She’s apparently a superfan of the band, and yet doesn’t seem to give a shit that she’s spamming my phone with this stuff at all hours.
Still... Sin likes her and I kind of do too.
In a way, she kind of reminds me of my mother.
Which begs the question...
“Hey, Josse, you know what sort of demon Elara’s related to?”
He pauses, still wheezing. “Funnily enough, that hasn’t come up. Isn’t it, I dunno, rude to ask people that sort of shit?”
Maybe. “I’m just curious, is all,” I mutter back.
If she is part Chaos demon, there’s no way she’d care about me asking. From my experience, there’s not a lot they do care about, apart from family. My mom would tear the world in two if she thought I was in danger. Hell, she got close to opening a portal to another dimension when I didn’t get the part in a school play one time.
“So where did you track him down to?” I ask. “Any idea where he’s headed?”
Josse grunts. “That’s the reason for the radio silence from me, boss. He’s not in the country.”
My stomach clenches as Josse continues, “It explains why everyone on his tail has had so much trouble tracking him down.”
“So where is he?” My question is abrupt, but I can’t help it.
“Funny thing is, we tracked him to Centralis. He’s only a couple of hours away from where you are right now. He met up with what looked to be some of his hangers-on yesterday. They all kept trying to kiss his hand, so I’m guessing they’re his ex-followers or—”
“—Devoted,” I correct.
“—whatever. We considered one of us trying to infiltrate their meetings to see what he had planned, but there were too few of them. It’d be too conspicuous.”
“No shit.” I snort, imagining Elara or Josse trying to go undercover. Josse is a six foot eight bear shifter who tracks like a dream and somehow goes unnoticed, but once you’re in a room with him, you can’t miss him.
“Have you still got both eyesand ears on Orlog?”
He lets out a weary sigh. “It was harder than it should have been, boss. Somehow, our first set of mics got disconnected, so we had to start over. The guy is squirrely, but he’s not saying anything useful. Nothing about your girl, either.”
“All right then. Keep me informed.”
We hang up and I have to take a second to pull myself together.
All my grand plans of finding and hog-tying Cedar Orlog and leaving him on a demon mobster’s doorstep are feeling pretty out of reach right now.
He’s here. A few thousand miles away from where he should be.
In bringing Sin on tour with us, we’ve inadvertently brought her closer to the guy she’s spent half a decade trying to stay well away from.
Good fucking going.
No good news to share with Sin, either. If I had his head in a box to present to her, or even a bit of good news, I’d feel better about knowing I need to come clean about spending weeks trying to track him.
Maybe I should find out if she has any asshole ex-boyfriends and might want their severed dick in a box instead.
I sit and stew, not realizing how much time has passed and that I’ve missed everyone having returned to the suite until there’s a tap on my door.
I’ve done nothing productive for the past couple of hours, alternating between scanning the latest bullshit stories about us and digging through anything I can find on Cedar Orlog.
“Yeah?” I call.
I’m surprised when the door opens slowly and Sin’s head pops inside. Her hair is still damp, and she smells like a decadent mixture of lust and satisfaction that has my cock perking up in my pants.
