Kitty Rocks the House - By Carrie Vaughn Page 0,43

he’s got up. If we get to the thing that’s after him, we can get to him. Can’t be that hard.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “Really. Just get some rest.”

“You want to know what he’s really up to, I’ll figure it out.” With that, he closed his eyes, snugged down into his pillow, and sighed. In another minute he was asleep.

Ben and I left him to it. I considered taking the keys to the Jeep with us, so he wouldn’t be tempted to run off on some epic scheme, but Ben talked me out of it.

“Are you sure he’ll be okay?” I said as we got in my car.

“Yeah. I think so. Probably. Seriously, he survived two years in prison, and we’re worried about this?”

He had a point.

* * *

STILL, I had a feeling. At dusk, on the way home from work, I took a detour to the Auraria campus and swung by St. Cajetan’s. Just to see.

I found the Jeep before I found Cormac. Parked on the street at a meter, a block or two away from the church, it was definitely his Jeep, with dried mud on the wheel wells, chips in the windshield, scratches in the paint that might have been normal wear and tear, or might have been, with enough imagination, claw marks. Thing had been around the block a few times. A few dozen times. He’d managed to drive the stick shift, broken arm or no. I parked in a spot nearby and went in search of the man himself, letting my nose guide me. He’d managed a shower sometime during the day, but he still smelled like Cormac, like his leather jacket and the muddy Jeep. He’d left a faint trail through the air he traveled through, and the steps his rough boots tracked on the pavement.

I found him on the church’s north side, and Detective Hardin was with him. Her smell was touched with the stale scents of nicotine and breath mint. They stood side by side, looking up at the roofline. His broken arm was held close to his body by the sling; otherwise, he looked normal. He wasn’t lighting candles or drawing Greek letters on the sidewalk. I supposed that would have looked suspicious with people still walking around.

“This isn’t resting,” I said. Hardin glanced over. Neither seemed surprised to see me, and neither said anything. I tried to sound polite, but it came out frustrated. “What are you guys doing?”

Hardin wore a satisfied smile. “I think Mr. Bennett is right. My suspect is hiding out here, and I have a warrant for his arrest and extradition. A couple of officers and I scoured the building earlier today and didn’t find anything—”

“And you’re not going to,” Cormac said. “He’s a vampire, using magic to hide himself. You could walk right past him and all the holy water in the world isn’t going to flush him out.”

“Which is why we’re here,” Hardin said. She was definitely pleased with herself.

“And why are you here?” I said, trying again to make sense out of this.

Cormac said, “Figure the best way to get a reaction out of the guy is to break his protections.”

“I’ve hired Mr. Bennett as an independent contractor,” Hardin said. “He’s going to help me nail my suspect.”

What happened to hell, no? “When Ben said you should go into business for yourself, I don’t think this is what he meant,” I said.

“Yeah, well, he should have thought of that.” Cormac pointed along the roof. “The protection spell forms a sphere, not just a circle,” he said. “Or maybe a dome. I haven’t been able to get into the basement yet, to see if it extends underground.”

“Maybe you should check out the dinosaur museum?” I pointed around the corner where I’d seen the door.

“It’s closed,” he said.

Well then. “This still isn’t resting.”

“I’ll rest better once I’ve figured this thing out.”

“Are you sure that’s such a good idea?” I appealed to both of them. “If your information is right, Columban burned buildings fighting this thing in Europe. People died.”

“And that’s why we want him in custody and out of Denver,” Hardin said.

Pacing away from us, Cormac muttered under his breath, almost to himself, “I want to know what we’re dealing with. What kind of magic. How he made it, what he hopes to accomplish. The nature of his enemy—is it magical or demonic, can it be reasoned with? The shield, it feels different somehow, as if it recognizes me from the last time.