Chapter 26

Dylan

"It's the same," I insist. "I didn't spend enough time looking at it before—not with the right focus. But whoever wrote the code for this website also wrote the code for the fake job sheet that set up Matt's attack."

Raum tilts his head. "I beg your pardon?"

"Matt was badly beaten earlier this month," Marc explains. "He would have died had I not healed him." There's something a little too pointed in the way he says it, and Matt wraps his arms around himself. He's been acting even weirder since I called them all back in here—maybe something happened while they were gone?

I'll think about it later. "We were able to prove that the attack was deliberately planned, but not by whom. Now we know that whoever it is has some connection to the demon trafficking activity."

"Are we sure?" Ian asks. "Don't most companies hire people to design their websites?"

I shrug. "Yes, but it seems like a helluva coincidence that this company, whose head office site has been used repeatedly to summon demons, just happened to hire a website designer who knows about the Collective and set a hunter up to be murdered. Plus, most third-party web designers have it in their contracts that they can say they designed the site—usually it's a note with a hyperlink in the footer. Free advertising. Nine times out of ten, if you see a site that doesn't have that, it's because it was designed in-house."

"Is web design one of the services SuperTask offers?" Matt asks, speaking for the first time since they all came back in.

"No. But if they only have one person capable of it, and they're trying to keep an eye on us via the internet, it would make sense not to split that person's focus. Not to mention all the stuff they'd need to do to stay ahead of the government."

"The government?" Raum parrots. "Your government knows about Crm?rdinesgh?" He looks at Marc. "I was under a different impression."

"Your impression is correct. I suspect Dylan is referring to the tedious paperwork human governments insist upon."

I nod. "Since SuperTask would very definitely not want to attract attention, they'd need to make sure everything looked as legal as possible. That means all their employees would need to be eligible to work in this country, paid on time, taxes up to date. When I first looked into the company, I checked most of that—there's nothing suspicious. They even have a registered union rep on staff. They've done everything possible to make it look like they're an ordinary business trying to do the right thing, but if their ‘employees' are demons like we think, that means their tech person had to create legal identities, backgrounds, and paperwork for all of them. At a rate of two per month, plus the time needed to monitor us and make sure we weren't noticing them, and the usual crap involved in running even a small IT department, that's a more than full-time job."

"Couldn't they hire someone else to run the IT department?" Ian asks.

"Would you want to hire someone tech savvy when you were doing so many dodgy things?" I counter, and he grimaces.

"Point."

"So SuperTask is using demons as slave labor… and I guess we can assume prostituting them, since I doubt their official services include anything a carnarius demon excels at." Matt looks faintly sick, and I can't say I blame him.

"I can find that out for sure, but their coder is good enough to eventually notice once I hack that far into their systems," I admit. It burns my throat a little to say the words, but I can't deny it. "There will be fail safes. It's…" I stop and swallow bile. "It's my fault Matt got attacked. They probably noticed I kept going back to look at their site, assumed I was suspicious or even that I knew more than I did, and decided to send a warning."

"Which is why they left his phone and watch but took anything that would point to demonic connections." Ian shakes his head. "They wanted us to get the warning, but they don't want the authorities suspecting paranormal activity any more than we do."

Matt stares directly at me, his gaze fierce. "It's not your fault. You were doing your job—there's no way you could have known about all this. I'm a hunter; risk is part of my life. None of this is your fault."

Marc stirs a little but says nothing, and I take a deep breath, then shake it off.

"It's not important right now. What matters is that we have the company name and address, and I can use that to get into the necessary government databases to trace them back to the owners' names. That will tell us if we're dealing with someone within the Collective."

"It would have to be generational," Marc muses idly. "Since this has been occurring for nearly two hundred years."

"That we can confirm," Raum adds.

Matt and Ian exchange a glance. "If it's a Collective family or network, is this even something that we could trace back through our archives?" Matt asks. "Recent GPS data, sure, but how could we prove that monthly visits to Columbus weren't innocent? Especially if it's a large group and the visits are randomized among them?"

"Or they have a reason to be there that's not connected to the company," Ian adds. "Another summoning or assignment. A friend or family member they visit. Fuck. I don't know if the Collective will survive another betrayal like this. We need concrete proof."

"My concern is that the family is so deeply rooted in the Collective that many will prefer to brush this aside," Marc counters. "We've been working to show hunters that not all demons are vicious animals, but how many would truly care about demons being enslaved? Especially when there's a long history to show they are contained and not causing harm to humans?"

I shift uncomfortably in my chair, because he's a hundred percent right. If it is a Collective family, one of the ones that have been around for centuries and are well-liked… well, there's a whole bunch of hunters who would care more about them than about nameless, faceless demons. And they might be willing to brush the whole situation under the rug—which will definitely endanger, if not destroy, the truce with Crm?rdinesgh.

"Let's all hope it's not a Collective family, then," Matt says grimly. "Personally, I'm hoping for a cult like the one I dealt with earlier this year—remember? They thought summoning demons to do farm labor was a clever idea until I re-educated them."

