Page 22 of Suck This

“Tell her, again, if she calls that we’re no longer in a relationship and that if she has any other inquiries, to forward them to Adelaide.”

Abraham choked.

I grinned.

“That’s kind of harsh,” Fox said from the corner of the room where he’d been sitting since I’d arrived. He was holding a cigarette between his fingers, though it wasn’t lit. It’d been a human habit that he’d brought into the afterlife. Though he knew better than to light up in my office.

“I think it’s time to pull the big guns out,” I said, denying him.

Adelaide was Fox’s sister, and he knew, just as well as I did, how harsh she could be when it came to the men she felt were under her protection.

Though, Adelaide was a human—or human-like. She’d been digesting vampire blood for over three decades, which had enabled her to keep her youthful appearance.

Adelaide, unfortunately, didn’t have the right genetic make up to take on vampirism. Fox, and I, had tried numerous times to turn her to ill effect. Luckily during one of those times, we realized that she could digest vampire blood, and benefit from its effects.

She’d been an asset to not only me, but my company, and I planned to keep her as long as I could.

“Sir, yes, sir.”

I flipped Pavlov off and took a seat behind my desk.

“What else happened tonight that warranted all four of you being in the city?”

Normally they were spread out in the surrounding area, and I had to call them in to get them to come to me. They liked their own territory, and since my power and magic gave off a ‘don’t come into my territory’ vibe, they usually stayed away unless I’d called them in.

Being invited into the city by me was something that changed the dynamics of our power shift, allowing them to come in without repercussions—such as feeling as if I was peeling their skin off their bones with my inadvertent power release.

“There was a call put out sometime around midnight asking for assistance, yet nobody can remember pushing the silent alarm,” Abraham grumbled. “And conveniently enough, the alarm was pushed from somewhere in your central office, meaning only a few would’ve been able to access it.”

“Did you check the logs to see who was here?”

I had a bio-scan that scanned everyone and everything that entered and exited my office. It didn’t matter whether you were human, shapeshifter, or vampire. If you had a body and triggered the alarm, it scanned you.

“There were eight people here, all of them your own personal staff. All claim not to have seen anything,” Fox said from his spot propped up in a chair. “Their logs on their computers also show them in their office, working on what they were supposed to be working on at the time of the alarm going off, too.”

“Can you tell where the alarm went off at?” I asked.

There were five alarms in the office, and four of them were where people could press them if needed. The only one they couldn’t access was the one in my office, and I damn well knew nobody had been in here.

Even though any of the men that were currently in my office could’ve gotten there if they wanted to.

Teleportation was fun like that sometimes.

“The copy room,” Fox answered. “No smells. No impressions. I don’t think they were here when the alarm went off.”

“You think it was set off remotely,” I guessed.

They all nodded.

“Why did they want you here?” I asked.

That was the million-dollar question, and none of them had an answer for me.

Though, the question was answered not even fifteen minutes later as they were getting ready to go home.

An explosion rocked the building. Windows cracked but didn’t explode. The walls shuddered. The sprinklers started to lower.

But they didn’t go off. Something in which I was very thankful for.

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