When Monica saw me, she shook her head a little.

“I think the gang’s all here.” The man in charge, greying hair, dark skin turned to face me. “We know about you.”

“Then you should have known I’d show up.”

They should have, I thought, and had a better plan than this.

“We can’t let you leave…yet.”

That seemed a bit more progress. I shook my head. “That’s not acceptable. My girlfriend will put together half an army to come looking for me if I don’t show up.”

I was absolutely sure Kanesha would hook up with the valkyries and come rescue me, or try to.

His eyes faltered. “There’s…”

“I don’t care what the good reason is.” I kept my eyes on him. “You’re kidnapping a dying woman and trying to make her scry for you when it doesn’t work that way. And threatening me. Give me one good reason not to kill everyone in this room.”

There was a pause. “You and your friends probably could too. I have no idea why Washington is suddenly such a hotbed.”

“Blame my old man.” I smiled at him. “Okay. You know what. Let’s try this again. What do you want?”

I glanced at Clara. She was clearly ready and I could feel the build up of magical energy, as if she’d started a spell then paused it.

“Information.”

“And you couldn’t just ask.”

“I know better than to expect people like you to be loyal to your country.”

It came out before I could think. “I’m not American.”

He half-smiled. “Shame I can’t really deport you. You’d only come back.”

I couldn’t resist responding with a similar expression. “I’m hard to get rid of.” Unless your name was Odin, but…

“Your kind generally are. But I won’t keep you for long. I just need to make sure…”

“…that we won’t tell the media about your operations. Which we won’t.” Clara glared at him. “A little bit of trust?”

“Spies don’t trust people by definition,” Mike supplied.

“What information do you want? Maybe we can come to a deal.” I could probably kill them all, but somebody would get shot. Probably more than one somebody. And I didn’t really want to.

“We need to know what a demon that’s been active is up to.”

“Is that all?” Clara rolled her eyes. “Give me a description and a use-name and I’ll tell you.”

“She’s using more than one name.” A frown from the spy. “Do you…”

“I keep track of things like that. You really need to stop being dramatic and ask people.” Clara was grinning.

I rolled my eyes. “I really think we should start this over.” Not that we could. However, while they were watching Clara I walked over and untied Monica.

Nobody stopped me.