The hastily written note ended there.
EJ pulled on a pair of armored pants, buckled his belt, and laced up his combat boots. These days, the military used SLER sealers on their boots, but he liked the feel of laces. Mostly he liked these old, perfectly fitting boots. He didn’t bother with the top half of the armor. His jacket was better, newer than anything he had left over from the war, made to order by the queen’s armorer.
He assumed—felt—that Angie and Walter would be fully armored.
When they were kids, his and Angie’s magic had been tangled together while she saved their lives. Every now and then he picked up a few things from her. Sometimes. Not important things, clearly, but he knew that Walter and Angie would be armored. And Angie was…Angie was Angie. The sharp, powerful sister he remembered from his toddler years. She was taking care of this, whateverthisturned out to be. That certainty moved through their connection.
Yeah. The two would be fully armored. Walter would be doingthe queen’s business. Angie would be doing…vengeance? Something more? He didn’t know this part of his sister at all. What he did know was that his job would be keeping them safe. Just like in the war.
EJ pocketed three sets of palillos, placing the nearly drained set of castanets on a large, black marble tray on a kitchen shelf. His Aunt Liz, a stone witch, had made trays for Angie and him. The stone worked like a battery, and when he didn’t have time to charge his amulets and weapons with energy by playing music, the stone provided backup. To his pockets, he added some healing and attack weapons, changing out most woodwinds for steel and silver. He strapped on one vamp-killer, a curved, silvered shortsword designed for taking heads.
He and Angie hadn’t talked much about what they had been through in the war. Him, because everything he had done was classified. Her because…Hell. He didn’t know why she hadn’t told him about Karson Marrazzo setting her up to fight a vamp. Or her having to behead a vamp or die trying. She’d never talked about why they divorced.
And he hadn’t asked.
Was he being aguy? Not to ask? He’d just been giving her space. Right? Letting her get over it? Or, maybe he thought she had been doing girl stuff while he was gone. Knitting. Making pottery. Playing being a vamp’s wife. Which wereguyassumptions. Angie had never been predictable.
He’d been stupid. Even more stupid than the stupid he’d been about Londyn.
He’d been taught better and had trained too hard to still be so stupid.
Marrazzo had allowed one of his people to try to kill Angie. His own wife. It was exactly the same as trying to kill herhimself. And she’d had to fight her way out of his clan home, killing more vamps.
The queen probably had some security vids. And no one had ever shared. EJ would be having a few words with the queen’s top security people, Alex and Eli Younger. And if he wasn’t satisfied, he would contact the queen herself.
The queen had sent help, keeping Angie alive after she left Karson. There was that.
EJ stared into the darkness beyond the invisi-windows as shame coiled through him like a vat of snakes. He had felt this shame to his toes, listening in the hallway as Angie told Villetti what had happened. She could have died. And he had never asked.
Guything. Yeah. He’d been aguy.Shit.Not said aloud. Not while demons were around.
Satisfied, he left his apartment and headed to Walter’s, two floors up. He had a few questions for their bodyguard.
“So where did you put the elixir?” EJ asked.
Walter looked to the refrigerator.
“You think it’s safe there?”
Walter half smiled and snorted. Like a normal human might. EJ almost gave away his surprise. Walter was the least human-acting fanghead he’d known since the war.
“Evan Junior, my entire being wants to lock it in safely with the banners, but it had been stored in the refrigerator in Londyn’s home, so I deduced it needed to be kept cold.”
“You had it in your poc—”
The smile widened. “And my pocket was as cold as the night air. Corpse cold.”
“Did you just make a joke?”
“I never joke.”
EJ frowned. That sound like humor too.
Walter was armored, wearing the queen’s black and gold with the royal crest over his heart. It was the same style armor worn by the queen’s personal security team. EJ had never seen Walter in the queen’s armor. Their bodyguard might be tacitly under the oversight of Grampa, as master of the hunting grounds that included Chattanooga, but he was the queen’s man first. Until now, Walter had been a free vamp. It hadn’t occurred to EJ that, by using the queen’s banner to keep them safe, Walter might have given up all his own independence as well as theirs. Was he pissed? Or was that why he had laughed and made a joke?
Walter pulled a Dyneema cowl over his head, pressing his hair close to his skull, and slid a gorget snug beneath his chin, protecting his throat with the minuscule steel rings washed in a thin layer of silver against fang attack. To his weapons harness, he added a battle-ax and mace, a small pistol in a spine holster, two longswords, three shortswords, one a silvered vamp-killer, and numerous throwing knives. With practiced motions, he slid the shortswords in and out. The longswords in and out. Threaded into loops across his chest were null sticks and silver-tipped stakes. He pulled Dyneema bracers up his arms and secured them. He holstered twin nine-millimeter handguns at his back, above his buttocks, the grips placed for easy draws. Sitting for any length of time would require a straddle position or serious discomfort. He bristled with weapons.Holy hells, he looked like…Walter lookeddangerous.
Walter placed the queen’s standard into one flap pocket and pinched the gold brooch displaying the queen’s official crest into the specially made tab in his gorget. Her crest was a goldenlaurel-leaf crown, a puma fang, a feather, and a chunk of stone shaped like her fist, what she called The Glob, and what was, in reality, her most fearsome weapon.
