Alex sank into the chair beside Poppy and reached for the pen. “Sometimes the answer to bringing balance between the light and the darkness is more darkness.”
I stared at him, wishing I could see his eyes.
He had to be putting me on.
Alex stared back.
Finally, I smiled. “Words to live by. Now let’s just focus on those names, shall we?”
“Next up are a pair of roommates,” I said, reading from Alex’s list. “Lauren Reilly and Gabrielle Phillips.” I set the list on the passenger seat and slipped the key into the ignition as I looked at Alex in the rearview mirror. “What did they do?”
I couldn’t tell if Alex was looking at me because he was still wearing the sunglasses. I guessed it didn’t matter though, since the sun had set forty-five minutes ago, and he had to be pretty much blind at this point.
“Gabrielle and Lauren preyed on a doe-faced young intern.Gabrielle was the doe’s immediate superior, and she would force the doe to do all of her work and then claim credit for it. The doe tried to bring it up to management, but Lauren flirted with the manager and convinced him that Gabrielle was the victim and the doe was merely doing the research that was her job and then trying to claim credit for the entire project.”
He tilted his head. “I arranged for the doe to be absent the day of an important presentation—with the project she’d done completely on her own safely locked away in her desk at work. Gabrielle broke into her desk to steal it and ended up covered in blue dye with a symphony of greeting card musical inserts blaring. Everyone at the meeting came out to see what was going on.”
I frowned as the light turned green, and I eased into the intersection. “Couldn’t she just claim that the project was her work and she’d had to get it out of her absent assistant’s desk?”
“She tried,” Alex agreed. “And Lauren’s lover backed her up. But I had told the doe to do this project in her own hand—no electronic copy. Gabrielle didn’t know that, and was caught…unprepared. And since the manager’s bosses were all present, he was unable to save them—or himself. All three were fired.”
“Okay, so they could definitely be angry enough to seek revenge.” I pulled into a parking spot in front of the apartment building.
Since we had no way of knowing if whoever had sent the zombie after Alex had seen Poppy, both the necromancer and Alex stayed in the car while Peasblossom and I went into the apartment building. As I had on the other visits, I had an official-looking file in my hand that held Alex’s “mug shot,” a police report I’d printed off the internet, and a blank form for the victims to fill out.
“Ready?” I asked Peasblossom.
The pixie squirmed deeper into the collar of my red trench coat. “Ready.”
I knocked on the door.
No answer.
I raised my hand to knock again, but just before my knuckles touched the wood, the doorknob turned. I pasted a polite expression on my face and waited while the door slowly opened.
A girl stood there with one hand braced on the doorframe as if she needed the help staying upright. Her eyelids drooped, and she looked like she hadn’t brushed her hair in a couple of days at least. She was dressed in a pink hoodie and matching yoga pants but didn’t have any socks on, and there was something about the paleness in her cheeks that made me think she was unwell.
“Hi,” I said, carefully. “Are you Lauren Reilly?”
“No, I’m Gabrielle. Hang on a second.” She looked over her shoulder, swaying as the movement seemed to set her off balance. “Lauren?”
She sounded as if she’d tried to yell the name but didn’t have the breath for it.
She opened the door a little wider. “Come in.”
Another girl came out of a room off to the left as I stepped into the shared living space. She had rich brown skin, but even without the paleness, I could tell that whatever was wrong with Gabrielle seemed to be affecting Lauren too. She moved like a woman fifty years older, shuffling forward in fuzzy green slippers. She made it to the couch and grasped the back cushion to steady herself as she looked at me.
“Can I help you?” she asked.
I looked back and forth between the two girls. “I’m here looking for information on a cyberhacker who’s been targeting peoplein the area.” I opened my file and pulled out Alex’s picture to show them. “Do you know this man?”
Both girls tensed.
“No,” Lauren lied. “I’m sorry.”
“Who is he?” Gabrielle sidled around the couch and let herself collapse onto the threadbare cushions. “He looks like he got beat up. Is he in trouble?”
“He certainly is,” I said, pinching my face in stern disapproval. “This young man has been illegally spying on people on this campus. And we’ve had reports of him hacking into personal computers and disseminating private information.”
