And why was it called ringworm when there were no worms involved? That wasn’t playing fair.
Also, maybe she should talk to Keir about contraception. He’d said it was unnecessary because she could not fall pregnant. She wasn’t immortal enough yet, quite literally a different and biologically incompatible species from Raphael. But with the Cascade going on . . .
Then again, she appeared to be becoming even more mortal these days.
Chastened and ringworm-less, Elena made her way to Vivek’s domain. “Where’s V?” she asked a passing vamp when she couldn’t spot the other hunter.
“Being tortured by a physiotherapist. Sadists even check to make sure he’s not wearing an earpiece. Man’s totally cut off from comms.” A shudder at the idea.
“I guess he finally got on their last nerve.” Vivek had a way of interrupting sessions to follow up on incoming pieces of information.
“Whatever.” The vampire wasn’t buying it. “Anyway, he’s out for an hour. You need help?”
“No, I think I can handle it.” With that, she made her way to the area at the back that was set aside for Tower residents who needed computers but didn’t have an office. Elena could’ve had an office, but she preferred working here or in Raphael’s office. Today, bones heavy with missing her archangel, she wanted to be around the buzz of life in the tech center.
She’d just sat down when she sensed a current of power in the air. Turning, she scowled at Illium. “Are you following me?” She wouldn’t put it past Bluebell—he was very protective of his people.
“You wound me, Ellie.” A hand pressed to his chest, golden eyes wide in innocence. “I was visiting my friends.” He indicated a couple of angels hunched over the computers, their wings flowing gracefully to the carpet.
That sight always took her a moment or two to process even though she knew full well that part of the reason Raphael’s Tower ran so well was that he’d changed with the times—and he had Illium. The blue-winged angel handled a phone with the same ease he did the sword he wore in a spine sheath.
“What are you doing?” He leaned over the back of her chair, his scent familiar and as welcome as the heat coming off his body.
Elena was so cold deep inside.
Shrugging off the odd sensation and telling herself she’d be fine once she could wrap her arms around Raphael for a long embrace, she logged onto the computer. “Looking at security footage from near Beth’s place.”
Illium stayed where he was, watching along with her. “I heard about Harrison.”
First, she replayed the section she’d watched at Al and Anita’s house. But no matter how many times she ran the footage, the camera just hadn’t caught enough of the assailant.
“Now comes the boring part,” she murmured. “We have no idea how long Harrison’s attacker was lying in wait, so I’m going to cue it up to the time of the incident and go backward at speed from there. Even then, it’ll take time.” She dug out an energy bar to eat while they watched.
Illium’s stomach rumbled.
Elena blinked and paused the footage to look up at him. “Seriously? You haven’t eaten for so long that your stomach is actually rumbling?” Angels didn’t need to eat as often as mortals, which meant Illium had skipped a serious number of meals.
“I’ve been busy.” He rubbed his stomach, the blue-tipped black of his eyelashes lowered.
Rising from the chair, Elena thrust half the energy bar at him. “Proper food for both of us, I think.” Her body had already digested the sandwiches, and that wasn’t scary at all. “We can eat as we watch.”
Illium went with her to the suite, where the two of them got busy preparing more sandwiches, as well as rolls. “You’re missing Aodhan, aren’t you?”
“I have to set him free.” Illium’s answer was quiet. “I finally figured that out. He’s doing what he didn’t do for two hundred years.” Eyes of aged gold held Elena’s. “Those years when he buried himself in the Refuge, I had a chance to grow and become who I am today. Now it’s his time.”
Elena ran her hand over his wing with the intimacy of long friendship; though the silver filaments glittered, the texture of his feathers was incredibly soft and silken. “That doesn’t mean you can’t miss him—especially after you waited two hundred years for him to emerge from the shadows.”
“I’m scared all the time,” he admitted, bracing his hands on the counter. “I know he’s powerful, I’ve seen him in battle, and yet the fear crushes me.”
“Of course it does.” Elena let her wing overlap his. “That’s what it means to love someone.” She gave him a lopsided smile. “I worry about Raphael and he’s an archangel. I’ve been known to warn him that if he gets hurt, I’d kill him dead.”
Illium’s laugh pierced the darkness around him to reveal her Bluebell who had so much light in his soul. “Let’s go watch your boring footage. I know how to program it to stop on movement, so we don’t have to keep it to a speed the eye can track.”
As it was, Illium had gone through half his sandwiches and she’d finished off her filled rolls and all they had was a big fat nothing. The only movement so far had come from a couple of prowling cats, two snowfalls, and a flying plastic bag. No indication of an intruder in Beth and Harrison’s yard.
“Assailant could’ve been hiding in a section the camera doesn’t cover.” Elena threw back more of Nisia’s mixture as the footage continued to run backward.
“He’d still have to enter the house,” Illium pointed out. “Only two options left if he didn’t use the back door. Either he was in the house for hours—and that doesn’t seem reasonable with how you’ve described the layout of your sister’s home—or he went in another way.”
Tapping her fingers on the table, Elena said, “They do have a large window on the other side of the house.” She rang the forensic team and asked if they’d picked up anything unusual near that window.
She groaned inwardly at the answer. “We could’ve saved ourselves the mind-numbing boredom,” she told Illium after she’d hung up. “The techs found shoe prints on the windowsill. Nothing in the snow outside, but depending on when it snowed, any footprints could’ve been buried.”
Illium dropped his wings in a dramatic slump. “Does this mean we can stop the visual torture?”
Elena went to nod then thought better of it. “No, let’s watch it through.” She scratched absently at the older cut on her forearm through the fabric of her long thermal tee; she’d long ago stripped off the jacket. “Harrison’s attacker must’ve scoped out the property at some point, and we’ve got two days of data.”
“I must really like you to subject myself to such punishment,” Illium said as they settled in to watch more of the same endless scene. Even at the speed they had it going, it seemed a static image.
The only break came when a giggling Maggie ran outside dressed up like a little polar bear—complete with bear ears on the hood of her snow jacket. Harrison stepped out after her, the two of them playing in the snow until Beth came to the doorway to call them back in. It was odd watching the entire scene in reverse, but one thing was clear.