Dusk Avenger (Flirting with Monsters #3) - Eva Chase Page 0,74
won’t be needing her without my mortal ass around,” I informed him on my way out.
I’d texted Monica to give her a heads up that I’d be stopping by. Apparently the Austin branch of the Fund was particularly cautious about people infiltrating their secret lair: the password had already changed, to “Yoshitaka.” I gave it to the same dude behind the counter and strolled on in to the evening meeting.
A couple more people had shown up for this one: a slight, middle-aged woman with a Tinkerbell pixie cut and a young man whose not-entirely-successful attempt at growing a moustache looked like tufts of grass poking up from a desert plain. Klaus was standing at the foot of the table, waving his arms emphatically as he made some point about, “…might be the only real chance we get.”
Everyone looked over when I came in, and a smile leapt to Klaus’s face. “I think we’re all decided,” he said before turning back to the others. “Are we?”
Monica nodded slowly, the Man in Black and the scraggly moustache dude more emphatically. Klaus beamed, the rosiness in his rounded cheeks making him look even more like Saint Nick.
“That’s great,” I said. “Er… What are you decided about?”
“You made it clear there’s a menace lurking that’s a threat to both the shadowkind and those of us trying to help them. We can’t look the other way. Let us know where you need us and what we can do, and we’ll pitch in however we can.”
I’d expected to have a debate on my hands, but apparently it’d already happened without me, spearheaded by Father Christmas himself. And it wasn’t anywhere near December 25th. I’d still take this gift, thank you very much.
I grinned back at him. “Okay, I take back my ‘great’ and raise it to ‘awesome.’ We’re definitely going to need all the help we can get. I can’t stay very long because we’re about to head out, but we’ll be regrouping in San Francisco. If any of you are willing to make the trip and help us on the ground, maybe even just coordinating with the Fund branch there, that’d be huge. But even doing some information gathering or similar from afar would be useful.”
Klaus rubbed his hands together. “I haven’t been out to the west coast in years. A vacation and a campaign of righteousness in one—sounds good to me. I’ll just have to check the flights.” He glanced around at his companions. “Who’s with me? You’ve got to figure out your own way there, but I can cover an AirBNB big enough for all of us.”
“I’ve got the time off already,” the Man in Black said. “Count me in.”
The pixie woman raised her hand. “I think I can make it work. I’ll just have to make a couple of calls.”
“Same here,” Monica said, and inclined her head to me. “Keep me in the loop with what’s going on and what else you discover. If you could email me a full run-down of how you’ve tackled these people so far so we can start our own strategizing, that would be great.”
I wasn’t sure I really wanted them knowing that our strategy so far had involved a lot of torn-off heads, disemboweled torsos, and charbroiled corpses. As the memories darted through my head, a wavering heat shot over my arms—and a flame shot up over the knuckles of my right hand.
It was barely a flash of light, there and then gone as I jerked my hand against my side. I bit my tongue at the stinging sensation but held in my yelp. Still, spontaneously catching on fire is the sort of thing it’s difficult to keep on the down-low. When I looked up, several of the eyes watching me had widened.
Time to divert and refocus! “Of course,” I said quickly, clasping my hands in front of me as if nothing at all unusual had sparked from them. “It’ll be a bit of a novel, but I can give you the gist with all the important stuff.”
“Excellent.” Monica smiled, which I hoped meant everything was still a-okay. I had the feeling apologizing for my near-combustion would only make things worse.
“I’ll get started on that then. And reach out once we’re in San Francisco so we can meet up. Don’t you lose my number.” I wagged a finger at the group at large and hightailed it out of there before my prickling nerves could let loose any further supernatural special effects.