I lied.
Gibson had slowed the car nearly to a stop. Not that he had much choice. It was already 4:15 and traffic to the ballpark had things jammed up back onto the highway. “The king’s driver, Ivan, will meet us at the giant cap on the right with the replacement tickets.”
“Good.” I didn’t look up, I was too busy checking the water pistols one last time, making sure that they’d function if I had to fire them. I’ve always had better luck with the actual One Shot brand than with the imitations, but Gibson had been doing the buying.
“I wish he’d have called it off,” Gibson said. “It’s stupid to deliberately walk into a trap.”
“No chance. He wants to find the traitor and to know whether or not his sons are involved. He figures his people can handle whatever comes up. They’ve had plenty of warning.” I grinned. “Of course, he may decide to hire a double. If a spawn does a shapechange, it actually becomes a double of the target’s body. Fools fingerprints, voice analysis, lab work. Everything down to DNA.”
“I know,” Gibson said bitterly. “Makes life hard for us cops. Fortunately, there aren’t too many spawn out there.”
“Yeah, but what do you wager the king’s got at least one on the payroll? We know the bad guys do.”
Gibson grunted and turned the car onto Gene Autry Parkway. We were nearly there. From where we sat I could see fans in Angels red and Cubs blue hiking toward the stadium across the packed parking lot as outdoor vendors hawked their wares. Four fifteen in the afternoon and already there were plenty of people who acted as if they were trashed. I shook my head. Call me a prude, but I can’t imagine paying a small fortune for a ticket to a game like this and then getting so wasted I wouldn’t remember the game.
Traffic was moving at a crawl. Just ahead, a man in a neon orange vest signaled with a flashlight that there were openings in that row. Gibson followed the line leading toward him.
“Did you get hold of your boyfriend and the werewolf?”
“I tried. Neither one of them answered his phone. I think Bruno’s pissed at me for standing him up. Of course he may have just not recognized the number. But I doubt it. He knows I had to get a new phone the other day and I imagine he got the number from Dawna.”
Gibson had to stop to let the driver ahead of us pull into a parking space, so he had the chance to give me a shocked look. “You stood him up?”
“It’s not like I had a choice. As you’ll recall, I was unconscious at the time. But he doesn’t know that, and he’s pissed and won’t answer his phone because I was supposed to return his Mets cap and I didn’t.”
“He should know you better than that.”
“Yeah, he should. And he’ll realize that about the fifth or sixth inning and start worrying. He’ll call me back during the seventh-inning stretch.”
Gibson laughed as he pulled the car into one of the last few vacant spots. “You know him pretty well.”
“We were together through most of college.” I didn’t quite manage to keep the wistfulness from my voice.
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be. It’s things like today that made me so crazy. If he’d just pick up the damned phone. But nope. He’s too hardheaded.”
“And I bet it’s things like today that made him crazy, too. Knowing that you’re going off into danger and there’s nothing he can do about it.”
I managed not to flinch, but ouch. That was a little too close to the mark. I climbed out of the car so that I wouldn’t have to answer. Not that Gibson didn’t notice. Still, he didn’t press. I was glad. I didn’t want to think about Bruno. I didn’t need the distraction.
We moved across the parking lot with the rest of the herd, making our way past the huge “A” with its lit display. Peppered throughout the crowd were plenty of uniformed security and warrior priests of the various militant religious orders in full regalia and armament. Even from this distance the noise of the crowd beat against my sensitive hearing. Competing scents vied for my attention. Unwashed bodies, cologne, buttered popcorn, hot dogs, and beer were the most prevalent, but by no means the only, smells floating in the air.
The announcer was doing the usual pregame nonsense that most of the spectators were happy to ignore. The first pitch was set for 8:00 EDT. It wouldn’t be too much longer before they announced the starting lineups and played the national anthem.Ivan was waiting right where he was supposed to be. He stood there, unmovable as a mountain, dressed in jeans and a polo shirt under a Cubs jacket. The clothes were supposed to help him blend in with the crowd but didn’t. For one thing, they were pressed. His jeans had a crease. And then there was his posture. The regular fans were excited but relaxed. He wasn’t. He held himself in absolute readiness, his eyes constantly moving, taking in everything. I wondered if I looked like that when I was on duty, and figured yeah, I probably did.
I paused, letting Gibson take the lead. I took off my sunglasses, turned slightly, and, pretending to clean them, took a good look at old Ivan in the mirrored surface. He passed test one. He wasn’t an illusion.
