“Because I’m more than mildly annoyed hearing what went down, which means Ari will go ballistic and I need his head in the game right now.”
“Got it.”
“Let’s see what we’ve got.” Kane hummed under his breath. “Fuck.”
I leaned forward. “What?”
Kane didn’t answer me.
“Kane,” Rohan snapped.
“Wait,” Kane snapped back. “Fuuuuck!”
I gripped Ro’s hand. “Kane?”
“There’s only one Rasha in the past fifty years with ice magic. Ferdinand Alves.”
I needed a moment to absorb the fact that a supposedly dead man had attacked us.
Ro paced in a tight circle. “Search for all Rasha killed in the past, say, six months.”
Kane came up with a list of twelve. Four of the men were the hunters that had been killed in Askuchar.
“You sure those Rasha are dead?” Kane asked.
“Yeah. Mahmud saw their bodies and I trust Mahmud.” Ro pinched his nose. “Any correlation between missions? Chapter houses?”
“No and no,” Kane said. “Other than the fact that they all supposedly died, there’s nothing connecting them.”
“Thanks, Kane,” Ro said. “Be careful, man. We don’t know what the Brotherhood has managed to piece together about who’s working with us, but just being our friend is enough to throw you in the danger zone.”
“I’m hard to kill. And no one else is getting hurt on my watch.”
As soon as Kane had hung up, Rohan grabbed the burner phone. “I’m gonna call Drio. He needs to be warned.”
I flopped back against my mattress, rubbing my eyes. “He’ll want to come back here because it’s safer for us to be together.”
“It is safer.”
“And if he decides to bring Leonie with him?” I stared at the print Leo had given me, wishing I could grab her and disappear into that neon cityscape.
“I’ll convince him there’s no point coming back here tonight. But she has to tell him.”
No, that was the one thing she could never do.
Ro’s conversation with Drio was short and to the point. True to his word, he assured Drio there was no reason to come back tonight. Ro didn’t expect any more visits and the attacker had done what he came for. At least until we made our next move.
We had one final call to make and I insisted on making it.
Rabbi Abrams took the development in stride, even the news about my witch status.
“I always knew you were an interesting girl,” he said.
I switched the phone to my other ear. “Does this change anything?”
“Should it?”
“Well, no?”
He chuckled. “Beseder. Then get some sleep.” He said he’d arrange privately to beef up the security at the chapter house. A ward could be set to keep all Rasha out, but that would include us, so Muggle security solutions it was.
I chucked the phone onto my rug and rolled myself up in my blanket like a burrito. If Rohan was able to confirm that those eight hunters left on Kane’s list weren’t actually dead, then they had to be the ones working with Mandelbaum on whatever was going on. I edged my head out of my cocoon. “Can I see the photo you got at Ferdinand’s house?”
“Sure thing.” Rohan jogged downstairs, returning with the snapshot.
In his forties, Ferdinand was ruggedly good-looking, with a crew cut and the deep tan of someone who spent a lot of time outdoors. His clothes were neatly ironed. He had his arm around a woman with long blonde hair with gray streaks, wearing a tie-dyed dress in brilliant swirls of color.
“One of these things is not like the other,” I said.
“Huh?”
I tapped the photo. “He looks like he’s in the military and she’s a Woodstock refugee.”
“Love is blind.”
“Is it? Really? Check out her pendant.”
“A crescent moon. Witch?”
“I’d say love knew exactly who it was tapping.” I yawned. “I’ll see if Gelman can identify her.”
“First, sleep. We need to hit up the sugar refinery in a few hours.”
“The excitement never stops around here.” I didn’t bother leaving my blanket roll.
Rohan crashed out on my bare mattress.
I was woken up by someone shaking my shoulder. “Five more minutes, Mom,” I mumbled.
“Sparky, wake up. Sarah needs to install the safety bars on your window.”
I flung a pillow at Ro’s head.
“Sorry.” A dimpled woman who had to be close to retirement poked her head in to my room. She had a large red tool box in one hand. “I’d have let you sleep, but Uncle Isaac told me this was urgent.”
I blinked through my grogginess, squinting at my clock. I couldn’t see it from this angle, but my room was flooded with bright sunlight. “Yeah. Of course.” I had never been so happy to be wearing sweats and not my dress from last night.
Last night!
I stumbled out of bed, scanning every available surface for the purse I’d so cavalierly tossed somewhere and any bondage systems that may have tumbled free.
“Smooth,” Ro murmured, brushing my hip. “I put it in my room.”
“But it’s mine.”
He grinned, booped me on the nose, and left.
Sarah tested her cordless drill. “You two are adorable. New relationship?”
“Yeah.” I shrugged on Ro’s hoodie that was draped on my chair. “I’ll get out of your way.”
I followed the rumble of the coffee maker down the curved staircase, my hands jammed in the pockets of his hoodie. I rubbed my cheek on the shoulder because the fabric smelled like him.
“Navela.” Rabbi Abrams beckoned at me from the front porch. I almost tripped off the last stair. The man wasn’t in a suit. Just dress pants and a long-sleeved shirt. “Come see what we’ve done.”
I threw a longing glance back down the hallway toward the kitchen and found Rohan behind me holding out my already doctored coffee. “Remind me to thank you in sexual favors,” I whispered.
Rabbi Abrams showed off the new front door. He hadn’t changed the hand scanners because he didn’t want to alert anyone, but this door was some heavy duty shit. It had rebar running in a “T” pattern. When the door was locked, the rebar sunk deep into the frame of the house. No one was breaking in through this puppy. The back door was now the same model.
My burner phone trilled. I glanced at the text as I finished off my coffee.
Thank me in sexual favors.
I snorted my drink out, coughing. Ro patted me on the back, a pious expression on his face as he asked the rabbi questions about how the new security bars on all the windows opened from the inside.
Rabbi Abrams walked us around the house, pointing out all the hidden camera that would be recording twenty-four seven with the data on a server in-house for our eyes only.
“Does your niece own the security company?” I said.
“She’s not really my niece. Daughter of my wife’s best friend. But yes. She’s discreet, trustworthy, and very good at her job.” Rabbi Abrams lowered himself into a chair on the back deck, rubbing his knee. “Do you have your phones on you?”
We shook our heads, having left the Brotherhood-issued phones in Ro’s room, and got comfortable on the wicker sofa. I leaned against my boyfriend, my legs curled into my chest.