Quentin sighed.“It sounds so easy when you put it like that.”
“It’s only complicated if you make it so.”
He couldn’t argue against that.“Any update on who might have attacked you?”
Grevin shook his head.“You probably won’t be surprised to learn the cops didn’t turn up anything new.”
“I am a little,” he admitted.“Those two at least seem semi-competent.If they didn’t find anything, there were probably no clues left behind.I was hoping I had missed some evidence, but I guess that was wishful thinking.”
“I still don’t know the motivation.I mean, not everyone likes necromancers, but I can’t think of anyone who would want to kill me.I try to keep out of people’s way.”
It was a sad fact that necromancers were considered the gutter trash of the magical world.To be overlooked or denigrated unless they were needed.
“It had to be someone who knew the weaknesses of my wards and was familiar enough with my house to know how to find my private ritual room.”
Quentin hated to agree.Betrayal hurt.
“Is there anyone you want me to contact about you being here?”Surely there was someone to miss the cranky necromancer.
Grevin thought about it for a minute.“No.If someone is plotting my death, I’d rather they don’t know I survived.Right now, no one knows what happened to me unless you told anyone.”
“No.I kept it to myself.Besides Jaks and Dr.Wesson, I only told mother.”He frowned.“Braed was there also.I don’t know who he might have told.”
Grevin rubbed his forehead.“Hopefully, no one.I don’t think they used magic to break the circle, but they had to use magic to remove my protections.”
“True.Unfortunately, I couldn’t sense any.”Quentin tapped his chin as he reviewed and discarded the few investigation skills he had.“I haven’t reached out to the bounty hunters yet.I’m sure they have much more sophisticated tracking spells.I only know a few.The only reason I found Vlad so fast was that he wasn’t hiding, and they gave me the address,” he admitted without shame.
Grevin laughed.“Dammit.Stop making me laugh.It hurts.”
“Sorry, Grev,” he said, smiling.If his friend was hurting, at least Quentin lightened his heart a little bit.
“If you want to call your bounty hunter people, I have no objection.The wards are down, so I won’t need to let them in.You don’t even need clearance from the police because they already closed the case.”
“Already?”Quentin frowned.“That’s unusually fast police work.”
Grevin snorted.“I don’t know how much ‘work’ was really done.I got the impression that they were certain I was at fault and only pretended to look things over so they could claim they investigated.”
“Huh.That wasn’t the impression I had of them before.Maybe they’re prejudiced.”Quentin chewed on his bottom lip, pulling at the chapped skin he still hadn’t taken care of.
“Stop that.You’ll make your lip bleed, and then you’ll have Loverboy killing his clan to keep them away from you.”
Quentin smirked.“Right.I should only do it in front of vampires I dislike is what I heard.”
Grevin’s bark of laughter echoed in the room.“Ouch, Q, stop being so funny.”
“Sorry again.”
“No, you’re not.”Grevin squinted at him.“Are your eyes glowing?”
It took Quentin a second to jump to a different conversational track.“What?”
“The silver ring around your eyes was glowing.Since when did you have any silver in your eyes?”
“Hmm, I would’ve thought the bracelet would block that.”
Grevin gave his bracelet a cursory look.“Necromancers can see past enchantments.What’s going on?”
It only took him a second before he decided Grevin could be trusted.He told him what his father had shared.
