“Nah, I’m okay,” he said, but he sat down to take advantage of the heat coming up off my knee. “The people who strung up that witch in the park were here, all right. The air ducts are closed, but you can tell they were opened recently and the filters changed. Hardly a day’s worth of dust on them. The ductwork has been cleaned, too. Only a pixy could tell.” He glanced at Nina, listening intently. “Or one of those optic lines, maybe.
“And the computers?” the pixy added, his wings shivering to up his core temperature. “I got into the history files of the ones they didn’t take. All of them say they haven’t been used recently, but the trash was wiped last Thursday, so it’s my guess that that’s when they left.”
Nina tapped her fingers and pushed herself away from the counter. “The day before they dumped the man in the park.”
Jenks nodded. He looked about as cold as I felt, and I promised myself I’d make cookies tonight to get the kitchen warm and cozy for him. “I don’t even know why they used them,” Jenks said. “They’re so old that a laptop would have more power.”
“Not the same programs, though,” I said, wondering if he’d accept the unused tissue I had jammed in my shoulder bag as a blanket.
“Right,” Jenks said. Arms wrapped around himself, he looked up at me, an odd look of both revulsion and attraction on his face. “The curator said the computers down here were for doing genetic stuff.”
I nodded. “Helpful when you’re making witches capable of invoking demon magic,” I said. God! What were they doing? This was crazy. Who would want to be like me? My life sucked.
“Like you,” Jenks said, his voice thick with warning.
“Yes, like me,” I said, then sighed. “I’ll be fine, Jenks.” I glanced at Nina, who had heard my theory in the coffeehouse about what these wackos were doing. “They know better than to go after me, or they would’ve done it by now.”
“Maybe they would have except for Wayde,” he said. “He’s a lot better at this than you give him credit for. You need to get off his case.”
“I know. I apologized,” I said, and he made a satisfied noise.
“You need to stay away from Ivy, too, Mr. Walkie-Talkie Man,” Jenks said suddenly.
My head came up to see Jenks standing, still on my knee, with his hands on his hips and staring at Nina. “Ah, Jenks?”
Nina slowly slouched until she was reclining against the counter again, her attention on the FIB as they began packing up their gear. On a man, her posture would have looked casual and attractive, but on Nina, it was untidy and at odds with her expensive pantsuit. “I know. I apologized,” she said, mimicking me to sound mocking.
“I know your type,” Jenks said, unconvinced. “You see something, and you want to know if you can eat it. You’re worse than my youngest daughter. Stay away from Ivy or I’ll find where you sleep and send my gargoyle in to carve out your heart.”
“I’m staying away from Ivy,” she said flatly, and Jenks hummed his wings.
“Good. See that you do.”
“Oh, thank God,” I whispered as Glenn started our way, and Jenks took to the air when I dropped my feet back over the edge of the counter. “Maybe I’ll get out of here before the sun sets.”
“Agreed,” Nina said sourly, standing to tug her cuffs down. “I have things to do tonight.”
I didn’t want to know. Really. The FIB personnel were starting to leave, dipping under the yellow tape and talking loudly in the hall as they made their way back to the elevator. Glenn was taking off a pair of blue plastic gloves as he approached, cataloging my weary acceptance and Nina’s bored apathy as he shoved them in a back pocket. “Thanks for staying out of the way,” he said as he halted before me, and I winced.
“No problem.”
“The room is remarkably clean,” he said, ignoring my sarcasm. “No fibers, no small particles. Nothing. They wiped it down, meaning they knew we’d find it.”
“It’s unusual for serial killers to move like that,” Nina said, and Glenn shrugged.
“The stain in the corner is coolant from the machine they moved. Jenks told you about the ductwork?”
I nodded. “Cleaned out. He told me the computers were wiped, too. It might be nice to know what programs were on them. And the ones that were stolen.”
“Already have a call in to the university,” Glenn said.
Ivy had finished with the lab guys, and Glenn shifted to make room for her before he could possibly have heard her coming. Nina made a small noise as she noted it. “There was a lot of fear here,” Ivy said as she scuffed to a stop. “I’m not registered to do a court-rated moulage, but you can tell what’s coming from the cabin and what isn’t, and there’s a lot to be accounted for.”
Nina closed her eyes and breathed deep. “I taste it, too,” she said, and I shivered when her eyes opened, black as sin. “Perhaps that was why they chose to be here. Someone passing in the hall wouldn’t be as likely to notice. My God, it smells good.”
Camping here because of the cabin’s moulage was a good theory, but I was betting the computers they took were the real reason.
Ivy’s attention flicked to Nina, worry pinching her brow as the dead vampire struggled to bring Nina back under control. As I watched, Ivy suddenly frowned and turned away, as if refusing to acknowledge the incident. Ivy had a tremendous—and usually hidden—need to nurture, and I knew the risk that the master was putting Nina through was bothering her.
“So,” I said as I slid from the counter in an effort to put more space between me and Nina, quietly vamping out. It was a longer drop than I had counted on, and my ankles, stiff from the cold, hurt. “You ready to let me move around, Glenn? I’ve been waiting hours.”
Jenks laughed, and the tension eased even more. “Face it, Rache,” he said, slipping gold dust as he warmed up. “You and crime scenes don’t mix. You should have seen the mess she made of one last year.”
“Which one was that?” Ivy dropped back a few steps to make room for me, worry for Nina showing in her slow movements. “Getting her fingerprints on the sticky silk at Kisten’s boat, or touching things at the house with the banshees?”
“Hey! I’m being good,” I said, not as upset about the ribbing as I thought I’d be. Must have been the cocoa —or that the laughter at my expense was giving Nina’s master something to hook his control on to and calm her down. “I’m sitting here waiting my turn until everyone else gets what they want. And if you remember,
Recognizing my mood and knowing its source, Glenn tapped his clipboard against his palm. “We’re almost done, yes.”
“Then you want to know what the amulet pinged on?” I said as I pulled it from underneath my shirt. “I do.”
Jenks’s wings hummed in anticipation as he moved to my shoulder where he could watch better, but Glenn looked betrayed. “You mean—”
Nina put a hand on my other shoulder, and I stiffened. “There’s more, yes,” she said, her voice low, rich, and rolling with her master’s accent. Jenks had taken off when I shuddered, and I slipped out from under Nina’s grip.
“No touching,” I said, glaring at her. “Okay? Them’s the rules.”
Ivy, too, wasn’t happy, and Jenks was nearly beside himself, sifting a bright red dust as he hovered with his hands on his hips. Nina ignored them both, hands behind her back. “Rachel, you’ve developed your timing to the point of exquisite delayed gratification,” she said. “Use your amulet. I’m dying to know what drew us here.”
“You mean it wasn’t the ambient residual evidence?” Glenn said, and I filed that away for future use. Ambient residual evidence. Nice.
“No.” I frowned as I pointed at the patch of new concrete behind him. “I’ve got a bad feeling about that.”
“That what?” Jenks asked as I went to stand over it, watching the amulet more than my feet clinging damply to my garden shoes.
