“Keep thinking,” I ordered. “There’s a way. We just need to find it.”
“What are you going to do?” he asked as I stood.
“I need to report this to the vampires in case we’re successful. We may need reinforcements.”
“Is that wise? If the werewolves are compromised, what makes you sure the same isn’t true for the vampires?”
“Liam should be safe enough.”
He was an ass, but he’d come through for me in a pinch before. What I didn’t say is that if we couldn’t trust someone we might as well sentence Caroline to her fate. I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to win against the combined might of whoever had done this.
Seeing his acceptance, I pulled out my phone and clicked on his name in my contacts.
“Do you have news?” Liam said, his voice sounding tense.
“Possibly. Well, sort of.”
“What does that mean?”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. It seems like the very thing I’d tried to avoid, revealing my tie to Caroline, was the very thing I needed to blow wide open.
“It means that the person I’ve been using for research just got kidnapped.”
There was a long pause.
“I thought our agreement made it clear that you were to work on this alone. If the wrong person found out about this-”
“Relax. The person is human. She has no ties to this world.”
Another pause. I could almost feel the thoughts turning over in his brain.
“Your friend from last night.”
Smart man.
“That’s the one.”
“How much did she know?”
“Not much. Just that I needed her help tracking the descendants of a certain family to present day.” I gave the sorcerer a glance over my shoulder. Caroline had no ties, but the sorcerer did and technically he’d been there when I asked for help.
“Alone, that information would not be very useful,” he said almost to himself.
“That’s not all,” I said.
The quality of his silence changed, almost as if its ears perked up.
“Oh?” was the soft response.
“I’m pretty sure the demon taint had something to do with this. I smelled basil and anise in her house.”
“She could just be a fan of that combination.”
“No. You know as well as I do what this is.”
There was a long drawn out pause. I got the feeling he’d put me on mute and was conferring with someone on the other end.
I waited, summoning patience I didn’t necessarily feel.
