The Curse (Belador #3)(67)

Another Rías?

She lifted the strap off her shoulder, bringing the viola case around to sit on her bike seat where she could access the weapon inside.

A deep male voice that belonged to her favorite Nightstalker rumbled with Southern undertones. “Don’t tell me you done gone and started violin lessons. I ain’t listenin’ to no screechin’, so don’t come ’round here to practice.”

Evalle looked over her shoulder to find the translucent image of Grady in his usual red-and-black-plaid, short-sleeved shirt and wrinkled trousers a size too big for his tall, bony frame. He hadn’t aged beyond sixty-eight, the age he’d been when he’d died well over a decade ago. “I didn’t ask you to listen to me play, old man, and this case is for a viola, not for a violin.”

“Why don’t you git a gee-tar?”

She heaved a sigh and stood the case against the back wheel of her bike. “What’re you doing here?”

“Watchin’ your pitiful excuse for a love life.”

That meant Grady had been here long enough to witness her kissing Isak. “Can we move this along? Why are you here and not over by the hospital?”

When he’d failed to give her a name the first time she’d met him, Evalle had started calling him Grady due to finding him always around Grady Hospital.

He got that ornery-old-cuss look. “Gotta shake if you wanna know what I know.”

She hadn’t shaken hands with him since she’d made the mistake of doing it too long one night out of sympathy when she should only have been shaking for intel. The result had allowed Grady to take human form with no help at times and hold that form longer than he should.

“What happened to taking human form any time you want, Grady?”

“I never said any time.” He bunched his lips and squinted one eye in a stare meant to let her know she’d aggravated him.

She grinned, refusing to make this easy. The wily old dog could outmaneuver the best of VIPER agents. Shaking too quickly would cost her more next time.

Grady gave up on his mean look and turned pouty. “I can still do it some on my own, but I had to use up my solid form to come here.”

“Why? What was going on here?”

“Nuh-uh. You know the rules.”

Now she shoved an ornery look at him. “All right, but this needs to be quick.”

“Like Ironman said, ‘Waitin’ on you now.’”

She’d ask him where he’d seen that movie, but she didn’t have the time to waste on chitchat.

When his filmy hand connected with Evalle’s, heat flushed through her hand and arm with the power she generated.

Grady’s form turned opaque, as if someone had poured cocoa-brown pigment into his body. Even the faded colors on his shirt sharpened. His face muscles relaxed into an unguarded smile that always gave her a warm feeling in her chest.

“Start talking, old man. What were you doing here?”

Grady stretched his arms as if just waking up, then wiped his wrinkled mouth in a patent sign that he wanted a drink, but she had nothing to offer him this time and he knew it. He said, “You don’t want to know about the Svart trolls first?”

“What have you got on them?” He’d more than earn this handshake if he had information on Svarts.

“They’re stirrin’ up all this gang mess.”

“We know that.”

“Bet you don’t know how many are here.”

She’d heard Horace tell everyone last night that the Svarts often worked in teams of two or four, so she expected more than one. “How many?”

“Eight came into the city and—”

“Eight? Crap!”

“Save all that exasperation for the bad news.” Grady licked his lips and scratched his grizzly beard. “There’s more comin’.”

“Why? What do they want?” Evalle had the best snoop in the underworld of Atlanta standing in front of her. Grady always had more pertinent information than any other Nightstalker she could name.

“Don’t know. But those Svarts are plannin’ for more trolls like the local ones to arrive as soon as the Svarts finish somethin’. Sounds sort of like a troll convention in the makin’ with Svarts runnin’ the show.”

She chewed on that mentally. “What could be worth their facing off with VIPER, especially this division?”

“Somethin’ they been promised once they finish their job would be my bet.”

“What do you mean?”

“Our world—the unnatural one—don’t work like human-world logic. If the Svarts are here now, it’s to do somethin’ for a powerful group. And if they’re plannin’ on callin’ in all kind of trolls soon, that makes me think whoever they got a deal with has the Svarts believin’ VIPER ain’t gonna be able to protect this country soon.”

Unimaginable. But she’d seen enough in her five short years, since becoming a Belador warrior at eighteen, to know that anything in her world was possible. “Svarts are pretty powerful, but I don’t see where eight are a force to match with VIPER. I’m not wishing more trolls of any kind to deal with, but if the Svarts intend to bring in more, why aren’t all those extra trolls here now?”

“My guess would be that the Svarts are waitin’ to call in the rest after someone else clears the way.”