Before he could reply she said, “I’ve got a really good vegetarian pasta recipe, with chickpeas, those new purple snap peas, and zucchini.”
EJ leaned over the counter and kissed her on the forehead. “We just caught a case. I can’t promise, so I’ll take a rain check.”
“So not fair,” she said, her narrow face tight just for an instant.
EJ smiled, paid for the tea and shipping, and left the store, glancing back once to wave. Londyn was annoyed. It might be time to move on from this relationship. He had discovered that humans who claimed to want only a casual relationship were usually not telling the truth, and since he was perfectly content alone in his own witch skin, when women started to want more from him than he had offered to give, he moved on. Fast.
The war had taught him to keep relationships on the surface. Anything more put people in danger.
A gust of wind howled down the street between the buildings and cut through to his skin, the first sign of a winter storm heading in from the northwest and slamming into the stationary, warm, high pressure that had been keeping the South unusually temperate into late autumn, even in the Appalachian Mountains. Ducking into a shallow notch in the brick façade marking a wall between two buildings, EJ pressed his comms’ ear-patches into and over each of his ears, waited a moment until they adjusted to his ear shape, tapped the system on, and said, “Call Alex Younger.” The unicom put him through, and when the electronics genius answered, EJ said, “Update?”
“Still analyzing the vids you sent from your office, kid, and I have some programs creating some vid schematics for you. As we speak, I’m preparing a file on Ivyanna Holmes.”
“I’m preparing that,” EJ said before he could catch back the complaint.
“Ivyanna Holmes was on the queen’s property, in close proximity to the queen,” Alex stated. “That, Evan Everhart-Trueblood, means she getsmypriority andourresources.”
What EJ wanted didn’t really matter, though stated more politely. Got it.
Watching traffic and the buses dropping off shoppers and workers, EJ tucked his hands under his armpits for warmth. The low pressure had brought hard winter to them.
Alex went on, unyielding, reminding him of the stakes. “You would have come to me at some point if for nothing but Ivyanna’s past paperwork. She’s been contracted to seven different vampires over the course of the last ten years, and we have all the contracts on file. You. Do not.”
Uncle Alex’s tone almost had EJ apologizing, but he managed to say instead, “That’s a lot of fang hopping.” EJ took in thesidewalk with a quick glance. Delivery bots crawled down the walkways. To his right was a security bot armed with Tasers and what looked like a nine-millimeter weapon shaped into a third upper limb. Expensive. A new model. It was guarding a high-end jewelry store and a leather bag and shoe store that catered to the city’s elite.
“All short-term contracts?” he asked.
“Yeah. One year max, which is interesting. Holmes gets around. She has a strong public and underground social media presence in the vampire world. Makes one wonder what she was looking for and never found. She is, or maybe was, human, depending on how much blood she ingested over the years. She was born totally mundane, not a witch, not a were, and no indication of a magical bloodline was discovered when she traced her genetic line seven years ago. All that should be in your inbox, when you get back to The Firm. Along with Eli’s and my security assessment of the fiasco at Kegs and Boots.”
EJ didn’t respond to Alex’s statement that he wasn’t at The Firm. His unicom wristband had a GPS tracker in it; so did his vehicle. As the queen’s godchildren, there was little privacy in their lives, though usually it wasn’t quite so in your face as Alex was making it feel. The fight at the bar must have really upset their godmother.
The queen’s security programs were better than anything he andOjoscould create, and though EJ could call on resources that Alex and the others at royal HQ didn’t know about—people he’d met in the war and after—he wouldn’t utilize those unless things were desperate. His background was still classified.
He had to react to the Kegs and Boots comment. “What was the reaction?” EJ asked.
“The queen saw it. Analyzed it. And then she said, ‘Fuck.’ ”
The queen didn’t cuss. Ever.
It was Alex’s and Eli’s job to keep the Dark Queen and her Consort safe, which meant keeping her clan and family safe from harm—from mundane or magical attack and from abduction, and since last night’s attack, that surveillance would grow only tighter. Alex was probably watching him on some hacked security feed right now.
“Sorry about that. Go on,” EJ said, lightly, as if the queen hadn’t said the forbidden word. “Walter and I handled it.”
“You did. And quite well.” Alex changed the subject. “Your missing woman, Holmes, shows only on human spectrum video on the event at the queen’s reception. We have vid of her talking to fourteen fangheads and interacting with five witches, over thirty-two human blood servants, and two Onorios, in various groups.”
EJ considered that as he pressed deeper into the wall’s small notch and scrunched his shoulders against the cold. In front of him, a dark gray Toyota approached, moving slightly slower than the regular traffic. The car behind it had to brake, which caught his attention.
Although the Toyota was like thousands on the street, the windows were totally dark, the exact same shade as the car’s paint job. It had a small dent in the back rear panel on the driver’s side. EJ was pretty sure the same car had gone past the tea shop while he chatted with Londyn. He gathered himself, planting his feet to move, watching for a car window to go down and a weapon to be aimed his way. His voice revealing nothing of his hypothetical circumstances, he asked, “Was Ivyanna Holmes a social butterfly or was she working the room for something specific?”
“Watch and make up your own mind,” Alex said, his tone goading. “It’syourcase.”
Without changing position EJ took a series of pics of the car with his unicom.
“Deserved,” EJ said. “We’ll watch.”
The car moved on. EJ memorized the tag number. Just in case he lost his unicom.
Suddenly sounding almost militarily precise, Alex said: “Dark Queen and Clan Yellowrock verbal contracts initiated. Alexander Younger, head of electronic security, speaking to Evan Trueblood Jr., godchild to Jane Yellowrock, a prince by decree to the Dark Queen of the vampires.”
