Page 53 of Flock This

However, it was my win, so I refused to complain about it.

I slid the card, opening the door so I could enter, finding the large open room empty.

I didn’t spend much time here. In fact, I’d only come in during training, when my boss had explained how the system worked. I recalled him walking me around, showing me how items came in and were placed in the appropriate bay for the courier assigned to the delivery.

It had struck me as a lot more boring than I’d expected. When I heard magical delivery service, I’d thought about self-delivering mail and a place that cleaned itself.

Instead, I’d found something that looked just as dull as a normal post office, and boy had that disappointed me.

Of course, now that I had to sneak in, it made things easier.

The large room had small doors all over the walls, each with a four-digit code above. Items were received with the recipient’s information attached to them. They were placed into a delivery bay, then assigned to a courier. At that point, the courier would gain access to the delivery bay and the information was sent to the courier and displayed on their arm.

I recalled the bay information from my arm—2693. Finding the box was easy, and I opened the door as soon as I located it. The door opened to a portal, just like the ones I opened to gain access. It meant that the items weren’t actually held at this place. Instead, this was just one of many such courier locations which all had access to the boxes. It helped streamline and quicken the process, since packages could be delivered without having to cross long distances. It also meant that should this office shut down for some reason, the deliveries could pick up anywhere else with little to no delay.

On the inside of the door sat a list of who had accessed the portal from this end, kept by magical means rather than scribbled down in pencil. It meant it was nearly impossible to change or screw with.

Nearly was a tricky word, though.

The list didn’t show names but rather numbers—the identification code programmed into each person.

Forty-two showed over and over again—not a shock as forty-two belonged to the Justice who handled this mess most of the time. I dragged my finger down the list, pausing when I hit something other than forty-two.

I’d never seen that before. I knew most of the people who worked in this office, given I saw their codes with the delivery information, and I’d for sure remembered a number that had sixty-nine in it…

So who the hell was six-nine-six? It even had a small mark to the side of it, a sign that it had been accessed remotely—something that should have been nearly impossible.

The timing of the last access was just before I would have gone up the elevator, meaning it had to be placing the stake into the bay for me to find. The only thing that made sense was that the original delivery item was something intended to self-destruct, since I’d found nothing else in there. Afterward, once William had been killed, six-nine-six had remotely accessed the delivery box and put the bloody stake inside.

The opening of a door elsewhere in the large room had me closing the bay quietly and sliding behind a rolling bin used to transfer large amounts of mail, trying to stay out of sight.

“You’re sure?”

“I thought I saw someone.” The two men spoke back and forth as they entered the room.

“You’re always paranoid.”

“I am not! Besides, isn’t it better to make sure? If we lose a council member on our watch, can you imagine the trouble we’d be in?”

The other person sighed loudly, and boy I knew that sound. It was shorthand for, ‘I agree but I don’t like it and I’m not willing to admit it.’

“Fine. Let’s do a sweep just to be safe. Then I want coffee.”

“I hear they have the Pumpkin Spice now.”

“You are such a basic bitch.”

The two kept talking as they walked through the space, but their check was half-assed at best. Hell, it might have been little more than an eighth-of-an-ass.

I didn’t recognize either man, which surprised me. I knew most of the security in the building given I got into trouble often enough. It meant these weren’t security for this area.

Their words hit me, then. Council seats?

That meant they had a meeting, right? Could it be about me?

I hated to seem self-centered or egotistical, but the reality was that I was likely their biggest issue at the moment. I’d known the meeting was coming up, but what were the odds that I’d pick the exact time to break in?

I almost laughed at the thought that the vampires were in the council room right now, getting ready to put out a warrant for me and set a trial date, while I was a measly two floors down.

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