Guardian's Joy #3 (29 page)

“He’s already bent,” JJ snickered.

“You prove my point! Think what will happen
if he slides over into complete and total perversion.”

“All right, I surrender.” She wasn’t angry
anymore and was pretty sure she’d jumped to the wrong conclusions,
but without her ability to detect his lies, how could she tell if
he was telling the truth. “I’m not good at this relationship stuff.
I don’t even know if we have relationship.”

“We do. See how easy this is?”

“No, it isn’t easy for me.” She turned to
face him. “You said what we did was a waste of time and you didn’t
want anyone to know.”

“When did I say that?”

JJ huffed. “Not ten minutes ago, when you
rolled out of bed.”

Nardo thought for a minute, sighed in
exasperation and thunked his forehead against hers. “You have some
problems that need to be solved. We’ve wasted time talking about
them, worrying about them instead of doing something about them.
The more detailed the plan, the fewer questions will be asked.” His
hands caressed her cheeks.

“The time I spend with you could never be
wasted and I don’t care who knows we share a bed. They all know how
I feel about you. They knew it before I did.”

He reached behind her to open the War Room
door and backed her into the room. “Feeling better?”

“No, I’m feeling foolish,” JJ admitted.

“Good. You should feel foolish for doubting
me.” He spun her around and gave her a playful push. “Now, let’s
get to work.”

Chapter
28

“Give me five more minutes.”

That’s what he said fifteen minutes ago and
fifteen minutes before that. Nardo sat at a computer terminal, his
fingers flying over the keys faster than she’d ever seen anyone
type. He paused, read something as it flashed across the screen and
typed some more. JJ wasn’t sure why he’d dragged her out of bed. He
didn’t need her to watch him type. In fact, once he contacted
whoever it was, Nardo seemed to forget she was even there. JJ was
bored.

She idly fiddled with the mouse on the pad in
front of her and the screen came to life. It was a log of some
sort, set up in columns and written in code. Curiosity overcame
boredom. Elbows on the table, she propped her chin on her fists and
stared at the screen.

The first column was dates. That was easy
enough. The last date was the night she and Nardo met the vampire.
The second column was a series of letter/number combinations; F8,
B2, D5 and so on. She had no clue, so she moved on to the third.
This one she figured out fairly quickly. WF 20-25; white female,
twenty to twenty five years old. Some had more definite ages. HM
47; Hispanic male, age 47. Some of the spaces were blank,
particularly at the bottom of the page. The next column was another
mystery; DD, DS or SD; enough of both so she knew the letter
reversal wasn’t a typo. Beyond that, who knew? It took her a few
minutes to catch on to the next column, but once she did, she felt
pretty lame for taking so long. She chalked it up to not being
familiar with everyone’s last name. BaT; Nardo was Bernardo,
Bernardo ad Tormeo; CaS, Canaan ad Simeon. Manon had explained the
ad was similar to the German von. There were usually two sets of
initials, sometimes only one. The last column clicked right away.
She’d seen too many of them not to recognize a case file number
when she saw one.

Suddenly, it all fell into place. This was a
record of demon activity. Some of the case numbers were without
Guardian initials and all of those were marked SD, Suspected Demon.
DD had to be Demon Destroyed. JJ smiled at that. She wondered if
Nardo’s game,
Demon Destroyer
, got its name from the log or
the other way around. The letter/number combinations were map
locations.

She was quite proud of herself when she found
the file with the corresponding maps, each section marked with tiny
colored dots. Her eyes slid back to the log. Red-DD, Blue-SD,
Green-DS.

On the last date logged, Broadbent and Col
had killed a demon, no victim noted, but there was the red dot. It
was blocks away from where she and Nardo were. The two must have
left their patrol to come to their aid. She looked at the map
pinned to the wall to get a better picture of how far away they
were. It was the same map, pieced together from printouts of the
sections on her screen, but without the dots.

She stared at the push pins in the map on the
wall. Her vampire was missing. Was that because there was no victim
or had someone simply forgotten in all the excitement? It wasn’t a
date she was likely to forget.

She turned from the map with the push pins to
the one with the dots and then to the log. Push pins, dots, log.
Push pins dots, log. Push pins, dot’s…

“Dates!” she shouted.

