“Thank you.”
“Pleasure. Let’s hope we don’t have to meet again.” He hesitated. “Michael bid me to pass on the warning to not rush in where fools dare to tread on this one.”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m a field agent—rushing in when the situation warrants it is what we do.”
“Which is exactly what he said you’d say, and why I’m sticking around for the next few days.”
“Well, let’s just hope that your services are not required.”
“From your lips to God’s ears.”
With a smile and a goodbye nod, he grabbed his kit, then walked over to the two regular medics. More Society people arrived just as Ginny returned. She gave them a brief rundown of the situation and then walked across to me. “Come on, let’s get you back to the car.”
I accepted the hand she gave me, rolled upright, and hopped down onto my good foot. With her help, I made it to the car, but I was damn well sweating and slightly nauseous by the time I got there. Either the healing had sapped my strength, or the blood loss had.
I collapsed into the passenger seat, did up my seat belt, then, once Ginny was in the driver’s seat, handed her the key fob. “So what did you find upstairs? Anything of use?”
“It wasn’t Lanie who contracted the men. It was Stephan.”
Meaning our guess about Monica and Co. becoming too much of a problem for Stephan’s taste might have been correct. “We got an address?”
“And a phone number. The former doesn’t exist, and the latter can’t be traced. Which does beg the question, why would he bother sending in goons to kill her?”
“Maybe he’s just being thorough. He did give his real name, remember.”
“That would explain the third goon going after her records, though not why he wouldn’t just give a false name.” She started the van and pulled out into the traffic. “What’s our next step?”
“Moving house. We can’t risk Lanie, Luke, or even Orion coming after us. Sadly for you, I’ve been ordered to keep still for the next few hours and won’t be of much help.”
“That’s okay. Atticus will help me.”
Atticus will not, he retorted.
“Ass,” she said.
Dinner, he replied.
I snorted and closed my eyes. Next thing I knew, things were being shoved noisily into the back of the van, and then the doors were slammed shut.
“Hey, sleeping beauty awakes,” Ginny said as she climbed into the driver’s seat.
I yawned and stretched as best I could in the small space. “How long was I out?”
“A couple of hours.”
“You should have woken?—”
“Atticus threatened to smite me if I did.”
I turned around and looked at him. “What is this sudden fascination with smiting?”
I watched a demon movie last night; the witches smited. It looked like fun.
“I didn’t know you were into horror movies,” Ginny said. She handed me a signal blocking box so I could put my earwigs into it, then drove out of the underground parking area into the traffic.
It was research.
“Movies are not accurate representations of witches, magic, or even shifters,” I replied dryly, “let alone a reliable source on demonology.”
