silently moved to block the front door.
“Wait,” Vlad said when the man backed away. “I haven’t agreed to accept this package.”
“You have to accept it.”
“No, I don’t.” The package was addressed to Ms. Wolflover MacDonald. The “company” address said “Dead Cops Club.”
Smiling enough to show a fang, Vlad picked up the phone on the counter and called Burke’s direct line at the Chestnut Street station. “Captain? We’ve just received a package from something called the Dead Cops Club. What would you like us to do with the man who delivered it? Yes, he’s still here. Well, you can arrest him, or we can eat him.”
The man gasped. Meg dropped her clipboard on the sorting room table and made an odd sound. Since she was safe from the stranger, Vlad ignored her, more interested in Burke’s moment of silence before saying he would send a car.
Vlad hung up.
A long minute later, Officer Debany, in uniform, entered the office at a run, almost tripping over Nathan, who still blocked the front door.
Must have been getting ready for work when Burke called.
“You’re under arrest,” Debany said.
“I just delivered a freaking package!” the man protested.
Hesitating, Debany looked at Vlad. “Do you believe that?”
Vlad looked over his shoulder to check on Meg and saw her slice the underside of one finger on her right hand.
“Arrest him or we’ll kill him,” Vlad snapped. “Either way, I want him out of here!”
Nathan snarled.
Vlad rushed into the sorting room, cursing Meg and himself. After calling Burke, he should have let Nathan guard the stranger while he kept watch on Meg.
He pulled the razor out of her hand and set it on the table. No obvious blood on the razor; nothing to run onto the cards. And no time to grab anything to soak up the blood dripping off her finger, so he cupped his hand under hers, struggling not to shift to smoke and consume the drops of blood as they hit his skin.
“Speak, prophet, and I will listen.” How much time had passed as she’d tried to swallow the words along with the agony that preceded the spoken words of prophecy? Not his first choice since she was already upset with Meg, but she had experience dealing with the girl during these prophecies.
“Rotten eggs,” Meg whispered. “Hands. Feet. Bones. Maggots.” A hesitation before she breathed out one final word. “Bullet.”
She sank to the floor. Vlad went down with her, still cradling her hand to keep her blood off the floor.
He felt Tess sweep into the room and out again. When she returned, she crouched beside Meg, lifted the bloody hand, and wrapped a towel around it, dropping a second towel under Vlad’s hand. He quickly wiped Meg’s blood off his skin.
“Put the towel in the sink. Run cold water over it while you rinse off your hands. The female pack says that works for removing blood from cloth so we don’t waste what we might need later,” Tess said.
Vlad asked as he hurried into the bathroom.
Tess studied him when he returned.
At another time, the truth of that might have made Meg’s self-doubt amusing. But not now.
• • •
Monty retrieved the mail from his letter box and climbed the stairs to his apartment. He wasn’t sure he would spend the night there. He wasn’t sure a man alone, even a police officer, who was known to work with the terra indigene would be safe in this part of the city. Between the fires that burned down so many businesses on Market Street and the flash floods caused by the localized storm the same night of the fires, this part of Lakeside was in turmoil, and the police were breaking up several fights a day between members of the HFL, who blamed the terra indigene for all of the city’s troubles, and people who now blamed the HFL for the city’s troubles.
And then, today, the package that was delivered to the Courtyard. He believed the deliveryman when the fool claimed he didn’t know what was in the package. The hysteria after they had shown him what he’d delivered hadn’t been feigned.
Two hands with some of the bones showing through where the flesh had