“Fuck!” Nardo spun around so fast in his
chair, it tipped. The wheels took it out from under him and he
landed on the floor. “What?” he yelled at her, hands in the
air.

JJ’s hands flew to her mouth to stifle her
laughter. The maneuver didn’t work. He looked so silly sitting on
the floor with his legs splayed and his hands in the air. “Your
five minutes are up,” she spluttered just as the door opened.

Canaan and Grace stood in the doorway. Dov
was behind them peering over Grace’s shoulder.

“What the hell’s going on in here?” Canaan
looked from JJ to Nardo.

“She must have found his stash of porno
sites.” Dov shook his head and turned back to the kitchen.

Grace snickered. “Either that or he said,
‘Just five more minutes’ once too often.” She shook her head and
followed Dov.

“Nardo was concentrating on the computer and
I must have startled him,” JJ explained lamely.

“That’s a first. Breakfast in fifteen
minutes.” Canaan shook his head and closed the door.

“Sorry,” JJ apologized with only a little
snort. She bit her bottom lip and held out her hand to help him
up.

He pulled her down on top of him instead.
“We’ve got fifteen minutes.” He nuzzled her neck. “Thanks to you I
have several places that need kissing to make them better.” He ran
his hands up under her sweatshirt.

“You’re asking me to kiss your ass.”

“Yeah, but it sounded better the way I said
it.” He started to lift her shirt, but she pushed it back down.

“No,” she said, slapping at the hand trying
to sneak back under her shirt. “You brought me down here to work,
so that’s what I’ve been doing.” She laughed when Nardo raised his
eyebrows. “You were glued to that stupid screen for ‘another five
minutes,” she mocked, “And I was bored, so I snooped, okay? But I
think I may have found something.”

“I found something, too.” His hand snaked
into her waistband as she tried to move away.

“You were the one who said we’ve wasted
enough time,” she laughed.

“So I did, but I also said time spent with
you wasn’t wasted. Let’s make Dov’s nightmare come true. Come on,
just five more minutes.”

*****

Breakfast was a casual affair, most times
eaten in the kitchen with the first arrivals getting to sit at the
island and late comers leaning back against the counters holding
their plates in their hands. JJ was amazed at how much food Grace
could cook up in half an hour and how quickly it all
disappeared.

She liked it this way. You filled your plate,
grabbed a fork and got down to it. The first few days, she’d eaten
light, not wanting to impose her appetite on the House’s budget or
hear the comments about how much she consumed, but after suffering
the relentless teasing of the twins over her growling stomach a few
hours later, she saw it as a no win situation and decided to eat
her fill. No one noticed. The Guardians ate copious amounts of
food. In comparison to the men, her plateful looked modest.

JJ and Nardo were the last to enter the
kitchen, JJ still flushed from their ‘five more minutes’ and Nardo
grinning like a boy.

“Good waking,” Grace chirped, using the
Paenitentia greeting and watched happily while they filled their
plates.

“Must have been,” Col whispered a little too
loudly.

“We’ve been busy…” Nardo began.

“Sounded like heavy work,” Dov cut in.

“It’s best if you just ignore them,” Grace
advised JJ.

“Anyway,” Nardo drew their attention back to
him. “While I was trying to get some information on Joy, she was
working on our vampire problem. She found something interesting.”
He nodded at JJ and she took over.

“Every vampire incident coincides with a
demon incident. Now that might be a coincidence, but you guys tell
me activity in winter is slow and this winter seems to be an
exception. I also have to ask myself why these demons are showing
up regularly in the sectors you just happen to be patrolling that
night, particularly when they’re not showing up elsewhere.
Everywhere else, the log is dotted with suspected demon or demon
sighting designations. Not lately. They’re all demon kills with no
vic. It’s almost as if someone is sending them into your patrol
sector to keep you busy and away from the vampire. There are too
many coincidences to make me believe it’s random.”

“It doesn’t fit the night at the rave,” Dov
said, frowning. “Nardo and I weren’t supposed to be there, but the
demon was.”

“Good thing you were. That bastard was a big
mother.” Col toasted his brother with his coffee mug.

