the contractor. And yours isn’t just a loose contract—your demon was using magic. How?”
She again shifted her grip on her sword, the long blade wavering, and I noticed the blood dripping from her elbow. The vampire had raked her upper arms with his claws.
I twisted my hands together. “Zora, please—”
“How did you fool Darius?” Her eyes blazed. “MagiPol is just waiting for an excuse to disband the Crow and Hammer. How dare you put our guild at risk?”
“I—I didn’t—”
“A contracted demon with magic,” she spat. “Now I know how you took down the unbound demon on Halloween. There’s no way you can control your demon. There’s no way you aren’t a danger to everyone with that—”
The patio door banged open. Taye rushed in, Amalia right behind him.
“Zora,” he said sharply. “You all right? The police are on the way. I put in a call to the MPD and they’re sending agents and a cleanup crew, but we should leave the crime scene.”
Her furious stare jerked back to me. “Are you waiting for the MPD?”
So they could arrest me on the spot? No thanks. “I—I should go.”
“You can go for now,” she said darkly, “but we aren’t finished, Robin Page.”
Taye’s brow furrowed, whereas Amalia’s expression flashed from confusion to alarm as she guessed what had happened.
Zora grabbed her sword case off the floor and crunched across the room to the patio. Amalia stepped back as the sorceress strode out the doors, Taye hurrying after her. As their footsteps retreated, the wail of police sirens drifted into the unit, growing louder by the second.
“Shit,” Amalia muttered. “What does she know?”
“She saw Zylas use magic,” I said heavily, fighting the nausea building in my stomach. “She knows my contract isn’t legal, but not the full extent of it.”
“Shit,” she said again. “We need to get out of here.”
Nodding grimly, I climbed over the fridge door—when had it fallen off?—and grabbed both the case of demon blood and the case of syringes from Claude’s desk. Amalia scooped the papers and photos off the floor. Carrying our loot, we ducked out the doors.
The patio backed onto a courtyard shared by several apartment towers. We cut across it and joined the busy sidewalk. Three police cruisers with their lights flashing were parked on the curb, two officers directing pedestrians away while four more headed toward the condos. They were about to get a nasty surprise. The MPD agents would have fun smoothing over that bloodbath.
All in all, though, that didn’t even rank on my list of worries.
I clutched the metal cases to my chest, breathing hard. Zora knew my secret. What would she do? Report me to the MPD? Report me to Darius? Both courses of action would have the same result. Darius had warned me that if anyone from the Crow and Hammer discovered the truth, he would turn me in to protect his guildeds.
No matter how I looked at it, I was doomed.
“Maybe she won’t report you,” Amalia said, her mind on the same worries as mine. “It’s not like you’re hurting anyone. Maybe …”
Faint hope sparked, but I didn’t let it grow. Considering how furious and betrayed she’d appeared, I didn’t think she’d ignore her discovery.
“I’ll call her,” I mumbled. “If I can explain the situation like I did with Darius, she might look the other way.”
“Yeah … yeah, she probably will.”
Silence fell between us. We both knew we were fooling ourselves.
“I grabbed all this stuff”—she hefted her armload of papers—“so the MPD wouldn’t have a reason to look at my dad, but why’d you take those cases?”
“These are proof.”
“Of what?”
“One holds bottled demon blood. The other … it has vials of vampire saliva. Last time we saw him, Claude used a syringe of it to bring down Zylas.”
I couldn’t believe I hadn’t put the clues together before. The tranquilizing effect of a vampire bite was identical to Zylas’s collapse after he’d been injected with the mysterious syringe. Vamp saliva was the perfect demon neutralizer, especially since it had an even stronger effect on demons than humans.
“You think Claude has been trading his demon’s blood to the vampires in exchange for their saliva?” Amalia squinted. “But why did they trash his townhouse? And why did his demon steal back his documents from the vampires?”
“That part I don’t get, but I suspect it has something to do with that Vasilii guy the other vampires are following. Maybe Vasilii isn’t happy with their arrangement anymore.”
We stopped at a crosswalk and waited for the light to