Page 42 of Reaper (Quincy Harker Demon Hunter #10)

W hat was all that really about?” I asked our assembled brain trust that night.

I sat at the head of our conference table in the apartment we kept empty as a “war room,” with Luke, Becks, and Xia all gathered around.

Nameless had hopped up on the table itself, typically disregarding anything resembling propriety, and now lay curled up at the far end under Luke’s hand.

I felt oddly disgruntled about my uncle completely co-opting my cat, despite never wanting a cat in the first place.

“What do you mean, babe?” Becks asked. “It seemed pretty clear-cut. Mort still blamed you for Christy’s death, and he wanted to kill you for it.”

I shook my head. “Not that. I get that, misplaced as his anger was.” I noticed the confused look on Xia’s face and gave her the condensed version.

“Mort’s daughter, Christy, was a half-demon, a cambion.

She was murdered a few years ago by a bad guy who wanted to open a Gate to allow his demon boss a permanent visa in this plane of existence.

I had nothing to do with her death, didn’t even know she was his daughter until she’d already been taken, but that didn’t make her any less dead. ”

I shook my head again. “But Mort said some shit right before he came at me that didn’t track.

He talked like he’d gotten some kind of new information that implicated me in Christy’s death.

Like I’d given her over to Orobas for some reason.

That’s what made him decide I had to die—because he thought I legitimately killed his daughter. ”

“What would give him that idea?” Luke asked.

“Our encounter with Orobas was quite a number of years ago at this point. I would expect that any information about your involvement with Christy’s death would have come to light before now.

Not that there is any information to come to light, of course.

” He added that last bit at the end in an uncharacteristic nod to my prickly feelings.

“I have no fucking idea,” I said, refilling the rocks glass by my right hand. I was running low on Johnny Walker Blue, and this time I didn’t even have Faustus to blame. “And Mort was standing right next to me when we confronted Orobas. I don’t know how he could get the idea that

“Have you pissed anybody off lately that would be devious enough to come at you through Mort?” Becks asked, polishing off her detective skills. “You’ve got a lot of enemies, but they tend to come at you head on. Who wants you dead and is sneaky enough to use Mort to do it?”

I wracked my brain for as long as it took me to drain my glass, then set it down with a click on the glass. “No idea to that one, either,” I said. Then something struck me. “But I had a question for you guys.”

“Shoot,” Becks replied.

“How did you find me?” I paused. “Let me rephrase that. The last time we talked before you showed up at the Colosseum, you were close to figuring out where the fights were taking place, but you hadn’t gotten it dialed in to a specific location.

Then right as I’m about to get my heart ripped out by Eleanor the Super-Vamp, you go full Ride of the Rohirrim on me and pull my ass out of the fire at the last moment.

Please tell me you didn’t wait until I was sure I was going to die just for dramatic effect. ”

Becks smirked at me. “Like you would do?” she asked.

I gave her a grin. “Okay, fair. I’d totally do that. But you’re a better person than me, and Luke doesn’t have the pop culture references to go full-on Avengers: Endgame on me. So how did you find me. Was it something you did?” I directed that last bit at Xia, our new tech genius.

She held up both hands in surrender. “Not me, boss. I could get them within a two-block radius, but there were a lot of big buildings in those two blocks where you could have been. Wish I could take credit, but it wasn’t me.”

“It was me, after a fashion,” Luke said. “I received a phone call from a very old associate asking me why my nephew was participating in bloodfights under an assumed name. He gave us your location.”

“An old associate?” I asked.

“One of the oldest of my associates,” Luke replied.

“And he saw me at the fights, recognized me, and called you?”

“Precisely.”

“You gonna tell me who this ‘associate’ is, or are we going to dance around this a little longer? Because if we’re gonna keep dancing, I’m gonna need another bottle.”

“I do not know what name he uses today. I first met him in Poland in the sixteenth century, and his name at the time was Jackert. Like myself, he has used many names through the centuries. Honestly, I didn’t know he was in America until he reached out to me.”

“How did he find you?” Becks asked.

“He reached out through social media,” Luke replied. “I have a Twitter account. @therealcountdracula. Unfortunately, they refuse to give me a blue check mark.”

“I think it’s called X now,” I said, my mouth moving as my brain continued to process the concept of Luke on social media. And that handle?

“I refuse to call it that,” Luke said. “It is a stupid name. But that is how Jackert found me, and he sent me the location of the arena. Rebecca called some allies together, and we affected a rescue.”

“Can I see your phone?” I asked. Luke slid it over to me, and I opened his app.

He kept his phone unlocked, since biometrics are iffy when your body temp is whatever the central air is set at.

I scrolled through his DMs, ignoring the staggering number of young women sending him “Turn me, Daddy” posts, and finally located a message from a user named PolishJack1564.

It read “You will find Quincy at 1234 Commercial Avenue, fighting to the death tomorrow night. I do not believe he can best Eleanor, as we both participated in her training and she was a gifted student. Best of luck. J.” There was no profile photo, but his location was listed as Atlanta, Georgia.

I slid the phone down the table to Luke. “I think I met your friend Jack a few months ago. If he really is in Atlanta, that is.”

Luke’s eyebrows went up, and he said, “Really?”

“Yeah,” I replied. “When I went down for that CDC thing where Oberon was trying to poison all of humanity? He was at the party. He said he knew you from way back, and I could feel the power rolling off him in waves. He’s a badass.”

“Yes,” Luke said. “Jackert is one of the most powerful of my creations. The essence of Skyffrax was far less diluted when I turned him, and he was a well-trained warrior in life, so when he became immortal, he spent centuries perfecting his skills, both mundane and mystical. I have always wondered if he has surpassed even my abilities.”

“Well, I hope you don’t need to find out, but I think with him popping up in two of our cases in three months, we need to go to Atlanta and have a little chat with your old buddy.”

Luke nodded. “I agree. It seems too great a coincidence for him to be at both Oberon’s gala and this fight club. Jackert has a few questions to answer.”

“Yeah, like who told him about the fight club,” Becks said. “Okay, everybody. Go get some sleep, then tomorrow night we hit the road for Atlanta. Somebody’s got some ‘splaining to do.”

That was the damned truth. I’d just chopped the head off another person I once thought of as an ally, and while that hurt, what really burned was the idea that there was someone behind the scenes manipulating this shit.

Again. It was starting to feel like that shit with Edgar calling himself The Chancellor all over again.

And this time I had a sinking suspicion that I knew who was behind it.

I went to bed with the image of a blond woman carrying my father’s eyes and my mother’s jaw in my mind. Because I was pretty sure that the next day, I was starting the hunt for my sister, and only one of us was going to survive our reunion.

THE END