“Wait a minute. You went to see the owner of this company without telling me first?”
“Well, yeah.”
“Cheyenne, I don’t have to explain to you how delicate we have to be with all of this. If you’re running around blasting in front doors and asking questions that are likely to expose all of us then—”
“Jesus, stop talking and let me finish.” Cheyenne stood from the recliner and put the call on speaker, not wanting his voice that close against her ear. When he didn’t say anything else, she took it as the go-ahead. “We haven’t been running all over town, okay? This guy just happens to live in our apartment building.”
There was a loud click, and the line went dead.
Ember stared at the phone. “Did he just hang up on you?”
Cheyenne clicked her tongue in annoyance. “Yep. Without listening to anything I had to say.”
“Is everything okay over here?” Ember yelped and jumped in her chair when an oval of shimmering light burst into existence three feet in front of her.
Corian stormed out of his portal, sidestepped quickly to avoid the fae girl’s wheelchair, and headed for the front door. “Tell me where he is.”
“Hold on.” Cheyenne tossed her phone onto the recliner and took off after him. “Corian, wait.”
“I am. I’m waiting for you to tell me where this sonofabitch is so I can wring every drop of information out of him before I wring his neck. What’s his name?”
“No!” Ember wheeled quickly toward them, the violet light beneath her wheels lifting the whole chair enough to give her an extra boost of speed toward the front door. “You don’t get to pop into the middle of our apartment like that to go storming after someone.”
Corian spun around and raised an eyebrow, pointing at her with a hand tufted with light-brown fur. “I strongly suggest you don’t let your new role as Cheyenne’s Nós Aní go to your head. It’s been eight hours.”
“This has nothing to do with that.” Ember gestured at Cheyenne. “You didn’t bother to listen to her. And unless you’re showing up like this to stop an attack, you seriously need to give us some warning.”
The nightstalker turned his silver gaze on Cheyenne. “Sounds like you’re starting to rub off on her, kid.”
The halfling shrugged. “It works both ways. Not a bad thing.”
“No.” Corian nodded. “Tell me then.”
“I’m not telling you where he lives. Not right now.”
“I meant the information he gave you.”
“Right.” Cheyenne glanced at her phone in the recliner. “He gave me a name, two addresses registered under that name, a history of their in-person meetings, and a catalog of the services and various programs this Syno guy has been purchasing from him for a long time.”
“How long?”
“I don’t know. A couple of years.”
Corian’s nostrils flared. “Why don’t I have this information right now?”
“You know what? You’d have it by now if you weren’t jumping to conclusions and you took a minute to listen to me. I was about to text it to you but figured I’d call to explain first.”
The nightstalker’s lips twitched into a barely perceptible smile, one pointy tufted ear flicking against his light hair. “This sounds familiar, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah, I get it. I used to be the one jumping to conclusions before I got all the information. Now we understand each other.” Cheyenne went back to the chair and snatched up her phone to forward the text to him. “And now you have all the information.”
“Does that include this company owner’s apartment number?”
“That’s not important,” Ember said. “If we have to go back and talk to him, we will. But you should take your team and go look for this Syno first. If this information is good, you’ll probably find one of their control centers.”
Raising an eyebrow at Cheyenne, Corian clasped his hands behind his back. “If the information’s good?”
She shrugged. “We’re trying to take his word for it, okay?”
“I sincerely hope you made it perfectly clear what will happen if we find out he’s jerking us around.”
“Hmm, I don’t know. Ember? Do you think we made that clear?”
The fae girl pretended to consider the idea. “Yeah, I’d say he’s well aware.”
“Good. I’ll hold you to that. Both of you.” Corian swung his finger from Cheyenne to Ember and dipped his chin. “We’d better not end up on another wild goose chase.”
“We get it.” Cheyenne gestured at the open space on the other side of the coffee table where he’d portaled himself into their apartment. “Go check it out. Unless you want us to come too?”
“No, you two should stay in tonight. Let the rest of the ceremony settle in. It has the potential for side effects.”
Ember rolled her eyes. “Are you serious?”
Corian peered over the back of the couch at the scattered pages of Maleshi’s spellbook. “Who’s been working on spells?”
Cheyenne snorted. “Please. Like you don’t know the answer to that.”
Looking back over his shoulder, the nightstalker gave Ember a small, appraising smile. “How’s it going?”
She folded her arms. “Better than Cheyenne, at least.”
“That doesn’t tell me anything.”
“Okay, very funny.” Cheyenne sank back into the recliner and crossed one leg over the other. “She’s a natural. Created a tiny rainstorm over our chair.” She gestured at the wet pool in the cushion of the other recliner. “And set up an alarm around the apartment.”
“Really?” Corian dipped his head toward Ember. “I’m impressed.”
“Thanks. It only works with other people in the hall, so maybe I should start working on something that’ll go off right before nightstalker portals pop out of thin air.”
“Maybe add a little warning shock too,” Cheyenne added.
Corian ignored them both and stared intently at their front door. “I’m curious as to why you’d want an alarm to sound for someone out in the hall. Aren’t there only two apartments up here?”
“Yep.”
Ember looked quickly at Cheyenne. “We used it for the pizza guy.”
When Corian gave the halfling a questioning glance, she gestured
