Page 88 of Stalk the Dark
Padma dropped me a nod. “Agreed. Let’s weapon up.”
Cosmic Stars was basedin the fancy-ass part of New Town, two blocks from Longlier and the Sangualex offices. It was a door with a peep slot and a buzzer. There was no sign, just a symbol above the door: a star with smaller stars around it. How had the guys even found this place?
I glanced up and down the ominously quiet street. “You sure this is it?”
“Yep,” Padma said curtly.
“We’ve been here before,” Edwin said.
We’d left Merry back at the office. It wasn’t wise to take a half-blood into a den of vampires. Fae blood was supposedly delicious, and although Merry took special herbal pills to mute her scent, we couldn’t take the risk.
“You ready?” Edwin asked.
I nodded.
He pressed the buzzer.
Long seconds passed before a gravelly voice fringed with static answered. “How many?”
“Three.”
“Breed?”
“Humans,” Edwin said.
The door buzzed and clicked. Padma pushed into the darkness beyond, a small entranceway dimly lit by a single tube light. The door closed behind us with a buzz and a click, and another one opened in front of us leading into a room with a cloakroom area where the largest man I’d ever seen, larger than Ordell, which was saying something, stood chatting to a petite woman.
He turned his craggy face to look at us, his gaze going to the sword hilts at our backs. “No weapons. You check them in here.”
“Really? What about all the vampires inside there? Do you make them check in their fangs?”
His eyebrow lifted, and he took a longer look at me. He had beautiful eyes, a warm hazel shade fringed by thick, dark lashes. They were the only soft thing about his brutal face. He rubbed his jaw, bicep flexing against the cotton of his button-down shirt.
“Never thought of it that way,” he said finally.
“They have to check in,” the woman said. “Them’s the rules.”
“True.” He swept us up and down. “Less you got an exemption.”
I walked closer and pulled my Order badge from my pocket. “This do?”
He studied it for a beat, then settled his gaze on my face again, looking down at me as if I was the most interesting thing he’d seen in a while.
I resisted the urge to shift from foot to foot because his scrutiny was making me feel awfully uncomfortable.
Padma cleared her throat, and he blinked, finally releasing me from his eye hold.
“You planning on making trouble?” He addressed us all.
“No plans to do so,” Padma said. “We’re here on official business.”
He dropped a nod. “Works for me.”
I pulled my phone from my pocket and flipped to the photos of the women that the guys at the office had given me. “You seen these two? They came in here a couple hours ago.”
He scanned the photo. “Came in with a group. The group left. They stayed.”
“Thanks.”
