“Good to meet you,” Trent said, and I pressed back into the seat when the cop stuck his hand in to shake Trent’s. I gave Trent a pained look, and he barely lifted a shoulder in a shrug. “I understand you have your orders, but my friend has information about the misfires. I have to help get him down.”
Clearly torn, the cop looked out over the river, then behind him at the barricade and the three other cops trying to stay cool in their cars. “I think we can make an exception,” he said as he handed the ID back. “Just promise me you won’t start a riot,” he kidded.
I snatched Trent’s ID before he could, blinking at the bad picture he’d taken. His eyes were wide and his smile quirky.
“I was in a hurry that morning,” Trent said as he twitched it from my grip, clearly peeved.
“Open it up!” the cop said, whistling three times in quick succession to get the three other men moving. “They’re cleared!” The man looked back at us. “I hope you can talk your friend down, Mr. Kalamack.”
“Thank you. I’m sure my father would have enjoyed meeting you.”
“If you need a place to stay, give me a call,” he added, then fumbled for a card, handing it in. “The hotels are full and you’re kind of stuck here now.”
“I’ll do that, thank you.”
“Tink loves a duck.” Jenks darted back in. “Guys give you their number too?”
Trent shrugged, but the cop was waving us through, and I rolled my window up so I wouldn’t have to talk to anyone else. “That was nice,” Trent said, and a tremor passed through me as the barrier scraped back in place behind us. We were in, and it felt wrong.
“How so?” I asked.
Bringing his arm in, he rolled his window up. “Lately, it’s not always good when I’ve been recognized out on the street.”
I thought back to Limbcus. The “them and us” animosity probably wasn’t entirely new to Trent, but finding it in a public setting was. “It happens to me all the time,” I said, leaning to see around the corner before we made the turn into the city. My unease was thickening. The entire city felt wrong, and it was more than the graffiti.
Traffic was almost nil, but the city was closed. Those who were out were driving with little regard for traffic signals, going too fast and treating reds like flashing yellows if no one was coming. In contrast, both of the stadium parking lots were packed.
“There’s no game today,” Jenks said as we passed them.
“They’re using it as an emergency shelter,” Trent said, pointing at the marquee. “I didn’t want to believe it was this bad. How are they keeping a lid on this?”
Apart from the stadium, there was little foot traffic, and those who were out walked furtively fast. Were graffiti was everywhere, covering up and mutilating the new FV symbols. Shops were closed with hand-lettered signs in the window, some of them tagged with territorial graffiti. It reminded me of the chapter on the Turn in my fifth-grade history textbook—the one titled “The Decade’s Darkest Hour.”
“Crap on toast, look at that,” I whispered when I tried to make a right turn to get to the FIB’s tower, only to find it cordoned off. Beyond it, the street was littered with chunks of cement and glass, the cars at the curb covered in debris. The scent of dust and smoke hung in the air like a haze of sun, and a uniformed man was directing people with FIB business elsewhere when the sign saying to take FIB matters to the arena didn’t do the trick. My eyes flicked to the top of the tower, seeing the damage. Hands clenched, I drove past, not wanting to be noticed by the news vans.
“Jenks, you want to do a quick look-see?” I said as I lowered my window, and he whizzed out.
“I don’t understand how they are keeping this out of the news,” Trent said as I turned down a side street looking for somewhere to park. Bits of cement littered the road, and an ambulance was parked illegally in a cordoned-off alley. “There’s a spot beside the ambulance,” Trent said, pointing, and I stomped on the brake when he reached for the door, not waiting for me to stop before getting out.
“Trent!” I protested, but he was lifting the caution tape, eyeing the street behind me as he gestured for me to get through. I leaned forward as I slowly drove under it, carefully sticking to the curb and parking out of sight beside the ambulance. The front door to the FIB was just a block away. We’d never find a better spot.
“Trent, wait up!” I said as I fumbled for the FIB sign under the seat and shoved it on the front dash in the hopes it would be the difference between being towed and left alone. Grabbing my shoulder bag, I got out, trying to be quiet as I shut the door. It was eerily silent between the two buildings, and the air had an unusual musky vampire scent under the increasingly familiar scent of burning furniture.
Trent was scanning the damaged top floor as he came forward with two hard hats and a clipboard from an abandoned front-end loader, clearly here to get rid of the chunks of building. “It’s strange how we need the very thing we fear,” he said as his eyes met mine.
“Beg pardon?”
“The undead vampires.”
“Tell me about it.” I took the hard hat, the glare diminishing as I dropped it on my head. “How do I look?” I asked as we started up the alley, and he gave me a sidelong glance.
“I’d suggest the front door,” he said, his words coming from the back of his throat, and I warmed. Maybe he had a working-girl fetish. My flush deepened as he touched the small of my back, ushering me forward as he lifted the tape for me. Trent was always touching me, but after that last kiss, it felt different. Seeing him in Jenks’s jeans and silk shirt along with that hard hat and the thickening stubble of a workingman wasn’t helping either.
I breathed easier when his hand fell away. Arms swinging, we strode down the side street to the front, picking our way through the chunks of concrete and glass. Jenks’s wings gave me a breath of warning before he landed on my shoulder. “I hope Edden got your call,” he said. “I’ve been inside, and they aren’t letting anyone up there but emergency people. It’s creepy, Rache. The entire building is empty.”
“He promised he wouldn’t ignore me!” I almost hissed as we slipped in behind the man directing traffic; Trent’s small wave and our hard hats said we belonged. Even the news crews didn’t notice us.
“Tell them you’re Margret Tessel. She’s the hostage negotiator,” Jenks said.