Drink Deep - Chloe Neill [39]
I’d previously visited the Loop office of the Chicago Police Department. The perps who were booked there might have been down on their luck, but the facility was pretty nice. It was new, clean, and efficient in the way a police department had to be.
This place, on the other hand, had an air of hopelessness about it. It reminded me of a photo I’d seen of an abandoned building in Russia, a structure designed and built for a different kind of regime, left to rot alone when the philosophy was abandoned.
I couldn’t imagine Tate—used to all things luxurious and gourmet—was thrilled about being here.
I turned at the scritch of rocks on my left. Catcher and my grandfather rolled up in a golf cart. Catcher, as fit his aggressive personality, was driving, although he looked like he hadn’t gotten any sleep since last night. My grandfather was holding on, white-knuckled, to the bar above his head. I guess he wasn’t impressed by Catcher’s driving.
“This is where you’re holding Tate?” I asked, climbing on to the backward-facing backseat. Catcher pulled away almost immediately, turning in a circle tight enough that I nearly fell off. Lesson learned, I grabbed the bar, as well.
“Until we know more about what or who he is,” my grandfather said above the sound of whirring toy-car motor and gravel, “we take all precautions.”
I surveyed the landscape as we passed, from bits of trash and debris to piles of fallen bricks and rusting carcasses of metal that might once have been factory equipment. “You couldn’t find a place more out of the way than this?”
“Third-biggest city in the country,” Catcher said. “We took what we could get.”
“Which is?”
“A bit of land the city took over when the former tenants vacated. It’s a former ceramics factory,” my grandfather said. “They used to form and fire bricks and tile out here.”
“Which means lots of thick, fireproof, and insulated buildings,” I guessed.
“Precisely,” my grandfather said.
We drove (twice as fast as probably recommended) around the compound, circling around until we came to a very bumpy, quick stop at a building with a long bank of yellow doors bearing sizable black numbers.
“These were the wood-fired kilns,” my grandfather explained as we climbed from the cart.
“Interesting,” I said. “Creepy” was what I thought.
Silently, I followed them down a narrow path beside the kiln building, stopping in front of a small but pretty brick building that stood alone in the center of the circle made by the rest of the buildings.
The small one couldn’t have been more than forty feet square. Fairy guards stood at the door and each corner, leaving little doubt about its purpose.
My stomach began to churn as the anticipation built. I looked at my grandfather. “He’s in there?”
“He is. This used to be the factory’s main office. It’s divided into two rooms. He’s in a room by himself.”
Catcher’s phone beeped, and he pulled it out, glanced at it, and smiled.
“Kind of bad timing for sexy messages, isn’t it?”
He rolled his eyes and showed me the screen of his phone. It bore a picture of a brick room, empty but for a cot on the floor and small sink on one side.
“Tate’s cell,” he explained. “Since he’s out of the room, I had it searched.”
“Clever,” my grandfather said.
“It might have been if there was anything in it,” Catcher said, tucking the phone away again. “Room’s empty. He may not have a shiv, but that’s not to say he doesn’t have power. You’ll want to hand over any weapons. We don’t want them to fall into the wrong hands,” he explained. “And if you need help, we’ll be right outside.”
I hesitated, but lifted my pant leg and pulled the dagger from my boot. The thought of playing supernatural cat-and-mouse with Tate without weapons didn’t thrill me, but I took Catcher’s point. If Tate managed to best me and take a dagger, he’d be a much bigger threat against me, the fairies, or anyone