“They’re like anything else,” Cormac said. “You corner them, they get stupid.”
“When this is all done, would you mind letting me buy you a pint and wring some stories out of you?”
Cormac just smiled.
Caleb rose from his seat and said, “First thing to do is check in with the scouts. That’ll give us some idea of who’s on the move and where we should go next. If you’ll excuse me.” He drew his phone from a pocket and scrolled through its numbers as he left the room.
Cormac gazed after him. “Alpha of the British Isles, you said? That’s impressive.”
“Yep. Don’t look at him like you’re staring through gun sights,” I said, and he chuckled.
“By the way, where’ve you been?” Ben asked. “Dinner with the Parkers couldn’t have lasted until four in the morning.”
“No. They have an early bedtime with the kids and all, so we went out looking for ghosts.”
I had to ask. “Like, real ghosts?”
“Amelia wanted to check up on some spots she knew from before. The Tower, along the river, Whitechapel.”
“Jack the Ripper?”
“Among other things, yeah.”
“Huh.” He wasn’t going to keep talking unless I prompted, and I was dying to know. “And … how did the dinner go?” Ben and I leaned in to hear the answer.
“It was … awkward,” he said. “Not bad. But you know, trying to make small talk channeling someone’s dead relative…” He made an annoyed movement like he had an itch on his back. “I keep asking how I got myself into this. Stuff like this, what I’ve been doing? Nice dinner at home with the family? Never would have thought of it.” His expression was confused, wondering. Like he really had just woken up from a nap and found himself in another country. “Anyway, his wife got out the photo album and Amelia ID’d faces in old pictures. Broke a little ice that way. The kids are cute. For kids, you know.”
And that was almost as astonishing as Amelia hunting for ghosts in Whitechapel.
Phone in hand, Caleb returned, smiling, a gleam in his eye like a wolf who’s spotted prey. “We’ve got our first stop.”
Chapter 17
CALEB DROVE us to a neighborhood in south London called Brixton. Dawn hadn’t yet broken, but the sky had paled to a gunmetal gray. Soon, it would become light. Shadows played strangely.
“Not the best part of town, is it?” I said, whispering. We’d passed street after street of row housing, endless three-story buildings of brick walls sta
ined by decades of soot and graffiti. They might have been a hundred or more years old, but they looked tired and decrepit rather than quaint.
“Depends on who you are and why you’re here,” Caleb said. His focus wasn’t on me, but out and around, scanning his territory. “Some vampires like staying in neighborhoods like this. Helps them keep their cover. They certainly don’t mind a little thing like crime rates. I suppose we could have brought along your soldier friend for more backup.”
“No,” I said. “I want to leave him out of this.” Tyler had his own problems, he didn’t need to fight my fights, too.
After turning the next corner, Caleb nodded. “Right, there he is.”
He was one of Caleb’s lieutenants, a man with dark skin and a shaved head. In his midtwenties, he was tall and broad, tough. Pure enforcer, though he ducked his gaze and slouched when Caleb looked at him.
The British alpha parked on the street and rolled down his window. “Find anything?”
“Don’t know just where the fangs are holed up, but there’s a pair of wolves patrolling the end of the block. I stayed downwind of ’em, they haven’t spotted me.”
“Whose?”
“Solomon’s.”
“Good man,” Caleb said. “Let’s walk, shall we?”
The four of us got out of the car.