“I promise.”

  “All right, here we go. The demons have nothing against the vampires.” I went on to explain everything we had discussed. “So, they need to use the Underground as a base.”

  “Why didn’t they just ask?”

  “I guess they thought you wouldn’t believe them,” I said.

  “Well,” Saturn said. “I can see one big stumbling block. Most of the vampires—most of the Underground, actually—already believe that he’s out to destroy us. How can I suddenly turn around and say, “He’s fine, let him move in” without giving them the facts? I’m going to look like I’m selling out my people.” Saturn’s voice was so smooth that he could give the orders for my death and sound like he was welcoming guests to a party.

  “I don’t have an answer for that. Not yet,” I said. “Do you have a couple of friends who carry cachet in the vamp community? Ones you can safely confide in? Who won’t spill the beans? If they backed you up⁠—”

  “I’m not sure,” he said. “Except…I do have two compatriots who wield immense influence in the community. If they back me up, others might listen. But I don’t think they’ll be amenable to listening to you. To someone who’s half demon. Do you trust me to tell them?”

  I glanced at Dante. He gave me a single nod. “I suppose we have to. I don’t want to see anyone else killed because of a misunderstanding. But you have to move cautiously. My father’s concerned about this information getting out because it could lead to the entire downfall of their operations.”

  “I realize that,” Saturn said, his forehead wrinkled.

  “The thing is… If the Elder Gallara manage to come through the portals, we’re all dead.” As much as I didn’t like revealing my father’s plans, this seemed to be the only way. “Can you at least tell us who you are going to contact?”

  Saturn nodded. “I suppose that won’t hurt. The first is an old vampire mobster named Severin. He’s extremely good at keeping secrets, and he owes me several favors. The second would be Madame Veruka. She runs a chain of brothels for blood whores. She’s known for keeping her list of clientele completely anonymous. Nobody knows how she does it but she never leaves any tracks, and her customers on both sides are always satisfied.” Saturn leaned forward, his hands folded on his desk. “Will that satisfy you?”

  “I suppose it has to. And it sounds like they’re both discrete. Here’s my private number. You can always call me if something goes wrong. Even though I’m connected to my father, I want you to know that—at the first sign that he’s lying—I’ll be on him like white on rice.”

  “Thanks. And you truly believe him about Brim Fire?” Saturn asked.

  I hesitated, but then said, “Yeah. He’s right. I’m afraid that we’re facing an invasion by a group of Demonkin who won’t spare anybody or anything. At least my father is civilized in his demonic nature.” I stood, reaching out to shake his hand.

  Saturn also stood, and took my hand in his. He was cold as ice, and I still wasn’t used to touching the vampires. Even though I had occasionally held Lazenti’s hand, the chill startled me every time.

  “Thank you for caring enough to reach out. There are plenty of people—Supe community or not—who would just let them wipe us out. I won’t forget the kindness.”

  As we made our way out of the underground, I turned to Dante. “We’ve done everything we can. At least we know Lazenti is safe, and here’s hoping that we paved the way for a number of other vampires to survive.”

  “I know what you mean,” Dante said. “I think we can trust Saturn, and I hope that he find some amenable compromise with your father. Where to next?”

  As we headed back to the car, I said, “It’s time to go visit Benny and talk to his friend Dan-Dan. After this morning, I’m kind of dreading what we’re about to find out.”

  We settled back into Dante’s car, and I fastened my seatbelt, hoping that Saturn would manage to knock some sense in the other vampires. Because I knew that my father wouldn’t let any pushback from them stand in his way. Dante put the car into gear and we headed out, towards the side of town where nobody walked in the streets alone at night, unless they were heavily armed.

  Benny’s neighborhood made New Orleans, Memphis, and all the other murder capitals of this country look tame. The southern tip of Seattle housed numerous slumlords, flop houses, drug dealers, gang members, and lowlife scum. In fact, Benny’s street and the surrounding blocks were known as Dead Man’s Row, there were so many gang fights and murders. Seattle, as a whole, wasn’t extraordinarily high in crime, but certain areas had earned the warning, enter at your own risk.

