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But I could think about them. I could ask Ward to do me a huge-ass favor and summon them. And I could talk to Mays—who, after all,technicallydidn’t answer to Villanova the way that Dan did—and then take all that to Doc, who had some serious research-fu.
“I’ll let you know if I happen to hear anything,” I said to Dan.
He blew out a breath that sounded relieved, and I immediately went into stress mode. Because that meant that Dan—and the slow and lumpy wheels of justice—was relying on me to somehow solve this case, sans warrant, sans legal support, and with the ominous threat of potential sudden invisible-bullet death hanging over my head.
To say nothing of the fucking Culhua running around murdering dogs and canid shifters.
And the fact that the fuckers from the Magic-Free Movement hadn’t stopped protesting my right to keep breathing. The riots had died down some—they hadn’t stopped, but you only heard about them on the news every so often, and most of the MFM protests were smaller and didn’t tend to end with somebody in the morgue. Bloody, yes, but there hadn’t been a death or really serious injury at one of them in months, and none in Virginia since the day I’d almost ended up in a black bag myself.
Small favors.
After Dan hung up, I treated myself—and the rest of the office—to fancy coffee because I needed more fortification than my cheap-ass drip coffee was capable of providing. We were going to do a whole bunch of things that were at least questionably legal if not outright illegal, and that necessitated splurging on fancy-ass coffee and donuts.
I showed up carrying a drinks tray and a box of Sugar Shack.
“Family meeting, people!” I called out, carrying the coffees and box into the lobby, where Rayn looked up, confused, from his desk.
“What family?” he asked me.
“The Beyond the Veil family,” I answered.
“Oh. Does that include me?”
Why the fuck not? The kid deserved some donuts if he wanted them, even though he usually didn’t. “Yep.”
I almost felt guilty the way his face lit up. “I’m family?” he asked, and I could have absolutely strangled myself for shoving my foot in my mouth, as fucking usual.
“Sure, kid,” I mumbled, feeling my ears heating up. Then I held up the hot chocolate with two shots of espresso that he liked. “You got your mug?”
As a touch-psychic, Rayn didn’t want to touch anything that someone else had handled. Since people didn’t dip their hands in beverages, he could absolutely drink things that other people made, he just didn’t want to touch the cup they put it in. Once I’d realized this, I figured out that I could bring it and pour it intohismug, and then we were all good.
Rayn got up from his chair, his gloved hands around his mug, his black eyes weirdly bright, and a big smile on his face.
I had just finished pouring when Ward came out of his office.
“That bad, Hart?” he asked, his tone only half-playful.
“Pretty much,” I replied, putting the empty cup back in the tray.
“Hart says I’m family,” Rayn reported to Ward, who shot me a questioning look.
I shrugged. “The BTV family,” I explained.
Ward’s face got all soft, kind of the way it did when he looked at Doc sometimes, which was a little weird, because he was looking at me. Then he, thankfully, turned to Rayn. “He’s right,” he said, still smiling. “You are part of the BTV family.”
I don’t think I’d ever seen Rayn’s grin so big. “I like this family,” he said.
“Me, too,” Ward replied.
“You, too, what?” Doc asked.
“He likes the Beyond the Veil family,” Rayn told the big orc.
“I would hope so,” Doc replied. “So do I.”
“Don’t forget Auntie Beck!” came the bright, cheerful tones of our banisher, who was decked out today in honest-to-fucking-God spangled jeans and a crimson drape-front tunic shot through with metallic threads in gold and silver. Mixed metal tasseled earrings and bangles completed the look, along with metallic gold eyeshadow.
Beck and Doc made the rest of us look like we shopped exclusively at low-end thrift stores and Walmart, even though I hadn’t been in a Walmart since I moved away from Wisconsin. Target, absolutely. Half my damn shirts came from Target. And all my socks and unmentionables. And jeans.
