tenants aren’t going to be as welcoming to uninvited guests as I was to you three.”
“I can check to see which are unoccupied,” Ruse said, and tipped his head to Snap. “If you take a taste of the doors for those, you might be able to tell how soon the residents were planning on coming back.”
Snap nodded, eager as always to contribute to our plans.
As we checked out the hall of apartments that branched off from the dingy lobby, Thorn kept scanning ahead and behind, his stance tensed, as if expecting another attack. Based on the threadbare carpet and its faintly musty smell, this clearly wasn’t a five-star residence—but that was better for us as far as security went. All the same, the atmosphere combined with the scene I’d just fled set my skin crawling.
With my next breath, I quietly sang a lyric I’d mangled into pure nonsense. “Til now, I always got pie on my own—I never really dared until I met brew.” Ruse raised an eyebrow at me, and I grimaced back at him. “It makes me feel better. And I could use a whole lot of better right now.”
“Whatever makes you happy, Miss Blaze,” he said with a grin, and slipped through the shadows around the first door. He emerged seconds later shaking his head, and we moved on to the next.
“How many people know of your involvement with this ‘Fund’ and where you live?” Thorn asked, managing to keep his own voice quiet to fit our current stealth mode.
“No one outside of the Fund knows about the Fund,” I said. “Well, other than some of the higher shadowkind who live mortal-side, like Jade—and the hunters and collectors are at least vaguely aware that we’re around. I haven’t had anyone over at my place since I adopted Pickle.” I reached into my purse to scratch the dragon’s back between his wings, and he let out a hum that was almost a purr. “Even the Fund people wouldn’t really approve of me keeping him, despite the circumstances.”
“But someone who’d visited you there before might have remembered.”
“Possibly. That’s still a very limited number of people—and no one I can think of would have given my address to a stranger.” I sucked my lower lip under my teeth to worry at it as Ruse returned from the fifth apartment. He motioned to Snap, and we stopped while the godly shadowkind worked his powers.
“Whoever’s decided they need to bring me in—or shut me up—wouldn’t need to drag the information out of my friends anyway,” I said. “If someone saw us at the bridge or the market, or realized I was at the bar asking questions, it wouldn’t be hard for them to find out my name. Which is unfortunately a pretty distinctive name. Anyone who can orchestrate some kind of conspiracy against the higher shadowkind should be able to dig up my address from that no problem.” My black market contacts did the same with collectors using less definitive information.
Snap drew back after several flicks of his tongue around the doorknob. “They expected to return in the morning,” he said. We needed longer than that.
“The real question,” Ruse said as we moved on, “is what made our enemies so sure you were going to cause trouble for them.”
“They could be monitoring Fund activities—could know I’ve been involved with that. And then seeing me poking around at all made them nervous.” Which made me even more glad that I’d kept Vivi out of this mess. If she’d come along on our earlier investigations, would they have stormed her apartment too? She wouldn’t have had three shadowkind guards ready to jump in and protect her.
No, I couldn’t let my best friend hear a peep about this, not while the assholes who’d come for me tonight were still on the loose.
“The sword-star people are very powerful,” Thorn said darkly. “We can’t know everything they’re capable of finding out—or doing.” He glanced over his shoulder again.
“There’s no way they could predict we’d come here,” I reminded him. “I don’t even know where here is.”
“We weren’t truly prepared for them to launch an attack at your apartment. It could have gone much worse. I won’t be caught off-guard again.”
I wasn’t going to argue with him there. As irritated as I’d been with my unexpected—and stubborn—houseguests, I was awfully grateful that they’d been around tonight.
“Next time,” the warrior added, “if there’s a chance that doesn’t risk our escaping unscathed, I’ll take one of the attackers for questioning.