Page 60 of Aberrant Monsters
“Excuse me?” She arched a brow.
“August Vera is a rift walker with the Order of Yaga. Protocol for questioning a rift walker is clear. You speak to her handler first.”
Devyn’s gaze flicked to me, surprise evident in their baby-blue depths. She recovered quickly, smiling tightly at Quentin. “You’reher handler, I presume.”
“Correct. We can speak in the kitchen. My charge is unwell and needs her rest.”
Devyn’s gaze went to me again, her expression almost torn. But she nodded and followed Quentin from the room.
“Fuck.” Archie sagged against the window ledge.
Nandi closed the door. “Shit, this must have to do with Jamie McNamara, right?”
But we all knew that wasn’t the case. With Lothos as my alibi for that night, she had no grounds to be questioning me about it.
“The Order cleaned up,” Archie said.
“They don’t make mistakes,” Uncle Fred added. “It’ll be fine.”
Quentin entered the room a moment later. “She’s gone.” He pressed his lips together. “The humans have been reported as missing. The human police are investigating. They found out where the men were that day and tracked their movements to the train station.”
“You cleaned that up,” Uncle Fred said.
“The Order missed the camera outside the station. They have footage of August entering the station and the guys following a couple of minutes after.”
“So what?” Nandi said. “August could have gotten on the train, and they could have missed it.”
“The train was already leaving when I got to the platform.”
“They don’t know you didn’t catch it,” Archie said.
“They checked the train footage for each carriage on that time stamp,” Quentin said. “They know you didn’t get on.”
My heart sank. “Is Devyn my supe liaison?”
“Yes.”
Any altercation that involved a human-supe pairing was handled by the human PD. The supe was allowed a Night Guild liaison, though, and in cases where the human was at fault, the Night Guild did their best to prosecute. But the fact that humans were considered a protected species made the whole process a fucking joke.
Quentin raked me over. “How bad is the pain?”
“A five right now.”
He nodded. “We’ll dose you up. I’ll be with you at the police station.”
“They know she was there,” Archie said. “They know she didn’t get on that train or leave, and they can probably check the next train too.”
“So she can say she took the east platform and hopped out at Bently,” Nandi said.
The east platform was an abandoned line and Bently Station no longer in use, which meant no cameras.
“That’s a trek,” Archie said. “Why take that exit when she could just go back the way she’d come.”
“Because the guys made her uncomfortable,” Nandi said. “She didn’t want to be alone on the platform with them and she didn’t want to go past them, so as soon as she saw them coming, she headed away from them, through the east access tunnel and out the other exit.”
“And walked home from there,” Uncle Fred continued.
It was the best we’d be able to do.
