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range. But the place’s location had been compromised several months back. Arawn, their leader, wanted them to stay in the city, so they moved to the heart of it. Little did their rich, trust-fund-spending neighbors realize that demons lived on their block.
    They came up the stairs and emerged in the rehabbed great room. Wooden floors shone and leather couches and chairs filled the room. On the wall hung a seventy-two-inch flat screen that saw a lot of use from their Xbox. But tonight, all was quiet. “Jude and Tor aren’t back. Rilan’s upstairs,” Rhys said as he inhaled, detecting the occupants of the home.
    Brenin vaulted over the back of a couch to land squarely on the cushions. He pulled out his phone. “I was about to level up in my game.”
    Rhys rolled his eyes and walked to the adjacent den, which housed his three computers and various tech equipment. “Lame, dude. I’m gonna research our new friend.”
    “Your new hottie,” Brenin muttered, barely perceptible.
    Rhys ignored it and sat in his rolling chair. Enza was hot. That was a fact. Did she have a boyfriend? He frowned. Doesn’t matter. His fingers flew over the keys as he scoured the web for information about Miss Vincenza De Luca.
    It didn’t take long. Data was Rhys’s friend, flowing to him as he cracked codes and slipped past firewalls. If he ever needed an assist, he had super-hacker friends he could call at human agencies as well as among supernatural allies. But tonight, nothing about Enza was buried too deeply.
    She’d resided in the city all her life. Even attended culinary school at local Kendall College. Her mom, Concetta De Luca, owned a home a block south of Taylor Street in Little Italy. And her grandparents, Vicente and Maria De Luca, lived a few blocks south of that. Bought their place in 1962.
    De Luca…all with that same last name. Who was her dad?
    Rhys dug into Concetta next but found no record of marriage or engagement. She worked as a nurse at Rush Hospital.
    Brenin leaned on the doorframe. “I can hear your teeth grinding from over there. Don’t tell me you can’t track down something?”
    “Not finding anything about her dad.”
    Brenin walked over to peer at the screen. “That her mama? Looks just like her.”
    “Yeah. Same last name, never married.”
    “You think Mom’s human and Dad’s a Deserati who knocked her up.”
    Rhys nodded. “Been known to happen.”
    “Mama might not even know her baby-daddy is a demon.”
    Rhys frowned. A dude shouldn’t take off and abandon his child. Then again, maybe he’d been an asshole and Concetta hadn’t wanted him around. There was a lot he didn’t know, and that bugged him for reasons he couldn’t pinpoint.
    “So.” Brenin flipped his phone from one hand to another. “She’s a halfling. Seems like she has a nice family, a job. A place to live. Leave it be.”
    “Yeah, but what if the dark elves try to track her? They saw her jump into their portal. And you know it looked like she did it on purpose.”
    “Dark elves are dipshits.”
    “True. But, they can be mean and scare the shit out of humans.” Rhys leaned back in his chair, pushing it close to a tipping point.
    “So we get Rilan to build wards. We can ward her shop too. What did she call it?”
    “Java Genie.” Rhys leaned forward and began a new search that yielded a slew of information on the store. “Opened two years ago in Lincoln Park. Huh. This must be her partner.” Rhys pulled up a photo of a dark-skinned woman named Meena Krishnanti.
    “How’d two women in their twenties get the cash to start up a coffee shop in Lincoln Park?”
    “Not sure yet. I’ll dig into the business documents next.”
    Brenin let out a yawn. “Sounds fascinating. I’m going upstairs.”
    Rhys kept researching, finding that Meena’s parents had fronted the money to open the shop and were majority owners. But the shop’s slick website full of drinks and sweets wasn’t what held his attention.
    Returning to