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“Do you think they know there’s a portal in the closet?” Zee asked.

“It does seem like an unlikely place,” Victor agreed. “Perhaps the Project Prophecy team’s calculations were off.”

“Must have been another spreadsheet error.”

I avoided getting involved, and scanned our surroundings. Glass panels made up the corridor walls, just as I remembered from my previous short and not-so-sweet visit. I hadn’t ever expected to come back, but apparently a few glasses of whiskey and a party vibe made a return trip seem like a great idea.

“Is that a robot dog?” Zee asked, getting distracted by one of the sparkling labs we strode by. The yellow doglike robot stood eerily motionless, waiting for its master’s instructions. Thankfully, nobody was around at two a.m. to give it any.

“It is.”

“Gideon Cain has all this now, huh? That must be a kick to the fangs.”

“It is,” Victor repeated, adding a snarl.

“I’m sure he’ll use it all for peace and to benefit the disadvantaged.”

“Having met the man, that is unlikely.”

“Oh well, can’t be any worse than a bunch of vampires using it to spy on people.” Zee’s sing-song tone needled.

“Indeed.”

Victor had admitted they weren’t just spying on people. The vampires planned to use Reynard Technologies to disable all electronic devices, and ultimately use the chaos to step in and rule the world. Fun times.

I was very much staying out of all that apocalyptic hoo-ha, due to my personal circumstances.

We were just here to find out where Jimmy’s family were being kept, so we could fix our gremlin problem. That was all. Oh, and Victor would probably set fire to a few things on the way out.

The tracking control room appeared up ahead. Victor stopped at the door and keyed in a code. Clearly, nobody had thought to remove him from the security systems yet.

Victor went straight to the interface pad below the bank of screens, and clicked search. “How do we spell Jimmy’s name?”

I glanced at Zee, who shrugged. “I was at the bar,” he said.

“G-r-r . . . erm . . . d-o-g?”

“Grr Dog.” Zee snorted. “That’s his fucking name?”

“Grr-dog or Grrdug?” Victor asked.

“Grr-Dawg?” Zee suggested unhelpfully.

“With a hyphen or without?” Victor asked.

Zee gave a snort. “Fancy Fangs said hymen.”

“I said hyphen, demon. Why are you so fixated on vaginas?”

“Fuck, he said vagina. You walked right into that one. Now all you have to do is say testicles and I’ve got a full house of Victor Says Genitals.”

“I’m not going to say . . .” Victor straightened and took a self-leveling breath. “Might we please focus on this highly illegal and marginally dangerous task of breaking into a military-grade classified program to find a pixie’s family, and less on whatever puerile game you’ve decided to play at any given moment?”

Zee leaned his hip against the bank of computers and blinked at Victor. “I got no fucking idea what you just said but you looked hot while saying it.”

“Go with g-r-r-d-u-g,” I suggested, butting in before they got physical. There were no wards here to stop sparks flying between them.

Victor typed it in and a waterfall of names poured down the screen as the system searched for Jimmy.