Cash resisted the urge to pull away. His skin crawled, and he struggled not to check Harry’s hands again for the Hunter ink. Just in case it had welled to the surface overnight.
It was superstition. The caul-born were resistant to monster tricks, but that was all. Useful enough for a Hunter or a Jesuit investigator but not dangerous. That was what everyone said, but the hair on the back of Cash’s neck believed in the old gory folk tales Shanko used to tell when he had a few in him. In those, the cauled Hunters could rip your monster out of your bones, screeching and gritty with marrow. That and worse.
The back of Cash’s neck itched as he casually leaned back.
“I know you’ve watched TV. Pretend you’re Tom Hardy and it’s a meet cute.”
A brief smile tilted the corner of Harry’s mouth before he bit it back. “I suppose I can do that,” he said. He took his glasses off, folded the legs neatly, and tucked them into his pocket. “How do you know it was—”
“I grew up around here,” Cash reminded him. “I’m dating her brother.”
“She’s the mother of your daughter.”
Cash’s mouth felt sticky. It wasn’t a secret. These days, if a monster wanted to live in the human world, they needed human identification. It could be faked, but why bother when you could get a real one if you just turned up with a baby. Admittedly, that was how some monsters got fake ones too. Yana’s name was on Ellie’s birth certificate, Donna was Cash’s emergency contact—which always felt odd when he had to fill it in, but if something happened to him she’d take care of Ellie.
Any sort of background check would turn that up. Cash hadn’t actually expected Harry to do one, but he should have. Still, he didn’t like the idea that Harry had read Ellie’s name. Maybe he’d even seen a photo of her.
“Cute kid,” Harry said, a pro forma compliment from someone who felt they had to say something. “It sounds a bit more complicated than a hookup.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t spill my life story to strangers who’ve knocked me out and dragged me to a cave,” Cash said. “Yana and I, we aren’t on good terms.”
“To put it mildly. She hasn’t seen her daughter in, what, five years now?”
“She’s still Ellie’s mom. She’s Arkady’s sister. I don’t want anything bad to happen to her. I mean, I still think someone’s led you up the graveyard path, but if you were right about her boyfriend… I won’t let something happen to her just so you can catch your monster red-handed.”
“Pawed,” Harry corrected him absently. “Red-pawed. They don’t have hands, not like we do. It’s one of the ways to tell that mankind was put here to have dominion.”
That was so bizarrely wrong that Cash nearly argued with him. He thought better of it before he blurted out something he shouldn’t know, like the factthismonster had enough manual dexterity to give someone the finger.
Okay,someof them didn’t have hands. They still got by fine.
“Whatever,” Cash said. “I’m not going to tell my daughter her mom’s been eaten—or kidnapped, or whatever—but it’s okay because Harry proved his pet theory about monsters was true.”
Harry gave him a genuinely injured look. “I would never,” he said earnestly. “No monster is worth spending a single human soul, not even a soul as… dissolute… as Ilyana Abascal.”
Rude, but not untrue. Yana lived like someone who didn’t give a damn. Mostly because that’s what she was.
“Not that it matters,” Cash said. “Because you’re crazy.”
He wasn’t, of course. Wrong about the details, but not crazy. Harry smiled briefly as he took a drink of his coffee.
“You know I’m not,” he said. “I’ve been doing this for years, Cash. Hunted down curses, exposed corrupted priests, and even went to Europe to track down one of the last vampires. And every time I could sense the… undercurrent that it wasn’t over, we’d just hit a dead end. We might have won, but we’d missed something. If my contact is telling the truth—and I think he is—we’ll know what. Who.”
That was the sort of talk that would get you killed. The Prodigium preferred discouraged investigators, but in a pinch, dead ones would do. It was messier than they’d like—old-school rather than new-guard—but it worked.
“And if he isn’t?” Cash asked. “I saw the fiancé carry Yana’s bags into the house. He looked normal enough.”
Harry finished his coffee. “I hope you’re right,” he said as he gently set the cup down on the table. “This would be the biggest story of my career, and I still hope you’re right. I just don’t believe you are. What do you want, Cash?”
Cash sat back and looked away. He ran his eyes over the handful of monsters and humans mostly peacefully coexisting as the need for coffee overrode anything else. The stocky, fish-faced blond throwing a fit as she demanded the lanky bloodybones behind the counter let her speak to the manager… she might not make it all the way home after her stay.
But nobody cared about Karens. They were free calories.
“I want in,” he said. “You need a cameraman, and I need to make sure that you don’t put anyone at risk.”
Harry looked amused. “I can shoot my own footage.”
“I didn’t realize you’d made the guest list,” Cash said. “Or been asked to do the honors when it came to photography.”
