Chapter Three #2
Although the Toyota was like thousands on the street, the windows were totally dark, the exact same shade as the car’s paint job.
It had a small dent in the back rear panel on the driver’s side.
EJ was pretty sure the same car had gone past the tea shop while he chatted with Londyn.
He gathered himself, planting his feet to move, watching for a car window to go down and a weapon to be aimed his way.
His voice revealing nothing of his hypothetical circumstances, he asked, “Was Ivyanna Holmes a social butterfly or was she working the room for something specific?”
“Watch and make up your own mind,” Alex said, his tone goading. “It’s your case.”
Without changing position EJ took a series of pics of the car with his unicom.
“Deserved,” EJ said. “We’ll watch.”
The car moved on. EJ memorized the tag number. Just in case he lost his unicom.
Suddenly sounding almost militarily precise, Alex said: “Dark Queen and Clan Yellowrock verbal contracts initiated. Alexander Younger, head of electronic security, speaking to Evan Trueblood Jr., godchild to Jane Yellowrock, a prince by decree to the Dark Queen of the vampires.”
As Alex spoke, EJ darted across the street, watching every reflective surface for anything or anyone out of place.
Horns honked. The Toyota stopped at the next light.
EJ passed the pizzeria and stepped into a narrow alley between a hotel and a weight-loss clinic selling magical amulets for appetite suppression.
Magical chimes sounded softly from within. The Toyota’s left blinker came on.
Alex gave the date and the time. “State your name and position for identification verification.”
Without losing sight of the Toyota, he said, “Evan Everhart-Trueblood, aka EJ, aka Junior, COO and CFO of Everhart Investigations Firm. Godchild to Jane Yellowrock, and member in good standing of Clan Yellowrock. Covenless witch, formerly of the Everhart-Trueblood witch clan. Named Prince of the Vampires by the Dark Queen.” He had been through this verbal rigmarole before. Alex was making something official.
“Evan Trueblood, you have previously signed the NDA issued by the Dark Queen of the vampires, and also the NDA from Clan Yellowrock. Is this correct.” It wasn’t a question; it was a statement.
“This is correct.”
“The Yellowrock Clan and the Dark Queen’s NDA applies to the following information and to all information pertaining to Ivyanna Holmes, including all electronic, audio, and printed information. Do you and your firm accept the conditions of nondisclosure?”
Damn, he thought. Alex was pushing this.
“Accepted,” EJ said, his voice as cold as Alex’s had become.
As he listened, he manually texted the license plate number and car pics into Ojos and ordered it to run the plate.
Into the Bigelow-Holmes file he added the text, Have seen 2X in the last 15 minutes. It was probably nothing. But…
“I’ve created a folder containing several case-specific files,” Alex continued.
“Within the hour, I’ll send it to Everhart Investigations Firm, under the subject line ‘IHolmes.’ You’ll find it contains at least four things: A doc with the names and short bios of every person attending the reception, including staff, numbered from one to three hundred twenty-nine.
A document listing the names of the people Holmes spoke with in timeline order, numbered from one-A to fifty-two-A, so you can track each of them easily, and the minutes she spent with each person.
A vid file containing every second of visual-light video we have of Ivyanna Holmes, which you can open on standard video software.
“Last, will be a computer-generated timeline schematic titled ‘IH Timeline,’ which will show the floor plan and where each person was during the reception at all times. Each guest will be identified by a dot, colored according to magical type or mundane, and each dot will have a number that corresponds to the number next to the guests’ names in the first document file.
Open the schematic under the Yellowrock Proprietary Software.
Do you accept these files under the auspices of the aforementioned NDAs? ”
“Accepted under the NDAs.”
“Do you accept the same nondisclosures for your sister Angelina Everhart-Trueblood?”
“I do.”
“Verbal NDAs off.”
“Good,” EJ said. Dealing with legalities between family and the queen and her clan was an annoying process, but with Angie’s precog in play, the legal protocols were another thing that could keep them all safe. EJ scanned the street again and backtracked, slipping into the pizza joint.
He inhaled the smell of sausage and pepperoni and spices. His mouth watered. Damn.
