Page 6 of Laundering Down the Legions
The call ended. No goodbye, just the click and then dead air against my ear until I lowered the phone and set it next to my half-eaten soup.
Kearan had turned. Not all the way, one hand still braced on the counter, but enough that his profile showed the sharp line of his jaw, his eyes fixed on the middle distance between the window and wall. He'd heard every word. Of course he had. The kitchen was small and Kearan never missed anything.
I put a hand flat on the counter and tried to breathe through the weight on my sternum. The fear had already burned off and left the cold, clear shape of fury. I wasn't a fucking pawn in other's games. I was sick and tired of being the only one out of the loop. Fuck Zandia, the division, and whatever damned entity controlling Ro. And fuck Ro.
I was done with all of it.
They could bend to my will.
Kearan finally moved, opened the fridge and pulled out milk. Then he set it on the counter while retrieving a tall glass. Next came ice, each cube dropping with a little clink. Coffee from a carafe I hadn't noticed him brew, dark over the ice. First milk, then caramel, the real stuff, thick and amber, in a pour that turned the whole glass sweeter.
He set it at my elbow without a word.
I picked it up. Cold enough to cut through the panic still buzzing in my veins. Sweet balanced against bitter withouthiding it. I hadn't asked for it. Hadn't said one word about wanting coffee, or wanting it iced, or the exact ratio that made my shoulders come down from my ears.
He just knew, the same way he'd known about the eggs, the berries, and the soup steaming next to a phone that had just confirmed every bad thing we were afraid of.
I wrapped both hands around the glass. "You realize 'the world wants you dead' goes down a lot easier with caramel iced coffee. That's manipulation."
"Drink your coffee." He went back to the sink.
I drank the coffee.
CHAPTER 4
The sweet taste of caramel was still on my tongue when I pushed through the door into the main room. I'd stayed in the kitchen too long. Grayson hadn't been in the archive room when I'd finally made it. Instead I'd had a text letting me know about a debriefing. The debriefing had started without me.
The room smelled wrong. Division air freshener over something sharper, adrenaline and the metallic tang of too many distressed people packed into too small a space. Maps covered the table, pinned down by mugs and tablets, satellite shots and city grids with red circles drawn over places I couldn't place. Division intel on Ro. Or on whatever controlled Ro.
Nobody looked up. Seph paced by the window, her boots hitting the floor just short of a stomp, her fingers tapping her thigh like they wanted to break something and couldn't find the right thing. Rhiot sat with his legs propped on an empty chair, fake-casual in a way that fooled no one, scrolling his tablet. The space between him and Seph felt charged enough to taste.
Grayson stood by the door. Not leaning, not relaxed, just there, back to the wall, gray eyes tracking every face in the room like he was reading three layers the rest of us couldn't see. Whichmade sense. He was reading everyone's thoughts. I could tell by the way his eyes darting between different people. He nodded when our eyes met. One downward tilt of the chin and soft words whispered into my mind. You're late, you're okay, we're not.
Ryker kept to the far wall, arms crossed, shoulders hunched in a gray hoodie I'd never seen. Human form. I was happy to see he wasn't resigning himself to his raccoon form all the time still. He hadn't looked at me once.
And Kearan stood near the kitchen doorway with a coffee mug, expression set to nothing. He'd beaten me here.
Trux sat alone in the corner armchair, his huge frame folded into something smaller than it had any right to be. Hadn't looked up from his hands once. His fingers worked at something between his palms, the kind of repetitive motion that keeps worse motions at bay. The brightness of his eyes had gone dull. He was holding himself together by millimeters.
Nobody talked.
Then Mephistral landed on the table with the grace of a dropped anvil, scattering three maps and knocking a pen to the floor. "Coming in hot!" He planted both hands on his tiny hips and did a runway sashay then threw his arms out in a faux model pose.
I almost laughed.
"That is not how you track a dual-signature entity. That is how you track a human. Or an especially ambitious squirrel. I have never once been successfully tracked by Division satellite imaging, and I am significantly more detectable than whatever two-faced horror we are allegedly hunting."
He snatched a red marker from beside Rhiot's elbow and started drawing furious circles on the nearest map, vibrating with chaotic energy.
"This is where you look. Infiltration points and supernatural back doors. Places where the architecture already has gaps."Each circle landed with a decisive thump. "Ro did not break into your room because he is good at breaking in. He broke in because the compound was built wrong. All human dwellings are built wrong. You people have no concept of proper threshold warding."
Rhiot's mouth twitched. Not a smile, but close, the softening around his eyes that happened when Mephistral's chaos shoved whatever heavier thing aside for a second. He reached for the marker, slow and careful.
"Meph. Those are sewage access points."
"Exactly! Glorious, aren't they? Nothing goes noticed in a sewer. At least not by humans. But everything leaves evidence. The question is not where Ro is. The question is what he has been flushing every time he happens to show up where you are."
Seph stopped pacing.