  Luckily, Dante and I were pretty intimidating ourselves, and Dante’s car had an alarm system from hell. The shrieks that the alarm emitted when someone tried to pry open the door were piercing. In fact, they did what they were supposed to and chasing people away.

  We managed to find a parking spot right in front of the house that Benny rented. Several times, I had tried to encourage the goblin to move to a better neighborhood, but this was all he could afford. And quite frankly, there was so much prejudice that I doubted he’d ever find a place to rent that was halfway nice. Nobody wanted to rent to goblins, and I understood, given the nature of most of the sub-Fae.

  I texted Benny that we were at the door, and then knocked. Otherwise chances were he wouldn’t answer.

  The door creaked open and Benny peered out, saw me, and flipped the locks on the screen door so that we could enter.

  “Hey Benny, how’s it hanging?” I asked, pushing past him as we entered the house. I looked around, taking in my surroundings. Since I’d last been here, he had actually cleaned up and the smell was under control. The furniture was ragged, and the smell of pot filled the room, but for a goblin’s home, everything was relatively tidy.

  Benny stood there in ripped jeans and a Metallica T-shirt, looking like a cross between Yoda and Dobby. He pointed toward the Formica table that looks straight out of the 50s. “Have a seat, and I’ll get Dan-Dan. He’s skittish, so be careful when you question him.” As he turned away, he paused to add, “Thanks, Legs. I appreciate you coming to my house instead of making me try to drag him to the office.”

  Dante and I sat down at the table which had a plate of chocolate chip cookies on it. The bag the cookies came in sat on the counter that opened into the kitchen. A moment later, Benny returned, with a short guy who was hunched over. Dan-Dan had the look a dog gets when it’s been kicked around one too many times by an abusive owner. He had shifty eyes, but he didn’t look sneaky—just afraid to look us in the face.

  “Sit here,” Benny said directing him to a chair at the table. Benny’s voice was surprisingly gentle, and I realized he really did care about Dan-Dan. “You can trust these two. They’ve always done me a solid. This is Kyann. She owns the company I told you about. And this is Dante, he’s a wolf shifter. He’s her partner in the business.”

  Listening to Benny try to calm the frightened man made me realize just how scared Dan-Dan was. The man pointed to the plate of cookies.

  “Is it okay if I have one?” he asked, sounding a lot like a child.

  “Of course, would you like some milk to go with it?” Benny asked.

  “Yes, please.” Dan-Dan flashed Benny such a grateful look that it made me want to cry. There was something vulnerable about him, something that seemed incredibly fragile. Dante must have noticed it too, because he pushed the plate of cookies toward Dan-Dan.

  Dan-Dan took one of them, biting into it. “Thank you,” he said.

  “You like cookies?” I asked.

  He nodded, taking another. He ate so fast that I wondered if he was starving.

  Benny returned, glass of milk in hand. He set it down by Dan-Dan, patting him on the shoulder. “Remember how I told you Kyann and Dante were coming to talk to you about where you’ve been?”

  At that, the smile on Dan-Dan’s face crumbled, and he dropped the cookie, staring at the table. He nodded, frozen, looking like he was about to be whipped.

  “Benny,” I said. “Can I see you in the kitchen for a moment?”

  Benny nodded. “We’ll be right back, Dan-Dan. You go ahead and finish your milk and eat more of the cookies.”

  I followed Benny into the kitchen, where he shut the swinging door behind us.

  “All right, what’s going on?” I asked. “Is Dan-Dan developmentally disabled?”

  “He does seem so, doesn’t he?” Benny said. “He didn’t act like this before he was captured. He came back like this — like he has the mind of a child. I don’t know if it’s fear conditioning, or if they did something to him while he was there. He used to read a lot, and was actually quite the thinker. Now though, ever since I met up with him again, he seems dazed. I’m not sure what happened, Legs. Whatever it was, it seems to have pushed him down so far that he has to look up to see the bottom. I was hoping you could figure out what happened.”

