“I’m going to take a walk with Sammy,” Pellini announced before heading outside to cope with the shit in his own manner. I dried my hands, refreshed my coffee then took a seat at the table. My horrific exploitation pissed me right the fuck off but, until I scraped up more info, further brooding was a waste of time and energy. Besides, my focus needed to remain on my current goal—a cease fire in the Pellini-Idris war.
“Don’t say it,” Idris said as he slathered jelly on toast.
“Don’t say what?” I asked.
“Don’t say whatever you’re planning to say about how awful it must have been for him never being able to tell anyone.”
I shrugged and took a sip of my coffee. “Okay, I won’t say it.”
He gave me a withering look and took a savage bite of toast and jelly.
“What?” I asked innocently. “You told me not to say it, so I didn’t say it.”
“You might as well have. You do that thing with your eyes.” He licked jelly off his fingers.
“What thing with my eyes?”
“You do this sort of narrow-eyed smug disapproval thing,” he said.
“You’re insane.”
“And now you’re doing it again.”
I threw my hands up in defeat. Bryce unwisely chose that moment to step through the back door. “Bryce, Idris says I do a weird narrow-eyed smug disapproval thing with my eyes,” I said. “Tell him he’s imagining it.”
Bryce stopped, frowned, looked from me to Idris and then back to me. “Sorry. No can do.” He continued to the sink to wash grime from his hands.
“Afraid Idris will turn you into a newt?” I asked with a lift of my eyebrow.
Bryce shook his head. “No can do, because he’s right.”
“Traitor,” I growled.
He dried his hands, challenge glinting in his eyes. “You want to get Pellini’s take on it?”
I started to say yes, that was exactly what I wanted, but stopped before the words left my mouth. “No. He’ll agree with you both.”
A sound that might have been a chuckle came from Idris, but he took another bite of toast before I could be sure. Bryce gave me a wink then headed down the hall to the computer room. I masked a smile. Bryce was a damn good addition to the team.
“For what it’s worth,” I said to Idris after a moment, “apart from being victims of the overall machinations, you and Pellini have at least one common goal.”
Idris shoved up from the table, took his plate over to the trash can and scraped his crusts into it. “Fine, I’ll bite. What’s our common goal?”
“He’s hell-bent on nailing the perps in his latest case—your sister’s murder.”
He went still, fork poised above his plate. “Okay,” he finally said then took plate and fork to the sink. “Will you tell Bryce I’ll be ready to go in fifteen minutes?” It might have been wishful thinking on my part, but I detected less of the jagged edge in his voice than before.
“Sure thing.”
He met my eyes and nodded once then went down to the basement. When the door closed I blew out a breath. It was a truce of sorts. I hoped.
I headed to the computer room—formerly a junk room that I’d pretended was a home office. The majority of the equipment was Paul’s from when he was briefly our resident computer supergenius. Unease whispered through me. Paul was with Kadir. But for how long? He was “out of phase” and would die if he left the matching out-of-phase-ness of Kadir’s realm. Would he ever be able to return to Earth or was he damned to spend his entire life kneeling at Kadir’s feet?
I pushed the unsettling questions aside. The answers would be worse than not knowing.
Bryce sat at the desk, fast-forwarding through surveillance video from my driveway gate and fence-line cameras.
“Idris will be ready in fifteen,” I said then lifted my chin toward the screen. “Anything good?”
“Family of raccoons on the northwest side. Nothing else of interest.”
“Baby raccoons?”
“Three of ’em. I took a screen shot.” He pulled it up so that I could make the obligatory awwwww noise. He snorted. “Adorable rabies factories.”
“I’ll gush over them from a distance,” I said as I settled in the chair beside his.
“Agreed. That’s why I’m not . . .” He trailed off, eyelids fluttering as he stared off into space.
Seizure? Worried, I grabbed his arm and shook him. “Hey, Bryce! You still with me?”
“Yeah, sorry,” he said to my relief then smiled wryly. “Seretis. Checking in, so to speak.”
Releasing him, I replayed his words in my mind, but they made no more sense the second time around. Why would a demonic lord be checking in with Bryce? And how? “Huh?” I asked oh-so-brilliantly.