“It all goes fuzzy at about that time. See,” he said, pulling up multiple frames from the interior cameras. One by one, each camera went to a fuzzy, static-filled screen for a few seconds before going back to normal. He started with one that showed the closed bank vault door, then fuzz, and next, the massive door standing open.
“Witches could do that, ya think?” Lydia asked.
“Declan could do it blindfolded,” I said, still studying the pictures. I could see glances being exchanged out of my peripheral vision, so I answered before they could ask. “No, I don’t think he would. He literally hates the idea of anything that would make him bad,” I answered.
Lydia snorted. I turned and faced her. “We’re a lot alike, he and I. We understand each other. He didn’t do this,” I told her. “If he did, he wouldn’t have to hide in the vault. He’d just waltz in and open the vault, time locks or no time locks.”
“He’s really that strong?” Lydia asked.
“Stronger. But Chris is right. That boy wouldn’t do it. He has a bit of hero worship going on and he would never disappoint his hero,” Tanya said, nudging my shoulder.
“You think?” I asked. Lydia snorted again. “Yeah T, I find that one
really
unbelievable,” she said.
“Hey, I’m not a bad role model,” I said.
“Let’s see. You hang around vampires and weres, hunt demons, and piss off the feds. I’m sure every mom in the country wants their boy to be like you,” she answered.
“It’s the trashy mini-vamps that taint my reputation,” I said. She blurred across the room and got up in my face.
“Trashy?” she asked in a dangerous tone.
“That Goth getup you wear at Plasma is exhibit number one,” I answered.
“That’s a costume, you idiot,” she said, backing up a little. If I didn’t know better, I might think I’d struck a nerve. The thought of continuing to press on that nerve held both appeal and warning bells. I was leaning toward the appeal part when Tanya intervened, possibly saving me from myself.
“You two knock it off. This is serious,” my vampire said.
“Could be any of dozens of witches. City is crawling with them,” Arkady said, towering behind Tanya. Trenton, one of Arkady’s top guys stood slightly to one side, listening and watching but as usual staying quiet.
“More than usual?” I asked.
“Much. From every state, from all over world,” he said, his Russian accent thick and oddly familiar. Every time I hear him speak, it almost triggers a memory or two—almost.
“So that’s kinda bad,” I mused.
“What is worse is that the location where we kept the book pail was known only to our inner group here. It was very carefully placed in that vault by trusted staff. For a witch to find out about it, they had to be told,” Tanya said.
“Couldn’t they have sensed the book somehow?” Chet asked. Tanya, Lydia, Arkady, and I all shared a quick glance.
“No Chet, they wouldn’t have been able to pick up the magical scent or witchy radio waves or whatever,” I told him.
“I’ll get Nika on it,” Lydia said, leaving the room.
Chet looked horrified. “You think someone betrayed you and so you’re going to have her check everyone to see who might have done it? Let her rip through all our minds till she maybe finds one person. What if you’re wrong, what if the witches sniffed out the book? Then you’ll have basically mind fucked us for nothing,” he said.
“Chester,” Tanya began, leaning right in his face to capture his full attention. “Christian is not wrong. The witches could not have sensed the book in that pail. They either followed our people or one of our people gave up the information. Nika will find them, and she won’t be rooting around in everyone’s secrets to do it. Have a little faith in us, please,” she said, her voice gentle.
I watched his response carefully. Chet was one of my friends from before—before the assassin’s bullet removed two years of my life. I have little to no memories of him. Most of the others, I have at least a flash or two. Some, like Tanya, Stacia, Lydia, Arkady, and Nika, much more.
But with Chet, almost nothing. It may be that he had never really been around me when my alter ego, Grim, was out to play, create mayhem, and generally cause insurance companies to go bankrupt. The bulk of my most vivid memories seem to come from my dark persona.
Whatever the reason, it’s been a struggle to for him to reconnect with me. He always seems uncomfortable around me and my personal belief is that he is bothered at a very deep level by my memory loss. Chet is basically a big brain on feet. His strengths are all cerebral, so looking at me, with my sniper-induced memory lobotomy, plays into his own worst fears—loss of mental ability.
He was frozen in the chair, trapped by my vampire’s eyes, although she wasn’t being at all hard on him. He looked guilty as hell, but I didn’t read it as anything to do with the grimoire. No, with the uncomfortable glance my way, it seemed like it had more to do with his personal demons.
Lydia popped back into Chet’s computer room. “Alrighty, let’s go gather with everyone in the dining room,” she said, waving us to follow her. Trenton gave me a nod as I filed past him and I realized he’d been watching Chet’s reaction as well. Trent is quiet but deep.
If you entered the factory on the first floor, it would look just as you might expect. Machinery, manufacturing areas, material storage, industrial, commercial, blah blah. Same with the second floor, except you’d see some offices as well. The elevator only shows floors one and two. If you had the right thumbprint to put on a small sensor panel, you’d find there is a basement floor. That one would look more like a hotel or private club. Not swanky, but nice décor and decent furniture. You’d find a bunch of private rooms and a big dining room with about ten eight-person tables and a buffet line that served both food and warmed blood. That room was where we headed, finding much of the staff already there and the rest arriving in dribs and drabs. When we broke off from the Coven, about eighty vampires and human staff went with us, more than we expected. Most of those had their own living arrangements but the core staff that devoted themselves to Tanya numbered about thirty-two.
The dining room could hold almost two and a half times that many people, so it didn’t look that crowded as the last of the staff arrived. The final person through the doors was Nika. At almost a hundred and ten years of vampire age, Nika looks to be in her mid-twenties. Born in an era when women always wore dresses, Nika seems to celebrate the options she has in today’s world. Calf-high boots of brown leather over gray leggings and a soft knit sweater dress in deep maroon. She closed the doors behind her and waited on Lydia, who hopped up on one of the dinner tables in one lithe movement.
