on in the world, because it’s not like the killers advertised the fact that they abducted an innocent little boy and gutted him for spare parts. How could you know that was happening and sit back and let it happen? What is wrong with you and your precious council?”  
    The car abruptly slowed, swerving around a bend into a path flooded with bright lights. I barely caught a glimpse of enormous stone lions on either side of the drive as we plunged into a richer shade of darkness. Armaeus dismissed my concern with a flick of his fingers.  
    “Your crusade, laudable though it may be, is not the crusade of the Arcanans.”  
    “Well, it should be! Kids are out there dying every day, which you apparently know with your all-seeing Eye of Sauron. All to give some shit-kicking dark priest a new spleen to stir into his cauldron. The whole underworld is going batshit crazy these days. Everyone is hyped up—everyone is stressed. And finally your holier-than-God council is choosing to take an interest, and all you care about is ridiculous gold seals and idols and trinkets? Why don’t you start worrying about the people who are collecting these trinkets, Armaeus? That’s where the real trouble lies.”  
    Beside me, Armaeus’s teeth glinted in the shadows.  
    “In that, I couldn’t agree with you more, Miss Wilde.”  
     

 
Chapter Four  
    We swept up the driveway into a deep thicket of trees. Within a minute or so, however, I could see lights ahead. A lot of lights. “You’re taking me to Disneyworld?”  
    Armaeus didn’t respond. Rounding the last turn, the road opened onto a palatial estate