Page 117 of Tin God

Summer pushed away from her desk and spun in her chair. “Why aren’t we tech billionaires?”

“We should be.”

“Right? No more filing.” Summer lifted up a manila folder. “We could hire people to do filing.”

Raven stared into the distance. “And fill out incident reports.”

“We could hire people to be us, and then we could be cool, badass vampires.”

“Speak for yourself.” Raven sniffed. “I’m already a badass vampire.”

“Keep telling yourself that the next time you’re arguing with Baojia about the new incident-report form and why it’s not as good as the old one.”

Raven flipped her off. “To be fair, we weren’t even born when Henri Paulson started investing in Silicon Valley, so he has a head start.”

“Details.” Summer rolled back to her desk and pulled out the compact 9mm handgun Baojia had given her for her birthday the year before. “Dusk tomorrow, Katya said. She wants me to go inside and you watch from above. We’ll need to get Lang to monitor their comms. She wants to know who they contact when I go in and start asking questions.”

“They won’t answer any of them,” Raven said. “You know the exchanges run on privacy. They’re independent of aegis.”

“I know, but depending on who they call or what messengers they send after I go in, that might tell Katya what she needs to know.”

“Gotcha.” Raven stood. “I’ll let Lang know. Tomorrow night?”

“Yeah.” Summer leaned back and kicked her feet up on the desk. “We get to shake that apple tree and see where the rats run out.”

Raven just shook her head. “You are the hickest hick that ever did hick, Summer Mackenzie.”

“Don’t be jealous of my colorful Carolina vernacular just because you come from the frigid north, Jessup.”

“My people are from Chicago, okay? Not the Yukon.” Raven shook her head and walked out to the balcony. “See you at home.”

Raj wason a plane to Vancouver before the captain even connected the call from his boss. “Why am I flying to Canada?”

“Because I may need you there.” Gavin’s voice was clipped. “Did I inconvenience you?”

“I know who I work for.” Though Raj had been doing some very amusing surveillance on a group of teenagers from a charter school in Long Beach who had been trying to hack into the Paladin servers.

The group of four boys and two girls had found rumors about Paladin on the dark web and decided that it must be full of spies, crypto-millionaires, and drug dealers instead of centuries-old vampires who were constantly forgetting their passwords or filing reports on YouTube videos that got historical events wrong.

“If you open your email,” Gavin said, “you’re going to find a file on Henri Paulson.”

Raj recognized the name immediately. “I know him.”

“Mild-mannered tech billionaire by day?—”

“Nothing about Paulson is mild-mannered,” Raj muttered. “Mila almost worshipped him. Thought he had all the right ideas. Vampires are the superior species. Humans are basically cattle, and immortals need to thin the herd so we don’t suffer from their bad choices. Human governments shouldn’t have any control over us or our resources.”

“The whole buffet of vampire conspiracy, I see.”

“Oh yeah.” Raj tried not to think about his toxic former lover, especially since she was dead, but at times the security work he did for Gavin Wallace made it impossible.

“Tell me what you know,” Gavin said. “Beyond the conspiracy buffet. The man has more money than nearly anyone in our world, so he’s not an idiot.”

“He’s not an idiot, but…” Raj took a deep breath. “Paulson thinks he’s a genius, but he’s not. He has a nearly cultlike following among water vampires in South Asia. Lots of them into the floating-city thing.”

“What about you?”

Raj shook his head. “I may be a water vampire, but even I know it’s not a feasible plan. We need humans to live, and humans need land. Not that Paulson cares much about humans.”

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