His wounds had nearly put him in a coma. Lavius breaking the soul connection to Ben–Ben’s bite freely given and freely taken by Jame–had nearly killed him.
I hadn’t asked Rossi how long mates survived when that link between them was broken.
I could guess it wasn’t very long.
“Isn’t this wonderful?” Death cooed.
The tension between vamps and weres snapped, as every head jerked toward him.
The weres snarled, the vamps made that weird clicking sound at the back of their throats, all of them hunters locked on prey.
Than didn’t seem to notice any of it. “Is it an oolong?” he asked. “I do enjoy a good oolong.”
Of course he was more interested in his tea. These kinds of things, the very real struggle of the living trying to survive, was something he’d never been all that involved in.
“How?” Ryder asked into the weird silence.
“Hot with lemon usually,” Than said.
“Not your tea.” Ryder shifted, easing his stance so he wasn’t squared off quite so hard toward the vamps. “How are we going to find Ben with the bite and blood—which still isn’t happening, Delaney. What’s the plan?”
“Blood will not work,” Rossi said.
“I have a plan,” Myra said, because of course she did. “We need to sit down. All of us. Jame? Could you sit down?”
He lifted his head and gave her a steady look. “No.”
Okay, that was more like the old Jame. Fawn said something low and soothing, and after another moment, he returned to the couch.
And there went the rest of the tension in the room, whooshing away like someone had just opened the spill gates on a dam.
Jean got busy handing out tea and coffee, then placed herself with her back to the door toward the visitor’s entrance. Myra stood near Death, facing Jean. That left Ryder and me between the supernaturals, shoulder-to-shoulder, Ryder on the vamp side, and me on the wolf.
Death sipped his tea, his dark eyes glittering over the chipped rim of the mug. He was enjoying every minute of this.
Jerk.
“We know Ben isn’t in Ordinary,” Myra began. “Outside of Ordinary becomes more of a problem for us to pin him down.
“They could have just driven him somewhere, or might still be on the move. Since vamps don’t have to eat or sleep, we’re not going to get the kind of hits off of bank accounts and purchases that we might if we were tracking a human.
“We have a few options, but we need to be careful not to tip our hands.” She pulled the notebook out of her coat pocket and clicked a pen.
“If we are thinking of asking gods to enter this search, we might be able to bypass a lot of the standard kidnapping procedures and get some valuable information. I suggest we talk to a few gods, see if they would be willing to pick up their powers, leave Ordinary, and help us. If not, then we could contact the gods outside of Ordinary and see if they’ll lend a hand. Possibilities for gods who might still feel generous toward us are Crow, Thor, Athena, Heimdall.”
I winced a little at that last one. Heimdall was my ex-ex-ex-boyfriend. We hadn’t left on great terms, but since he’d been chosen by Heimdall’s god power and I’d made sure he could take on that power, maybe he didn’t hate everyone in Ordinary.
But Myra was right about one thing. The longer a god stayed away from Ordinary, the less they seemed willing to go out of their way to help us.
Until they wanted to vacation again. Then it was like we were all long-lost friends who were finally meeting up.
“A few people in town might be able to give us information without relying on gods,” Myra continued. “Jules is a witch and Yancey is a seer. We know Ben’s scent can’t be found, nor his blood, since neither the werewolves nor vampires had any luck tracking him.
“Tapping the possible information sources in town won’t take more than a few hours. Maybe half a day. But if we want to do this fast and hard, we summon a demon or hellhound and bargain for their tracking services.”
Death made a small humming sound in the back of his throat like that idea intrigued him.
“Demons?” Ryder said. “That’s in our arsenal along with dark magic?” He shot a look my way and I sort of shrugged. “Okay,” he said. “That’s in our arsenal. I vote fast and hard.”
