Page 21

TWENTY-ONE

Sorsha

Helpfully, the residents of the apartment we’d borrowed had left the keys to their vehicle in a bowl near the door. When Ruse pressed the unlock button in the parking lot at the back of the building, a shiny silver SUV beeped.

We’d treat it well, I told myself as we walked over. We’d even leave them with a full tank of gas as a thank you present.

Then I opened the passenger side door, and my eyebrows shot up. “Oh, for the love of sweet potato fries.”

It’d looked like a perfectly normal SUV from the outside. The inside stunk of the ‘60s. Literally. A waft of musky, earthy patchouli washed over me. As I wrinkled my nose, I took in the bright pink mini shag rugs on the floor in front of each seat and the bejeweled peace sign glittering where it hung from the rear-view mirror.

Maybe walking would be better.

But no, given the house Snap had described from the impressions on Meriden’s mug, we were heading out to the posh suburbs at the north end of town, and that was a hell of a hike even for me. So I clambered into the back of the car with Snap while Ruse took the driver’s seat and Thorn stretched out his expansive legs next to the incubus.

I wasn’t going to let this assault of decades past go unchallenged, though. Tapping at my phone’s screen, I connected it to the SUV’s sound system and started Tina Turner’s Private Dancer album playing. Take that, flower children.

As the opening notes of “I Might Have Been Queen” spilled from the speakers, Ruse gave a knowing laugh. He backed the SUV out of its parking spot more smoothly than I’d have expected from a guy who’d probably only needed to use his driving skills about once a decade, and we were off.

We were looking for a big colonial style place: white walls, gable windows, and columns on either side of the double front door. A wide lawn with a tree that shaded the driveway. And, most importantly—because there were probably a thousand houses in the suburbs that fit the rest of the description—Snap had also caught a glimpse of a bronze statue of a rearing horse poised next to the front steps. We just had to hope it was still there after however many years it’d been since Meriden had last worked in the office building.

I opened up my map app. “Keep going north on this street until I tell you otherwise,” I ordered Ruse. “We’ve got a ways to go.”

“Navigate away, Miss Blaze!”

Receiving only a couple of honks—Ruse wasn’t so smooth at the whole changing lanes thing—we made it around the edges of downtown and up into the wealthier district where I’d set more than one collector’s home on fire. I got the incubus weaving up and down the streets while the rest of us scanned the houses beyond our windows.

After a couple of hours, my vision was starting to blur from staring so long. Snap made a soft hissing sound against his teeth. “I’m not seeing the same one—not the way I tasted it from the mug. I don’t know for sure it was in this city.”

“He might live farther out of town,” I admitted with a grimace. It would take days to scour the entire greater metropolitan area—if even that got us what we wanted. Maybe I’d have to put our fates in the hands of a black-market hacker cabal after all.

“We’re here now—might as well give it our best shot,” Ruse said with good cheer. I guessed he enjoyed driving.

We continued on until my stomach started to grumble that it needed something more substantial than the bag of barbeque chips and mug of coffee I’d already downed as a sort of lunch. At a particularly loud gurgle, Thorn turned in his seat with a questioning look. With the final notes of The Joshua Tree fading from the speakers, I admitted defeat. We definitely still hadn’t found what we were looking for.

“Let’s head back and grab some dinner, and I’ll try to figure out how to reach out to my internet associates in a way that won’t get us killed.”

“I approve of that plan,” Ruse said. Even he was starting to sound a bit weary.

We cruised down one last residential street, heading south. Just as the houses started shrinking and the lawns were getting scruffier, Snap jerked toward his window.

“Stop! There, on that street we just passed. Turn around!”

We got five honks for Ruse’s next maneuver, pulling a U-ey and then a left on the heels of his companion’s urgent plea. Snap gestured to a house three from the corner: white walls gone a bit dingy, paint flaking from the columns on either side of the door, a rather bedraggled oak tree by the driveway. The late afternoon sunlight glinted off a tarnished statue of a rearing horse next to the front steps.

Ruse let out a low whistle. “Nice job.”

