“You will regret this,” Bryson said as Nathaniel hauled him to his feet.
“I don’t think so,” I said. “I know that you’re under orders, and you think you can’t defy the Agency. So I’m not going to hurt you. But I can’t let you report back to Sokolov, either.”
His eyes burned as Nathaniel and Jude dragged him in the house, and I knew that I had made yet another enemy.
15
“HOW LONG ARE YOU GOING TO KEEP HIM HERE?” J.B. asked. “Sooner or later someone from the Agency will come looking for him.”
“Just until the morning,” I said. “That will give us time to search Chloe’s apartment.”
“And what then?” Jude asked.
“We’ll kick Bryson loose, and he’ll have to go back to Sokolov and say that he failed. But they’ll have no proof that I did anything wrong,” I said.
“What if we have to go into the Forbidden Lands?” J.B. said.
“If Bryson really wants to follow us into the Forbidden Lands, then he’s welcome to it. But I don’t think he’d be able to. We’d probably have to go through a portal, and we could easily prevent him from entering. So again, no proof that we’re doing anything wrong.”
“I don’t know,” J.B. said. “Somehow I don’t think Bryson or Sokolov are going to take this well.”
“I can’t worry about Bryson’s feelings,” I said. “Or Sokolov’s, for that matter. They’re the ones who came after me. I can either roll over and let them have their way, or I can defy them and save the missing Agents.”
J.B. scrubbed his hands through his hair, always a sign that he was under stress. “I know. But the fallout…”
“Will be what it will be. You knew that when you asked me to come downtown and see that massacre. You knew that I would go after Azazel.”
“But that was before the Agency sent one of their goons to threaten you,” J.B. said. “The stakes are higher now.”
“I’m not leaving Chloe, or any of the others, to Azazel,” I said steadily. “Bryson’s out of the picture for now. Let’s work the problem a step at a time.”
“Is this how you get through the day?” J.B. asked. “By only looking at what’s directly in front of you?”
“Since my typical day involves conspiracies of the fallen, Agency and faerie nature, regular attempts on my life and a cascade of shocking revelations, yes. If I tried to take in the big picture, I’d probably lose my mind.”
“So what are we doing now, then?” Beezle asked. He still sat on the railing of the porch. I’d forgotten he was even outside.
“You go inside and help Samiel and Nathaniel,” I said. “Me, Jude and J.B. will go to Chloe’s.”
“I’m not a guard dog,” Beezle sniffed.
“You know, your job description includes the words ‘home guardian.’”
“That’s not guarding the home. That’s guarding some guy who knows two thousand ways to kill me with a toothpick.”
“Look, I want you to do what you do best,” I said.
“Make nachos?” Beezle said hopefully.
“No. I want you to badger and annoy Bryson until he gives up information on Sokolov’s plans for me.”
“That’s diabolical,” Jude said. “I thought you said you weren’t going to torture him.”
Beezle gave Jude a dirty look. “What makes you think he’ll crack?”
“I know you,” I said.
Beezle flexed his claws. “Fine. But I want compensation.”
“In the form of some trans-fat-laden pastry, no doubt,” I said as Beezle flew back inside.
“Where does Chloe live?” I asked J.B.
“Not far from here, actually,” he said. “Near Belmont and Paulina.”
“By the frozen custard place?” I asked.
“No, closer to the library,” he said, giving me a funny look.
“What? Beezle likes custard,” I said. “I can’t help it if my mental map of the city has all the sweets shops as landmarks.”
We decided to walk since Jude couldn’t fly and it wasn’t worth the effort to carry him there. He changed into wolf form so that we would look like a couple walking their dog late at night.
“We should have a leash or something, though,” I said.
Jude growled at me.
“Okay, okay. I was just trying to complete the illusion. Stay close to us so nobody gives us a hard time.”
“I don’t think that’s going to be a problem,” J.B. said. “Most normal people aren’t out and walking about on a night like this.”
Chloe’s apartment was about a ten- or fifteen-minute walk from mine. There was very little traffic on the street, and we saw no pedestrians from my house to hers. Most homes were darkened, their residents already tucked in bed for the night. I thought longingly of my own bed, but hard on the heels of that thought came the memory of Puck disguised as Gabriel.
Maybe I would sleep on the couch for a while and give Jude my room.
Chloe’s apartment was on Melrose in a white-siding two-flat not much different from my own. We walked up the porch and peered at the names on the mailboxes. Chloe was on the first floor, which was handy.
“I’ll go in through the wall and come out to let you two in,” I told Jude and J.B.
They nodded, and I laid my hand on the exterior door.
“I am the Hound of the Hunt, and no walls can bind me,” I said softly.
My hand slipped through the door like water, and the rest of me followed with it. I turned around and let the other two into the foyer, and then repeated the process on Chloe’s door.
A few moments later we were inside. I flipped on the light switch that was near the front door.
The place was trashed.
The apartment was an open studio with a small galley kitchen at the far end and a little corner reserved for a bathroom.
There were clothes everywhere, papers scattered willy-nilly and an open futon covered in tools and bits of metal. Her storage system seemed to consist of cardboard boxes and old milk crates, and they were used for everything from underwear to books. The sink was piled high with dirty dishes, and I think there was mold growing on the coffeemaker.
“Has someone been here before us, or does she live like this?” I said, horrified.
“You’ve never seen her cubicle, have you?” J.B. said. “This is actually somewhat organized for Chloe.”
Dismayed, I looked at all the paper all over the floor. “You don’t think she took the sheets out of Azazel’s binder, do you?”
Jude, who had been sniffing around the room, gave a short bark. He stood near a small, two-person card table that Chloe had shoved under a window.
Azazel’s binder rested on one of the chairs. I opened it up and found it empty.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said, scanning the mess on the floor. “We have to go through all this junk.”
J.B. sighed. “It’s you, right? Nothing can ever be easy.”
We spent the next hour or so on our hands and knees, crawling around collecting pieces of paper and sorting them into two piles—“Azazel” and “not Azazel.”
After a final walk-through we were pretty sure we’d gotten all of the documents. I’d noticed as we were collecting them that Chloe had made oblique notes on several of the pages in purple marker.
I shoved the papers back through the rings of the binder and shut it. “Let’s bring this home and look it over. I can’t take the smell of this place anymore. Hasn’t she ever heard of disinfectant?”