“What are the black ones?” Stacia suddenly asked, pointing. A number of houses on the map were entirely dark.

“Excellent. There are twenty-nine locations that do not register enough usage to even reach yellow. Several are homeless shelters or battered female recovery sites. A handful are refugee welcome housing. But eighteen are unaccountable. The Book of Darkest Sorrow noted in three chapters that demons were generally not fond of technology.”

“Oh, that’s outstanding, Omega,” Chris said, looking up at the others. “We need to split up and check these sites for other details. Omega, have there been any police complaints about sounds or smells by any neighbors of those houses?”

“Nine of them have been mentioned in recent reports to either City Hall or the Burlington Police.”

“Let’s start with those,” Chris said, looking closely at the now highlighted nine houses.

“Start with what?” a new voice asked. Nika was in the doorway.

“Wow, they let anyone in this place,” Stacia said, arms crossed, tone nasty.

“Yeah and pets too,” Nika said, glaring back at the wolf girl.

Devaney’s eyes got real big and he glanced quickly at Holly, but she was chewing a nail and watching without much reaction. He looked at Chris and the college girl in the corner, but the Hammer of God was studying the map. Jetta was painting the bullet tips with a deep pink nail polish which, partway through, she held up to the nails on her left hand, swiping an experimental swath on an index finger.

Devaney looked back to the wolf and what he thought, from the scent he was getting, was a vampire. A very attractive vampire. The two women moved directly at each other and instead of fighting, they simply hugged with sudden smiles.

“We’ve got a lead on some possible demon hideouts. We’re gonna split up and recon the situation,” Stacia said to Nika.

“Why don’t we do teams of two? You and Holly, myself and the dashing young deputy here, and Chris with ‘Sos?”

“Isn’t he guarding twin hellions?” Stacia asked.

“He could use a break from being the best wolf pony in the world,” Nika said. “Toni is watching them. That girl wrangles them better than any of the rest of us.”

Chris snorted. “Not wrong there. That’s a better plan than ours. We can’t ever forget how dangerous this demon is. If any of us get a hit, we fall back and alert Omega to put some drones on surveillance duty. She’s less likely to notice a hidden mini drone than one of us.”

“I’ll give Toni a hand when I finish these off,” Jetta said, now painting her right hand fingernails.

“Omega? How’s Declan?” Stacia suddenly asked.

The city holograph disappeared as both mini-drones turned and projected what looked like live video on the white wall. The screen split into sixteen squares, each showing the witch in question from a different angle.