He had enough sense of stealth to drive a little farther before parking outside a house on the other side of the street. I squinted at the building Snap had indicated, noting a key feature he hadn’t picked up on from his vision.

“Meriden doesn’t live in the whole place. It’s divided into apartments. There are three different mailboxes beside the door.”

Ruse motioned toward the driveway that ran alongside the house to a garage farther back. “And another around the side there.” Another door stood atop a couple of concrete steps with its own mailbox, maybe a separate entrance to the basement or a back apartment.

“It seems we can be reasonably confident that the object of our interest resides somewhere in that place,” Thorn said. He glanced at me. “We should investigate while you stay here, m’lady. We don’t know how closely Meriden’s home might be monitored. You can keep watch in case he leaves while we’re conducting our search.”

“I don’t even know what he looks like,” I protested. Like hell did I want to hang back in the car like a kid waiting for her parents to run an errand. Sure, the shadowkind could slink around unseen and I couldn’t, but this guy had been working with—or on?—shadowkind for years. He might be able to detect them anyway. They shouldn’t have to take all the risk, especially when investigating on our own had been my idea.

“Make note of any male who leaves the premises, then.”

“But—”

Thorn’s dark eyes turned hard as obsidian. “You’re staying here. There’s nothing you can do inside to help our investigation that we can’t do ourselves.”

That statement stung. I stiffened, groping for an argument in response that I thought he’d accept. “He’s not likely to have left any obvious evidence of where he works just lying around, considering how careful the sword-star bunch are obviously being. I know the city—I know mortals. I might realize something is significant that you wouldn’t.”

“If we turn nothing up, then we’ll consider it.”

“He may be home,” Ruse pointed out with an apologetic note in his voice. “You couldn’t go waltzing into his apartment while he’s there anyway.”

I sighed. “Fine.” As I sank back against the patchouli-scented seat, the reminder prompted a question I hadn’t thought to ask before. I turned to Snap. “If Meriden is in there… can you test him and pick up impressions of other places he’s gone, or?—”

At the flinch that tightened the shadowkind’s heavenly face, I cut myself off. His whole body had tensed, his green eyes going momentarily dark and distant, as if he was seeing something a long ways away that he wished he’d never had to see at all. Then he was looking to his companions, still rigid in his seat.

“No,” he said, a quiver running through his clear voice. “I won’t. Omen said— We agreed?—”

“Hey,” Ruse said in the same warm, gentle tone he’d used with me when I’d been reeling from the drugged air the other night. He reached over to grasp Snap’s hand. “We’re not asking anything like that of you. Don’t worry about it. She was just curious—she didn’t know.”

I glanced between the two of them. “ What don’t I know?”

Snap’s shoulders had come down at the incubus’s reassurance, but he still looked haunted, as if a different sort of shadow had risen up through his usual brightness. He exhaled sharply and appeared to get a grip on whatever emotions my question had dredged up. “It’s different with living things. It isn’t something I would ever want to do.”

I could hear an unspoken again in the resistance that wound through his voice and the way his gaze darted away from me. Something about his abilities… horrified him? Sweet harping Hades, how bad could it be for him to react like this?

Under all that joyful innocence, this god of sunshine had scars of his own. Scars and secrets.

I had the urge to touch him like Ruse had, to tell him that I knew what it was like to swallow down pain—that whatever haunted him, I wasn’t going to judge him for it. But now wasn’t the time for uncovering those secrets. We’d delayed here long enough.

I let myself give his arm a quick squeeze. “I’m sorry I brought it up. I had no idea. I’m sure you can dig up all kinds of useful dirt your regular way. You’re the one who brought us here, after all.”

Snap blinked at me, and a glimmer of his usual curious demeanor returned. He turned to Ruse. “Why would we want dirt?”

The incubus cracked a smile. “Another one of those silly mortal expressions. Come on. If we don’t get moving soon, Thorn’s likely to explode with his impatience.”

“I’m hardly that limited in self-control,” our warrior muttered, but he did vanish into the shadows around his seat awfully quickly after Ruse’s remark. The other two slipped away a second later.

I refused to let myself slump. Although maybe it would have been a good tactic to avoid anyone wondering why I was sitting out here on my own. I settled for fiddling with my phone instead, as if I just had to finish this level of Whatever The Hot New Game Was before I could haul ass to wherever I was going.

