In one horrifically painful moment, I tore my eyes away. Time, which seemed to have slowed while I hesitated, moved at its normal pace again. If I wanted it to continue, I would have to keep my attention focused on my own business. I moved towards the metro tunnel, and much as it pained me, I didn’t look back.
Two days later, and no one had heard a word about Lara Achilles. Nor had Ember been spotted at any of her usual haunts. My desk chair felt like a part of my body, but I was determined to know if the two of them were all right. And more than that, I wanted to know what Ember planned to do to stop Lara from getting herself, and all of us, into trouble again.
Because if she was the killer, and the Authority found proof, they could take us down with them. We’d covered up what she’d done. I glanced over at Eryx and Av, who were simultaneously playing a game of chess while each of them watched a screen of their own.
Av had a chat box open in a corner of the dark web that I didn’t particularly want to know more about, while Eryx scoured less shady parts of the internet for mention of “the Angel.” I’d be a fool not to think that moniker referred to Lara Achilles.
I glanced at my phone for the tenth time in as many minutes. None of my contacts had gotten back to me. Reluctantly, I opened a spreadsheet. Waiting was not my forte, but spreadsheets I could handle.
Though being the head of the Orphium Necroline dynastyseemed like a fairly glamorous job from the outside, the truth of the matter was that it was a lot of paperwork and analyzing data. The business of keeping my people safe in a world that wasn’t built for them was boring a lot of the time, but usually I was willing to put in the hours. Right now, the columns swam before my eyes, practically meaningless while other thoughts clamored for attention.
The three of us sat quietly for a while, with only the sound of tapping keyboards and marble chess pieces moving in the background. When this was Roman Necroline’s office, the paneled woodwork on the walls had gleamed with precious oil, and the chesterfield furniture had been soft and supple. Under Magnus, things had slipped into disrepair.
I’d done my best to restore things to the way Roman had kept them, but I could never quite measure up to his nobility. The wood never had the same luster, and the leather in all the furniture bore scars. Still, our offices, high in the bureaucratic wing of the Carlyle, were nicer than many of our people’s homes. That thought grounded me, drove me to focus. I slipped into a flow state, my fingers flying over my keyboard as I calculated a projected budget for the fourth quarter.
“Ares?” Av’s voice broke through my focus.
I glanced up to find her next to me, laptop in hand. Her Poltergeist, Stanley, wove around her feet, taking the shape of a rather adorable sewer rat. When I almost smiled at him, he grinned back, revealing a mouth of human teeth.
“Revolting,” I said, refusing to react further.
Av smiled. “He doesn’t know any other way to behave, Ares. He’s a good boy.”
I swallowed hard, not wanting to argue with Avaline. If she was happy with her ghostly little pet, who was I to argue? Eryx covered his mouth to keep from laughing. We were both humoring her, apparently. She held up her laptop as Stanley disappeared.
Her screen showed grainy footage of the Pizza Queen. LaraAchilles walked in, sat down at a booth, and picked up the phone to order. Only, instead of ordering, Lara was quiet. She nodded several times, then hung up.
“What are we looking at?” I asked. “Is there sound on this?”
Av shook her head. “No, but look.” She pressed a key and the video sped up. At the video’s twenty minute mark, someone brought Lara a pizza box. She opened it, took out a slice of pepperoni mushroom, bit into it, and walked out.
“She never said a word,” Av remarked as she closed her laptop. “So what did whoever was on the other end of that call tell her?”
Eryx shook his head, his brow furrowed. “You’ll never find out unless she tells one of us.” His phone pinged several times on the table. My brother leaned forward. “We’ve got them. Verona’s at the Automat, and Achilles is four blocks away, closing in on her. Should we intercept?”
I shook my head. “No, if they’ve been avoiding each other, they need to catch up. Let them.” I glanced at my watch. It was nearly eight o’clock at night. “But we’re going to follow. See what they do.”
Eryx nodded to Av, who stowed her laptop in the safe. I slid mine in after hers. We didn’t have desktops anymore, and the safe was built as a Varaday cage—a shielding device against EMF and other surveillance tech. Each of us had similar pockets built into every jacket we owned for our phones. Our secrets were locked up tight these days, and would stay that way.
“Bring your phones, but make sure they stay in your pocket unless we need them,” I cautioned. “I don’t want anyone to know what we’re up to.”
Av nodded. “I’ll call Stanley in, as well.”
I nodded. This was why I let Av keep the disgusting creature. Poltergeists were incredibly effective at repelling tracking tech, but it took a rare medium to befriend the contentious creatures. Av was my secret weapon in more than one way.
“Let’s find out what our girls are up to,” I murmured as I followed Eryx and Av out of my office. The more we knew about what was going on, the safer everyone would be.
CHAPTER 12
EMBER
My key limepie was the best I’d ever had. The soft light of the filtered neons was a soothing silver tone that bled out from behind the hundreds of compartments that held food. The Automat really was better than the ThunderBowl in about three thousand ways. It was also blessedly quiet, just the hum of the neons to keep me company.
But the best damn thing about the Automat was all the spirit activity. It scrambled any kind of listening devices, and because the place was so haunted, the owners had made it fully automated. The spirits didn’t make much trouble, as such things went, but the volume of their presence often repelled humans. There wasn’t a living soul in the entire building.
Because of the spirit activity, typically people didn’t linger here to eat. They came, got their food and left. But when I arrived, a human couple, two men in their early sixties, were enjoying pie—blissfully unaware of the spirits hovering around them as they devoured their lemon meringue. Some humans were more attuned to spirit activity than others. Typically, the happier, and more oblivious to others’ suffering that humans were, the less they seemed to sense spirit activity.
These two were both blissfully happy and completely oblivious of anything but themselves. It was sort of sweet, actually. Oddly enough, it was comforting to sit and listen to them talk about their children visiting for the winter holy days.