  “We’ll do what we can,” I said. “I might want to bring Sophia in on this. She’s really good with getting flashes off of people’s lives, you know. I don’t want to send her down to this area though. While she can take care of herself, this isn’t a safe neighborhood for anybody.”

  “I’m not sure how to get Dan-Dan to your office,” Benny said. “He’s not good with buses, I can tell you that. And I don’t have a car. I don’t know if the taxi would stop for us, given I’m a goblin. And then there’s the fact that Dan-Dan’s terrified they’ll come for him again.”

  “We can take care of the transportation,” I said. “If you can convince him to get in the car, we can send Orik down to pick you up. Anyway, let’s go see what we can find out. I’ll be careful. I don’t want to scare the poor guy anymore than he obviously has been.”

  I followed Benny back to the table, where we both sat down. I glanced at the cookies, then at Benny. “These aren’t laced are they?”

  He shook his head. “No, there’s the bag that they came in. They’re Dan-Dan’s favorite, so I bought them even though they cost an arm and a leg.” Benny usually bought generic at all costs.

  “Hey, Dan-Dan, do you mind if I ask you a question or two? It’s okay if you can’t remember, or if you don’t know the answer. We won’t be mad.”

  Dan-Dan picked up another cookie, staring at it. “Go ahead. I’ll try to answer.”

  “Before Benny found you, do you remember where you were?” I asked.

  Dan-Dan pressed his lips together, but after a minute he nodded. “I was in the bad place. I don’t want to go back—please don’t make me.”

  He was trembling, and I glanced over at Dante. Dante seemed to catch on, and he gently reached out, placing one hand on Dan-Dan’s arm. “We aren’t going to make you go back. In fact, we’ll try to make sure that you never have to go back. We just want to know about it so we can help others who might be stuck there. Were there other people where you were?”

  That seemed to spark a light in Dan-Dan’s eye. “There were. At least ten. We all worked together, at least until Becky died. Then there were nine.”

  Frowning, I asked, “Who’s Becky?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know where she came from. We were always in the laundry. We slept in the back on piles of clothes. I hate the smell of bleach.” Dan-Dan finished off his milk.

  “What did you do there?” I asked.

  “We washed clothes. Big piles of clothes. We did that all day, three days a week. Two days a week, we carried boxes and sorted them. Each box had a number on it, so we had to sort them into piles of the same number. A lot of them were pretty heavy, and the women had trouble carrying some of them. One day each week we scrubbed the kitchen from floor to ceiling.”

  “What kitchen?” Dante asked.

  “It was like a warehouse, only a lot bigger. I don’t know where it was because we never got to go outside. The last day each week we washed out the cells. They took the people out of there, and we had to go in and clean everything. It always smelled because there were no bathrooms there, only a hole in the floor and the people sometimes missed. We had to clean everything from top to bottom, put new covers on the beds, and the women in our unit were assigned to scrub down the prisoners.” Dan-Dan had a horrified look on his face, and I sensed he was close to panicking.

  “You’re safe now, you’re okay. Tell me, who were the prisoners? The ones from the cells?”

  “Women and kids. Boys who were under twelve, and girls and women from—oh—I think about three years old on up. Every week there would be new people, and some would be gone.”

  “What happened to them?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. I asked one time, and the supervisor beat me so bad that I fainted. You learned not to ask questions. You don’t ask why.” He coughed, tears streaking down his cheeks.

  “Dan-Dan? Are you all right?”

  He shook his head. “It wasn’t right. Nobody ever knew why they were there, but it wasn’t good. It couldn’t be good. The little kids were so scared and they wanted their mommies. Sometimes, when the supervisor wasn’t watching, we try to calm them down, to tell them everything was okay even though we knew it wasn’t. When the littlest ones would cry and beg us for help, there was nothing we could do. I’ll never forget their eyes. I’ll never forget the fear in their eyes.” At that, he burst out in tears and, resting his head on his arms, sobbed.

  I leaned back, trying to keep my temper. It was all too easy to guess what waited in store for the prisoners. Servitude, in all too many ways. I glanced at Benny, and for once, he had a grim look on his face rather than a goofy one.

