are you three doing?” Brooks asks, looking at us like we’re crazy.
“Fondling each other. Come inside,” I say as I try pulling him in.
Brooks doesn’t seem convinced or interested. “I don’t want to be fondled.”
“Come into my hole, Brooks. Come,” I say as I drag him into the room and lock the door. “Marcus, activate your bat perception and tell me if we’re being listened in on.”
“Brooks, can you fire me?” Karsyn asks. “I didn’t agree to any of this.”
“Shush, Marcus is using his bat beacon,” I say.
Marcus lets out a noise that’s either his bat senses turning on or his brain shutting down. I’m not quite sure which. “I don’t hear anything besides your loud breathing.”
Brooks glances between us. “What’s this about? You’re all uncomfortably close.”
“I think Miller is working for the elder vampire,” I say.
Marcus pulls out the paper he’d jotted his notes on. “We could be wrong, but the call log actually points to some inconsistencies in his report.”
“Miller?” Brooks asks. “The guy whose partner was killed?”
We explain everything to them as they listen closely.
“Interesting, can you send me that?” Karsyn asks.
“We need to confront him—”
I stop Brooks. “I want to watch him instead. He might be meeting with the elder vampire. There’s a possibility he could lead us to him.”
“So if we go with the mindset that Miller is working with him, we can start to assume that the elder vampire changed him, right?” Karsyn asks. “He probably also changed the guy who killed Perez. Adler, right?”
“What about the vampires who attacked Finn on the bus?” Brooks asks. “These three groups all have one thing in common: Finn.”
“I’d mentioned that too,” Marcus says. “But I didn’t want to jump to conclusions. The elder vampire made it clear that he doesn’t want Finn to have anything to do with the VRC. And the attack on the bus fed into that idea. We haven’t found any other connection between them and the VRC.”
I nod, excited that it seems like we’re finally getting somewhere. “It’s a high possibility he turned them. I mean, he’s had hundreds of years to make himself his own little mini army, but this means they’ll know what his face looks like. We could have something.”
“Then we should go about things legally, arrest him, and question him,” Brooks says.
“Who invited him?” I say as I turn my body so just Karsyn, Marcus, and I are squished together and Brooks has been shoved into the corner. “So, Karsyn, could you watch him while at work and let us know when he leaves?”
“Sure. For a price.” He gives me an evil grin, showing plenty of fangs. “You have to go on a date with Claude.”
I stare at the traitorous man. “You know you’re my closest friend, right? And I understand that you don’t really comprehend the importance of comedic timing with jokes, but that joke was just awful.”
He narrows his eyes. “But it’s fine for me to go?”
“So?”
“Fine,” he grumbles.
“Please be careful, though. Please don’t stand out, and no matter what you do, don’t risk anything for any of this. I don’t want you hurt.”
Brooks sighs loudly, like he needs to make sure we all hear it. “I’ll keep an eye on him too. Are you guys planning on following him or something?”
“That’s the plan,” Marcus says, letting Brooks back into the circle. “Do you have a better idea?”
“Just be careful that you’re not being watched. If he knows you’re on to him, it might not end well,” Brooks says.
“That’s the issue, though, isn’t it?” I ask. “If we’re careful enough to never get caught, we’re never going to catch him. But I don’t want to put any of you in danger. He clearly doesn’t plan on killing me, so what if you guys just stayed back? Watched from the sidelines and let me handle it? Marcus, you too.”
Marcus folds his arms over his chest and narrows his eyes. “Is this a joke?”
“No. Just think about it. If he wanted to kill me, he’d kill me. He’s obsessed with me. I’m safest alone. All of you know that. I couldn’t live with myself if he killed one of you,” I say.
“I know, but we’re also here to protect you and to keep anything from happening to you,” Marcus says. “They’ll be careful here, but I will do what it takes to end this and nothing you say will stop me.”
I nod, even though I don’t want to. I want to tell him that he needs to just