Every few seconds, I glanced toward Meriden’s house and all around, but no one emerged from either door, and of course I couldn’t see my shadowy friends. “Just a small town girl, living in a lonely world,” I muttered to myself.

As if on cue, the phone in my hands vibrated. Vivi’s number came up on the display. My throat tightened as I answered it, even though I should have welcomed the distraction.

“Hey!” I said with as much normal enthusiasm as I could feign. “What’s up?”

“I was calling to ask you that, girl. You seem to be making all kinds of mysterious plans lately.”

Her tone was teasing, but I winced inwardly all the same. “Not really. Honestly, all I’m doing right now is hanging out on my own.” Not a lie! Somehow I couldn’t feel all that victorious about it.

“No exciting news, then?”

“Still nothing. I promise, when I’ve got anything to tell, you’ll be the first to know.” I just wasn’t going to tell anyone at all until I knew men with gas and guns wouldn’t be coming for every person in the know.

Vivi laughed, which didn’t really make sense—I hadn’t told a joke. Something about the sound was a little forced. Apprehension pricked at me.

“We should get together for a proper hangout sometime,” she said before I could go on. “Come over to my place, pick another movie off our watchlist, order in Thai. We could both use some time to unwind, don’t you think?”

“Yeah,” I said. “You know I’m always up for a movie-and-Thai night.” I paused. “Is everything okay with you, Vivi?” The bastards hadn’t harassed her in some way simply because they’d found out about our friendship, had they?

“What? Of course! Just missing that one-on-one time with my bestie. Hey, can you remind me how to get to that thrift shop on the east end you were telling me about? I was thinking of doing a little shopping after work tomorrow.”

It wasn’t an odd request, and I didn’t see how it could have been prompted by nefarious villains, but her jump from one subject to the next still struck me as awkward. Was she grasping at straws to keep us talking? As I gave her the directions, I listened carefully for any hint of background noise that might reveal more than she was saying, but my ears didn’t catch a thing.

“Okay, perfect,” she said when I finished, and let out another giggle. “So, you’re at home right now?”

I couldn’t easily explain where I actually was, so… “Yep. Just finishing up dinner, actually, so I should get going.” Save me from having to lie to my best friend even more. “Let’s say Friday for movie night?” If my life was still precarious by then, I could always cancel.

“Sounds good to me. Is there anything else I can pitch in with in the meantime? You really shouldn’t have to go it alone with, well, anything.”

Her voice had taken on that concerned tone. I winced—but I wasn’t actually alone in this mission, was I? “I know, Vivi. Thank you.”

“Well, I guess I’ll see you at the next meeting!”

She hung up without her usual “Ditto!” Of course, she didn’t always say that when we were signing off, maybe not even half the time, so it didn’t necessarily mean anything. Nothing about the conversation had been overtly weird. The tension of the past few days might simply be bleeding into all of my perceptions.

Still, a deeper restlessness gripped me as I returned my attention to Meriden’s house. Had the guys found anything? Had we walked into a trap somehow? Why the hell was I sitting uselessly out here with no clue what was going on with anyone who mattered?

My hand came to rest on the door. I knew that walking over there was a bad idea, but—if they had gotten into some kind of trouble?—

I was still wavering between common sense and impatience when the trio shimmered into being around me as if they’d never left. None of them looked exactly happy, but they appeared to have returned in one piece.

“Well?” I demanded before they’d had a chance to speak of their own accord.

“He’s definitely living there,” Ruse announced.

Thorn’s mouth was set in its usual solemn line. “The back apartment. We have plenty of evidence of that, but nothing that points to where he might be spending his time otherwise—and he wasn’t currently there.”

Snap made a face as if that was his fault. “We do know what he looks like now. The impressions I picked up were mostly mornings and late at night. He might be wherever Omen is the rest of the time.” He glanced toward the others as if to confirm.

Thorn nodded. “We’ll come back tomorrow and see where he goes after he completes his morning routine. Then we’ll discover where this Meriden is carrying out his wretched work now.”