Sinister Magic: An Urban Fantasy Dragon Series (Death Before Dragons #1) - Lindsay Buroker Page 0,51

shrugged.

“Thanks for driving me up here, by the way.” I should have said that five hours ago. “And helping me with the agents. I hope you won’t get in trouble for that. I was a little surprised that you helped, given that you barely let me on the premises yesterday.”

“They shoved their way in and were asking me questions before you got there. I asked them if they had a warrant to come into the house, and they got real pissy. Turned it into an interrogation. Like they already had me pegged as a criminal who’d broken probation.”

I eyed his scarred, buzzcut head, pockmarked face, and black metalhead T-shirt. Even in a tutu, he would have looked like some mafia dude’s bodyguard. All I said was, “Rude.”

“That’s what I told them. They found out I live in the van, not the house, and told me to go wait there and stay out of the way. I was tempted to knife their tires even before you and Sigrid showed up.”

“So you helped me to spite them, not because you warmed to me as a person and a human being?”

“I’m mostly hoping to see your dank tiger again.”

I assumed dank had evolved—or devolved—into slang, since Sindari was far from damp and musty. “Gotcha.”

He looked hopefully over at me.

“I don’t usually bring him out to sit in traffic. His time here is limited, so I save him for battles and when I need someone to vent to. He charges less than a therapist.”

“Huh.”

My phone buzzed as we rolled into Seattle proper, city lights glittering next to the dark waters of the Sound.

Get out of town if you aren’t already, came in from Willard’s number. There’s an investigation going on at the office, Sudo has brought in MPs and some brass, and I’ve got a guard outside of my hospital door. I don’t know where they think I’m going while I’ve got all these monitors cabled to me, but there’s someone there day and night. And I know Sudo is looking for you. And his car. What trouble are you getting yourself into, Thorvald?

I stared at the screen, worried by the mention of monitors and cables. Had she gotten worse? How much time did I have to figure this out? Or was it already too late? Whatever she’d been given, it couldn’t be some simple poison, not if it caused cancer.

I’m trying to figure out who dosed you and with what, I texted back, deciding there had to be a reason she hadn’t accepted the call. Either she was too sick to speak, or the walls were thin, and she worried about that guard overhearing her. You ever come across anything about dark elves? It looks like someone was in your apartment and spiked your coffee or something you drink regularly with a potion. There was a sigil on the bottom of the vial from the dark-elf alchemical language. It took me three tries to get alchemical out without AutoCorrect inserting something stupid, and I growled at the phone. Maybe my mom wasn’t missing anything by forgoing modern technology.

As I told you before, someone may have been in my apartment recently. By the way, is it true that the building burned?

Yes, sorry. I got your cat out. She’s staying with my mom in Bend.

North Bend?

No. Bend, Oregon. It was a long drive.

I’ll bet. Maggie can be vocal in the car.

You’re a master of understatement, Colonel. FYI, she detests Sindari.

I’m sure. As far as dark elves… they’re around. We’ve never sent you after them because they’re too discreet to get caught kidnapping anyone, but the city morgue always has a few bodies in it that have been mutilated in ritualistic fashion. It’s believed that a lot of the people who disappear in Seattle end up in their lair, but nobody’s ever lived to talk about it. They hide the entrances very well. The police have looked and never found them.

Where’s their lair? Do we know?

The Seattle Underground.

Uh, I went there on a field trip when I was a kid. It’s a bunch of basements and a couple of spots where you can walk under the street downtown. I was underwhelmed.

That’s only a tiny portion of what’s down there. The whole city burned in the late 1800s. Today’s Seattle is built on top of that. All of downtown, and some say there are tunnels that were added later and go under Lake Union and Portage Bay, all the way up into Fremont and the U-District. Every