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“Me? You’re the one with a nasty habit for being in the line of fire. I was so worried about you.”
I smiled. “You know me. Takes more than a few ambulatory corpses to keep me down.”
She evidently didn’t find this very funny.
“Your friends here were just tellin’ me these ain’t zombies.” O’Brian slipped a small container of chewing tobacco from his breast pocket and placed a bit between his gum and lower lip.
“Oh?”
I explained to them what Keaty had told me, trying to limit my use of the phrase necromancer but failing terribly. There wasn’t much sense in downplaying the paranormal aspects just because O’Brian was with us. He’d witnessed the dead rise and take to the streets tonight. There was a good chance he believed in the supernatural now.
Most people were going to need to reassess their understanding of the world after tonight. Now they would know the truth. Ghost stories weren’t just stories, and the things that went bump in the night were no longer figments of their imagination.
The world was going to be a different place when this was all said and done.
I had to give O’Brian credit. He took the whole thing pretty well, considering what we’d told him. He nodded a lot and didn’t ask too many questions, which was what I liked in authority figures.
“Where’s Owen?” I asked Cedes, hoping her boyfriend was somewhere safe if he wasn’t with her here.
“He and your cat are holed up at my apartment. The alley gate makes it more secure than a lot of other options.”
While I was relieved to hear Owen was okay, I was even more pleased to hear Rio, my cat, was being cared for. I’d left her in Mercedes’s care when I went to Paris and Manitoba, and I hadn’t realized until that moment how worried I’d been about the stupid white fur ball. If I ever saw her again, I would give her the best canned food every day for the rest of her life.
Brigit had given Rio to me, and the cat was a constant reminder of my lost friend. If I didn’t have Rio, a very large memory of Brigit would be gone along with her. Stupid, but there it was.
I loved that cat.
“If we have a chance, we can go get him,” I offered.
Cedes shook her head. “No. He’ll be better off where he is, as long as he doesn’t try to do anything too heroic. I think I’d rather have one fewer person to worry about.”
I got her logic completely. If I could have spared the manpower, I would have preferred that none of my loved ones were out on the streets tonight. Unfortunately I couldn’t tackle this situation on my own, and I’d take helping hands where I could find them. But I wouldn’t endanger anyone against their will. Owen would stay put, and I’d make sure his girlfriend came home to him when this ordeal was over.
“So what’s the plan then?” O’Brian barked.
I liked him more and more the longer I was with him, but I wasn’t sure whether or not it was a good idea to include him. But, then again, what was the harm at this point? My own personal secret was already out among the paranormal community, and now that entire community was at risk of being exposed. What did one more human knowing the truth matter?
He was good with a gun and he was willing to join us, two big pros on his side. My only concern was that when the time came to kill the necros, would he be willing to bring down a mortal if he had to?
But I was getting ahead of myself.
“We’re going hunting. But first we need to find my dad.”
Chapter Eight
I don’t know if it was because of the extra manpower or because we’d gotten accustomed to the new order of the streets, but it seemed to take a lot less time to reach Chelsea than it had to get to the police station.
We’d waited for Tyler to return, but there hadn’t been any opportunities for him and me to have alone time where we could discuss what the FBI might be doing to help. I didn’t think he’d appreciate me outing him to Cedes and O’Brian, and I wasn’t ready to answer all the questions she would have. Even Desmond had looked at me funny when I’d announced my job over the police radio earlier, but he hadn’t pushed for details. Which was good, because it was a long story to say the least.
Too long to get into in our current situation.
But, hey, he and I were getting married. We’d have plenty of time to discuss my secret role in the FBI later.
Now there were six of us instead of three, and all of our new members were gun-trained and armed. O’Brian had opened up the precinct’s gun locker and supplied Tyler, Cedes and himself with semiautomatic SWAT rifles and a ton of extra clips.
“I didn’t think your building had a SWAT unit,” I mentioned to Cedes, admiring her new weapon.
“We don’t. Most of the stuff in that locker is obsolete for daily use, but we keep it around in case of emergencies. Guess this counts.” Her smile said she was trying to make a joke, but her voice was gravelly and tired.