“Listen up. The witch’s grimoire that we’ve been hiding has come under attack. A few hours ago, someone broke into the bank vault and stole the book bucket,” she said. Nika began working her way through the room, moving unhurriedly as if to cross the room to where Tanya and I stood with Chet. Arkady was near the buffet line, closest to the middle of the room.
The staff buzzed slightly at her news, much quieter than a roomful of just humans would have. The mix was about three-quarters vampire and one-quarter human.
“The only way they could have known about the bank vault was if someone told them,” Lydia said.
Nika tells me that reading minds is kinda hard work. What she gets are the surface thoughts, the ones most active at the time she is reading a person. Deeper, buried thoughts are much harder to grasp and in a room full of people, almost impossible. Humans, vampires, and weres are alike in that our uppermost thoughts are usually inane. What we had for lunch (or who we had for lunch), who we’d like to sleep with, what we’d rather be doing than whatever we are currently doing, and so on. Men in particular are difficult, as we tend to think much simpler thoughts and if the mind reader in question is a very attractive blonde, then the man she is trying to read is probably thinking about how much he’d like to get her into bed and what his odds are.
But if someone leads the conversation and directs the topic, it’s very difficult for most people to avoid thinking about that topic and what they know about it. Call it the power of suggestion. Right now, every being in the room was thinking about the Book of Darkest Sorrow. Everyone was thinking about Lydia implying that someone had told.
“Lydia, what if a witch sensed the book?” a female vampire asked.
“They couldn’t, Clare, because the book wasn’t in the bucket,” Lydia replied. “We didn’t trust it to a vault. Chris and Tanya hid it somewhere else, a location that only they know,” she said. Most of the people looked our way, except Nika who looked at a vampire standing against the wall farthest from the buffet line and farthest from Arkady. That vampire, whose name I couldn’t recall but who worked in finance, was staring at us, face blank till he turned and saw Nika watching him. Frozen for moment, he suddenly bolted—right into Trenton’s grasp. They struggled for a moment, but Arkady was there in a flash and the finance vampire was taken away.
The group had frozen during the drama. Now they started to move and talk. It was Tanya’s turn to hop a table. She Lightened herself so much that the table barely wobbled.
“Thank you everyone. We weren’t sure if it was someone here, but now we know. The Book of Darkest Sorrow is safe and we’ll get to the bottom of Bruce’s actions,” she said with a wave toward the door where Arkady and company had slipped out.
“Have you checked on the book?” asked another vampire, a tall male with dark hair and long, thin features.
Tanya turned and looked my way, but I didn’t need to move, nod, or bat an eye to answer her question. “No. But rest assured it is deeply hidden. If we check it now, we might only lead a Circle of witches to its hiding place.”
“But then you don’t know for certain that it’s untouched?” he continued.
I spoke up. “If it were taken from its current spot, I would feel it,” I said.
“But you don’t know for certain,” the tall vamp pressed.
“Nick, my Chosen has said he would feel it. Do you doubt him—his abilities?” Tanya asked, voice colder.
The vamp, Nick, shook his head quickly. “No, Young Queen, I just like certainty,” he said.
“That’s because you are an auditor, Nick. That’s how you roll,” Tanya said, getting a nervous laugh from the group. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to see why Bruce would betray us.”
Chapter 8
A woman—that was the answer. Bruce, from finance, had given up his own for a woman. A witch, to be exact. Once I looked at him with my sight, I could see the black tendrils of the spell she had used to ensnare him. Like strong, black thread that wrapped around his head and torso. It didn’t lead anywhere but likely made him desperate to please her. Aura works well for ripping through witches’ magic. So I almost tore it away from him, but Lydia stopped me. Taking us aside, she spoke to Tanya, Nika, Arkady, and I. “If we break it, the witch will know, right?” she asked.
“I guess,” I answered, shrugging.
“So let’s leave him in place, use him to feed information to this Circle.”
“What are you thinking, Lyd?” Tanya asked.
“Let him overhear that the book was already taken by another Circle. Set them against each other,” she said.
“That will stir up trouble,” I said.
“That’s the point,” Lydia said.
“I like the idea, Lyd, but not the target. I’m thinking if that Bishop woman follows through on her threats, that maybe we can send some fun and games her way,” Tanya said.
“Oh. You
have
been paying attention to your grandmother, haven’t you?” I said, thinking that was a much better idea.
“How did he find out where the bucket was being kept?” I asked. It hadn’t been common knowledge, just mostly the security people and the inner circle.
“He paid the bills,” Nika said. “When the safe deposit box was first rented this past summer, he was the one who paid the bill. When the witch came looking for information, he remembered the odd rental of an extra-large safe deposit box.”
“Has he compromised our finances?” Tanya asked.
“I don’t know, but I’ll try to find out,” Nika said, heading back over to the bound and gagged vampire.
“She deserves a spa day,” I said. “Digging through peoples’ heads has gotta suck.”
Lydia and Tanya both looked at me, surprised. “What? You don’t think she should get a spa day?” I asked.
“No we agree, we’re just shocked you’d think of it,” Lydia said. Nika turned from where she was sitting across from Bruce and mouthed
thank you
at me before going back to filtering his brain.
I was about to reply to Lydia when Chet popped into the security room. “Hey, the cops are looking for you,” he said to me.
“Like what? An APB?” I asked.
“No, like a phone call from that lieutenant that always gets sent for you,” he replied.
“He called here? Just picked up the phone and dialed our secret hideout?” I asked.
“No, he called the Murray Hotel, knowing you used to be there. The manager passed the word to his boss, who left an email on the corporate website that copies emails to Tanya. I just spotted it. He wants you to call him. Something about a new problem over in Jersey.”