“There has to be a way to narrow it down. I mean…we have to know something more. Surely there’s something missing. What are we missing?” Kali’s gaze swung between both men, but almost as if a light bulb had switched on in her head, her eyes settled on Alex. “How long does it take for the information to be passed on from a dying Oracle? Is it something gradual or is it instant? Would there be a specific window of time for the baby to be born? I mean…hell, I’m not sure what I mean…I just…is it possible that they are targeting women born at a specific time on that day?”
“That’s quite likely,” Alex answered as theories started forming in his brain. “I’m not exactly an expert on Oracles, but I believe the information transfer is almost instantaneous at the moment of death.”
“So,” Kali said, looking thoughtful, “if whoever is looking for these women knows that, they’d be targeting the ones who’d been born the exact moment of the Oracle’s death.”
“Give or take a couple of minutes to allow for slight differences in clock settings,” Ronan added with a nod.
“Okay, so if we know the specific time the Oracle died, then we can narrow down the list of women who need protecting.”
Alex ground his teeth together, not wanting to upset Kali but needing to give her the bad news anyway. “Trouble is I don’t know her actual moment of death. I doubt anyone knows, except maybe her murderer.”
“We don’t need to know it,” Kali said, looking maybe just a little bit excited. “Call my brother. He’ll have access to the victims’ birth certificates showing the time of birth. I know it’s a long shot, but it’s a fair assumption that whoever wants the Oracle’s supposed recipient dead is also the person who wanted the Oracle dead.” Alex nodded in agreement. “So they would be the one person who would know her time of death. Why send assassins to kill hundreds when they can narrow it down to a handful?”
“Good point,” Ronan said as he pulled the car to a stop. “Don’t scare Dave. He doesn’t know anything about paranormals. If we need to tell him, I’d rather it be before he sees you appear out of nowhere.”
Alex nodded, pressed a kiss to Kali’s lips, and slipped straight to her brother’s office across town.
* * * *
Ronan ground his teeth, annoyed at the soft smile that graced Kali’s face. “Climb into the front seat,” he growled even though it was supposed to be a suggestion, not an order. He would have tried to smile but was worried that it would come off as more of an aggressive show of teeth instead of the reassurance he was hoping for. Kali moved quickly, climbing over the seat just like he’d asked rather than stepping out of the car. He spared a moment for her to grab her seat belt before setting the car in motion once more.
“He’s gone to talk to Dave?” she asked quietly, but before he could say anything, she seemed to answer her unasked question. “Oh, right, no cell phones.” She glanced around the ordinary-looking streets of the small town they were passing through and then turned her attention back to him. “Are we vulnerable without Alex?”
Great. Fucking great. It wasn’t that he begrudged Alex’s rather handy skill set, but it pissed him off that Kali would think he needed Alex’s help to protect her. He was more than capable of holding his own against paranormals. It was how he and Alex had met in the first place. Granted, he hadn’t come up against pixies before, but that shouldn’t be a problem anymore, especially now that he had a whole box of demon shots. He could very literally stand over the ashes of a pixie, wait for her to reform, and shoot her again. He also had an inkling that a sticky substance like paint lacquer or the spray glue he’d tucked under his seat would slow the pixie’s reformation down, if not stop it all together.
He shook his head when he imagined Alex’s reaction to that. The trouble with paranormals was that they lived so long they forgot to think outside the box. Alex was one of the more progressive members of his species, having embraced human science and modern technology, but the majority of his people still clung to the past. It was amazing how few of them had any clue of the destructive range of weapons humans had developed in the past hundred years. Ronan could still see the shocked expression on his attacker’s face when he’d shot the massive creature with a bazooka. He didn’t enjoy killing anything, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to stand by while a creature from his nightmares tried to snack on him and his squad.