red underbelly. When I first shifted into the form, my mother had told me I looked beautiful and deadly. I had been a foot long and seven years old, thinking I wasn’t pretty because my colors were boring.
It took a few decades, but there came a point when I agreed with her. I was beautiful and deadly, and I was only getting bigger.
Slipping through holes in the fences to get to the yard, I lifted, looking around to check for predators or humans before continuing. At this point, there was no way I could contact Carter or vice versa if anything came up. I had to get in and out quickly.
I made my way around the presumably rented or borrowed home and tried different windows, annoyed as I found them all closed and locked. I resigned myself for the impending annoyance of climbing up to the roof and trying to find a way into the attic. I used the side paneling, different windows and the gutters to get on the roof, then found a hole into the attic. I dropped onto an unfinished wood floor and found my way to the attic door. Checking for cameras before I did, I shifted back into my human form and took a deep breath, relaxing. Shifting to and from snake form always got my heart rate up, normally from adrenaline—something about it was exhilarating.
Pulling the attic door open, I reminded myself that most homes didn’t have security cameras in every room. I was one of those paranoid people, but as I climbed down the attic ladder, I realized I was right. This house didn’t have security cameras in every corner.
“Cassius would kill me if he found out I was doing this,” I muttered as my feet touched the floor gently. When no motion sensor alarm went off, I counted my blessings and got moving. Licking my tongue over my lips, I tasted the air for different scents and couldn’t discern anything out of the ordinary. Three people had been through here recently—a vampire, a fae, and a witch.
Let’s hope this keeps going as expected. I don’t want a bunch of trouble tonight. I just need Sinclair’s intel.
I moved fast, checking rooms, deciding to ignore the bedrooms unless I needed them. Wandering into the dining room and kitchen, I found files laid out on the dining table. They had gotten their hunt started before going out for the evening. They were overconfident, making no attempt to hide the information after they were done looking through it before going to party.
And it was definitely partying. Sinclair would stretch his trip in Phoenix for as long as he could to annoy me and everyone else who lived in the city, most of whom hated him as much as I did. His activities in Las Vegas, only five hours away, were too close for us to ignore on a good day.
I pulled my phone out and started taking pictures. I couldn’t steal all the papers and wasn’t green enough to try. He would know who to start looking for if the intel went missing, and Sinclair wasn’t afraid of a bloodbath. He would kill every possible suspect until he got what belonged to him. I was unafraid to shuffle the papers around, though, knowing I wouldn’t leave fingerprints. The likelihood any of them remembered exactly how they left the papers was incredibly low.
I stopped as I stumbled on a report written by Mygi about possible aliases Raphael kept. Taking a quick photo of it, I decided to give it a read through.
“‘He’s been known to live in towns for a very short time, posing as an illegal alien from a South American country, and gets paid under the table,’” I recited from the printout, raising an eyebrow. “He’s smart and knows Mygi is looking for him…”
It continued on with how they had been trying to capture him for five years, but he was slippery. The moment he caught wind someone was looking into him or acting strange near him, he vanished. He was also very good at escaping from brute force measures and disappearing again for up to ten months. I remembered Paden’s intel on how Raphael had been about to join the military and wondered if he had already received some training or if this was something he picked up, trying to outrun Mygi.
One thing was becoming apparent, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about it.