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right in front of the door and
we saw a wolf shifter guarding the mansion. The doorman glared at Henry, but he
didn’t say anything as we passed him. Inside was the same as usual; it had
modern amenities, high ceilings, blank white walls, and sophisticated,
uncomfortable furniture.
    I was leading us to the library I knew Stephen was
usually in when we ran right into Marcus. He was dressed in a blue t-shirt and
jeans and his hair was a little too long, but he looked happy and healthy. Not
living in constant fear of being assassinated was a nice change for him.
    “Hey! I’m glad you two could make it! What are you
doing here?” he asked.
    “You realize those two statements are---” Henry
began.
    “Don’t get him started,” I interrupted. “Marcus is
about as easy to follow as Darwin.” I turned to the newly converted vampire.
“Stephen said he needed to see us.”
    His smile fell. “Oh, okay. Yeah, I’m not supposed to
know about that, so I’ll let Stephen tell you. I’m surprised he called you, but
I’m glad. It’s not good.”
    “Where’s Darwin?” I asked.
    “You asked him to check out a hacking case,” Marcus
said.
    “Yes, but I expected you would help him. With the two
of you working together, it should have taken you an hour at the most.”
    “Twenty minutes, thank you. He’s dealing with
something else at the moment and will be along in a few days.”
    He led us to a different office than Stephen was
usually in. I wouldn’t have thought it was odd if I didn’t hear the sound of
construction as we passed that hallway. “What did you do?” I asked.
    “Why do you think I did something?” When I gave him a
deadpan stare, he shrugged. “I might have used the room right underneath
Stephen’s favorite study to test out a new electromagnetic pulse bomb.”
    “E-pulse bombs only damage electronics.”
    “Yeah, that’s what went wrong; it was a little heavy
on the ‘bomb’ part.”
    “Wouldn’t it be easier to hack or use a computer
virus?” Henry asked.
    “It depends on the company you’re trying to bring
down. Say for example that Darwin got some dirt on me and threatened to release
that information. The only proof he has is on his network. Hacking is
impractical because he can control his system from anywhere. He’s got a really
cool program called a funnel web that---”
    “Skip,” I said.
    “Okay. Anyway, the only reasonable way to stop him
from getting information out is to destroy his means. Of course, as a wizard,
you can do just as much damage to his system naturally. You can fry all the
electronics you could want without the risk of the building coming down on top
of you. Darwin and I are each working on our own way to bring down… let’s say a
company. If humans ever found out about the paranormals, it could be a shit
storm.”
    “I don’t see this going well. You do remember that
you were human a few months ago, right?”
    He scoffed. “Semantics. The point is, we’re working
on a way to stop someone from getting information out. We’re each building and
testing our own method, and then we’re going to test it out on each other.”
    “You’re going to try to crash each other’s servers?”
    “Well, he’s going to try. I’m going to annihilate.”
    “What is stopping them from becoming super villains?”
Henry asked me quietly.
    “Laziness.”
    We arrived at a door, Marcus knocked, and we were
invited to enter. Inside was a plain room with one small wooden desk and a very
irritated vampire king. He scowled at Marcus but spoke to me. “Good evening,
Devon. Please tell me you came to take Marcus back with you.”
    “Actually, I’m here because you said you had a case
for us.”
    He nodded. “Marcus, leave us.”
    With false sorrow, the young vampire left and shut
the door. “He doesn’t mean any trouble,” I said. “He needs a lab or something
to play in.”
    “And an assistant,” Stephen said, dropping his scowl
instantly. “He forgets to eat and