Page 3 of Even Robots Die (Even Ever After #3)

Florentine

I don’t wait for them to tell me anything else. As soon as Cassiopé finishes her sentence, I’m out the door.

In just a few minutes, I’ve organized things for my sisters and booked a jet to Blois.

I don’t know what I’ll have to do to get my dad out, all I know is that I don’t plan to stay there for long. I still pack an overnight bag, just in case. Blois isn’t a big city, but it’s not like I can shift into something small and sneak around looking for dad. It might take some time to find him.

The jet costs me an arm and a leg, but if it can make things go faster and solve this problem in under a day, I’m willing to spend all the money I earned on my latest job.

I arrive in Blois a half hour later and the jet drops me right in front of the town house.

I paid for it to stay around for the entire day if necessary, but now what?

My dumbass rushed outside when I finally had the name of the city I needed to search. It only occurs to me now that maybe, just maybe, Cassiopé actually knows the exact house where her father is staying.

It’s too late now to think about that, though. I’m here already and I doubt she would tell me exactly where he is, anyway. Not if she had any idea what I packed in my overnight bag next to the extra shirt and underwear. Not if she saw the kind of weapons I brought with me.

I might often work for the shifters, but I’m still human, and with my type of skills? Of course Libération found me.

You don’t build an AI all on your own at twelve and hide so easily, especially when you have a dad who has as much pride as his penchant for gambling.

So, yes, I’ve been inventing weapons since I was a teen. It stands to reason that I would have some with me at all times. My bag is full of them, and there is barely a centimeter of my body that isn’t covered with something lethal.

No one ever knows because I haven’t commercialized half of what I’ve built, so they don’t know what to look for.

But I know.

And if I were any shifter, I wouldn’t trust myself with my father’s location either.

It’s already a miracle I got a rough location at all. Not going to lie, I was banking on the hope that those rumors of Brice attacking Elhyor were true, and it worked.

Now, I just need to find out where on earth Brice is hiding.

I switch on my holo and scroll through the list of bars in town. I need to find underground ones that cater to shapeshifters. It’s my best bet.

Wait.

If I have Cassiopé’s holo number on mine—thanks to the shared contact list with my dad—I should have Brice’s, too.

I look through the list, and there it is.

I don’t even try to call the number. I don’t want to clue him in that I’m coming. Instead, I enter the number into Milton.

I turn my earpiece on and talk to it.

“Milton, can you find out where this holo is?” I ask the AI.

“Of course, Miss F. It’ll take three seconds and a third,” Milton answers me. It pauses and then starts talking again. “This holo is in Blois. Unfortunately, it’s turned off and I couldn’t find where exactly the holo is. I circled the approximate location on the map for you.”

I drop down the visor hooked on my ear and look at the image Milton is projecting for me.

I was hoping for something that would pan out a few houses only, but the circle is freaking big.

The only saving grace is the fact that the castle and the square in front of it are taking up half of the circle.

On the other side of the circle is Saint Louis cathedral.

I’m not a religious person—I don’t know many humans in Paris who still are with that bird-shifter-slash-archangel bullshit—but I swear to god, if the prick is hiding in yet another cathedral, I’m gonna burn it down.

I still don’t understand why those assholes keep hoarding our human heritage like it’s theirs.

That might be overboard, but I’m tired of everything being in their hands.

The Sacré C?ur isn’t even ours. Of course Libération is hiding there. But they’re not hiding inside. They’re hiding underneath the church. It’s starting to crumble and it’s a damn shame.

But it’s not surprising either. When most of the money is owned by the very people you’re at war with, you don’t spend it on renovating old buildings, even if they’re historical ones.

No, when you’re at war, you buy weapons, and you don’t look too closely to see if the person who invented them is only fifteen.

On the side of the castle, I see one of the bars I have listed as being an underground one that could have shifters.

Le loup et le porc-épic.

My French is rusty, but it’s not too hard to translate. The wolf and the porcupine.

That’s an odd pairing, but that’s not my problem.

I guess it’s time to go get a beer and find a chatty barmaid.