Page 23 of Cold Curses

Unfortunately, we didn’t get any more details. The car was flashy, with New York plates; the guys were white and humanoid. The vehicle was unusual enough at the port to be noticed. But then the fire had happened, and all attention had turned to it.

Gwen was fuming when we found her again. “There’s no security video. We’re going to have to rely on eyewitnesses.”

“No video?” Theo asked, glancing around. “There must be dozens of cameras at a place like this.”

“Nearly one hundred,” she said. “But there was a blip.”

“Let me guess,” I said, holding up a hand. “It started around lunchtime yesterday.”

She lifted her brows. “Give the vamp a prize. How did you know that?”

We told her what we’d gotten from the group of warehouse employees.

“Suspicious,” she said. “I’ll get word to the uniforms to ask about the vehicle and its occupants.”

“Putting all these pieces together, it looks like two people came visiting from New York,” Theo said. “They created a distraction to draw attention from the warehouse. During that time, they took out our victims, leaving the bodies behind with an additional weapon.”

“And giving us enough time to see it before blowing the building and any evidence to dust,” I put in.

“No video of any of it,” Theo said. “Nice magic, that.”

“Could have been a gadget,” Gwen said. “Presuming the plates were legit, if you drive halfway across the country to blow a warehouse, you want to be prepared.”

“I don’t get it,” I said. “Where do potential New York demonsfit in? Maybe the blip was magic, but nothing else about this was magical. Not the site, not the victims.” I glanced at Gwen. “Buckley?”

“Human as they come,” she said. “First name is Felix. We notified the victims’ next of kin, and talking to Buckley is next on my list.” She looked down at herself. Her dress pants and jacket were stained from the blast. “After a shower and a change,” she said, and her smile became amused. “You might want to do the same yourself.”

I looked down, realized my clothes weren’t in any better shape. “Damn shrapnel.”

Theo looked at his watch. “We should touch base with the office. And maybe get food.”

“Fine by me,” I said, my stomach grumbling despite the location and the inappropriateness. But we’d been there for hours, and I’d cleared a building of people, survived a bomb blast, and cut a path through rubble. And that was in addition to my vegetal fight earlier. Food wasn’t an unreasonable need at this point.

“Update Roger,” I said. “Then we get Chicago dogs. And if nothing else demonic pops up, we go home.”

“Done,” Theo said. “You still smell like sap.”

“You smell like crushed baby angels.”

“Touché,” he said. “Touché.”

* * *

The Chicago dog, with sport peppers and the array of other ingredients, was fantastic. When I was refueled, I decided to make one more stop before heading back to Connor’s town house. Not a stop I necessarily wanted to make. But curiosity—and, if I were being honest with myself, irritation—had gotten the best of me.

It bothered me that Jonathan Black hadn’t returned my message. He was a broker of information, and a nonresponse from him was weird. Sure, he could have been busy with one of hisclients. Maybe he was out of town. Maybe I was just being nosy, in part because I still hadn’t decided whether he was friend or enemy.

But the trip served a double purpose: The second demon ward wasn’t far from the Prairie Avenue Historic District, the neighborhood where Black made his home. So first I’d drive by the warehouse that housed the demon-detecting machine and check on the sorcerers’ progress.

The warehouse was in a series of blocks of bars and shops, and traffic was squeezed into a single lane due to ongoing repairs of the several buildings Rosantine had damaged. I didn’t see the sorcerers working—they’d probably already gone home—but the front windows had already been replaced, and a crew was on the roof working beneath spotlights even at this hour. That was all remarkably fast renovation work for Chicago, but officials had apparently decided making the city safe from demons again was worth it, so they’d fast-tracked the permit process.

Traffic eased as I reached the historic district, with its elegant Gilded Age mansions. The houses were big, the lawns wide, and many lots still had separate carriage houses, where horse-drawn buggies might once have been parked out of sight of posh neighbors. Now they held expensive vehicles or served as short-term rental units or houses for newly installed pools—for the ten days a year Chicagoans didn’t have to contend with thirty-mile-per-hour winds or freezing cold.

Come to Chicago for the vampires and pizza; stay for the schizophrenic weather.

Black’s house was tall and stately, built of pale stone and standing at the edge of a large lot. He lived like most of Chicago’s supernaturals—nocturnally. But the windows were dark, the lights off. I didn’t see any vehicles parked nearby.

I walked to the porch, climbed up, and paused at the door tolisten for sounds of activity and to feel for unusual magic. But other than the low hum of utilities outside, there was nothing. And no magic at all.