  Dante cleared his throat. “Dan-Dan, you did what you could to help. It wasn’t your fault.”

  “One of the guys in our unit tried to help. He tried to hug one of the kids who was scared. He was beat so bad that he died. We had to carry his body out. I’m so ashamed that I was afraid to try and do what was right.”

  I sighed, realizing that Dan-Dan needed a lot more therapy than we could ever offer. Maybe I could hook him up with Seton. “How did you escape?”

  “Sometimes big boxes came through and were immediately sent out again. There was a really heavy box. After I moved it, I saw that it was scheduled to be taken to the mailroom. I dragged it behind the furnace and opened it up. There were elephant tusks in it. I hid them behind the furnace and—when nobody was looking—punched a few small holes in the side and top, then carried it back to the platform. I crawled in shut it from inside.”

  “How did you seal it?” Dante asked.

  “I had tape with me and was able to tape it shut. I must have fallen asleep, because the next thing I knew, I landed hard in an alley. I could smell the rain. I waited for a minute and when I didn’t hear anything, I broke out of the box. I realized I was back in Seattle. A van was coming down the alley toward me, but I ran. The only thing I could think of was to get to Benny’s. I managed to get away before the van reached the box. That was several days ago. So, here I am. I don’t want Benny to get in trouble for hiding me, though. I don’t know what to do or where to go.”

  So not only did Dan-Dan needed help, he needed amnesty.

  “Wait here a minute, I’ll see if I can find someone to help you.” I crossed back to the kitchen, and leaned against the counter as I put in a call to Seton. I told him what had happened.

  “I’m sending a driver now,” he said. “We have to shut down the portal. I doubt we can rescue anybody still in that warehouse, but we have to put a stop to at least one of the places they’re using to transport slaves and cargo. The fact that Dan-Dan found elephant tusks means that they’re transporting illegal goods, as well as human trafficking.”

  “If you’ll call Carson, he’ll give you the background that we’ve learned about them. This isn’t the first go around they’ve had with slave trade.”

  “Will do. Give me your address. The driver will be carrying a sealed note from me, so you know he’s trustworthy. He’ll be there within half an hour.” At that, Seton hung up.

  I returned to the living room. “Dan-Dan, a man I trust implicitly is going to send a driver for you. He’ll get you the help you need, and a safe place to stay. You can’t stay here because they’ll target Benny if you do. I’ll wait until the driver gets here and verify he’s who he says he is. Will you please go with him?”

  Dan-Dan thought about it for a moment, then nodded. “I don’t want Benny to get in trouble because of me. I’ll go.”

  “Good. Thank you for talking to us. We’ll try to ensure your safety, and maybe we can find a way to hide you away for good.”

  As we waited for the driver, I took Benny aside and told him what was going on. He agreed that this was best for Dan-Dan. Forty-five minutes later, Dan-Dan was on his way to Seton’s place, and Dante and I were sitting there, eating cookies, thinking about how deep the corruption ran at Give A Hand Up.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Back at the office, we filled everybody in on what had happened, and I asked Sophia to contact Seton.

  “See if you can help,” I said. “Maybe you can get any hits or visions off of Dan-Dan. This guy’s had more than just a scare. It feels like part of him is missing.” I shuffled through the mail, putting aside two letters that I had to answer myself.

  “PTSD can alter the brain structure. Trauma leaves lasting effects, mentally, emotionally and physically. Trauma can literally trigger off certain chronic conditions because of the hypervigilance.” Carson finished off his coffee.

  We were sitting around the table in the breakroom, as usual.

  “True that,” I said. “Well, it’s been a productive day, as much as we can hope for. Saturn agreed to talk to my father again and try to smooth things over. Orik, if you would call Lazenti and tell him what went down on that front. I’m just glad that he’s out of there now.”

  Orik nodded, frowning. “Speaking of trauma, what are we going to do about Give A Hand Up? Somebody needs to put a stop to Appleberry. I’m willing to pay him a visit, if need be. His family line should end with him.”