Rocked by Love (Gargoyles, #4)(29)

“That’s King David.” Kylie’s voice broke the silence, her tone even and carefully neutral. “He comes and goes as he pleases, but when he’s here, that’s where he sits.”

Dag took that to mean that he himself could either stand or go to the devil because the cat was staying put. He supposed that summarized the nature of cats, but it also indicated his little female might have been just as put out by that unplanned kiss as he had been. How he felt about that, he couldn’t decide.

He glanced around the space and caught sight of the closet door. If he remembered correctly, Kylie’s perfectly serviceable desk chair should still be inside. Crossing to the small space, he pulled out the rolling seat and positioned it beside the cat’s current perch. It lacked the toile chair’s soft cushions and well-broken-in cozy comfort, but at least it saved him from standing around like a fool in the queen’s court.

He wondered if his female realized the significance of giving her cat the title of King. Wouldn’t that make her a monarch in her own right? She seemed to have no trouble acting the part.

For several minutes he simply watched and waited, dividing his time between Kylie’s green-ringed eyes and King David’s furry yellow coat. Both ignored him, even after the cat completed his bath and settled into a sphinxlike pose to relax. It seemed cat and mistress had something else in common—neither appeared particularly impressed by his presence.

After nearly twenty minutes, it became clear to Dag that Kylie had no intention of speaking to him unless it became absolutely necessary. He could only hope that if a demon suddenly appeared at his back, she would at least put aside her irritation long enough to warn him to duck, but just then, he preferred not to chance anything.

When he finally broke the silence, his voice sounded unnaturally harsh, even to his own ears. “Have you found anything else on the device?” He winced when he heard himself, but it was too late to alter what was said.

Kylie stilled, her fingers freezing a hairsbreadth above her keyboard, her gaze still fixed on her screen. It appeared as if she debated the merits of responding to his question or continuing to ignore him, and Dag honestly had no idea which she would choose.

Of course, when she eventually made her decision and turned her dark gaze on him, relief failed to flood through him. She looked at him as if he emitted some sort of odor offensive to her senses.

“I’ve found several things,” she said, her voice still tight and flat, as if she spoke to an irritating stranger. “As I mentioned earlier, there are a number of files saved on the drive in various formats. However, the footage we already viewed was the only video file. I’m afraid we won’t get any more information of that kind from this source.”

Dag nodded, trying to prevent a frown from pulling at his features. It took a second for him to realize why she sounded so strange to him; it was the lack of spark in her voice. Without the undercurrent of energy and impudence in her tone, she simply didn’t sound like Kylie. She sounded like a recorded message.

Something told him not to point that out, though. He thought he remembered seeing a pair of scissors in her desk drawer. Better to be cautious.

He rephrased his question. “What have you found of importance?”

Her lips pursed briefly, then she bounced a few times on her ball and seemed to thaw a bit. He only wished he knew exactly what had precipitated the change so he could do it again in the future. He had the feeling this would not be the only time he angered her.

“I was really hoping for another video, so I checked for hidden files first,” she said. “Nada. It’s a total WYSIWYG. I don’t think Ott was as tech savvy as he liked to think. Or else he figured the drude would eat anyone who tried to get into his files, so why bother being sneaky.”

Dag swallowed a sigh and reached for his calmest, most level tone of voice. “Nada?” he repeated. “Wizzy-wig?”

She blinked at him, her expression remaining blank for an instant before realization hit. She truly was unaware of her automatic use of slang and phrasing someone not from her own culture might have trouble understanding. At least he knew now that she didn’t do it to torture him.

Or rather, she hadn’t done so just then.

“Sorry. I didn’t find anything buried or hidden,” she explained. “What you see is what you get with this particular drive. So, next I started weeding through the files. E-mails are copies of his conversations with me. He didn’t keep as thorough a record as I did, so that’s pretty useless. The spreadsheet he set up was the first thing that really caught my attention.”

She turned back to her keyboard, set her fingers flying and opened a new document on the screen which she angled to allow him to see it. He had noticed that she used the small palm-sized device next to her typing surface sparingly and had asked her about it earlier. She called it a mouse, and said she could use keystroke shortcuts more efficiently most of the time. Now, however, she used the small pointer icon the mouse produced to highlight areas of the ledgerlike document for Dag to make note of.

“It looks like our friend Dennis was compiling a database of local nocturnis,” she said, her voice taking on more of the animation to which Dag had grown accustomed. “He has a list of people, mostly men, but evil is apparently not Y-chromosome-linked. Each entry is listed starting with what he calls the person’s handle. I can only guess he felt some kind of nostalgia for the days of CB radio when they used them. But I’m guessing a lot of the members of the Order chose to go by an alias rather than a legal name. A nom de guerre, I guess you could say.”