Page 36 of Grand Romantic Delusions and the Madness of Mirth, Part Two

“Tech and essence protections on the door leading through into the tunnels,” I whisper, just in case Coda missed it with the phone being pressed to my ear.

They don’t answer. I get the sense that the tech awry has a half-dozen things currently going on at any time, maybe more. Bolan and I wait for another moment. My heart is racing more than I would like — seeing as how any nearby shifter would be able to hear it, including Bolan.

“The Aston-Martin.” Bolan nods his chin toward the car in question.

I put the phone on speaker again, pointing the camera toward the vehicle that bothered Elias and stepping forward just enough to get a clear view of it.

“Got it,” Coda says.

“So … do we bust through the door?” I ask Bolan. It’s fairly clear that Coda can get us through the tech. My essence usually cancels out all other essence, even when I don’t want it to. And Bolan is more than strong enough for the manual locks. “Or find another entrance?”

“Option two,” Bolan says, threading his fingers through mine and tugging me lightly back the way we’ve just come. “We don’t know if it’s wired to their main security.”

I blink up at him.

“What?” He flashes me a grin. “You think I haven’t gone where I’m technically not wanted before?”

“Breaking and entering, you mean?”

“Please. Is it really breaking anything when your accomplice can just slide the locks open?”

He means Armin. And my brother’s telekinetic abilities.

I laugh, quietly pleased.

Bolan squeezes my hand.

For one of the very few times since Armin died, my thinking of him — and the tiny glimpse of him I never had before — doesn’t hurt my soul.

“He would have just sauntered in through the front door,” I say, a little ruefully.

“No, Mirth,” Bolan says, deadly serious suddenly. “He never would have risked the kids like that. Or you.”

“Only himself.”

Bolan sighs, raising our joined hands and pressing a kiss to the back of my hand. “Yeah.”

We retrace our route through the garage and step back out through a door alongside the gate, keeping tight to the shadows at the edge of the building. Bolan sniffs the air, head cocked. “Clear.”

Coda pipes up over the phone speaker. “Blake Evans.”

“Blake Evans,” I repeat, racking my brain. Then it hits me. “That’s … Viscount Boyne. He’s … he’s … one of the members of the Merton bond group. A few years older than Archie.”

“Fuck. That’s how Elias knew the car,” Bolan mutters quietly. “They probably play fucking polo together.” He glances around again, his eyes glowing with his wolf. “Get us another entrance to that building, Coda.”

“Already on it,” the tech awry chirps, sounding practically cheerful now. “And it’s racquetball every second Saturday afternoon, not polo.”

Bolan finds a secondary entrance to what now appears to be a series of interconnected buildings, a full block away from the well-guarded door in the alley.

He does this much to Coda’s chagrin, but apparently the maps the tech awry has access to aren’t terribly detailed.

Or more specifically, not terribly current.

Though London’s streets were laid down centuries ago, the hidden passages and tiny gardens between those streets are often secrets known only to locals.

But as a wolf, and even while in human form, Bolan has no trouble following the collection of overlapping scents that eventually leads us around the opposite side of the complex.

We’re silent and watchful as Coda cracks the security on the door, somehow once again reaching through my phone to do so.

“This isn’t connected to the security mainframe,” the tech grumbles. “I can’t take over the system from here. Or even the cameras. I need you to find me a security hub.”

“We’re here for the kids, Coda,” Bolan says, opening the door and stepping into a dark hall ahead of me.

“Don’t worry your pretty head about it, rock star,” Coda says. “Mirth understands that we’re doing each other a favor.”

I close the door, encasing myself in darkness. Coda toggles something on their end, and the locks click into place behind me. I take the phone off speaker, pressing it to my ear instead.

I feel Bolan the moment before he reaches back for me, holding my hand to guide me through the dark. Even after my eyes adjust, I can barely see more than the edges of the hall.

“Right,” Coda murmurs.

Bolan pauses — keeping me behind him — at the next intersecting corridor. He waits for a moment, then heads in the direction Coda indicated, proving how easily he can hear the awry tech even when I have the phone pressed to my ear.

We continue like that for ten minutes. Yes, I check the time on my phone more than once. As we weave through the building, Bolan’s nose guides us away from any recent human scents, heading back the way we’ve just come along the streets.

