She opened the door. "Sir?"
"These young women have been very helpful. Please have Severin escort them to Odele. They'll join her team in Atlanta." He abruptly murmured his thanks to us, a duty his manners wouldn't let him avoid. Then he stood, telling Sierra, "Get Gordon and the others back here immediately and bring everything we've got on this police station business."
We were dismissed.
Severin led us deep into the building to a tiny lounge where he said Odele would be meeting us. He seemed inclined to just hang out with us there, asking Mom what she was studying in school, how she liked New Orleans. For a minute there, I could almost forget he wasn't just a normal guy . . . until Sierra came and hauled his ass off to "discipline" the van-load of captives they'd brought in.
I was really hoping they'd just leave us there, unguarded and alone. They did--but not before Sierra warned us that the door was about to be locked and couldn't be opened by spell-power. If I tried, we'd find ourselves in for a little discipline.
A young couple was passing in the hall as Sierra led her brother away. Holding the door open, Severin called them over.
Neither was much older than me, the guy light-haired, broad-faced and smiling, the girl tiny, with dark hair and a noticeable baby bump. Their hands were clasped, fingers entwined.
"You guys are with Odele's team, right?" he said.
"Sure are," the guy said. "Just waiting to ship out. Anything we can do for you?"
"Actually, yes. We've got a couple of recruits who'll be joining you. Stay with them until Odele gets here."
"Will do," the guy said.
"I heard you caught the traitors," the girl said as she joined us. "Good job. I can't believe they turned on us like that. Two of them were members of our team. I never suspected a thing."
"No one ever does," Sierra said. "That's why we have to be vigilant."
The young couple nodded. Severin and Sierra left, closing the door behind them. The guy told us his name was Jake; his pregnant girlfriend was Lori. Mom and I introduced ourselves, then we all settled into chairs to wait.
"Did you say something about traitors?" Mom said after a few minutes of silence. "Were those the ones we saw Severin and Sierra bringing in?"
"Uh-huh," Lori said. "They were members of the movement. Or so we thought. Then after the lab blew up, they tried to make a run for it. It didn't take long to figure out why. They set the bomb. Apparently, they were Cabal plants."
So SLAM was blaming its own members for the bombing? Technically true--one of their own had set it off, but she was only following protocol to avoid exposure and had died herself. Would Giles really blame innocent members to keep his group from knowing what really happened? Or were they not so innocent? Had that blast made them rethink their commitment and try to break from the group?
"This place is hopping," Mom said. "Did they bring you all in because of the bomb?"
"Oh, no," Jake said. "We were already here, training and getting ready to deploy. That bomb just means we've bumped up the schedule. The mission begins tonight. Lori and I were two of the first to join and, I'll be honest, there were times when we weren't sure it would happen. But Giles has done it. He's perfected the serum and he's about to usher in a new age of supernaturals." Jake patted Lori's stomach. "Just in time, too."
Lori blushed. "By the time our baby comes, things will be different. That's why we joined. To give our child a better life. One where he won't need to hide his powers."
I looked at them, their fresh-scrubbed faces glowing, and I didn't see brainwashed kids. I saw two normal young supernaturals, in love, having a baby, genuinely doing what they thought was right for their child. If I told them to run, they'd think I was the deluded one.
"You said the serum is perfected?" Mom said. "That's the immortality serum, right?"
"Right," Jake said.
Lori leaned forward. "Can you believe it? Immortality?" She laughed softly. "When Giles first told us how old he is, we didn't believe him. We figured it was a recruiting gimmick. But then when we saw how hard he was working on this serum, we started realizing he was serious."
"But he discovered the cure for mortality centuries ago, didn't he?" I said. "If he's immortal himself . . ."
"But it wasn't something he could duplicate. Not on a large scale anyway."
That's what we'd figured. I was going to bet his own immortality had something to do with the kids he'd killed in the fifteenth century. Not something easily repeated, but he must have had ideas how it could be done by other means and had been trying for centuries. When Cassandra met him during World War II, he'd seemed to be experimenting with some kind of zombie and vampire hybrid.
"So this plan," Mom said. "Tell us about it."
"And I think that's all our new recruits need to know right now," said a voice from the doorway,
In walked a tall, dark-skinned woman. Jake and Lori rose. We followed their lead.