With no way to immediately steer the conversation back to Hunter and his dating proclivities, I let Janet lead me through a maze of cardboard boxes.
“This is our stock area. Basically we’re supposed to unpack, sticker, and shelve all items back here until they can be moved out front.”
“Exciting,” I deadpanned. I was surrounded by towering shelves of crap.
Janet smiled in understanding. “Everyone starts out in here. It’s not all bad, though there is a solitary confinement feel to it. But it gives you a chance to know the inventory, the pricing-and believe me, you’ll know it down to the last cent-before you get onto the floor. Besides, you can listen to some tunes if the radio is getting reception.” She hit an old boom box on its side, and the tinny voice of early Madonna piped out at me, overlaid with static.
Screw Olivia. I was out of here.
“Here’s where we stash our purses and totes.” Janet opened a closet doubling as cleaning supply storage, and cleared some space on the floor with her foot. “You’re supposed to have a clear plastic purse so security can see we’re not stealing anything from the hotel. The Balenciaga will have to go.”
She gave a wistful little sigh as I dropped the bag onto the concrete next to the Windex, and so did I. The animist’s mask was still cradled in the bottom of it, and a clear plastic purse would raise questions about such unusual items, though Regan had relieved me of the burden of hiding my conduit. I’d taken to using an ankle strap to carry a few edged weapons beneath my uniform. They wouldn’t kill an agent, but used right they could slow one down. So there was an upside to wearing this much shapeless polyester. Yay.
“So maybe that’s why the security guard won’t date employees,” I said, angling under the pretense of a little girly gossip. “He knows all the secrets we carry around with us in our little bags.”
“It’s more like he doesn’t want to mix business and pleasure,” she replied, before a knowing glint entered her gaze. “Or business and business, in his case.”
I raised my brows. “What do you mean?”
“It turns out our illustrious head of security has an interesting little hobby on his off-time,” she said, and swung open a top cabinet containing office supplies…and Hunter’s ad for adult entertainment taped to the door.
“That’s, uh…” Not good. “Interesting.”
Janet leaned against the wall, a dreamy smile playing on her lips as she ran a finger along the image of Hunter’s bare torso. “It’s Valhalla’s open little secret…at least among the women. God knows what would happen if it got out among the suits.” She straightened, looking stricken, as if I’d elbowed her in the gut. “You’re not going to tell your father, are you? Oh geez, if I’d have-”
“Of course not. Relax.” I angled my gaze back at the shirtless photo like I hadn’t seen the real thing only a couple of evenings before. “Anyone ever try calling that number?”
“Anyone? Practically everyone. You have to leave your personal information-name, address, phone-on a machine and he’ll call back after he’s checked on it, on you, and everyone you know. A Valhalla employee has never gotten through, though I know of a couple friends of friends who did. They were all dark-haired and -skinned, though. He seems to have a type.”
She looked at me apologetically, but I was secretly agreeing with her. He probably did prefer a certain type, though not for any reason Janet might entertain. If Hunter was only looking for a specific physical template, chances were he was also seeking a specific person. It was a she, it was someone who was involved in some way with escorts-my guess was a Shadow agent, targeting them-and, for some reason, she was important enough to have him creating an elaborate and very public persona that put his job at Valhalla at risk. Meanwhile, he was hiding it all from Warren.
So was this really why Hunter hadn’t wanted me working at Valhalla? Was he afraid I’d come closer to discovering what he was doing, and why?
After a brief run-down of the inventory, Janet left me alone with a bar code reader and went back out front to help with the registers. I spent a mind-numbing twenty minutes scanning codes on the bottom of Venetian-style masks-big sellers back in the Viking age, I guess-before boredom forced me to practice my fight stances in the door mirror at the back of the room. Pretending it was my lost conduit, I whipped the scanner from my cleavage, my hip, from behind my neck, and I was practicing spinning to nail two attackers in quick succession when I heard a hushed but distinct “Psst…Archer.”
I whirled, and the laser of the bar code reader landed square between the eyes of a five-foot human being, those eyes widening before he ducked. It took me a moment to recognize Kade; seeing him outside the hallowed halls of Master Comics was disconcerting. Stripped of context the visual no longer made sense. But, I thought, as Dylan popped up behind him, seeing the two of them together brought everything back into mental focus.
“What the hell are you doing here?” I straightened, running a hand over my hair, aware I was blushing.
“The Shadow Cancer was just at the shop.”
“Regan?”
“No, the other Shadow Cancer,” Dylan lisped, and ducked back behind Kade when I glared. “We tried to call you like Douglas calls her but you weren’t answering.”
I didn’t tell them I’d been at the state prison. They’d read about it in the manuals soon enough. Maybe. “So what did she want?”
Dylan peered around Kade’s shoulder again, and when he saw I wasn’t going to zap him with the bar code gun, shrugged. “She picked up a manual from Dougie, flipped through it while he whispered in her ear, then ran out of there like her house was on fire.”
Mind racing, I thought back over the events of the last few weeks. It was probably the manual that showed me trailing her after I’d discovered how she’d targeted Ben. I’d planted bugs in the townhouse belonging to “Rose” too. Dammit. One less resource at my disposal.
“Any idea what was in it?” Kade asked, when he saw my short nod.
“Some.” I wondered briefly if I could get Zane to let me in the store after hours to see what the latest Shadow manual said, but decided it was probably against the rules.
“Who are you talking to?”
Panicked, I motioned for the boys to disappear. They ducked back behind a stack of boxes containing Valhalla waist packs, and I skirted to the opposite side of the room, making sure Ginny could hear me. She did, and came marching that way.
“Nothing. No one,” I said brightly, propping the scanner up in one hand.
Ginny looked around suspiciously. “I thought I heard voices.”
“I think the radio is getting interference from the security tower. There was something about a guy passed out naked on the fifty-fifth floor. I thought that was kinda a weird thing for the DJ to say.”
Ginny gave me the zombie stare. “All right. Well, we need these coffee cups dusted off and brought onto the floor. The shelf out front is starting to look spotty.”
Oh, tragedy. “Sure. I’ll be right there.”
She looked at me a moment longer as if expecting me to stand on my head for her, and I stared back blandly as if expecting the same. After she finally disappeared, I let my expression fall and spun. “You guys are going to get me fired my first day on the job.”
“I don’t think she likes you,” Kade said, stepping out from behind the boxes. “When you’re as attuned to visual charges as we are, you can tell something like that. Her aura’s all muddled when she looks at you.”
“You guys can see a person’s aura?” I asked, drawing back when they both nodded. I hadn’t known that.
“Why you working in this dump anyway?” Dylan piped up, twirling a pewter thimble on his middle finger. “Next time she gets all tyrannical on your ass-”
“With that jacked-up aura-”
“You should say, ‘Fuck you, lady!’” He waved his fist in the air, pointing at the shop door. The thimble went clattering to the floor.
Kade did the same. “Yeah, fuck you in the ear!”
“Hold it down!” I hissed, throwing a worried glance over my shoulder. “Better yet, get out.”
“But we have more to tell you.”
I sighed and rolled my eyes. Of course they did. “And you couldn’t text me like any other tweener geek?”
Kade ignored that, his expression so serious it looked misplaced on a face still rounded with baby fat. “You haven’t suddenly lost the ability to imagine plate-glass windows into existence, have you?”
