Dark Debt

“And you’re pulling it off,” I said. “We’ll be heading to Reed’s within the hour, so I wanted to check in. Any word about Balthasar?”

“No,” Luc said, “but the door’s good and warded. He won’t be able to get in or out.”

“How’d they link it to him?” I wondered.

“Used a piece of wood from the office bookshelves. Residual magic, apparently. You know Mallory’s into forensic magic?”

I nodded. “Yeah. How are the Novitiates taking her involvement?”

“There are grumbles, of course. Concerns about trustworthiness. But considering those are matched against concerns about Balthasar, most are chill.”

“Where’s he staying?”

“Condo on Michigan near Grant Park. We aren’t sure which unit—we didn’t follow him in past the lobby. We’re looking through real-estate records to confirm the owner, and we’ll keep eyes on him twenty-four-seven.”

“What about his backstory?”

Luc leaned forward, tapped the touch screen built into the tabletop, and an image flashed onto the large wall screen behind us—a spreadsheet marked by black and green boxes.

“That’s impressive,” I said. “What is it?”

This time, Luc tapped a button on the conference phone.

“Yo,” said a familiar voice after a moment.

Luc smiled. “Jeff, Merit likes your spreadsheet.”

Jeff Christopher was a shape-shifting white tiger in the body of a lanky computer genius and, along with Catcher, one of my grandfather’s employees.

“My spreadsheets bring all the girls to the yard. Hi, Merit.”

“Hi, Jeff.” I glanced at Luc with amusement. “You’re giving orders to the Ombuddies now?”

“Requesting their assistance in our time of great need,” Luc corrected, bringing his hands together prayerfully.

“Being bossy,” Lindsey corrected with a grin, rolling back to her computer station at Luc’s arch look.

It occurred to me that over the course of the last year, we’d become a strange and wonderful team. The Ombuddies, Cadogan House, the sorcerers, with occasional help from other supernaturals. Most of them friendly, all of them with unique strengths that contributed to a pretty weird, but wonderful, whole.

“I’m short on time tonight,” I told the team members, “so tell me about whatever this is.”

“So,” Jeff began, and I could practically hear the smile in his voice, “we’ve begun the fact-checking process. Given the importance, we decided to be systematic about it, so we created this timeline.”

“Green entries are verified,” Luc said. “Black entries need to be. Red entries, if there were any, would be falsies. No falsies yet.”

I nodded, gestured to the green entries. “What have you verified so far?”

Luc gestured to the beginning of the timeline. “We’ve started with Persephone’s death, and Balthasar’s not-quite death and capture by the Memento Mori. There was definitely cult activity in Spitalfields. In our particular case, men who wanted immortality and, ironically, didn’t care who they killed to get it.”

Luc switched the image on-screen to a small gold disc. MEMENTO MORI was engraved around a center skull. “It’s a signet ring,” he said, spinning the picture so the band was visible. “Each member got one.”

“Anything specifically about Balthasar being one of their captives?”

“Nothing we’ve been able to dig up so far,” Jeff said. “But the Librarian thinks he’s found some of the group’s research materials. They’re held by a private collector, but there’s a library in London that has microfiche of the pages. Some of them are online.”

The Librarian was Cadogan’s aptly nicknamed research and book specialist. He worked in the House’s extraordinary two-story library. I was green-eyed with envy for the job. Although ass-kicking definitely had its moments.

“The Librarian has reviewed some of them,” Jeff said, “and we’re working on getting copies of the entire archive. He’s found some general mentions of vampires, but no names.”

I glanced at Luc. “I’m surprised the GP didn’t jump on that—a cult torturing vampires.”

“I doubt this popped onto their radar,” Luc said. “This wasn’t a large-scale operation, but a cult in a very poor neighborhood.”

“We looked at Walford Abbey next,” Jeff continued. “Unfortunately, the building was destroyed in World War Two, and the monks have all died, so we’re still searching for records there. That’s as far as we’ve gotten tonight.”

“And we’ll let you get back to it,” Luc said, and we offered our good-byes to Jeff.

I glanced back at the spreadsheet, surveyed the data. “It might all match up,” I said. “He’d have known we’d check.”

“I’d be surprised if it doesn’t,” Luc said. “He’d have prepared.”

I looked back at Luc. “And for what, exactly? This isn’t a courtesy call.”

“No,” Luc agreed. “He’s got an agenda. And from his little display yesterday, you seem to be part of it.”

“Oh, good,” I said, smiling weakly.

“He’ll use you if he can. Hell, he’ll use any of us, I think, if he thinks it’ll hurt Ethan.”