Coda corrects the wolf twice, guiding us to other security panels and ending up even more annoyed every time they can’t gain access to the security hub for the building. Presumably it’s because these corridors are running between separate businesses.

From the exterior, the complex — which is to say, the half-dozen older buildings within the same block — appears only a few storeys high, with various businesses occupying the ground floor.

But ten minutes in, mapping the interior has already become a frustrating experience, and not just for me.

Coda gets increasingly edgy the longer it takes for us to find something to ‘plug into.’ That’s the tech’s phrasing, not mine.

We bypass more security panels and locks, poking our heads into a garage that’s filled with luxury cars in various stages of repair. Farther along, the next back door leads to a pub with a beauty salon next to it. Everything is long closed this late, edging into early morning.

Oddly, all the back sections of the interconnected buildings appear to be mostly large empty rooms.

We keep moving forward.

“Turn right up ahead. Again,” Coda says in my ear, getting seriously pissy now. “And pick up the pace. If I can’t get into their main security system, assuming there is one, the other two aren’t going to be able to keep bluffing.”

“What?” I ask, following Bolan around the corner and breaking into a jog. “Bluffing? Are Elias and Sully in trouble?”

Coda doesn’t offer any clarification other than more rapid typing in the background.

“You’re the one who’s been leading us,” Bolan snaps.

“Get me access to the cameras,” Coda snarls, “instead of making me fog them one at a time, and this will go much smoother.”

There has been an odd lack of security cameras. And most of what we’ve happened upon and quickly moved past have been focused on the back entrances to the businesses.

I know I’m not the only one worried about the incongruencies piling up.

High tech is mixed with no tech at all. As if some activities that take place in this complex should never be recorded.

Pair that with the expensive and powerful essence wards on the doors and on the kids’ phone, but with a lack of wards or other essence-based —

“Stop!” Coda shouts in my ear.

Bolan and I freeze in place.

“Scan with the phone, Princess. Slowly.”

I put Coda back on speaker. We haven’t accidentally happened upon a single other person yet, so I’m likely being too cautious keeping them at my ear anyway.

I move my phone left to right along the corridor wall, then turn around and scan the camera along the other wall in the opposite direction until I’ve executed a full circle.

I see nothing on the walls. No signs, no marks, no doors. There’s barely a single layer of white paint on the drywall … as if these walls have been quickly built in place to section off certain parts of the interior …

“Next left, then stop. There’s a concentration of energy.” Coda finally sounds a little pleased. “Assholes are trying to hide it.”

“Like they know you’re coming,” Bolan mutters.

“They’ve been fucking hunting us awry for centuries, wolf,” Coda says. “They’ve learned a few tricks.”

“If it is this so-called Mobius Group at all.”

“It’s got their fingerprints all over it.”

We turn left, and the minimally painted walls abruptly transform into a worn red-brick corridor.

A small seating area opens to the immediate left.

It’s empty, excepting the modern and expensive furniture and a scattering of mostly empty champagne glasses.

Two silver ice buckets that could have come from any of my father’s numerous castles are set on a low sideboard.

Open bottles of champagne are shoved into the half-melted ice.

“Cigars,” Bolan says, nostrils flaring. “Expensive.”

“Someone was celebrating,” I say. Emotion flares in my chest, settling to seethe with each measured breath I take to try to keep myself focused. “An achievement?”

“Or an acquisition,” Coda says. “Get me through those doors. Now.”

On our right, ornate antique double doors are set into the brick wall. Not original to the building. But also, at first glance, not reproductions.

I wrap my hand around the handle.

Bolan cries, “Wait!”

Too late. The essence sealing the doors tries to grab me, searing across my palm, then streaking up my arm and over my shoulder. I stifle a moan of pain.

“Fuck, Mirth!”

Bolan reaches for me, but I raise my other hand, phone and all. “Stop! It will jump from me to you.”

I loosen my hold on my essence. It surges up and through me, then simply nullifies the essence spell warding the door. The ward collapses with a fizzle of energy, and the latch clicks under my hand.

Bolan grasps my shoulders, holding me back gently so he can tug my hand free of the door. He turns that hand over. My skin is seared a deep pink. Heaving a panicked breath, he shoves up the sleeve of my purloined sweater. More streaks mar my creamy skin, tracing my veins.