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Vanzir straightened up His eyes were sparkling He tipped his head to the side "We ask Trytian for help We go to hie he has to first tell us where to find Van and Jaycee Then we hand over the info on Gulakah to him"

"Trytian--you want us to deal with pond scu on the table so hard the soup spilled Hanna rabbed a napkin to wipe up the stea broth

Trytian was the son of a powerful daeainst Shadow Wing The daemon had sent his son Earthside--none of us was sure how, and Trytian wasn’t spilling secrets--to rally the Deround to help them Trytian had threatened Camille, tried to blow us all up, and then turned around and offered to build a truce with us He was about as trustworthy as snake oil

"I know you don’t like him, but look at the facts He came to us to warn you about Hyto He reached out first He’s fighting against Shadow Wing, too--"

"Thatinnocent people who he thinks are in his way!" Ca the floor She stopped and whirled to me "What do you think?"

I looked at the information Carter had sent us Gulakah sounded like a badass ard to Van and Jaycee The thought of dealing with Trytian was sto the pair of sorcerers go on to cause more havoc was far worse

"I’ at all that will help us catch thee of it"

"What about the coh the that would keep us fro to contact him? If we come up empty, fine then…we have Vanzir put in a call and we make a deal with the devil…or daemon, rather But maybe, if we’re lucky, on’t need to" Caood toto pull a late-nighter? If we divide up, we can check out everything that et so Hanna "I’ll keep the tea and coffee couess we take a quick shower break to wash off the soot and sh all of this crap"

After las were coed up to the bedroo up and--for the first ti of the soap and water onout of the shower, I toweled off and clihtshirt and pair of sweatpants

Shade was sitting on the bed, waiting for his turn in the shower He stopped ainstthe safety of his e only to crawl into bed for a nice long nap Before I realized what I was doing, I was inat him from the floor

He sat back down on the bed and held out his ar onto his knee He scritched irl?" As he rubbed the fur under an to purr and stretched my head for him to reach the sides of my face It was such a relief to be inthe sa see earan to relax I hopped off Shade’s lap and sawit, I felt my blood race at the sound of squeak I picked it up by the tail and raced out of the room, down the stairs to the second floor where Ca out of her roo ently and reached down to scoopa little out of sorts, Kitten? Thank you, thank you for the toy And thank you forme smile" She buried her face in my fur and kissed round to cover tonight We need you, as a wo skills aren’t all that developed when you’re in Tabby for her quickly on the face, I juht I didn’t have tined and a little sad, I transfor out of the shift, Ca a floor-length terry-cloth robe over a loose babydoll Smoky, Trillian, and Morio were already downstairs

I took Camille’s hand in h I think I’ers "Kitten, we all need to grow up But you’ll always be Kitten, and you’ll always have the playful kitty inside We need that part of you--it keeps us all hopeful Just like Maggie keeps us innocent Menolly can never have that innocence again I will never be able to trust anybody fully again But you…we need your joy Please, don’t ever lose it"

Inot to I don’t think I’d like myself if I did"

I took the store laptop while Cauys divided up the address book Settling on the sofa, with a bowl of Cheetos to lass of milk to my left, I opened the lid of the laptop Before we left, I’d h life left toit in I’d been careful not to close the lid so it wouldn’t go to sleep It was still running, so I didn’t need the password

Before I started doing anything, I plugged in an external hard drive and began to download everything on the laptop That way, if so happened, we’d have a backup of all the files I exaraa documents I opened thee-mails I opened the first and it asked for a return receipt when opened, but I closed the request without answering No use letting Van and Jaycee knoe had the co for the daily report, and giving a heads up that "MV" had not perished yet, with a stern warning that they’d better take care of the roup torched Marion’s house?" I stuffed a handful of Cheetos in ulp of milk

"Doesn’t have to be all of them There were plenty there to play at arson while the others waited at the store" Morio was thuh his part of the phone book He and Vanzir were using the household laptop as well as mine to do a reverse lookup on the phone nu-ups would give us away

"Any luck on finding out who those nu to?"

"So you’d expect for a sex toy business But there are three I’ve been unable to trace so far, and two that I came up with names for One connects to a fortune-teller’s shop in the Industrial District Future Glimpses I looked them up on the Net and they sell spell components, they advertise spells, and they read the cards But it says they’re closed for business until the first of the o Sounds like Van and Jaycee’s last shop" Camille looked up froh the day planner, jotting down notes "Who does the other nuht back to the Energy Exchange club"