“Which may only prove to be the exception to
the rule,” the professor commented thoughtfully. “It was a ‘big
mother’ as Col so succinctly put it. We’ve all commented on our
most recent run-ins being young, small and quick. I can’t help but
wonder if Nardo and Dov had stayed in their assigned sector, would
they have run into a small one as well?”

“You mean the small ones are part of a plan,
but the big one was just a regular, ordinary invader.”

“Well done, Dov. That’s exactly what I mean.
If JJ is correct and you’ll forgive the analogy, someone appears to
be hiring teenagers to do their dirty work, probably because they
consider them expendable.” Broadbent looked around the room gauging
the reception his theory had garnered.

“Or cheap labor,” Hope added.

“Says the book keeper,” Grace laughed.

“Well, think about it. I assume they have
some kind of payment system and we know they’re capable of rational
thought. What young demon wouldn’t jump at the chance to visit our
world? Offer a small salary and they’d be lining up at the door.”
She shrugged. “If they don’t come back, you don’t have to pay. From
a business standpoint, it’s a win-win.”

“My mate is turning into a shark.” Nico,
who’d been standing behind Hope with his hand on her shoulder, gave
it a squeeze.

Canaan nodded at JJ. “I’m not a fan of
coincidence either. Good work.” His eyes went to Nardo. “Someone is
either spying on us or has hacked – Is that the right word? – into
our computers to find our patrol schedule.”

“It’s not a hacker, my lord. My security is
tight.”

“Yeah,” Dov laughed. “Old Geekman isn’t going
to let anything past him.”

Nardo cocked his head and raised his hands.
“Hey, not my fault I was blessed with brawn and brains.”

“Me, too.”

“Sure, bro,” Col agreed, patting his brother
on the back. “And as soon as you remember where you hid those
brains, we’ll find someone to teach you how to use them.”

“Ever since he bought that New Word a Day
calendar, he thinks he’s some kind of brainiac,” Dov explained to
JJ. “What’s the word for today, bright boy?”

“Flabbergasted.”

“Sounds like a fancy word for fart, if you
ask me.”

“No one did,” Canaan and Nico said
together.

“There is another possibility,” Nico
continued. “Moonlight Sanctuary. Their constabulary has our
schedules.” He raised his eyebrows in what was clearly an
I-told-you-so look.

Canaan accepted the look without comment.
“Okay, so where do we go from here?”

“First thing would be to change the patrol
schedule.”

“Can’t do it, Col.” Dov shook his head.
“What?” he asked when found everyone looking at him. “If we change,
then who’s going to catch the little critters who are still coming
over on the old schedule? No can do. We’ll have to double the
patrols; one for the demon, one for the vamp.”

“Dov, that’s two cognizant thoughts in one
conversation.” Broadbent gave him a thumbs up. “You never cease to
amaze me.”

“Yeah, my mom used to say that a lot, too,
but it was usually when I did something stupid.”

Everyone passed their plates for Canaan to
load in the dishwasher after he insisted Grace stay seated where
she was. After more teasing from the twins about what size apron
they should buy their Liege Lord now that Grace had found a way to
make him do housework, the group got back to business.

“Nardo,” Canaan directed, “As always, you’ll
be in charge of the new patrol schedules. And you…”

When Canaan pointed at her, JJ had the urge
to snap to attention and salute.

“Look at this stuff again and see if you can
find another pattern for us to use. If you need anything, Nardo
will get it for you.”

“I beg your pardon, my lord, but you might
ask her nicely rather than order her about. She is a lady after
all.”

“Gee, thanks Professor.” JJ was touched. “But
it’s okay. I’m used to it.” Canaan was treating her like part of
the team. It was exactly what she wanted. She said to Canaan, “I’ll
get on it right away, sir.”

“We need someone to go over to the Sanctuary
to ask a few discreet questions.”

“Yes, but it won’t be you, Nico.” Canaan
smiled wryly. “After the last time we were over there, you’ll just
scare hell out of them or some idiot will call you out.”

“Get in your grill,” Dov said, seemingly out
of nowhere and then he clarified. “Call you out is so last
century.”