"Sure, but are they easier than being a good diviner? Easier than being an oracle? Pick something else. Psionic attack? Most information-gathering I could have just asked her."

Thea drummed her fingers on an alcove in the wall.

"Rank-four archiving can do it from something closed, right?"

"It can."

"Here. Business notes. Tell me what I added most recently."

Basia touched the cover of the moleskine with a finger. "J.N. is trying to delay payment and you suspect she doesn't have the money for the next shipment. K.V. hit on you, unsurprising but you don't know why now. Q is nervous and possibly being watched by Alphazon."

"...Okay. You're powerful, and competently hiding it."

"Yes. And Marco needs to be put down before he risks the coven or the entire Veil. So I'm helping."

"Euphemisms are contagious, hmm?"

"Assassinated. Murdered. Whichever. It's not like it gets more palatable when you talk about it explicitly. And I'd be fine just getting him neutralized some other way."

"And yet you're plotting to kill him."

"If you wanted to get rid of Marco, what would you do? Slice his balls off and then do it again when he healed until he shaped up? Persuade him to be better?"

"Throw him to the ORCs. He's straining the masque right and left, they'd already know if he didn't seduce half the witnesses and make the other half lose an hour of memories."

"You think they could hold him alive? He doesn't have anything at rank five but he's got the potential for it, he did that trick where you trade magical potential for mundane mastery and even more power. He's extremely deadly even before the vampire lord thing, blood magic and an intuition for murder and a Disaster four times over."

"...No, probably not. He'd get death."

"But you still object to Tesera handling it in-house?"

"Explain to me why she wants to."

"To reassure her coven that as long as they're okay with her, as long as she hasn't told them there's a problem, they're safe. Which I appreciate, at least. My dad's a mortal cop in the Met, I know plenty how fragile honor among thieves is."

"...I guess I don't. Much."

"That's what I thought. Would you object to helping us do it?"

"Why?"

"Because Tes wants to be very clear that she gave him several warnings he ignored, very publicly repeat them, and then kill him as painlessly as him fighting back allows. And Anoush isn't really the best knife to stick in his gut, for that last part. Or even the first part."

"...I'd object. But I'm willing to be there, and save her ass if she's not as clever as she thinks she is."

"I respect that. And I'll take what I can get."

"Now you're buttering me up, too? Come on, next you're going to start inviting me to bed the end of every conversation."

"Wait. Every one? That's adorable."