Page 56 of Insidious Monsters
“I bet it has. You looking for an eldritch here?” She looked toward the tower. “Wait…do you think there could be one in the tower?”
And damned if she didn’t have a point. “I’ll check for residue.”
“What’s going on?” Quentin asked.
“I’ll fill you in on the way.” I gave Jen a quick hug. “Give Tommy a kiss from me.”
“Who’s Tommy?” Quentin asked.
I steered him away from the coffee shop and toward the tower. “Her son.”
“Hey, rule breaker!”
I glanced over my shoulder to see Victor jogging to catch up to me, no sign of Keswick.
“Glad to see you agree with your nickname.” He grinned.
Crap. “I recognized your voice, that’s all. I’m assuming you had no luck tracking down the eldritch?”
“Correct.”
“Where’s Keswick?” Quentin asked.
“Gone back to base. He’s knackered.” Victor made a face. “Tracker work isn’t his thing. He told me to tell you he’s filing this as a cold case.”
“It hasn’t even been a month,” Quentin said.
Victor’s jaw ticked. “Keswick doesn’t like open cases.”
“Keswick was always more concerned with stats on paper than keeping our world free of threats.”
I expected Victor to argue but he dropped his gaze. “Look. I’ll keep an eye out for it even if he shifts the case to the archive team.”
Cold cases got redistributed and added to other rift walker workloads, and right now, I was the walker running all those cold cases.
“Don’t worry,” Quentin said tightly. “We’ve got it. At least we will when it lands on my desk tomorrow.”
Victor’s jaw ticked. “Look, man, it’s not like I have a choice.”
He was wrong about that. “We always have a choice. And right now, you can choose to come with us to check out the tower and a potential eldritch problem.”
“There’s no residue on the tower,” Victor said. “I checked it twice when we did a sweep a week ago and again today.”
“You know about the suicides?”
He looked perplexed. “Of course.”
Wow, looked like I needed to keep my ear to the ground more. “Yeah, well, they may not be suicides. Hence the tower being closed while they investigate.”
“Sothat’swhy the café is closed,” Quentin said.
“We need to check it out.” I strode toward the tower and the guys fell into step beside me.
“We scoped out the tower when the rift breach was first flagged,” Victor said. “It was clean.”
“Not doubting you. But it might not be clean now. And what better place for a person-sized eldritch to hide, eh?”
I picked up the pace, because now that I’d said it, I had no doubt. Our target was in the tower.
