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The blond agent grinned and pulled out his phone. Impatient, I stood and began pacing, though it proved to be difficult with all the crap we’d strewn all over the place.
“Jill says there’s nothing in that name,” Zack said after a brief moment.
I chewed my lower lip as I stepped over detritus. “Have her try Raymond Bergeron, just for giggles.”
“And his dad’s name too,” Ryan suggested.
“Right!” I turned to Zack. “His parents and his grandparents. See if there’s anything current.”
Zack relayed the info, then said, “How about I just put her on speaker phone?” He pushed a button on the phone and set it on the coffee table.”
“I feel like I’ve become the Oracle,” Jill complained.
I gave Zack a puzzled look as he burst out laughing. “It’s from the Batman comics,” he explained to me. “Barbara Gordon—the first Batgirl—was shot by The Joker and paralyzed, and so she became The Oracle, a computer expert and information hacker who provided intelligence to other superheroes.”
“There was more than one Batgirl?” I asked weakly.
Zack heaved a sigh. “You have so much to learn.”
I snorted. “No, I think I’m perfectly fine not knowing how many Batgirls there were.”
“No results for any of those names,” Jill’s voice piped up. “What next?”
“Okay, so who owns this house?” I said. I waited impatiently as the sound of clicking keys came through the speaker.
“Company named Imperium LLC,” she said after a few seconds. “And before you ask, yes, I’m searching the Secretary of State records to see who’s behind that.” A few more seconds. “Oh, good grief,” she muttered. “Corporate name, Posterula Inc. Searching on that now.” A pause. “Crap, it may take a while to dig through all these layers.”
I stopped my semblance of pacing. “Don’t worry about that right now. Are there any other properties in this area owned by Imperium?”
“Hang on. Yeah, two others. A residence in Clearwater Estates and a strip mall on the east end of town on Oakwood Street. I’ll text you the addresses.”
“Any chance either of those are in our ‘hot zone?’ ” I asked.
“Nope. Sorry.”
Nothing about this was going to be easy, obviously. “Okay, thanks a million, Jill. We’re going to go check those two spots out. If you find out anything else, give us a shout.”
“Will do!” came the cheery reply, then she clicked off.
“Okay, kiddos,” I said, “We don’t have much time. I can’t sense wards as long as I have this on, so I’m going to be relying on y’all to point them out to me.”
“You mean Ryan,” Zack said with an easy smile, but there was a glint in his eye. “I can’t see wards.”
“Oh, right,” I said with a laugh. “My mistake.” I held his gaze for another heartbeat. Find a way to warn me if you see something dangerous, I thought, hoping it would come through somehow. I knew perfectly well Zack was capable of seeing and manipulating wards, and with far more skill than Ryan seemed to currently possess. Ryan would hopefully be able to tell if any protections were in place, but I had no way of knowing just how far his demonic lord powers had been throttled back. With the loss of Eilahn, I was relying on Zack’s skill more than ever.
He broke the gaze, but not before giving me an infinitesimal nod. He understood.
“Let’s ditch this joint,” I said, “and hope to hell that we find something useful in one of the other places.”
Chapter 22
Traffic was a fucking bitch, adding to the mounting frustration already plaguing us. Tracy’s threat about finding a way to motivate me haunted me, and I knew I needed to be prepared. I knew without a doubt that he needed me alive only because he intended for me to end up dead or drained or something worse. Personally, I wanted to avoid that sort of fate.
The strip mall ended up being a complete bust, but luckily not one that took too much time to check out. It helped that it stood completely empty, and through all the window fronts we could easily see that there was nothing nefarious going on there. Moreover, Zack gave me the slight shake of his head that told me he couldn’t detect arcane residue of any kind—which would surely be there if Tracy had been summoning anywhere around there.>She gave me a wavering smile. “It is coming. I can sense it. I am sorry I cannot protect you in what is to come.”
“I’ll summon you back,” I said fiercely. “You can’t get out of this that easily!”
She gave a small nod. “It will take time before I return to my world. But when I do, I will find you. You will not get rid of me so easily, my friend.” Her grip loosened on my wrist, and her arm dropped to her side.
