Ultraviolet

Chapter Twelve: Terminal Tactics

Prince House

Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn

Saturday, December 19, 2009

When they got home, it was snowing lightly in New York, too. Isi wandered into the kitchen to make herself a late lunch, and scowled over the sandwich and salad she was making.

V said, "What is bothering you?"

Isi shrugged evasively. "Want me to make you something?" Though V didn't need to eat, he sometimes did for the taste—and he often drank coffee in the mornings.

"No, thank you." He boosted himself onto a stool at the kitchen island, where Isi was mixing her salad in her bowl. "I wish to know why you are so... irritated with that arugula."

Isi tried to mix more gently, but the damage had been done. V watched her, waiting for a response that she didn't have. How could she tell him the thoughts that had started to bounce in her head: I should have stayed, I need to be there, and I regret leaving.

"I couldn't tell them about a lot of it," she said finally.

"You wish that you could have?"

Isi frowned at her bowl, then drizzled on some ranch dressing. "Kind of. I mean, not really. But..." She scowled again. "Agent Daley said that Durant had alibis for a bunch of the places he burned, but I saw him at the restaurant."

"And he supposedly had an alibi for that particular time?"

"Yeah." Isi grabbed her lunch and went to sit next to him at the island. "But something Agent Daley said. He was seen on security cameras the minutes before and after the place burned. Why not just say 'during?'"

"Perhaps he was in a blind spot during. It would then be more accurate to say it was before and after."

Isi stirred at her salad, then put down her fork to chew a bite of her sandwich. When she was finished, she voiced the thought that had occurred to her in Agent Daley's office. "I'd need to see those security feeds to be sure, but it sounds like... like he made sure to be seen before and after the crime. Like he was giving himself an alibi."

"But Alexander Durant is human," V reminded her. "He could not have gotten across town so fast."

"But we were so sure that a demon was behind it in the first place," Isi said. "There was a sulfur smell. And if he'd gotten across the city so fast, he might have used the demonic teleporty-thingy."

The corner of V's mouth quirked up slightly. "Is it possible he is possessed?"

"Possible," Isi agreed. "I suppose. But why would the demon burn things that meant something to Alexander?"

"Very true," V said. He tucked a loose curl of Isi's dark hair behind her ear. "Don't worry so much about all this. It's noble of you to want to untangle this knot, but in the end, it is not your concern."

Partially he was right—she didn't live in D.C., and it wasn't anyone she knew. But it was still people, whether she knew them or not. She wondered how determined V might have been—how determined the hunter Tanakas might have been—if she and Emma had died in that first incident. If Hellfire wasn't so far away anymore.

"Ah," said V. "I see."

"You see," she muttered, not in the mood for any smugness on his part.