Quetzalcoatl had left Ginnungagap hours ago to help cover Patrick’s ass where the case was concerned. They’d finally agreed to pool their resources, something Patrick had been reluctant to do, but with two immortals aligned with the hells stalking the city streets, he’d had no choice. Looping Casale in had been a stressful one-hour phone call out in the alleyway since Ginnungagap still didn’t allow signal in and out.
Sage reached across the table to grab one of the blueprints, dragging it closer. “Did Biyu only get blueprints for the building the Crimson Diamond is in, or did she get any of the adjacent buildings as well?”
Biyu was one of Einar’s human servants, a petite, charming Chinese dissident and gifted hacker they had apparently pulled out of Beijing ten years ago. She’d learned how to hack within the Great Firewall of China without getting caught—until she did.
Arrested, disappeared into a jail used to extract confessions the Chinese government could parade through the media as a warning, Biyu had been left to rot. Einar rescued her before she’d signed that contract and sold her soul to the government. Biyu had been with Lucien’s Night Court ever since, and her hacking skills explained a lot at how Lucien was able to cross international borders so easily these days.
“No. Tremaine doesn’t hold those buildings as his territory,” Lucien said.
Sage shuffled a few more maps and blueprints together, muttering about tracks under her breath. Patrick watched her while shoving another bite of chow mein into his mouth. The food was cold, having been delivered earlier, but Patrick didn’t care. He’d felt hollowed out since waking up that morning, craving something he refused to acknowledge. He’d already smoked a couple of cigarettes, which was more than he’d had in the last few weeks. Jono hadn’t said a single word about that, even though he had to smell the nicotine and smoke that lingered on Patrick.
Fighting the desire to ask Lucien for another cigarette was easier than Patrick thought it would be, only because he didn’t want to owe the vampire anything more than he already did. Victoria’s potion had worn off hours ago, and the dull throbbing through his head and body made Patrick wish he had another potion to drink, no matter how disgusting they were.
Jono shifted in his seat between Patrick and Lucien, the arm he had draped over the back of Patrick’s chair pressing against his shoulders. The line of heat would’ve been relaxing under any other circumstances, but even with the tension Patrick carried, having Jono with him made things easier.
“All right?” Jono asked in a low voice. He bent his arm and settled his hand on the back of Patrick’s neck to gently massage the stiffness there.
“This is a mess,” Patrick admitted quietly. He tilted his head to give Jono better access to the knots in his muscles, all the while staring at the maps getting shuffled around on the card table.
“Seems that’s normal for us.”
Patrick snorted. “I’ll take a new normal any day now.”
Trying to make sense of the city grid through several different map styles and building blueprints from different decades was tough, but they were doing it. Patrick’s memories were hazy from last night, but he remembered the abandoned subway platform, and Jono knew the exact spot he’d been dragged through the veil by Áltsé Hashké. Tracing back the steps took some work, but it was possible.
All of it painted a mess of unsanctioned tunnels within the fringe of the veil that were laughably not up to code.
Sage uncapped a pen with her teeth and started marking points on the maps, flipping rapidly through the sheets of paper. Lucien let her, watching in silence as Sage traced out a route from the Crimson Diamond to the abandoned subway platform Patrick was almost sacrificed in.
On paper, the abandoned subway platform was probably located between the Canal Street Station and Spring Street Station. The subway had a mere handful of stations it had abandoned over the years, forcing reroutes during the time when it was being built. Most of those reasons hadn’t come with the blueprints, but Patrick could make a wild guess. Building structures through the veil was never easy or safe.
“I know you vampires have to hide from the sun, but living in tunnels like rats is a ridiculous way to do it,” Patrick said.
“Watch your mouth,” Lucien said.
“Are you embarrassed by the truth? My heart bleeds.”
“Can we focus?” Sage asked loudly before Lucien could go from contemplating murder to actually doing it. “I still have a brief to write when I get home tonight. I would like to finish up here as quickly as possible.”
“What did you find?” Jono asked, leaning forward. He dropped his hand from Patrick’s neck to his thigh, giving a squeeze. The gesture was one of support and a warning to not antagonize the bloodsucking bastard.
Sage tapped her pen against the paper. “There’s definitely a set of old tracks that run off the R line according to these records. Seems like the extension was scrapped last century when the city decided to give the A line its own route rather than connect the two. Tremaine’s been here long enough he could have taken it over with no one knowing.”
“The tracks were rusted, but the tunnel looked open. You could still drive a train on them if you were desperate enough.” Patrick paused, fork halfway to his mouth. “There’s an idea.”
“No police,” Lucien said.
“Might not get your way on that, but I wasn’t talking about the police. I was talking about a train.”
“You’d still have to send the request through the PCB,” Sage said. “Defense of the subway falls to the MTA and the PCB. You can’t loop in one without notifying the other in a situation like this.”
“I’ll think of something. We need to reach that back door, and we can’t get there on live tracks with the amount of people you want to bring down there for the fight, Lucien.”
“You said the wards down there were broken. You do not have the skills necessary to diffuse them, nor do you have the strength,” Lucien said.
Patrick resisted the urge to look at Jono.
“The SOA would.” The look Lucien leveled him was distinctly unimpressed. Patrick shrugged. “My agency has artifacts on hand for situations like this. I can request usage of one.”
