EJ said, “I messed up. I didn’t go beyond the basics. I didn’t delve into city codes.”
“I went deeper than you but not into city codes,” Alex said.
“The queen will be most unhappy,” Walter said, sounding unhappy himself.
“Did you detect anything after I started seeing her?” EJ asked.
“No,” Alex said. “She was clean as a whistle.”
“I looked her house over every time I visited. If there had been a Faraday cage, it must have been designed with a buffering regulator, a way to turn it off. I never sensed a thing.” Bitterness was sharp in his tone.
He had been on active duty in the final year of the war, in the field, battling demon-based weapons. Paranormal or human, war aged a person, stole pieces of a warrior’s soul. In the years since, he had done some healing, but he would always carry the scars of mistakes made, friends lost or maimed. And right now he was pissed that he had missed something that had endangered his sister.
“Ojos, are you inside Londyn’s system?” Walter asked.
“Negative. Entire security system is offline.”
“Offline? Weird. I don’t like weird,” EJ said.
“Agreed,” Alex said. “You will have oversight by our team. Eli’s ETA to the queen’s residence is two minutes. Remain in your car until he is in the security room. Do not approach the building.”
“Londyn put an EEB explosive device in a planter outside the entrance tomyapartment,” EJ said, his tone going cold, battle-ridden, older than his twenty-three years. “If Angie and Walter hadn’t caught her dropping the disk on camera and ifWalter hadn’t happened to be the one to pick it up with his cold, undead hands, any of our tenants could have touched it and been possessed, or been killed by the explosion.” He thought about the demon bomb in light of the ones used in the war. “It was sophisticated, which means it’s unlikely that Londyn is working alone. The likelihood that the security cameras at the tea shop were trained on our building the moment she didn’t get inside with us is high and getting higher.
“Ojos, access the tea shop’s surveillance now,” EJ said.
“Accessing.”
“Ahhh,” Walter breathed. “Is it possible that everything we are seeing and hearing and are being fed is a trap? If it’s a Mithran vampire trap, then it’s multilayered and knotted together and far more sophisticated than we first thought. Is your girlfriend working with your client? With whoever has Ivyanna Holmes? With Angelina’s ex-husband? With the queen’s enemies? All of the above? Or perhaps we are seeing a confluence of events, and Londyn was simply a useful scorned woman.”
“Not enough data to speculate,” EJ said as the cold of battle settled into him.
“This is Eli Younger,” a deeper voice said, crisp and…very Uncle Eli. Very Lord Eli Younger, one of three publicly known Hands of the Queen. He was more than human but not a vamp or an Onorio, and he was tied to the queen through her magic. Eli was in charge of everything related to security. Obviously, he had been monitoring them. “Local Chat-town PD is on the way, marked unit, no lights, no sirens. Also Detective Leandro Villetti is the woo-woo on shift. He has been notified.”
EJ sighed softly. If Walter had needed the breath, he probably would have too.
Angie had a history with Villetti in college, long before her marriage to Asshat. When Villetti moved back to Chattanooga,the cop had cozied up to all the local vampires, including Angie’s ex-husband, to solidify his political position with the local paras. For whatever reason, maybe because of that past fling, maybe because he liked Asshat, the detective treated Angie and him with barely hidden hostility.
A marked police vehicle pulled in behind EJ’s car. Two people got out. The driver was a mixed-race woman, a cold, experienced look in her eyes. She was dressed in cop blue, spit shined, weapons at her waist, sergeant chevrons on her jacket, dark hair in a severe bun. EJ lowered both side windows and she leaned to see into the car on the passenger side, glanced at them, taking them in, and walked on.
Walter murmured, “This one sees everything in a single glimpse.”
He was right. EJ had caught her eyes settling on Walter’s brand, lingering less than a second before moving to catalog everything on them and about them. Then she was looking over the entire neighborhood, taking in every house, each doorway, tree, window, every shadow.
The man who got out of the passenger side was clearly a rookie, his eyes wide as golf balls, darting in near-panic, as if he would have one chance to memorize everything and knew he’d fail. He looked in at them, blanched at the vampire at the open window, and didn’t seem to know what to do next. He was young, white, skinny as a rail, and average in every way. He would vanish in a crowd.
EJ raised the windows. He and Walter got out, standing in the winter air. The rookie moved ten feet away as the woman circled back.
“Sergeant Rocas,” she said, identifying herself. “This is Officer Stevens.”
“EJ Everhart-Trueblood.”
Rocas nodded and turned to Walter.
“Walter.”
“Just Walter?” she asked.
Soft bells sounded the moment their eyes met. Walter took a slow breath he didn’t need. EJ had heard bells like this before—the normal, human magic of attraction. Walter liked what he saw, what he smelled. So did she.
