Drink Deep - Chloe Neill [76]
“I don’t suppose you have any better sense of what Tate might be? Claudia kept mentioning old magic, and that’s the sense I get from him.”
“Old magic wouldn’t surprise me,” Catcher said, “although that’s not a magical classification per se. That his magic feels ‘old’ doesn’t signal what he is or who he might be.”
Of course it didn’t. That would be too easy. “Then we need to work that angle and figure it out. Can you get me in to see him again?”
Catcher whistled. “Since our office has been officially disbanded, we aren’t exactly on the approved visitors list for the secret facility holding our ex-mayor. We may be able to pull some strings, but that’ll take time.”
“Do what you can. I’m getting nowhere fast.” Although there was one group I could look into. “I know this question is going to hurt, but I need an answer regardless. What about the Order?” I gnawed my lip in anticipation of a snarky response. But that’s not what I got back. Catcher had changed his tune.
“I’ve been racking my brain,” he said, and I could hear that in the hoarse exhaustion in his voice. “But I can’t come up with any way they’re involved. I just don’t know what advantage they’d see in doing this. They may be naïve, but they aren’t evil.”
“What about Simon?”
“I don’t know how Simon spends his days, Merit, other than monopolizing almost all of Mallory’s time and every ounce of her mental energy. She seems to be the number one focus of his attention. Besides, he’s king of the city right now. Why cause trouble?”
“I had the same thought.”
“Keep your people calm and off Simon’s radar. He may seem mild-mannered, but he’s still a fully trained member of the Order, and vampire interference will only piss him off. Let me look into it.”
“I’ll stall,” I warned, “but Frank’s antsy, and you know the kind of pressure he’s putting on Malik. Humans are freaking out, and the National Guard is on its way to Cadogan House. Whoever is involved in this, we need evidence, and we need it fast.”
“I’ll handle it. Where are you anyway?”
I decided not to tell him I was hunched in a bus stop on State Street because I didn’t have any better ideas. “I’m playing Sentinel,” I told him. “Give me a call as soon as you have something.”
Catcher grunted his agreement, and the phone went dead. I tucked it away again and looked out into the night. Noise began to roll down the street as a parade of humans dressed in white clothes walked toward me. They carried white poster board signs announcing the apocalypse and recommending Bible passages for immediate consideration. The warnings were scrawled in bloodred paint, drips marking the edges of the letters. They’d painted the signs in a hurry, frantic to make a difference before it was too late.
“Before vampires destroy the world,” I quietly muttered.
The humans might be right about the end of the world; that wasn’t exactly information I was privy to. But I was pretty confident they’d have more than words for me if they caught me out here alone, so I hunkered back into the corner and watched as they passed, a Greek chorus warning of the coming tragedy.
A few minutes later they disappeared from view and the street was quiet again. I stood up and stretched my legs, but just as I prepared to leave the bus stop, a streak of white lightning shot across the sky and rain began to pour down in heavy sheets.
“Of course it would rain,” I muttered.
I stood in the doorway of the bus stop for another few moments, rain splashing onto my boots, waiting for a break in the downpour and wishing, once again, that Ethan had been here with me. He’d know what to do, have some plan of attack in mind.
I knew this burden was mine to bear; I just hoped I had the brawn to carry it and the brains to figure it out.
As quickly as it had begun, the rain slowed and stopped. As I stepped onto the street, I caught scents of water and city and sulfur, but there was something else: the smells of lemon and sugar, the same scents I’d caught around Tate.
Claudia thought the magic was old, and now the rain smelled like Tate? That