Dusk Avenger (Flirting with Monsters #3) - Eva Chase Page 0,50
him. “Head on in. Most of the usuals are already here.”
I braced myself and pushed open the door. I hadn’t told my contact—just “Monica,” since the contact sheet didn’t include last names—anything about myself other than that I thought my parents might have been involved in the Austin Fund a while back. My branch back home didn’t have any reason to believe I’d left the city, let alone that I’d come here. I didn’t think anyone would have sent out a general warning when as far as anyone there knew, the worst I’d done was get mixed up with some brutal local shadowkind. But if our experiences with the Company had taught me anything, it was that I was better off being careful than not.
From the size of the room and the—small—number of “usuals” who looked up at my entrance, this branch wasn’t as active as the one I’d left behind. The space held two tables, one like a dining table with eight chairs around it and a small card table off to the side that right now held assorted pop cans and a couple of bowls of chips that laced the air with a salty potato scent. Only four of the chairs at the larger table were occupied.
The woman at the head of the table had to be Monica… because she was the only woman in the bunch. She squinted at me through owlish glasses and then leapt up with a grin. Relieved at the thought that she might get a respite from testosterone dominating the room?
“You must be Sorsha!” she said eagerly. “Come in, come in, no need to be shy.”
You could tell she hadn’t met me before.
The three guys who got up more slowly might as well have been the personifications of a few of the more current mortal legends. The first had on a black suit and shades with a grim expression like he was auditioning to join the Men in Black. Across from him, a short, stout dude with wild, curly hair could have passed for one of Santa’s elves in that ruffled green shirt… which was especially noticeable because the burly man next to him was doing an excellent impression of Father Christmas himself with that bushy white moustache and beard.
My hopes sank before I’d said one word. Everyone here except Saint Nick looked to be under forty—too young to have been active in the Fund when my parents would have been.
I gave them a little wave. “Hey. Nice to meet you. Is this the whole group?”
Monica’s hands twisted where she’d clasped them in front of her. “I know our branch isn’t super impressive. There are a couple other people who come around maybe once a month, but they’re not quite as dedicated. Things have been pretty quiet around here lately, I guess. Not many humans stumbling on the shadowkind and ending up connecting with us these days.”
The man with the beard let out a low chuckle. “Back in the day, we’d have ten people show up and that was a small turnout. No accounting for how things change.” He dipped his balding head to me. “Welcome to our humble abode. My name’s Klaus.”
Of course it was. I could picture Ruse snickering in the shadows. I managed to keep my own smile friendly rather than incredulous.
“If anyone here can help me, it’s probably you,” I said. “I don’t know how much Monica told all of you—I think my parents were part of the Fund before I was born. Maybe for a little while after too. That’d have been almost thirty years ago. Were you working with the branch that far back?”
“I’ve been a member since I was twenty-two—which, I’ll thank you not to tell anyone else, was a whole forty-five years ago now.” He stroked his beard thoughtfully, only amplifying the Santa Claus look. “What were their names?”
I bit my lip. “I’m actually not sure… They died when I was three. From what I understand, they were murdered by hunters, presumably as revenge. I don’t know much about them other than that, but that’s why I thought they must have been working with the Fund. Why would hunters come after them unless they’d been getting in their way to help the shadowkind?”
For a few seconds, the four humans just stared at me. I guessed colleagues being murdered wasn’t a subject that came up a whole lot. To be fair, no one in the Fund back home had died for the cause in the eleven