It took Simon five minutes to find the information he was looking for, during which time a staff member knocked on the door and wheeled in a cart with dishes covered in a silver cloche. When Simon raised an eyebrow, I waved him back to his search. "I haven't eaten a real meal since breakfast."
But I left the cart untouched while he worked.
Finally, he handed my laptop back to me, with a web page that had a publicity photo of a group of people in FBME jackets behind a table laden with daggers and swords. "Spelled weapons bust in Seattle last year," he said, then pointed at the two people on the edge of the group. "That's them."
From the photo's caption, I got their names. "Haley McMair and Dion Sharpe."
"They were in the task force meeting this morning," Simon said. "In Seattle."
Even depending on a public teleportation site, it would have taken them less than an hour to get to Floodmouth. "Is it a good sign they had to use agents from Seattle? Maybe nobody here is involved."
"Or maybe," Simon countered, "they thought we might recognize any local agents and ask what they were doing there." He glanced at me. "You really want to dump this all on Salt and be done with it."
"Yes." The more people we could trust, the faster this whole thing could get cleared up. Trix could move back to our apartment, Simon and I would stop being targets, and I would be free to accept the perfect job that Delia had found for me. "But you're right. This doesn't actually clear anyone." I set down the laptop between us and pushed up to my feet.
Under the cloche, I found two grilled cheese sandwiches cut into one-inch strips and a tureen of tomato soup with a side of sour cream. The kitchen had included two small bowls that fit on the plates, so I ladled soup into both bowls, then moved back to the couch with one plate in each hand.
Simon stared at me when I handed him his plate. "Why do you have such a hard time understanding that I don't need to eat?"
"Why do you have such a hard time understanding that acquiring calories is only one of the many purposes of food?" Curling up at the other end of the couch, I inhaled the fragrant steam, smelling basil and garlic, before taking a bite. How the kitchen had produced tomato soup on demand was a mystery — this hadn't come from a can. Whether it would be the same as what Claire had served was a different question, but I'd passed along her instructions and the kitchen hadn't disappointed. Whatever cheese they'd used in the sandwich was going to ruin my appreciation for the cheap stuff.
"I take it you met my mother today?" He picked up a strip of grilled cheese and sniffed it.
"We had coffee and cheesecake. Well, I had cheesecake." Ignoring his prodding and sniffing of the food, I continued eating. "I like her. The meeting would have been much more awkward if I'd had to shoot you."
"I'm sure you would have muddled through anyhow."
"Naturally." In reality, if I'd had to shoot her son to save my life, she might have understood, but she never would have forgiven me — or herself. She'd already been worried something bad would happen, even without knowing the mess Simon and I had stepped in. Back when he'd been human, she would have pushed him to see a psychiatrist for some short-term pharmaceutical help until he got through this transition, but the minute he'd become a vampire, that was off the table.
It proved there really was a need for the bracelet Evan had worn, preferably without the addictive nature and sudden, messy death. If I had a time machine to go back nine hundred years, I could have worked with an insane vampire mage to create a better version without the drawbacks.
The mass of murky information swirling in the back of my brain suddenly clarified and my hand froze with the grilled cheese halfway to my mouth. "Holy shit. That's it. It doesn't make any sense, but that has to be it."
I had an answer that seemed obvious to me, but was it a case of everything looking like a nail because I'd spent years building a really big hammer?
Simon took a bite of his sandwich and waited for me to continue.
"I'm an idiot. They didn't create a new technique for getting blood magic to work on vampires. It was obvious from the start that whoever put that spell together didn't have any training. The whole thing uses power to hide a lack of finesse."
"Okay, but —"
Excited about my theory, I cut him off. "Someone figured out a way to treat depression in vampires and they didn't make it public. What does that say?"
He considered that, taking another bite as I nearly vibrated in my seat. Finally, he said, "It tells us they were doing something shady."
"Exactly. If it had been done in a university, there would be fifteen papers published by now. And if it was being done commercially, you'd see ads for a Vampire's Little Helper Amulet plastered all over the city. But instead, we have absolute silence."
"Okay…"
I leaned forward. "I couldn't figure out what the second part of the spell did. But if I'm right, it all fits together. Because they didn't create anything new, they used something old. Somehow they transformed mages. Vampires are making a play for immortality."