If the situation were different, I'd laugh, because if I remember right, Matt's idea of re-education was to rip away the connections of the summoners, prevent them from ever being able to summon a demon again, and scare the remaining cultists so badly that they actually disbanded just a few months later.

"I'm surprised you haven't already started looking, Dylan," he adds, and I realize I left out one very important piece of information.

"I was going to, but then I thought it might be a good idea to open the email first."

"How?" Raum asks Marc. "How do you live with these humans? Their brains meander freely with no logic."

"It's an acquired skill," Marc replies. "I'm still acquiring it."

"Rude," Ian chides. "So rude."

Marc ignores him. "To which email are you referring, Dylan?"

I quickly explain about the email and chat from earlier—was it just hours ago? It feels like a lifetime has passed. "I was checking how it got through my security filter when you called Ian and told us to come over," I finish. "I never got the chance to open it."

"You feel that is more important than finding the names of the people behind this atrocity?" Raum demands, outraged.

"I think the email's from one of them."

The squeak that comes from Ian's mouth is the only thing that breaks the silence until Matt says, "I think I speak for everyone when I say, what the actual fucking fuck?"

"And non-actual fucking fucks," Raum adds. "All the fucks."

"It's in the code. The style is the same for the website, the job sheet, and the trick they used to get their email through my security. They're good—very good—but they didn't even try to make it look different. The email is from SuperTask's tech person, and I think they're either reaching out to help us or they're trying to trap us." I shrug. "It's too early to tell which."

Marc looks at Raum. "Is there any evidence, any at all, that the kidnappers are affiliated with a higher demon?"

Raum immediately shakes his head. "None. If they are, the demon has gone to extreme lengths to hide themselves. I'm a very good investigator and I take this seriously. I've found nothing."

Marc glances at Ian, and I know people in relationships do those eye-talkie looks all the time, but I swear, it's almost like they're actually communicating.

"It's intent, right?" Ian says. "That's how you can use a computer without a keyboard and mouse. Can you intent— intend —to protect Dylan's equipment and us if he opens the email or contacts the sender?"

Marc nods. "Yes."

Ian seems convinced by that, but then, it's not his hard work at risk. Not to mention, this is a person who was complicit in my boyfriend's near-death—who can probably be said to be directly responsible, since they would have been the one who identified me poking around, traced who I am, and targeted Matt because of our relationship. Which was secret at the time, so they really are motherfucking good and I'd love to talk shop with them… but not if they're trying to kill us all.

"Dyl?" Matt asks quietly.

I shake my head, but it's not a refusal. No matter how I feel about all this, I know the risk is worth taking. We need to move forward and hopefully take control of the situation. "I'm opening it now."

Clicking on that email feels like one of the most momentous things I've ever done. That's probably exacerbated by the way everybody crowds around to watch. The body is just as blank as the subject line, but my eye is drawn to the attachment. "It's a PDF," I murmur, then glance at Marc. "You're sure you can protect my equipment?" I've never opened an attachment from an unknown person with mad coding skills before—not without spending a few hours checking the code first.

Marc huffs, insulted, but nods, so I double-click the document.

Everyone leans in.

The first page is the business registration for SuperTask. I've seen it before—it lists the owner as a parent company.

The second page is the incorporation certificate of the parent company, and the third lists the owner as a trust.

The fourth page is the trust registration document, showing the beneficiaries as the Wentworth and Hazelwood families.

My heartbeat picks up. "Do we know those names?" I don't recognize them.

"Not me," Matt murmurs, and Ian makes a sound of agreement.

"Whoever sent you this—could they have faked these? Because if not, they've given us the information we need."

"They could have." Easily. "But so far they haven't been stupid, and they haven't assumed I am, either. They have to know I'll check." And it's easy to check—just a few government databases.

"There's more," Marc says, and my eyes go to the side of the screen. He's right—there are more pages.

"What the fuck?" Matt asks when I scroll. "Is that a family tree?"

"Yes… a genealogy." The top line shows the Wentworths and Hazelwoods of this generation, complete with birthdates. I slowly scroll down the page, then onto the next… and the next. The lines are mostly direct—either these families don't have a lot of children to begin with, or only the relevant ones were included in the chart. There are a few siblings on it who died young, so I'm guessing the former.

We scroll to the fourth page of the chart, and that's where the two families merge. It looks like that generation had only girls, and when they married, they took their husbands' names, letting their birth surname die?—

"Does that say Martenson?" Ian asks, his voice strained, and panic rises in me… but there are no Martensons in the Collective. Not in the US, anyway. I'd know.

"Yeah. Do you recognize it?"

"Could you scroll to the bottom? I want to see the first name on the list."

Asking questions would delay the answer I want, so I scroll to the bottom. "Geoffrey Martenson," I read. "Married to Sylvia Clark."

"Geoffrey Martenson was kicked out of the Collective in 1735," Ian says quietly. "Uncle Norval asked me yesterday to find any records I could about him."

The conversation Matt and I had with Norval flashes through my head. This is the family he lost track of. "Why was he kicked out?"

"He was caught summoning a carnarius demon to fuck."