Battle Bond: An Urban Fantasy Dragon Series (Death Before Dragons #2) - Lindsay Buroker Page 0,54

booby traps?

I don’t know. Are you more in the mood to be dangled upside down from the ceiling than I am?

With my speed and agility, I am unlikely to be dangled at all.

In that case, you should definitely go in first. I pulled out Chopper.

Sindari pushed the door open further and padded inside.

A click sounded from across the living room. Still in the hallway, I dodged to the left, whipping my sword across defensively. Something tinked off the edge of the blade and clattered against the floorboard before hitting the thin gray carpet. A tiny silver dart.

Warily, I picked it up. A gunky blue residue smeared the tip. Poison?

“Clearly, I need a taller tiger,” I said.

My height is perfect for seeing over the tall grass on the Tangled Tundra on Del’noth.

“Helpful.”

Very much so in hunting there, yes. Sindari padded farther into the room, avoiding the lamps, books, and clothes strewn across the floor. I’d just gotten everything cleaned up from the last break-in.

“It may be time to move again.”

Perhaps you should not use your real name when you lease an apartment.

“You have to. They do credit checks before renting you a place. Gone are the good old days when you could lie about everything and pay in cash.”

Living in the human world requires an unsettling lack of privacy.

“Tell me about it.” I itched to go inside and try to figure out if the intruders had only come to ransack the place or if they’d taken anything. My giant wine jug of change was still sitting on the bookcase beside the door. Nobody ever stole that. Either it was too heavy for the average intruder to lift, or nobody wanted to deal with rolling coins to get the bank to take them.

I see the slender tripwire leading from the door across the ceiling and to this shelving unit. Sindari looked up at the ceiling, then put his paw next to my signed hardback of Elric of Melniboné. By some miracle, the Moorcock books were still on the shelf. Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings hadn’t fared as well. A heavy vase I’d picked up at a thrift store was the bookend on that shelf and the object of Sindari’s attention.

Something akin to a miniature crossbow has been affixed in here. It looks like that was the only dart.

I held it up and sniffed the tip, but my olfactory senses weren’t good enough to identify poisonous substances more exotic than arsenic and cyanide. “I may need to visit Zoltan again.”

Sindari checked the kitchen, small dining area, and bedroom and bathroom. I eyed the deadbolts. They hadn’t been forced open, at least not with a clumsy tool that would have damaged them. When I squinted across the apartment, I saw that the sliding glass door to the balcony was still closed and the recently added wood board that kept it from being forced open was in place.

When Sindari’s perusal resulted in no other ominous clicks, I walked inside and picked up a box of sandwich baggies on the floor. Almost everything from the kitchen drawers was on the floor. All of the cabinets had been rummaged through and most of the plates and cups knocked off the shelves. Because this had happened before, I kept plasticware instead of glassware now. Nothing classy and breakable for assassins with enemies.

Whoever did this appears to have been looking for something specific, Sindari said. Everything was searched, but little seems to be missing.

“You’ve inventoried my whole apartment already? You are impressive.” Despite the joke, I was inclined to agree with him. The television I never used was on the stand, and my laptop was still plugged in and sitting on the little desk in the living room.

I have been here numerous times, and I have the keenly observant eye of an apex predator.

After slipping the dart into a plastic baggie, wrapping it up, and using masking tape to bundle it so the needle wouldn’t poke out, I walked toward the shelf with the crossbow. As I passed my laptop, I noticed the poster Zav had given me was rolled in a different way than I’d left it when I tossed it on the desk. Before, it had been rolled in a tight tube. Now, both ends furled toward each other, with a small bone dagger thrust through the paper and into the wood.

I gripped my chin and stared at the dagger for a moment, then nudged the furls open enough to see where the blade had