“And Ethan?”
“He won’t mind as much if you go with me.”
“I know when I’ve been beat. Where should I meet you?”
Since I was already on the south side, I gave him the address of the convenience store I’d pulled into to make my calls. “I’ve got to cover my bases. I’ll let you know as soon as it’s a go.”
“I’m leaving now,” he said, apparently convinced I’d get the okay.
I was glad Jeff was on my side. Now I had to make sure the rest of the pieces aligned.
• • •
That alignment took phone calls. Plural.
I called Luc, told him Mallory and Catcher had found Tate, and Jeff had agreed to go with me to see him.
Luc hung up, and while I blasted Moneypenny’s heat and sipped the soda I’d grabbed at the convenience store—heavy on the ice and cherry flavoring, ’cause I was in that kind of mood—I waited.
Ten minutes later, I got a call back. My stomach buzzed with nerves.
“It’s Malik,” said the temporary Master of the House.
“Liege,” I acknowledged, a word I’d gotten used to during Ethan’s demise.
“Visiting him is a risk.”
“It is. And so is waiting for Regan to strike again, risking the elves attacking, and pissing off the Keenes. I was in Dominic’s prison, Malik. I know what he was capable of. But Seth Tate is not Dominic. The man we saw after the split was a good man, an earnest man, and he meant to make amends for the things he’d done. He stayed at the House, for God’s sake.”
“Ethan authorized him to say at the House,” Malik quietly said, his tone making clear that he hadn’t agreed with that decision.
“I don’t know if he’ll live up to that in the long run. But who else can we ask?”
Although I wasn’t entirely sure talking to Tate was a great idea, I was willing to stand behind it—and take the fall if necessary. I tried to pour that confidence and bravado into my voice.
“The idea is not without risk,” I admitted. “But I’m happy to take that risk on. We don’t have a lot of good options right now, and we’re stalled on Regan. I think it’s time to use the alliances we’ve created. He’s within driving distance, and he owes us a pretty big favor. Let me and Jeff drive down there. One conversation with him, and we see how far we get.”
Silence, while I gnawed the edge of my thumb.
“You go down tonight, you come back in one piece,” Malik said. “If he seems even remotely unstable, you abort the plan. If the situation seems dangerous, you abort the plan. If anything happens to you, you’ll have Ethan and me on your ass, and you don’t want that, Sentinel.”
“No, Liege,” I agreed. “I definitely do not.”
I did a happy dance. Not because I was thrilled to see Tate, but because I was thrilled to be doing something. Standing around the House and watching more footage of Ethan in trouble wasn’t going to help me at all.
“We’ll keep looking for Regan and the carnival,” Malik said. “Find us a guardian angel.”
It was my primary goal.
• • •
At first, I waited for Jeff outside the car, leaning against it like I was the baddest vampire in the modern age. Or certainly the vampire with the sweetest ride.
But it was February—in Chicago—and I quickly rejected that idea, climbed inside, and turned up the heater.
Jeff arrived a few minutes later, parked his car at the edge of the parking lot, and climbed in. “This is a damn fine automobile,” he said.
“Tell me about it.” I gestured toward the forty-four-ounce Mountain Dew in the cup holder, and the sticks of beef jerky I’d wedged between his cup and mine.
“What’s this?”
“Provisions. And a thank-you gift. That’s what gamers use for fuel, right?”
He looked at me with a mix of pity and adoration and my heart melted a little. “That was really nice, Merit.” He opened a stick of jerky, dug into it. “But don’t tell Fallon. She’s not a fan of processed food.”
“It’s just between us,” I promised, and we headed south.
• • •
The city lined up along the edge of Lake Michigan, with industrial ports and brick smokestacks reaching into the sky on the lake side, and dilapidated buildings on the other.
The main street was flat-out depressing, half the shops—still marked by their antique cursive signs—boarded up and closed. When manufacturing moved out, it took time for anything else to move back in. The Midwest and Rust Belt had dozens if not hundreds of towns proving that very point.
I found a cluster of new businesses close to the freeway, and pulled into the lot of a store that carried animal feed and farming supplies. You didn’t have to go very far outside Chicago to reach farmland.
“Need a snack?” Jeff asked with amusement.
“Need recon,” I said, pulling the photograph of Tate from my pocket. “We know he’s in the city. We don’t know much more than that.”
He gestured toward the photograph. “This is your big plan? You’re going to wander from store to store asking if anyone has seen him?”
In fairness, it sounded much more logical in my head. “He was the mayor of Chicago, and he’s looking for redemption. I don’t think he’s going to lay low. I think he’s going to get out there. Mix it up. Mingle.”
“He can’t still look like that,” Jeff said, pointing at the photo. “He’d be recognized. We’re not that far from the city.”
“I didn’t think of that,” I admitted. But we had to start somewhere. “I’ll try this. In the meantime, work some of your computer magic and see what you can find in the ether. I’ll be right back.
“No backup?”
“We don’t want to scare them,” I said. “If I go in alone, I’m asking questions. If both of us go in, we’re ganging up.”
When he finally nodded his agreement, I walked inside, a bell ringing on the door to signal my entry. The store smelled of leather and grains, and I lingered in the doorway for a moment, enjoying the fragrance. It smelled earnest, like hard work and chores.
The store was empty of people at this late hour, and a man, probably in his forties, stood behind the counter in a collared shirt and pants and a bright green vest with a name tag that read CARL.
He looked up at me, smiled. “Evening. Help you?”
“Yeah, actually, although I have kind of a strange request.” I walked toward the checkout line and pulled the photograph from my pocket. “I’m looking for this man.”
I held out the picture. He glanced at it for a moment, then back at me.
“Sorry. He doesn’t look familiar.” His eyes narrowed with interest. “Did he do something wrong?”
“No.” I frowned, realizing I hadn’t come up with a cover story, and opted for the truth. “He’s a friend of the family who disappeared. We’re trying to find him.”
As if sympathetic, he looked at the photograph again, shook his head. “Sorry. But good luck.”
I thanked him, tucked the photograph away again, and climbed back into the car. Jeff had pulled out that slick little square of glass, and he was tapping the screen busily.
“Let me guess—you’ve already found his address and favorite Chinese place?”
“No. But I just increased my mage to level forty-seven.”
“Gaming has a lot of math, doesn’t it?”
“You have no idea.” He put the screen away again. “I found nothing, but of course I’m using mobile equipment, which isn’t quite as nice as the box I had at home when you called me and I could have looked it up.”
“You rehearsed that speech for a while, didn’t you?”
Jeff grinned. “I take it you weren’t successful, either?”
“Not even a little. He didn’t recognize the picture.”