Blind Salvage: A Rylee Adamson Novel(35)

Really, a one-freaking-track mind. “Seriously? You don’t want to save that for a more humiliating time?”
He threw back his head, laughing uproariously. With what looked like great difficulty, he pulled himself together. “You’re right, I’ll save it. Maybe for when Liam is on the brink of snapping.”
Fuck, and he would do it too. Back to the point at hand, though. “Blind salvage—spill your guts.”
He walked toward me, stopping only when we were a bare inch apart. Just like on the rooftop. He was only a little taller than me, so he couldn’t pull off looking down his nose at me like Liam did.
“This salvage is not what you think it is. That’s what I can feel. You think you see the truth of it, but you don’t. There are forces I can’t divine, forces that are blocking me from seeing what they wish to hide. But the glimpses I’ve caught make me think that you could be tangling with a demon again. A Unicorn foal would be a perfect sacrifice … .”
His lip ring glinted in the firelight as he spoke and I found myself staring at it as I absorbed his words.
Doran lowered his voice. “Perhaps you would like me to cash in my kiss now?”
My eyes snapped up to his, my mind about as far from that as it had ever been. “I’ll pass.”
“Too bad.”
“Goodbye, Doran.”
I stepped back from him and spun on my heel. Jogging down the driveway, I passed through the mirrored reflection that kept his home hidden from human view and back onto the human plain. Demons, damn, lately it seemed to be always coming back to those nasty fuckers. Hoarfrost demon, then the prophecies about Orion, and now this. If this salvage was because a demon had snatched the foal, there wouldn’t be a lot of time to get her back alive.
With a sacrifice, there would be some sort of time period that would have to be perfect. If I could figure that out, I would know how much time we had to succeed in getting Calliope away. I wouldn’t think about the other alternative.
I jogged around to my side of the truck and slid in, rubbing my hands together. Whatever conversation the two men were having ended the second I opened the door.
I turned the key over in the ignition. “Don’t let me keep you two hens from gossiping.”
Dox chuckled, but it was strained. Forced. I lifted my eyes to Liam’s in the rearview mirror, but there was no hint there, either. What the hell had they been talking about? Curiosity flowed through me. I couldn’t help it.
“What?”
Dox cleared his throat. “I was waiting for you to finish telling Liam about the veil.”
A blatant lie, his face flushed up and he wouldn’t meet my eyes. Interesting. But I went along with it.
“Okay, where do you think we should start?” I checked the traffic as I pulled off Shawnee Road onto the main drag. Tracking Calliope, I focused on her, let her threads pull me in her direction.
Dox clapped his hands together, like the sound of two giant meaty symbols clashing. “You know about using your second sight to part the mirrored reflections?”
Liam nodded. “I figured that out pretty early on.”
Yup, that had been the first time I’d tried to leave him behind. It hadn’t worked so well.
“Well, the thing with the veil is, a human has to use a physical entry point in order to cross over. And just because they use that point, doesn’t mean they will actually be able to cross.”
Liam started to lean forward and the engine sputtered. He moved as far back as he could and the truck continued on.
“What do you mean? Like it won’t always work?”
Dox shook his head. “Not for a human, no. The entry points for crossing the veil always work for a supernatural, but not so much for a human. Actually, not so much for a human ever unless—”
“Unless they’re holding onto a supernatural?” Liam offered.
Again, Dox nodded. “Right, and those physical entry points can be anywhere, though it might seem like there are a lot, there aren’t more than one or two per state.”
It was my turn to do a jaw drop. “One or two per state? Holy shit sticks.”
The ogre laughed and leaned back in his chair. “Yeah, that I know of.”
“What, you’ve got a map of entry points?” Now I was asking the questions. As well as Giselle had trained me, and for all my experience, I still had a lot to learn, because, damn, every time I turned around, there was something new. Something dangerous and brutal. I could only imagine how Liam felt being thrown into the deep end of the pool with me when even I floundered. Then again, so far he’d handled it as if it were just another day at the office.
Liam reached forward, his fingers just brushing along my shoulder. “You think Milly has a map of the entry points?”