Shadow Rites

It took a while, but Eli finally pulled a tiny device out of a stake sheath. He held it up to the light and it looked like part of child’s toy, a red and blue plasticized square. “That was a good plant,” he said. “A good location, and I didn’t even notice the insert.”

I, however, couldn’t find one on me at all. We turned and retraced our steps to the front, and on the way, I stopped and picked it up. Eli frowned, a slight downward hitch of his lips, before his face relaxed. He said, “She slipped it into your knife retrieval pocket and it went straight through.”

“Yep.” Back at the entrance, Wrassler stood to the side, his hands loose and ready, as if to draw a weapon. Losing a limb could make one hyperalert. “Wrassler’s insert was excellent,” I said. “I’m wearing slacks with false pockets and it went straight through.”

The little blonde grimaced. Well, she wasn’t little. She stood five-seven, but that was several inches under my six feet, so she was little to me. Her name was Brenda Rezk and she had been number three in security in Atlanta back when. So far, here, she was feeling frustrated and tentative. It was hard to move in an apparent downward direction in anything, but she was better than she was feeling right now, and if she kept up the progress, when she went back to Atlanta, she would end up higher than number three in the clan home of the new Master of the City of Atlanta.

“Where should I put it, then?” Brenda asked Wrassler. “Jane doesn’t have anything else on the outside, and I had no reason to feel inside her jacket to the inner pocket when I could do that from the outside.”

“You were doing a pat-down,” Wrassler said. “You should have squeezed the fabric of her jacket lapels, and dropped it in whichever pocket was empty.” Wrassler motioned me against the wall, and I leaned in again, hands high. He patted me down, much less hesitantly than Brenda had, and when I stepped away from the wall, he turned me to face him and ran the jacket front between his hands, first one side and then the other, holding them each out to inspect for weapons holstered beneath each arm. He nodded to me and smoothed the shoulders of my jacket, the way a tailor might, which was intended to center my mind on my shoulders, not my jacket, leaving me that impression. Shoulders. Not jacket. “Thank you, ma’am,” he said to me. “I appreciate your kindness in letting me ensure the safety of everyone who enters the council chambers. Do you need a guide to tonight’s festivities?”

Festivities. Right. Wrassler was demonstrating the whole thing, which was probably a good idea. “No, thank you. I can find my way.”

“Enjoy your stay. And if you need anything, you’ll find house phones on each floor near the elevator, and in your rooms.”

I leaned around Wrassler, to Brenda and Eli. “Which pocket?”

“I couldn’t spot a thing,” Brenda said.

“Right,” Eli said. He had a fifty percent chance of being right. And he was.

“Good guess,” I said.

“Not a guess. Wrassler’s got a weak hand from the injury. He’ll always use his strong hand to insert the tracker.”

“Huh,” Wrassler said. “He’s right. And we have to assume that the European Vamps have intel on everything inside.” He looked at Brenda. “Practice. You’re in charge of teaching lefties and righties to be ambidextrous when inserting the trackers. You’ll also run the detail handling the searches when the EVs get here.”

A fleeting smile crossed Brenda’s face, and her shoulders went back slightly. “Thank you, sir.”

I dug inside my breast pocket and found the tracker, dropping it in the tracker can. Eli and I made our way down the elevator to the gym. When the doors closed, Eli said, “EVs. Bad influence, babe.”

“Yeeeah.” I drew out the word. “I heard that.” Once upon a time, everyone at HQ had used full names for everything and everyone. Since I got here, it was acronyms, nicknames, and a bit more snark than most vamps were accustomed to. “I’ll address it at some point.”

Negotiations for the visit were still ongoing, and slower than frozen molasses. I hoped they’d last another six months, because we weren’t ready to deal with the amount of magic and bad attitude the EVs would bring. Fortunately, with the EVs, any kind of negotiation took an agonizing amount of time because they didn’t accept or use or probably even know about the existence of e-mail, texting, or FaceTime. Their lack of electronic sophistication wasn’t something I had known going into this gig. I had expected the Visitation by Evil to take place right away, but when you live centuries, and even millennia, preparations for anything can last a long time. Time itself has no meaning when you are that old. And electronic media was something trashy done by the nouveau riche—or the nouveau fanged—and their blood-servants. For communications, they preferred and insisted upon heavy bond or handmade paper, or maybe papyrus, hand-delivered. It was ridiculous. But unless they thought they could get the upper hand by making a surprise visit, their whole stuck-in-the-past attitude was working to our advantage.

The elevator opened and I stepped out, leading the way to the gym. Eli stopped at the men’s locker room and came back out with a sword belted at his waist. “Seriously?” I said. Instead of a reply he drew the sword and shoved open the door to the gym, preceding me inside. “Men . . .” He was taking this whole “being my second” a little too seriously, though it was a position he had been forced to undertake on more than one occasion.