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Which meant she could have actually have survived this.
But no way she would have walked out of here on her own two feet after a bloodbath like this. And if someone had dragged her out, surely the security team would have noticed.
I sat on the edge of her couch on a somewhat-clean section and silently surveyed the room, taking in every last splashy red detail.
I think it was safe to say I’d figured out what would pressure Sig to withdraw his warrant on Davos.
The only problem was, now I had two missing people to find instead of just one.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“What do you mean you want me to fly Harold to New York?” Tyler asked me.
“I thought my request was pretty clear.”
I was lingering in the hallway outside Ingrid’s apartment, while a dozen different specialized crime scene techs, including two from our New York FBI office, processed every inch of the scene, looking for any clues that might indicate what had happened to Ingrid.
It was still hard to imagine she could have survived something that left behind so much blood, but I had to hope at least a little bit of it might have belonged to Davos’s men, or whoever had been sent here to take her out.
Which was what I had to assume their mission was.
Kidnap or kill Ingrid, because she might very well be one of the only people alive Sig cared enough about to make him change his mind on the hit against Davos.
“I’m not going to overnight a demon to you, Secret. And when are you coming home? We’re dealing with an epic-sized pool of bullshit here. We could use your help.”
“Not having a vacation here, Tyler. The shit has flowed east, and there’s plenty of it where I’m standing too.”
“I still don’t know what any of this has to do with Harold. I also can’t believe you’ve got me calling him Harold. It’s ridiculous. Now that he looks human, people are acting like it’s totally normal to have him around. Lily and the rest of the techies in the lab are having regular conversations with him. I swear to God if I’m not careful, I’m going to go down there one day and they’ll have the door wide open.”
“Would that really be the worst thing?”
“He’s a demon.”
“And I was a werewolf-vampire. What’s your point? Just because he’s a demon doesn’t necessarily mean he’s totally evil.”
“Secret, I want you to repeat those words again, slowly. He’s a demon. Demons by sheer definition are evil.”
“You’re prejudiced.”
He groaned. “I don’t have time to deal with this right now. Why do you want me to send him out there?”
“Because we have a unique but also equally motivated group of vampires out here trying to summon demons, and I’ve got some dead bodies and my own near-kidnapping to show for it.”
Tyler was quiet for a long time. “It would make my life a lot easier if you could possibly go more than a week without someone attempting to kidnap or kill you, you know.”
“I don’t want people to do those things to me, but it seems to be a byproduct of the job.” I peered back into the apartment where one of the officers was questioning Shane. Mercedes was busy dealing with the Davos mess, so we were at the mercy of the nearest responding precinct. They had also called Daphne to confirm I was really an FBI agent, and I was wondering if I needed a more serious haircut for people to take me at my word.
No, I probably needed testicles before that was going to be a g
iven.
No respect, and I was a divisional director, for crying out loud. Maybe that was part of the problem. Perhaps if I told people I was just an agent and not a director, they would roll with it. The fact I was younger than thirty and co-running a supernatural division might have been hard to swallow for lifelong beat cops.
“So this is a more widespread issue, then?”
“Yeah, I caught sight of that symbol again last night, so this has something to do with Belphegor. If you could get the research team to look at that more closely, it would be helpful. Like, what’s his deal? Why would a bunch of vampires be interested in bringing him up, specifically?”
“We suspect it might have to do with his chosen sin being gluttony. I think the vampires figure if they get him on their side they’ll be able to glut themselves on the blood of humanity? But that’s just a theory.”
