Page 170 of Death is Familiar

Steering clear of Jack and Todd, I made a few passes of the dance floor trying to observe one of the four suspects from the apothecary. It didn’t take long to find one. The suspect, a woman in her mid-thirties, was scowling—cross my heart, scowling—at the room as she tried to relight one of the candles blown out by the wind. If she was an anti-vamper she wasn’t being very subtle.

Taking a circuitous route, I walked past to ensure she got a semi-obscured look at my bite mark before promptly heading down stairs.

There was a chance it wouldn’t work. That I had gotten it all wrong, and the woman was indeed just an ex-familiar apothecary worker who helped at events. But I’d tossed my chum in the water, now I had to wait for the sharks to bite.

It didn’t take long.

The woman slipped down the stairs, mouth agape, as I moved to close one of the many doors to nowhere.

“Oh, excuse me.” I covered my neck to hide the bite mark and the woman paused her descent. “Sorry, do you know where they keep the bandages?”

“You hurt your neck?” Was all she said from her place on the stairs.

“You could say that.” I took another couple steps down the hall and opened the next door. “Anyway, I’m sure I’ll find a bandage down here somewhere.”

Approaching me in a rush, she pushed my hand away to look at my neck. “That’s not good. You need attention right away.”

“I’ll be fine, I just need to cover it up.” I threw in a disarming smile. “Apparently, it’s a big no-no to get bitten tonight. The only biting is supposed to be part of the fang ceremony, but someone got a little carried away.”

The women stepped closer. “There’s no bandages in there.”

Creepy. “So, you know where they are?”

“I’ve got some in my car.” Clearly, the woman was not used to thinking on her feet because she was practically telling me to come get some candy out of her van.

“Oh, that’s alright, events like this always have a first aid kit.”

The woman tried to step in my path. “It’s no trouble.”

“No, no, that’s okay. I’ll be fine.” Bass thundering overhead, I brushed past the woman, intentionally bumping into her as I entered one of the closed rooms. “Don’t worry about me.”

Closing the door behind me, I laid two brooms in a crisscross on the floor, and grinned. I’d pickpocketed her phone. My grin widened as I took in her lock screen. It was a three-by-three grid of dots. All I needed to do was swipe the correct pattern. And what do you know? There was a greasy smudge mark connecting each of the three lines in a zig-zag.

Bingo.

Easiest phone hack ever.

I did a quick check for any incriminating evidence like text messages or photos relating to anti-vamp activity, but the closest I got was finding a group chat at the top of her inbox, which was completely empty. Like messages were frequently sent. But just as frequently deleted.

The group chat’s name? Events Team.

The door creaked open, and the woman’s head popped in. “Hey, did you⁠—”

Catching sight of her phone in my hands, the woman lunged towards me. Though she didn’t get very far, crashing over the tripping hazard I’d laid between us. So, as she tripped over a couple of brooms and her own feet, I dodged her flailing limbs and exited the closet, locking the door behind me. Key in hand.

One down. Three to go.

41

Unsurprisingly, the woman thudded against the door shouting for me to release her. Too bad the music was blaring loud enough that no one else would hear her. Whisking myself away and down the corridor from the woman’s shouts, I took a blurry photo of my neck from a low angle, like the photo was taken surreptitiously from a distance, and sent it off to the woman’s Events Team chat with a note: Last seen entering surveillance room.

I chose the surveillance room because it was on the second floor and I wouldn’t accidentally be drawing any more apothecary events team members past their accomplice I’d locked on the lower level, nor run the risk of tampering with the agents’ activities, or the evidence. Because the surveillance room was actually two doors down the hall. I was seated in the decoy, a room outfitted with wires running underneath the door to adjacent rooms to look like a hub of activity. It was one of the traps the agents laid in case someone tried to mess with the security footage, or the cameras. The laptop set up in the far corner of the room rigged to record and relay whoever attempted to access the computer.

Spinning myself in the office chair, I waited.

It wasn’t too long before the door opened and the younger man from the apothecary events team popped his head into the room.

“Sorry, am I not supposed to be in here?” I ran a hand over my belly. My words chosen with care because he needed to decide to enter the room without me applying any pressure which could be considered entrapment. “It was a lot down there, and I just needed a breather.”