“Let’s split into three teams. Rook’s team on backup. Jude and I can have two of your people for backup. Victor and Wade, who do you want on your team?”
Victor chose Kerry and Tank. Wade put Bobby and Remi on his team, leaving Ezra to sputter about staying with the werewolves. I wondered what that was all about. Remi had gone really quiet all week, though his fever had finally waned, and the mark remained. My irritation with him over the flirting had long since vanished, turning to worry. The fae variant offered occasional tips on shielding but hadn’t tried again to get close. He also avoided Ezra like the plague.
“They’re your bloodline,” Bobby said. “Be friendly. Get to know them.”
Ezra growled. “They are no more my bloodline than Victor is yours.”
“Right, Bobby. You gonna introduce us to your long-lost vamp daddy? Victor, you have something to tell us?” Kerry teased.
Bobby flipped her off. “At least my bloodline doesn’t shed on the furniture.”
The giant bipedal wolf with rusty hair chuffed and bared his teeth. “Neither do ours. We’re house-trained.”
“Mostly,” Rook agreed.
I swallowed back a laugh. “Maybe now that we’ve established everyone’s pedigree, can we focus on the murder building behind us, please?”
“Murder building?” Wade asked, his gaze on a scanner that seemed to be on the fritz. “Why do you say that? We didn’t have human casualties from the Veil expansion.”
WhydidI say that? As I looked up the long tower of dark windows, absent of any sort of flickering ghost aura I’d become used to, I couldn’t help but sense something. A deep and dullache of wrongness, not unlike the corpses I’d tried to interview that turned up blank. Devoid of life?
“Tiny death mage sees the death we smell,” Rook said.
I blinked at him in horror. He smelled death? Way out here?
“Fuck,” Wade cursed. “Those vampire assholes left people for dead?” He glanced at Victor. “Sorry. Not talking about you.”
Victor sighed. “If they were already dead, the bodies would have been left. My people are nothing if not… efficient? Following the agreement to the letter? They’d have escorted out anyone alive. But already dead?” He shrugged.
Not their problem. I sighed, already butting heads with some of the changes from PD Homicide to SED. Angel rubbed the small of my back in comfort, as if he knew how much I grappled with the idea of leaving anyone behind. Even remains, as they might have family looking for them.
“We’ll have to clear it ourselves, then,” I said as a cold gust swept through the parking lot, carrying the scent of damp concrete and something faintly coppery. The werewolves shifted, ears pricked, their gazes locked on the building. My gaze lifted upward to Cassidy’s window, expecting to see him there again, only it was nothing but a gaping black hole, taunting, waiting.
16
“Arewe going floor by floor as a whole, or splitting up?” Wade asked.
I didn’t love the idea of splitting up, but there weren’t enough of us, even with Rook’s guys as backup. We got one giant wolf who huffed at me as if annoyed it might trip over me, and one bipedal werewolf with eyes clear enough to look like mist. I couldn’t do more than glance at him without shivering. It was like he could see right through me.
“We’ll have to split up, or it will take days,” Angel said. “The weres hearing is good enough to catch any of us calling if the comms go out.”
“I want to look at Brandon’s apartment,” I said.
“That’s the plan,” Angel agreed. “We’ll make our way up. Clear each floor. Full sweep. Review his apartment, then split the rest of the floors for speed.”
I tightened the brace on my wrist, heart in my throat at the idea of facing the shadows again. How much of the dream had been real? The windows gaped with darkness like empty eye sockets. No one watching. Not even a ghost. And that itself was eerie.
Everyone geared up again, though the tech was spotty. Tiana remained in the truck under heavy guard, while Ezra oversaw everything. The weres didn’t defer to him, but as Rook remained behind too, I suspected the big were was going to keep his people in line.
We headed for the door, and I kept a half step behind Angel.
“Remember to tell us anything you see,” he reminded me. “Even over here, there’s a lot you’ll catch that won’t be visible to us.”
“Got it,” I affirmed, anxiety spiking as we crossed the threshold. The lobby stank of copper and mold, but the strange breathing walls and tilting landscape were gone, replaced with the familiar layout of the high-end apartment building pulled across the Veil.
The elevator doors gaped open, cables snapped, cars looking as if they’d been splattered with paint. Blood? It didn’t look human, at least.
We swept the first floor as a unit, room by room, clearing each one, not surprised to find any of them empty.
