"Esmeralda's team. She and Cooper were with us, and one of them could have made a call when we weren't looking," Earl added. I noted that he didn't mention Julie's brother, Nate, because that was family, and therefore impossible to him, despite Nate's father's record for betrayal. "But I've known Esmeralda forever, and I just don't see that. Cooper seems like a good kid, but he's only been with us for a year."
"Dorcas," I said. Then all of us laughed. Not very likely.
"What about Grant and Albert?" Holly said. "They were right behind you."
"Al? I don't see it." Just because I held myself responsible for Lee's injury didn't mean he held any grudge. He was too honest a guy to fall in with the likes of the Condition. I paused. On the other hand, Grant had been gone for some time after leaving the company, only to come back just when this craziness started. "What was Grant up to all those months?" I asked.
Julie shook her head. "No way. He's a lot of things, but he's no cultist."
But it was obvious. Grant was our prime suspect. "Think about it. He's perfect. The timing just fits. Why else would he come back when he did?"
"A fat paycheck, for one thing," Holly suggested. "Man, I wish I had been along for that stupid oni instead of a lame troll."
"It'll be a cold day in hell before Grant Jefferson has to worry about money. His folks own, like, Delaware or something," Milo pointed out.
"You sure you're not letting your personal feelings get in the way of being objective?" Trip asked. "He did save you from the monster that was trying to kidnap you, which would make him a pretty lousy double agent."
"Or a really good one!" I insisted.
"You just hate his guts. It can't be Grant," Julie responded.
"And why are you defending him?" I shot back, and then immediately regretted saying it. Julie glared at me.
"Well, it's somebody," Earl stated. "And until we find them, we're not safe. Eventually this shadow freak is gonna lose his patience and just have the spy shoot Owen in the back."
"And if I leave, then he'll find me with magic and throw an army of undead at me. Great. At least here I'm safe from the dead."
"On the bright side, if it's a Newbie, then we'll farm them out to somebody else in the next couple of days," Holly offered helpfully.
"Unless I pick the spy for one of our vacancies. I'm a team lead too, and I'm still short since I sent Sam off to form Team Haven out in Colorado," Earl muttered.
"I do miss the big lug," Holly admitted.
"And then what about the next class, and the one after that? No, we can't risk filling MHI with a bunch of nut jobs. Not with the kinds of things that we're running up against all the time. Our people have access to every evil widget that comes down the pike. We have to end this now."
As if on cue, a small figure popped into existence, standing in the middle of the conference room table. The gnome tilted his pointy red hat at Earl. " 'Sup, dawg. G-Nome, reportin' for duty."
Julie, startled, went for her gun, but I grabbed her arm. "He's cool," I said.
"Damn right, I'm cool. Cool as ice," he said. His face was badly bruised, and he was wearing a few Band-Aids. I had at least given as good as I had gotten. The gnome turned his attention to Holly, leering down her tank top. "Hey, baby. Lookin' fine. I do like them blonde human chicks."
"Who the hell are you," she demanded, before adding, "Shorty?"
"Hey now, baby. It's all good. I'm G-Nome, out of B'ham."
Holly was just confused now. "Genome?"
"No . . . G hyphen Nome, straight-up gnome killa from the North Side." He flashed a gang sign, then folded his arms. "Yeah, that's right. I'm Tony Montana, baby."
Julie pulled off her glasses, cleaned the lenses on her shirt, and then put them back on. Nope. He was still there. She glanced at me, and I gave her the I'll explain later look.
"You were only supposed to appear to me or Owen, remember?"
G-Nome shrugged. "Y'all didn't seem to mind sharin' no secrets with these."
"You find anything yet?" Earl demanded.
"I'm just gettin' the lay of the land, know what I'm sayin'? Seein' the sights. Speakin' of . . ." He looked back at Holly and raised his eyebrows up and down quickly. "You know, they say once you go gnome, you'll never go home."
"Ewww," she responded, too grossed out to come up with one of her usual rebuttals.
"Back off, stubby," Trip said.
"Oh, you want to go, homie? Thinkin' you all bad?" G-Nome said, puffing his chest out.
"Don't go there, Trip," I warned. "Trust me on this one, man."
"Get back to work. Report in when you've got something," Earl ordered.
"Peace." And he was just gone. It was really unnerving.
"So, that's the secret weapon you were telling me about? One of the guys from the Rice Krispies, only psychotic," Julie muttered. "What's this place coming to?"
Milo harrumphed. "And you made fun of me for bringing home a troll," he said with a great deal of indignation.
Earl tried to placate his people. "He'll find the spy. Gnomes are sneaky. In the meantime, I'm going to bump up our security here. That attack on the concert was too brazen, too crazy. Monsters don't normally operate in the open like that. It brings down too much heat, but those just didn't seem to care."
"Undead and transdimensionals can't enter the compound because of the warding, but he may try to attack us with his human followers or other types of monsters," Julie said. "Obviously it doesn't work on lycanthropes . . ." She waved at Earl. "It probably won't stop anything that was born on Earth."
"So something direct from the Old Ones couldn't come here either?" I asked, thinking of the swarm of Christmas Party monsters we'd fought in Natchy Bottom.
"As far as I understand how the ward works, it's basically a focus point for our reality. Like a magnifying glass under the sun. Undead are an unnatural thing in this world, so it just blasts them. Things from outside this reality can't take the heat," she explained. "Its part magic, part physics, and way over my head."
"Groovy," Trip said. He loved the magic stuff. It came from being a fantasy geek.
"We've got the security room in the basement. The whole perimeter is wired with cameras and motion detectors, but we hardly ever man it," Julie suggested. "That should give us plenty of early warning."
Earl nodded. "I want somebody in there, around the clock."
"I'll make up a schedule," she answered. "I'll have to cycle through the Newbies too, which means some of them will have to get limited basement access."
"Just keep them away from my personal space. Well, that's it for now then. Let's get some rest. I know none of us did last night." My boss yawned as he said it. Hunters tended to work really weird hours, but even we had our limits.
I raised my hand. "We're not done yet, Mr. Wolf."
He groaned. "I didn't get to pick the name. I thought it was goofy as hell. Hey, let's name the lycanthrope Mr. Wolf, because nobody will ever see through that. The government spooks love naming supernatural assets like that. I knew this one poor weredolphin in the Pacific that got coerced into working for the OSS doing naval recon back in '44. They designated the poor girl Ms. Fish."
"Dolphins are mammals," Milo pointed out helpfully.
"Exactly. And yes, Z, I have met your dad. I didn't ever know his real name either, so I never knew you were related, though I can see the resemblance now."
"You actually worked for the CIA?" It sounded surreal in a black-helicopter, conspiracy-theory kind of way.
"I'm the only non-PUFF-applicable werewolf in the world. They didn't grant that status for kicks. I've been called up to serve my country twice, three times if you count back to when I was just a poor human kid. People like me got to earn PUFF exemption, and sometimes earning it means working the occasional odd job for the Man, like you have to go somewhere nobody else can and eat a specific bad guy's face. Got it?"
"You were an assassin?" Trip asked in disbelief.
"It's hard to run a guerilla war when there's a werewolf sharing your jungle," Earl sighed. "I did what I had to do. Y'all would've done the same. I'm just not proud when I have to let the beast run free. Maybe that's why I've been such an effective Hunter. I understand both sides, real good."
That gave me pause. The Englishman had said Harbinger was a liar and a murderer. That put the murder part into new perspective. I let it go though. I was too tired to exercise any critical thinking skills right about now. "Sorry, Earl. None of my business."