“I may be able to do a trace, especially if it’s handwritten, and find out where he was over the past few weeks. Maybe we can find the Order’s meeting spot. Sure, it’s a long shot, but it beats the alternative.”
“Then I’ll take the alternative,” Kylie said. “I think I might have to go to the deep for this one. If the Order is going to have any online presence, or if its members are going to set up any online communication, it’s going to be there. I don’t think they’re Instagramming ritual snapshots.”
“The deep?” Dag asked.
“The deep Web,” Kylie clarified. “The dark Web, the darknet.”
They all gave her the same reaction—the blank stare. Really, dealing with geeks was just so much easier sometimes.
She tried to break it down for them. “Basically, it’s all the places on the Internet that don’t get indexed and aren’t searchable on your average search engine. You can’t Google it. It’s only accessible to anonymous users—you know, theoretically—and it tries to keep the identities of its users anonymous through complex routing and other little tricks of the trade. But anyone who wants to discuss things that are illegal, immoral, or liable to cause one form of government authority or another to come after them, that’s where they hang out.”
“Sounds perfect for our little friends.”
“Which is why I’ll be taking a look. You just say a prayer for me that I don’t stumble across anything too gross while I’m looking. Some of the shit people talk about down there is just nasty.”
Dag watched her shudder and frowned. “And what will Knox and I do while you two search for the answers to this nocturni strike?”
Kylie and Wynn exchanged glances before Wynn turned to her fiancé and fluttered her eyelashes. “Sit around and look pretty?”
He bared his teeth at her.
“You guys are still in charge of security,” the witch said, more seriously this time. “Plus, we’re going to need someone or someones to scout out any places we think might warrant interest from the Order in terms of good target locations. I know Knox would prefer I not go out exposed like that.”
“And don’t forget,” Kylie added, “I meant it when I said that when the shit really hits the fan, I am not going to be charging into battle armed with a laptop and a gaming headset. Wynn and I might be hogging the glory for the moment, but when it comes down to kicking ass and taking names? That is aaaallll you two.”
“Three.” Wynn grinned. “I’ve found out I’m pretty good in the buttocks-booting department.”
Kylie laughed. “I’ll take your word for it. But me? I’m really more of a central-command, support-staff, civilian-noncombatant sort of a girl. I’ll just bring the popcorn.”
*
While Dag took Knox to check the outside perimeter of the house (Knox already being familiar with it from his earlier flyby of the bedroom window. Thank goodness they’d been at the back of the house where no one could see his gargoyle ass flapping away), Kylie and Wynn took care of putting away the huge quantity of leftovers.
Although, come to think of it, the two enormous Guardians ate even more than she would have suspected. Stagnant like rock their metabolisms clearly weren’t.
Kylie was sorting through a drawer full of reusable takeout containers looking for matching lids and bottoms when Wynn threw the first punch.
“So, did you and Dag get the whole mate thing worked out?”
Seriously, it hit like a fist to the solar plexus, one Kylie had not seen coming. She felt positively winded. “What?” she managed to choke out.
“When you guys went upstairs before dinner.” The witch scraped rice into a plastic tub and had the chutzpah to smile at her. “It sounded like you could use some time to talk things out.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me. You think an hour is enough time to deal with the idea of everyone in the world assuming I’m now the destined life partner of a hunk of limestone with an attitude? Az a yor ahf mir. I should be so lucky, but my mind isn’t quite that flexible, hon.”
“What does it have to flex around? And don’t exaggerate. Me and Knox—okay, and Fil, Spar, Ella, and Kees—are not the whole world. We’re six people.”
“No, you’re three people and three mythological creatures who should not exist in my version of reality. Four, when you add in Dag. You don’t think this is the kind of news that takes getting used to?”
Wynn gave Kylie the same look her grandmother used to use when Kylie told her the half-dozen missing cookies had been too burnt to serve to guests. “You’ve had a week to get used to the fact that Guardians exist and Demons are plotting to enslave humanity. If you weren’t capable of grasping it, I’d be visiting you in a psych ward by now, so don’t give me that excuse. The new facts of life are not what’s giving you trouble here.”