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If something had come to destroy the city I loved and the people I cared about most, I would go down swinging with my last breath.
But first I needed something to hit.
Once the dead woman had passed us, my motley crew of supernaturals made the rest of the trip to Keaty’s brownstone without incident. Given how dark the streets were with the lights off, the house gave the impression of being empty. But I didn’t believe Keaty would go anywhere in this situation when his house was the safest, smartest place to be.
I hadn’t brought my keys along, so I jogged up the stairs and knocked, as if I were here on a social call.
The etched glass on the front door read Keats and McQueen Private Pest Control, which continued to amuse me even now. Oh, we dealt with pest problems, all right, only instead of roaches and bedbugs, we focused on fae and those who used magic to prey on the weak.
My knock was greeted with silence.
I turned back to the group, shrugging, and when I looked back at the door, I was face-to-face with the barrel of a very large gun.
Chapter Four
“Hey, Jimmy Cagney. If I wanted a facelift, I would seek out a professional, thanks.” I swatted the gun away, though my heart was hammering from the surprise of the weapon suddenly being in front of me.
Keaty lowered the gun and took a half step out of the house, glancing up and down the block. Only once he’d scanned the street did he acknowledge Desmond, Holden and Genie by giving them all a terse collective nod.
“Who’s the girl?” he asked me.
“My sister.”
He stared at me, gave his head a slight shake, then stepped back into the brownstone. With a man like Keaty, there was always a chance he might shut the door in my face. He didn’t believe he owed anything to anyone, and in spite of our long and storied history, he could easily turn around and tell me to get off his porch.
“Come in if you’re coming in,” he grumbled, holding the door open for us.
I ushered the others in ahead of me, doing a final visual sweep of the street before ducking inside myself.
The interior of the house was illuminated mostly by candles and a few oil lamps—who the hell had those sitting around?—but to my surprise Keaty’s office was fully lit. Of course he’d have a generator so he could keep working.
Inside, my group remained huddled together, as if no one was prepared to let the others out of their sights.
“Guys, why don’t you find some place to sit down, relax a little. I need to talk to Keaty.”
“If he knows something, I want to hear it,” Holden said.
Keaty, who had no particular love for vampires, gave Holden a scary, serious look. Francis Keats might be the only human man I’d ever known who could intimidate a vampire with nothing more than a glare.
Holden didn’t back down at first, but when it became apparent Keaty wasn’t going to speak, Desmond finally said, “Let’s go see if there’s something in the kitchen.”
I waited until I was sure they’d gone, then I fixed my own well-honed death stare on my former partner.
“What’s go—?”
He lifted a hand, silencing me. “Come on. We should sit down.”
That didn’t bode well at all. My blood ran cold, and it was as if he had caught me doing something I shouldn’t. For a moment I was alight with nerves and guilt, until I realized the most fearful part of his words was that they didn’t apply to me at all. He had bad news, and it had everything to do with what was going on in the world outside his door.
After following him into the office, I shut the door for privacy, then settled into the big chair facing his desk. I tried to get a sense of what might be happening from his appearance, but it told me nothing. His shirt was crisp and perfectly white, he was wearing his contacts rather than his glasses, and not a single one of his dark blond hairs was out of place.
He looked ready to get down to business.
I hugged my legs to my chest and made myself comfortable in the chair, and for once he didn’t make any comments about what my feet might do to the leather. Normally I took my shoes off in the brownstone, but today I’d left my boots on when we came inside. His focus had to be somewhere else entirely if I wasn’t getting a lecture.
“What’s going on?” I was able to finish my sentence this time around.
“I don’t know.”
