Page 67 of Call of the Blood

That was another hour or two. I could work with that.

“Thank you.”

James Henry Bishop’s entire life was about to be mine to sift through.

26

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Iwas in the house when the email came in, and I quickly saved everything. I found that the office had a printer, and deciding to give myself physical copies to make notes on as well, I printed everything. I spent enough time prepping that I had a moment of uncertainty. Would this be enough information? Would I learn anything useful about my uncle’s new life that I couldn’t just drag out of him?

I’ll just have to see.

I started from the beginning, with the digital copy on my screen, the physical copy in front of me, and a notepad. It felt very old school and not entirely what I did, but information gathering like that was theoretically something I could do. I had to find things I could use in these files. With a red pen ready, I was going to mark everything I could use to find more.

James Henry Bishop, my uncle Henry Abbott, had joined Maria’s nest fifteen years ago, only two years after he disappeared after my father’s death. Almost as if he made a straight line for California once he had figured out how to create his new life and escape whatever had happened with Jacob.

“Interesting that he ran across the country first. He could have stopped anywhere to find the fae he needed to help him create this new identity…” I made a face. With so many major cities, there were so many opportunities to find a fae to help him over two years.

“The fact that he even felt the need to get magic to help him get a new identity… Though Alexius said Jacob would have used the exile to kill Henry without killing Henry or something like that. Henry was probably desperate. A lone vampire doesn’t do well, not without outside support or a lot of resources. And he would have been persona non grata if he tried to join a nest with the knowledge he’d been exiled from his previous…”

I looked into his work and saw my uncle was a low-tier financial guy in Maria’s offices. A budget specialist for different properties that either she owned alone or properties the nest owned through shell companies. I had no real idea what his work had been for Jacob, but I wouldn’t discount the possibility that he did a financial job for Jacob’s nest as well.

“It would be easier to stay in a line of work he knew well… He didn’t go to college or anything in those two years… Did he?” I searched for his qualifications and found he did have some education and a CPA. Whether that was legitimate or forged wasn’t something I cared to look into, but knowing he had thought of making himself seem like a good worker to hire meant he knew what he needed to do to be appealing to a new nest, especially a nest like Maria’s.

“Maybe he took the chance long before his exile to learn how people got into other nests and what made that easier or harder. He voiced his dislike for Jacob’s nest to me…” I shrugged a shoulder and kept digging into his life. The nest’s file on him read like an employment file. There were no disciplinary actions on his record. He never messed up at work. There was a note in a one-year review that he was quiet, doing good work, and didn’t like to be on the radar, not even to be praised. A quote from Henry, written by the reviewer, was that he liked how he could quietly live his life in Maria’s nest and was grateful for something that felt normal.

It was similar to what he had said to me.

I worked for hours, dissecting everything. He took his payments in check until it was discontinued, and they went digital for everything. He had to give up his banking information for that. He always earned his yearly bonus, one of the tops in the role. He was never promoted, refusing the one time Maria offered. He didn’t want more responsibility was the reason noted. With no more offers, the nest was probably waiting to see if he would apply for an open promotional role next time.

I put a red underline under his banking information and his address. Then his email on record. The bank was going to be the hardest to get into unless I phished him, and most supernaturals didn’t fall for those tricks.

Alexius showed up at two-thirty in the morning. I looked outside to see him looking thunderous as he got out of the SUV and slammed the door.

“Uh-oh,” I said lightly, knowing that wasn’t for me.

“Everly, I need your help!” he called out as he entered the house.

“Yeah, in here!” I called back, and he was there within seconds.

“I need you to see something.” He reached for a remote and turned on a projector I had been ignoring. I had seen the wall scribbles, too, but they hadn’t been my business, especially since I was now on my own hunt. The map the scribbles must have been for was now up as well.

“You really had a thing going here,” I mumbled, looking appreciatively.

“I used to do this with physical maps, but when I discovered projectors… Maria made sure this was set up for me for this job. Now, these are spots they’ve been seen, these vampires I’m looking for. I included your sighting as well and the blood I had found in their abandoned sleeping place.”

“Yeah… but how can I help?”

“I want you to cross-reference this information with missing people and murders.”

“Oh, shit. Yeah…” I made a face. “It could be really bad. This is a giant city, not some small, middle-of-nowhere town in Alaska where bad things happen so rarely. This is… There could be thousands.”

“I’ll be helping,” he said, crossing his arms as he stared at his map. “When I got back out there, the vampires had cleaned up. They had snuck around Maria’s cleanup crew. They had protected their faces from cameras. They took everything left.”

“They knew they had been caught,” I said, nodding.

“And they cared,” Alexius said. “Which is more important.”