“Dude, you started it. Just be glad your face healed,” I said. His scowl deepened.
“Here you go, Reagan.” Vlad handed it to me. “Take care of yourself.”
“Thanks,” I mumbled.
Vlad’s eyes twinkled as he bowed again. “Something tells me I’m going to regret passing you off to Darius. Ah well. Such is life. You can’t be lucky all the time.” He winked before he turned and strode away.
“Lucy, you have some ’splaining to do,” I said to Darius as I pulled up the text message app on my phone.
Immediately, an outgoing message from me to Darius caught my eye. It informed him I’d meet him at the hotel in a half-hour.
The vamp must have sent it, but Darius hadn’t known that.
“You ignored my text, I see.” I pulled up an old group message between Callie, Dizzy, and myself.
“I knew you didn’t send it.”
“How?”
“It was much too polite.”
I nodded, because that was a good call, as I texted Callie and Dizzy where to meet us. When that was done, I turned my attention back to Darius. “What’s this about theaswang?”
I pointed to the right because I needed something to eat, and there was a restaurant down the way.
“Vlad knows about that, does he?” I barely heard Darius sigh.
“The question is, why don’tIknow about that?”
“I wanted more evidence. When I got it, I had other things on my mind.” His touch slid down my back and across the top of my butt. I wiggled out of the way, knowing exactly what had been on his mind. “It seems my fears—our fears—are coming to fruition. The demon from—”
“I know that part. What I don’t know is how theaswangfits into this.”
“Theaswangthat you killed didn’t come from New Orleans. Or anywhere in Louisiana. It left a chain of murder victims across the country. If one painted a line on the map, stringing those murders together…”
“You’d get that Northern California town.” I let out a breath slowly.
“Theaswangfed every so often en route to New Orleans, stopping and killing one person before movingalong. Its first feed in town was across the street from your house.”
“It was spooked off from there, I think,” I said.
“Yes. But it didn’t leave town quickly, as it had done on those other stops. It lingered, killing again. And again. I believe that was to gain strength. Only after the last feed did it try to infect you.”
“It wouldn’t have succeeded, and not because of stupid Garret firebombing my face. So then what?”
“I’m not sure. But it seems that the powerful demon sent theaswangto you specifically. Then it came here, possibly hijacking the mages’ summons—”
“Everyone knows these things can happen but me. Why is that?”
“—and when theaswangfailed in its duty, whatever it might’ve been, you were sent for. The demon is trying to suss out your power. There can be no other explanation.”
“I was sent for by Seattle PD, though. And even if the MLE office had a hand in my coming, I doubt any of them hold hands with demons.”
“The demon, no. The mages summoning the demon, however, had already stopped the MLE office from investigating. How hard would it be for one of the mages to put a bug in the detective’s ear and call in reinforcements from your branch? Specifically, you, the number one bounty hunter in the country. The humandetective would go along with that in a heartbeat. And he did.”
“Except I’m not number one. I’m literally a nobody. That’s a long shot.”
“You worked directly with Detective Smith just once, and that was enough to make him your biggest fan.”
