Alain Moreau was a tall, slender, and impeccably well-dressed vampire. I didn’t know when he’d been turned, but company rumor had it that he was at least three hundred years old. He didn’t look a day over thirty-five with the silver-fox-Anderson-Cooper look he had going on.
“Agents Byrne and Fraser,” the boss said.
“Ma’am,” we said in unison.
“Sir,” I added with a nod to Alain Moreau.
“You weren’t at your desk,” my manager noted coolly. “And neither of you are answering your phones.”
Ian and I exchanged a baffled look and reached for our phones.
“Shit!” I jerked my hand away. “Excuse me, ma’am, but damn that thing’s hot.” I winced. “Excuse me, again.”
Ian managed to get his hand on his phone and tossed it on the table. I could swear I saw smoke coming from it. He flipped his phone over with the back of one finger and peered at the display. “Fried.”
Deep fried. The Gorilla Glass was even broken.
I wrapped my hand in a cloth napkin and extracted mine from its holster. Dead as a doornail. Even more baffling was that we hadn’t felt the heat until we’d actually touched the phones.
“I called you when we got back from the Murwood,” I told Moreau. “It was working fine then.”
“That was before both of us grabbed Bert,” Ian reminded me.
And after Bert had his brain grabbed by a demon-possessed corpse.
“Sir, may I borrow your phone?” Ian asked Moreau. “Fred Ash was with us.”
“He won’t be able to answer if his phone got zapped, too,” I pointed out.
Moreau handed Ian his phone, and my partner started entering Fred’s number. “Yes, but we’d get an ‘out of service’ message. That would clinch it.” He waited as the phone tried to call Fred. After about thirty seconds he hung up and passed the phone back to Moreau. “Thank you. Fred’s number is disconnected or is no longer in service.”
Looked like touching a necromancer under attack by a possessed corpse was bad for phone health, too.
Vivienne Sagadraco settled herself into one of the cafeteria’s chairs. “Considering the number of encounters you’ve had today, I think you’d both better start at the beginning.”
Ian and I took turns, starting with our interrupted lunch.
Alain Moreau had a raised eyebrow at the identity of my lunch date, but Ms. Sagadraco didn’t bat an eye. While Moreau was my manager, Vivienne Sagadraco was boss lady to both of us. She’d told me to go and have fun. Her blessing overruled one raised eyebrow. Besides, I wasn’t the one dating the world’s oldest gorgon, Helena Thanos. Though she was the boss’s BFF, and was not on SPI’s perpetual suspect list. Neither could be said of Rake.
We recounted what we’d found at the scene of Sar Gedeon’s murder: the unique and grisly cause of death, and most critical—at least to me—how the killers had gotten into and out of the apartment. In order to describe precisely what I had seen, I had to recall every detail, which I wasn’t too keen to do, but if I wanted to find out why I could suddenly see portals, I had a sinking feeling I’d be telling it more than once. I’d better not only be good at it, but also get used to it.
“This is a new skill,” Vivienne Sagadraco said when I’d finished. She didn’t ask it as a question. She knew what I could do, and until today, what I could do didn’t include seeing portals.
“Agent Byrne and I believe it may have something to do with the ley line convergence,” I said. “I was right on top of it.”
“So were Ben Sadler and Agent Filarion,” Ms. Sagadraco said.
“And Rake Danescu,” Ian added.
“Interesting,” she murmured. “Alain, would you check with Mr. Sadler and Agent Filarion to see if they are experiencing any unusual aftereffects due to contact with the Dragon Eggs?”
The vampire nodded. “As soon as we’re finished here.”
“Is it possible?” I asked. “I didn’t actually touch any of the Dragon Eggs, but could exposure to a magnified ley line nexus do something like that?”
“Prior to Viktor Kain collecting those seven diamonds, they had never been together, let alone activated by a gem mage of Mr. Sadler’s skill. Add to that the fact that they were activated above the convergence of two major ley lines . . . I feel safe in saying that we are treading new ground.”
Holy crap. Vivienne Sagadraco was two millennia old. Alain Moreau was at least three centuries. They’d been around the block a couple thousand times. If they’d never heard of it happening, it’d never happened.
“I’ve never aspired to be a trailblazer, ma’am.”
She almost smiled. “Those who are, seldom do.”
“Could there be another explanation?”
“There is, but it is one that you would find distasteful.”
“I’ve already got a bad taste in my mouth from all of this.”
“You were briefly connected to the mind of Viktor Kain. That combined with your proximity to the nexus and activated Dragon Eggs may be what is responsible for your new talent.”
“I’m trying real hard not to think Viktor Kain might have something to do with this.”
“Nevertheless, it must be considered as a possibility.”
“I don’t feel like I’m being influenced by evil forces.”