Page 56 of Death is Familiar

“Thruppy? Why are you wearing my watch?”

Thruppy spotted the watch, just as Zhou’s phone began to ring from Jack’s pocket. The one where his wallet was most definitely missing.

My escape only a few steps away, I fought back my smile.

“What the hell is going on?”

I began slipping out the door.

“Delilah…”

Now, I really couldn’t hold back the grin on my face, as I shot Jack a winning glance over my shoulder. “Ta ta for now!”

“Delilah...”

I kept on smiling as the door clicked shut behind me.

When no one came to stop me, I padded down the carpeted corridor to my hotel room, feeling an unbridled happiness I hadn’t felt in years. Like a child who’d gotten away with staying up way past their bed time.

I mean, who could blame me? I just messed with a room full of FBI agents and got off scot-free.

Okay, I was starting to get why Zhou disliked me…

13

To my surprise, I did not get a visit from either Jack or Todd that evening. Nor any other agents for that matter. And even more surprising, was that I was still in possession of Jack’s wallet. For an FBI agent, he carried quite a bit of cash. From all the petty bets he made with Todd if I were to hazard a guess.

What I did get, however, were two texts from Fawzy: Okay, that was impressive. And: Also, the chilli. Ten out of ten.

Again, no mention of the wallet. Jack probably kept that fact to himself. Wasn’t a good look for the person in charge to have their wallet stolen in plain sight.

I smiled.

So far, there was only upside to my troublemaking. It had also done a good job of using up my excess energy. Pickpocketing the FBI agents was like a sugar high. I hit a plateau before taking a nose dive.

Exhaustion soon took root. From there it didn’t take long before I shut the drapes, enjoyed a luxurious hotel bath, and headed to bed. Early. Like asleep before seven, early.

Not only was I up late the night before, but I needed to wake up to get to Spring Grove Cemetery before the sun rose. And in the middle of summer the sunrise was… I did a quick search on my phone… around six-thirty.

Not as bad as if I had been further east. In New York, it would have been at least an hour earlier.

Still, I went to bed, setting my alarm to wake under the cover of darkness.

Which came too soon.

Way too soon. I smacked off the alarm and rolled out of bed into my clothes before sneaking out of the hotel. Though it hardly felt like sneaking when I walked out into a brightly lit corridor and rode down to the lobby in a mirrored elevator playing some peppy instrumental background music.

Spring Grove was only a thirty-or-so minute walk away, then it was another fifteen-to-twenty minutes to make my way through the cemetery grounds to where the victims’ bodies were found. My pre-dawn meddling would be a good exercise to see how effective the cemetery’s security was at keeping trespassers, like myself, out after hours.

Which was just one of the reasons I had resorted to sneaking.

The other had to do with a suspicion I couldn’t quite place. Something very much vampiric and tied to ritual, but couldn’t put into words. Not until I could get myself on the scene. Feel it out for myself. Make the hunch more than a feeling.

Passing through the hotel parking lot on my way to the main road, I neared Jack’s rental car with his pair of furry dice—that I half considered hot-wiring just for the hell of it—when I noticed two shadows leaning on the hood.

What the hell?

Jack and Todd were waiting, arms crossed across their broad chests, watching me. Smug looks on both their faces.