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Why should a bug distress you? We can squash and eat insects, if we like. I doubt they are tasty, but we can do it.
Not that kind of bug. A device used to listen to us.
That is sneaky,Esme observed.
You sound like you approve,I said huffily.
A good hunter uses everything at her disposal.
‘Who has it been bugged by?’ Manners asked.
‘That’s the million-dollar question,’ Bastion replied drily.
Chapter 25
Thequestionofwhohad bugged our car and why was really annoying me. I tried to think back to any conversations I’d had with Manners in his car. ‘We talked about the dryads and Mark pissing on the elder tree,’ I said.
He nodded, looking grim. ‘And we talked about Mark being hip deep in the black tourneys. If the car is bugged by Mark’s killer, our number-one suspect is someone linked to the black tourneys and now they’re going to know that we know.’
‘But they don’t know that we know that they know.’ I parroted the famousFriendsepisode. Manners looked blank. ‘You never watched the TV showFriends, huh?’
‘No.’
‘It’s a classic, you’re missing out.’
He shook his head and still looked grim, despite my attempts at levity. ‘We could be walking into a trap.’
Bastion made a small noise of disagreement. ‘You’ll be in disguise and they wouldn’t expect you to track down a tourney so quickly. They’ll be prepared for you to show up to the next one, not this one. Plus, you have me with you. We’ll be fine.’
‘Is the organiser, Ghost, a friend of yours?’
Bastion shook his head. ‘No, we’re not friends. Griffins don’t do friends.’
‘That must be lonely.’
He met my eyes in the rear-view mirror. ‘We kill people for a living. Most people struggle to accept that.’ I noticed that he didn’t deny being lonely. Poor murderous assassin guy.
‘Sure, it’s a toughie,’ I agreed. ‘But a lot of things in the Other realm kill. Everything seems pretty violent. Common rules go out of the window.’
Bastion chose not to comment. ‘Everyone will be busy staring at me. You’ll go under the radar.’
‘Why will they be staring at you?’ I asked.
‘We’ll split up outside and I’ll enter in my griffin form. That’s fairly rare, so I’ll draw attention away from the two boring humans. Ghost usually takes human form.’
‘Hey! We’re not boring,’ I protested.
‘You’re not human either,’ he pointed out dryly.
Fair point.
We drew up to Black Park. ‘Let’s go and see what the vampyrs have to say for themselves.’
We moved quickly to the lakeside. Bastion gave a solemn nod to the handsome man sitting on a bench. A few steps back was a lady, who was presumably his daughter. They looked like chalk and cheese: she was fair to his dark and she was glaring at us, contempt written all over her pretty features.
I gave her a wide smile and a finger wave, just to screw with her. Her gaze darkened and I resisted the urge to snigger.
I turned my attention to Lord Wokeshire. I remembered Jinx telling me that a vampyr could alter his age at will, so he obviously fancied playing the silver fox today. His dark hair was streaked with grey, but that didn’t detract from his good looks. It isn’t fair: men with grey are sexy, women with grey hair are crones.