Alex’s voice had changed back to his normal laid-back style when he said, “Two times in fifteen minutes. Alabama plates. Interesting. Working on the tag number. You got people following you already? That has to be some kind of record. Initiate Pecan Protocol. I’ll be back to you soon.”
Into the dead connection, EJ said, “Son of a bitch. You are in our system.”
Alex laughed sourly into the supposedly dead connection.
The older woman behind the counter said, “I beg your pardon, young man.”
“Sorry, Nona Norina. Here to pick up one large Suprema with extra fixin’s.”
She blew out through her nose with a sound of disgust that morphed into amusement. “You must be trying to make your sister happy again, if you orderin’ so many extras and none a your vegetarian pizza.”
“If only making her happy were possible,” he said.
She snorted again. “Your sister. She’s a wild one.”
“Angie?” EJ asked, startled.
Alex said, “You have privacy. Until you don’t.” The call ended.
Pecan Protocol. Angie would be pissed.
“I hate going into my shell,” Angie said from her seat. “I had plans. I was meeting KeeKee at Kegs and Boots to suss out the place and see what people are saying about last night. Maybe dance a little.”
“Not unless Walter is available. And while I’d pay good money to see Walter on a dance floor under a disco ball, I’m sure he’s received the protocol too,” EJ said, not looking away from The Firm’s workroom wall screens, where videos of the queen’s reception played.
Ivyanna could be seen chatting with Uncle Bruiser, the Queen’s Consort, her gaze and hair flips flirty, barely falling within the bounds of royal decorum.
But her dress—something expensive, not off the rack—was perfectly fitted, proper attire for a royal soiree, though it did advertise her attributes. “Dress?” he asked.
“Dior,” Angie said. “Vintage, maybe a 2015.”
“Like always, when you go into Pecan Protocol,” he continued, “you’ll cancel going out, work down here until eight, and after that, you’ll go upstairs, where you’ll work on the math for the upgrade to the hedge working.
If the weather permits, you’ll go out to the roof and meditate and do yoga for forty-five minutes in the pitch dark.
Then back inside, where you’ll eat a bowl of yogurt with some fruit, and into bed because we’ll have the deglamour and facial rec from the DGFR programs before dawn, and you won’t be able to resist coming in early and seeing who Chancy really is.
“And really, Ange,” he said, dropping her name to one syllable, “you know you want to be here when Walter shows up with info from the bleed and read.”
Angie shot him a glare before returning her attention to the various screens. Mildly, she said, “You sound like an old man, not my much younger brother. Pretend harder that the war didn’t damage you. That, or talk about it. I’m always here.”
Outwardly, he ignored her comments, though she was right. The war had damaged something inside him. He felt old. He was old. And he could never tell her, or anyone (except a military therapist and they were useless), anything. For EJ, the war itself was classified.
His sister was curled in the workroom’s ratty upholstered wing-back chair, and had changed into woolen yoga pants and layers of shirts topped with a dark green C-MOCs sweatshirt from her college days at University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.
She didn’t seem traumatized from last night, which he found surprising.
Until the war, he’d looked up to his big sister, because she had saved his life more than once when they were kids, when enemies had found them.
But then, he became the soldier, the warrior in the Witch War. She had been safe at home.
“If you go out, that leaves me here all alone,” he said, shifting individual screens around with his fingertips to align properly on the board.
“I will be here to talk to Walter, to find out everything learned from the bleed and read of his prisoners, update our case-board, walk your dog, work until midnight, and maybe, at some point, go upstairs to the gym and practice with Walter for a bit. You? Will be left out.” He smiled a tiny gotcha grin.
Above The Firm were more levels, for a total of nine floors with the upper four floors leased out as apartments.
Angie had the second floor, EJ the third.
Walter, their royal fanghead security guard, had vamp-modified quarters on the fifth floor, the steel shutters paid for by God knew who, maintaining his sunlight-free apartment.
The fourth floor, between theirs and Walter’s, was the communal area with its own yoga studio, the martial arts practice room, a communal laundry, and a sitting area/kitchen/game room large enough for the renters to have parties if they wanted to pay the reservation fee and do cleanup, and a moderately luxurious multi-bathroom that had come with the building.
The fourth floor had once been a commercial gym and they hadn’t modified it much when they purchased the building. They sparred there. With Walter.