Adam swore and furrowed his brow. "Can he get my sister out?"
"We can ask."
"No, we have to insist. Even if we have to lie about the mole, we've got to make him get Felicia out of there."
"You want to lie to the Overworld's deadliest assassin?"
He looked straight into her eyes. "Without a doubt. If it saves her, then damned be the consequences."
A twinge of doubt plucked at Elyssa's nerves. "I don't think Meghan would like to hear you talking that way."
He smiled. "Then let's be sure we find the mole." His gaze darted toward the apartment. "I'll go help her."
Elyssa watched him go back inside. She hadn't thought about lying to Underborn, but since Adam mentioned it, she felt slightly more assured about their mission. If it meant saving Justin, she'd lie to Underborn in a heartbeat. She checked the time. Less than two hours until deadline. If she could do this right, she would, otherwise, she'd lie.
After what seemed hours, but was in reality only half an hour, Meghan worked through the sound patterns while Adam recorded them on his arcphone so he could search them for key phrases. Despite having a lot of crazy sex, nothing indicated Jean-Claude was the traitor.
They moved on to Gigi's quarters.
"I'm filtering out random noises," Meghan said, after several moments of spell casting failed to produce any talking. "So I guess Gigi doesn't talk much."
A ghostly female voice emanated from the bedroom. Meghan walked inside. Adam followed with his phone. Elyssa stayed by the door, anxiety growing as she waited for them to finish and hopefully find something, anything. The next person on the list would be Beck. He was a new officer, promoted only recently, so he didn't have his quarters here yet. Instead, he'd probably been staying in general quarters or, at best, one of the cottages normally reserved for grounds keeping. Could he really be the traitor?
Adam and Meghan emerged. Adam shook his head. "She talks in her sleep," he explained in answer to the querying looks of the others. "Mostly nonsense." He gave a nervous laugh, his eyes looking a bit unsettled.
"What's wrong?" Elyssa said.
He rubbed the back of his neck. "Nothing I can put my finger on. I guess I feel bad for the woman. Didn't you hear the screaming?"
Elyssa nodded. She'd heard a lot of weird noises coming from the bedroom while searching the rest of the apartment, but had discarded them as useless. A sigh escaped her lips. "There's only one person left. Beck."
"What about Ludovico?" Fausta said. "Maybe he was the traitor and they accidentally killed him." She shrugged. "Stranger things have happened."
"We should be thorough," Meghan agreed.
The group walked down the hallway to the next apartment. The building wasn't large—just enough to accommodate up to five apartments, and didn't offer many places to hide should someone enter the main lobby. Elyssa had already scouted the other hallways and found two emergency exits they could use. The problem would be escaping notice in the wide-open corridors.
"So freaky," Adam was saying to Bella. "Like the poor woman has nightmares every time she sleeps."
"She wrote about them in her diary," Fausta said, rolling her eyes. "In great detail. I think she's obsessed with her dreams."
"You went through her diary?" Bella said.
Fausta sighed. "Where else would I look for clues?"
"Wait, she wrote about her nightmares?" Adam gave her a curious look. "What the heck was she dreaming about that scared her so much?"
The Templar dismissed his question with a backhanded wave. "Oh, stupid things like a statue that came to life and a house where it was always raining and foggy in the backyard and sunny out front." She shrugged. "What's so scary about that?"
Adam frowned. "A statue?"
"Yes. Go read her stupid diary if you're so interested."
Elyssa's feet jerked to a halt. She almost didn't realize she was no longer moving until she looked down. Something in Fausta's statement had jolted her memory. Something about a house with—oh, crap. "Where's the diary?"
"It was stupid," Fausta said, reiterating her words slowly as if Elyssa wouldn't understand otherwise. "And there wasn't anything else interesting in there, not like Jean-Claude's quarters."
Bella's face turned red at the mention of those noises, and she brushed at her clothes.
"Where is it?" Elyssa asked.
"The top drawer of her nightstand has a fake bottom."
Elyssa ran back, thankful Bella hadn't rearmed the wards yet and found the nightstand in question. She dumped the miscellaneous items from the drawer, and knocked the bottom until a panel