Sliding the glasses back on, I reached my right hand into my pocket, pressing it against the little sponge until I felt wetness on my palm. Test two was something Matty had suggested when I called the hospital. Spawn and demons can change form until they look just like the real thing. But that uses demonic magic—which can be shorted out by the judicious use of holy items. If Ivan was a spawn this little dab of water wouldn’t make him change back, but it would sting like hell (literally) and give me a glimpse of his true form.
I walked up to Ivan, my arm extended in the classic “shake hands” gesture. I could tell he hated it. But there were witnesses, and refusing would be obvious. So he grimly shook my extended hand as quickly as he could manage, discreetly drying his damp palm on the leg of his jeans when he thought I wasn’t looking. “Follow me.”
He led us to the gates and into a line that was rapidly thinning as game time approached. One at a time we passed through curse and then metal detectors, pausing briefly as the security agent admired my little gadget. Then we were off, moving briskly through dim, wide halls lined with vendors and shops. Ivan was setting a quick pace, but we didn’t seem out of place. The announcer was reading off the lineups. Almost everybody was hurrying, hoping not to miss the first pitch.
I stopped when I saw something … odd. In the corner of my vision I saw a pair of spectators heading toward the elevators. The woman looked vaguely familiar, like I’d seen her before, and recently. The drunken companion she was helping walk looked, to my eyes, like a petite blond woman. But the reflection in my glasses was of a dark-haired young man, looking ill and only semiconscious.
I did a double take and the woman noticed. She glared at me as she stabbed her finger against the elevator button, and I recognized her from the expression. It was the guard … Lydia. The woman from Birchwoods on Vicki’s birthday. And that … oh, crap, that was the younger prince, Kristoff, Rezza’s little brother. I shouted a warning to Ivan and took off at a dead run.
The elevator dinged and Lydia shoved Kristoff in ahead of her, moving before the doors were even completely open. I was close enough to see her jabbing at the button panel when the doors slid closed in my face.
Shit, shit, shit!
Ivan and Gibson slid to a stop next to me as I watched the lights on the elevator winking to a stop at every floor.
“She’s got Kristoff. The guy with your people is a fake.”
“We don’t know that. This one could be the fake. Or you could be lying to distract us.”
Paranoia, thy name is bodyguard. “Fine, have your people spray him with holy water. If it’s him, he’ll be annoyed but fine.”
Ivan’s expression grew distracted and I knew he was talking mind to mind. A telepath then. No wonder he hadn’t bothered to check out Gibson and me the way I had him. He could look in our minds and see who we were.
Then he could also see that I was serious. And I hoped he’d understand what I was about to do.
I went dashing down the nearest stairs, taking them three at a time, dodging last-minute arrivals. Gibson was at my heels. “I hope you know what you’re doing,” he gasped out.
I heard Ivan’s voice inside my head. They have unmasked and are detaining the impostor. We are to pursue while our mage attempts a tracking spell. Sounded like a plan to me. But just in case they’d taken precautions against things like tracking spells and telepaths, I needed to think.
Kristoff wasn’t big, but he was practically deadweight. Lydia—or whatever her name was—wouldn’t want to lug him far, not alone. And they’d need a vehicle to transport him in. Probably a van or a camper, so that he’d be out of sight in case he tried to raise a fuss. Not that he’d seemed coherent enough to do so. But they’d want to be careful.
A catering truck? Nah. They’d be long gone by now, their work completed. As the soaring notes of the national anthem began to play for the crowd and the television audience, a new thought occurred to me. The press area. There’d be plenty of vans and trucks to choose from. It would be close to the stadium, too. Unfortunately, I hadn’t had time to do any research. I had no idea where the news vans would be. In the distance I heard the voice on the P.A. system order everyone to rise.
Good thought. I will find out.
It didn’t take Ivan long. Seconds later he was giving me directions. It wasn’t far. Just around the next corner.
Gibson and I took the corner at a sprint. He looked like death, but he kept up, just a step or two to my left. He gave a cry that was more a cough than a shout, and I saw them.
They were a third of the way across the crowded lot, heading toward a white van with the Channel 9 logo emblazoned on it in bold red letters. Erikson crouched inside the open doorway. He called out a warning to our quarry and reached inside the van to grab a long weapon. What the hell?
Kristoff seemed to gain focus a little, managing to struggle weakly against his captor. But I barely noticed. My eyes were only on Erikson, who had dropped into position and was preparing to fire.