And that staff.Hell, Angie had been working on that thing for years, claiming she had been unsuccessful with whatever it was supposed to do. She called it anullstaff. He had touched it, and the damn thing had nearly ripped his magic out of hisheart, it was so strong. He’d had to wear null gloves to handle the null staff, which was ironic.
He hadn’t questioned his sister about her staff project, which was stupid on his part, clearly. The staff had done…what? Why would his sister lie about it being just a null staff? Null energies didn’t bind or remove EEBs of any size or energy signature.
But the demon hadn’t possessed her. Or Walter. Or him. It wasn’t possible. Yet theBeswasn’t free. He had heard the broken cymbals and tortured screaming signature sound of demon energies. Then silence. There had been no sound since it disappeared. Where had Angie found—and hidden—a containment vessel to keep it until it was needed?
His feet were cold. His body was mottled with bruises, which he had treated with his mother’s healing herbal and magically powerful ointment. His skin was sticky and smelled like weeds in spring, bitter and sweet at the same time.
EJ pulled on his socks and briefs, working through the timeline, potential motivations, and all possible intended targets.
The questions the demon bomb created were complex: Why had Londyn brought it? How had she gotten it? All identified and recognized, inhabited collection containers from the war were kept under constant guard by the military in a level five containment facility twenty stories belowground. EEB demon collection devices/weapons were impossible to obtain legally and the cost on the black market was unimaginable. Londyn wasn’t from a wealthy family, so where had she acquired the bomb? Owning a containment vessel that imprisoned a demon was treason.
If it was intended to collect on Angie’s bounty, the cost of using the device became counterproductive. A million-dollar kill fee (if you happened to get away with it without being killedby counter–bounty hunters) was a nice chunk of change, but didn’t go as far as it used to.
Why the everlasting hell had Londyn tried to kill him?Because he hadn’t gone to dinner with her?The absurdity of that was dumbfounding. He had never chosen a chick who had been capable of hiding such unhinged feelings, thoughts, and behavior.
He stopped, the Heat-Keep silk undershirt half on.
His sister had been attacked last night. Was this connected? Some kind of plot?
Londyn wasn’t smart enough to plan a long-range kidnapping. He dated only empty-headed women for a reason.
That thought brought him up short. He had never thought about his dating choices. There were reasons but…It made him a shallow, empty-headed man to date only what amounted to intellectually challenged gorgeous women.
Something in the back of his mind suggested that it was easy to seduce and then walk away from a woman he didn’t admire and consider worthy of…friendship? Respect?
“Well, fuuuu—” He stopped. There were demons about. One did not curse in the presence of demons. There could be fatal repercussions.
Yeah.Hewas empty-headed and shallow. A horndog. He tucked that theory into a pocket of his mind to contemplate later.
For now, nothing about the attack in the parking lot of Kegs, nothing about the demon attack by Londyn, and nothing about the case they had accepted from a woman who wasn’t what she appeared to be, made any sense.
While he finished dressing in the layers neatly laid out on his sofa, he glanced often at the staff he had taken from Angie while she was having her concussion discussion with herselfand Mom. He had studied the null staff, pressing the small blue stone Angie seemed to have pushed with her thumb. He had risked, and deactivated, an amulet, testing the device, but that was solely the effect of the powerful null energies in it. The psychometric magic energies in his amulet had vanished while in contact with the staff, yet the amulet had been easily rechargeable afterward, similar to the effect of any null instrument on magic. Otherwise, nothing had happened. The stick, in his hands, didn’t seem to have any abilities beyond being a powerful null weapon. Which Angie had implied didn’t work.
The staff wasn’t a traditional military bo staff. She had crafted something a scholarly mage from fiction or even Merlin might have carried, with a narrow tip on one end, about an inch and a quarter in diameter, tipped with silver alloy, and a bigger diameter on the other end, shaped for Angie’s grip. That end was capped with a labradorite stone that glowed when she held it, and when she pressed the blue tigereye trigger…
It sucked up a demon?
How thehelldid the thing work?
After glancing at Angie on the screen to make sure she was okay, EJ pulled on a layer of silk knit Heat-Keep leggings for warmth. He tapped open the results of the DGFR programs. Once the pics had been through the deglamour program, the facial rec software had spit out a name. Chancy’s real name was Cennet A. Campbell-Baines.
EJ unfolded another small screen on his unicom tablet and transferred the image to the wall screen. He studied her face and her info. Cennet was forty-nine, blonde and blue eyed, and had a long connection to vampires, including Angie’s ex, Karson Marrazzo, aka Asshat.
“Well, well. That’s an interesting relationship since Asshat was at the party where Ivyanna, who also had a relationshipwith Asshat, disappeared. Chancy/Cennet, why didn’t you tell us you knew Karson too? Why are you keeping so many secrets?”
Asshat had originally appeared to be Angie’s prince charming, and Angie’s marriage had kept Asshat in everyone’s good graces. When he revealed himself as a rabid viper and she walked out, divorcing him, all of Karson’s hopes for a powerful future went with her. His grandiose plans and machinations had been destroyed by his boss, Lincoln Shaddock, Master of the City of Asheville and Surrounding Hunting Territories, aka, their grampa on their mother’s side. Even if Asshat hadn’t been stupid, he had hurt Shaddock’s granddaughter. Karson was an idiot bloodsucker.
Asshat’s invitation to the royal reception had been an opportunity to make things better for himself. Instead, Karson had stupidly squandered it by going over Shaddock’s head with an appeal to the emperor himself for a critical and prominent status upgrade. Grampa had not been at all happy with his not-so-loyal scion. Eddie the Great had been royally pissed.
EJ opened the guest list for the queen’s reception, sent by Alex Younger, but found no mention of Cennet. He transferred everything to the Ivyanna Holmes files and put that growing file on his wall screen to be organized into the background info collected byOjos. Walter called it his murder board, from old serial TV crime shows. With a touch, EJ setOjosto highlighting duplicate information and discrepancies so he could winnow things down for his board.
Still studying Chancy/Cennet’s real face, EJ pulled on a second pair of thermal leggings and two outer layers. The layers were vital because he anticipated a long, cold night. After paying a visit to Londyn, he hoped that he and Walter would be visiting Cennet’s address.
And then, if the information they obtained warranted it, they might be making another visit: to Chattanooga’s vamp-central. Due to Angie’s divorce and their current position as unaligned operators, they had no right to enter Karson Marrazzo’s lair. They would have to knock on a vampire’s door, at night.
Or bust in.
EJ had no idea how that would go. Without an official banner it was a home invasion. Or they could claim the protection of someone’s—the queen’s, or Grampa Shaddock’s—standard. Going in under an official banner gave them almost unlimited power over Asshat, which Asshat would hate.
