Well, this was an interesting development. I thought about some of the places bodies had been found, dredging my memory for names of unfamiliar streets.
“Do you guys know anything else about him? Where we can find him? We were going to check out some place off of Magnolia in Burbank next—”
Devon shook his head and gestured for Sara and me to take seats. Though I didn’t want to offend the White Hats, we didn’t have enough time to hang around and play nice. Not unless I ran out to tell Trinity to wait for us a little longer. I didn’t like the idea of annoying her, so maybe we’d come back here some other night—without our vampiric babysitter.
“You’re not going to find him there,” Devon said. “I can see you guys don’t have much time to talk. The short story is that he’s not from around here. He showed up in the last week or so, and zombies have been sighted all over LA County. We’re pretty sure he’s been storing them in the Angeles Crest, but it’s impossible to say for sure. The guy comes and goes seemingly at random. We’ve run into him a couple of times when we were out looking for particular targets at known vampire haunts. I’d call it luck that we happened to see him at all, but it’s not going to do you much good.”
“Why’s that?”
One of the other White Hats responded, leaning forward as he toyed with the safety on his gun. “He’s one of those magi who can fade. Looks like most any other guy on the street, and you forget what he looks like as soon as you walk away. The harder you try to recall the details, the faster they slip away.”
“Yeah, we’ve all seen him at least once, and none of us can agree on a solid description,” one of the others chipped in.
“We just know he’s a guy who’s sometimes surrounded by zombies. Aside from that? Can’t tell you much. We can’t decide if he has dark skin or pale, what color his hair is—nothing.”
Fading. That was a new term to me, but I could see where it could come in handy for a mage. Must be some kind of defensive mechanism some of them had developed to blend in. Considering what type of magic this guy did, it made a whole lot of sense for him to use some sort of passive forgetting spell that made peoples’ memories of him fade like that. Too bad it would fall under the category of black enchant, since it directly messed with an unwilling subject’s mind, and was therefore even more illegal than raising the zombies.
At least we knew we were looking for a man. That narrowed it down, if only by roughly fifty percent of the population of greater Los Angeles. Sigh.
The charm I was wearing might assist me in spotting and remembering the mage if we ran into him, but unless Arnold gave her something to counter that kind of magic, Sara wouldn’t know if she was looking at him. Even if she did, later on she wouldn’t know which guy I was talking about. This would be a heck of a manhunt.
Biting back a frustrated growl, I turned to Devon. “I do want to catch up with you, but our ride is waiting outside, and I don’t want her to come in with guns blazing. Can we meet up later? I’d like to talk and maybe see if I can help you remember some details about this mage.”
If Devon was disappointed, he hid it well. His smile was sweet and sincere, and he reached out to give my shoulder another squeeze, which this time felt more intimate than a simple expression of platonic friendship thanks to the way his thumb brushed over my collarbone.
I gathered the twinkle in his eye was from the knowledge that his touch was making me blush.
“Yeah. Seeing as you’re in town, we’ll have to make some time to get together.”
Coulda-woulda-shoulda’s rang dim alarm bells in the back of my head. The hunter had previously expressed some interest in seeing me as more than a friend. Since I was technically seeing Royce now, it wouldn’t be kosher to lead Devon on.
Luckily, I was saved from having to say something awkward about my love life in this room full of staring, judgmental hunters by Tiny’s booming voice. “Yes, we will. Let me give you a number. . . . Hold on. . . . Here.” He thrust a scrap of paper with a phone number scrawled on it at me. “Call us when you’re ready to get together.”
“We will,” Sara promised, me nodding as she pushed me toward the door. “Thank you for your help!”
“Yes, thanks!”
“Anytime,” Devon said, watching us go with hooded eyes.
Chapter 11
Trinity didn’t say anything until Sara and I were both back in the car. She glanced at us in the rearview, the reflection of red in her eyes hinting at her agitation with something—maybe us? Or was it the proximity of the White Hat hideout?
“Good to see you’re still alive. Were the White Hats not home, or did you get what you came for? ”
“We got what we needed,” Sara said, her tone carefully neutral.
Trinity turned her attention ahead, the glitter of crimson no longer visible from my angle in the backseat. “That’s good. I’m sure Clyde will be thrilled to hear all about it.” The not-so-veiled threat in what she didn’t say made me glad we’d cut things short with Devon and Tiny. If Sara and I had hung around much longer, Trinity or Clyde might have grown suspicious that we were plotting against him. “What’s next on your agenda, hmm?”
“Can you take us to any of the places where these attacks took place?” I asked.
“You sure that’s what you want? They’ve all been cleaned up, so you won’t see much.”
“Yeah. You never know. You guys might have missed something.”
Trinity made a derisive sound in her throat and started the car. “I sincerely doubt that, but if that’s what you want, then that’s where we’ll go. Did you have a particular destination in mind?”
Sara and I looked at each other, then simultaneously shrugged, never mind that Trinity couldn’t see it. “How about the one in Sun Valley? That’s close to here, isn’t it?”
She made another sound, this time more like a choked laugh. “Interesting choice. Buckle your seat belts. It won’t take long to get there.”
Though she was right, the area seemed to go from bad to still bad to oh-God-where’s-my-pepper-spray territory. Graffiti was sprayed on a number of the walls, shards of broken beer bottles scattered on the blacktop of empty parking lots shone with the glitter of fallen stars, and most of the windows on the houses and apartments were protected by iron bars—in some cases, even on the second and third floors.
When Trinity stopped at the side of the road in front of a 24-hour Laundromat, for a long moment, I wasn’t sure why. Then she tilted her head to look at us, her braid sliding across the slick leather of the seat.
“Well? What are you waiting for? I don’t want to be here all night. Go take a look. It happened over there.”
I took a look where she was pointing. There was a sign for a . . . carnicería? Whatever that was. Judging by the signs in the window, it must have been the Spanish term for a deli or butcher shop.
It felt like Trinity’s eyes were boring holes in my back as I slid out of the car and started walking toward the shop. I was sure she must have known how uncomfortable she was making me, but she was staying in the car and out of our way. That would have to be enough.
Sara came around until she was beside me, the two of us moving in tandem as we approached the shop. The hours posted in the window said it should have been open now, but the lights were off and a “Closed” sign was visible behind the streaks on the glass front door. Though I hadn’t made any special effort to breathe through my nose, the scent of dead things—worse than old, congealed blood, much worse—instantly coated my throat and tongue.
Sara stopped as I did, her brow wrinkling with concern. “You okay?”