Dark Debt (Chicagoland Vampires 11)

Lindsey rolled her office chair toward us, used red nails on the tabletop to pull herself to a stop. Her blond hair was pulled into a high bun, and she’d paired her suit with eyeglasses with trendy black frames that she didn’t actually need. But she pulled off the “saucy librarian” look.

“Babe,” she said to Luc, “you sound whiny.”

“I’m entitled to be whiny,” Luc said. “And don’t call me ‘babe’ on duty.”

Lindsey gave me a long-suffering look. “If I had a quarter, am I right?”

“Always.” I pointed toward the glasses, the hairdo. “What’s this?”

She smiled, shrugged. “Just trying something a little different. I’m going for intellectual femme fatale.”

“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?”