Vowed in Shadows by Jessa Slade Page B

attached.”
    â€œWell, they still aren’t junk,” Nim said hotly.
    Jonah turned from the shelves to study her.
    She shifted uneasily. “I don’t really care. But I’m just saying, you don’t get to judge somebody like that. Even if they don’t have a soul.”
    He shrugged. “I didn’t say they were junk.” He held up the VCR, cables dangling. “I found what we need.”
    She was silent as he hooked up the VCR to a television in the conference room and slid the tape in. He stood in front of the set with his finger on the button and rewound past the images of the two of them hovering over the display cases, past the clerk closing up shop for the night, past a couple kids with a stack of video-game cartridges. A few more unlikely figures sped past the camera. Jonah paused when the clerk opened the jewelry case for a woman, but she walked out empty-handed.
    Nim shifted as the tape whirred. “I don’t think we’re going to—Wait. Go back. I mean forward.” She edged up beside him. Her bare arm brushed his as she put her finger on the screen. “That guy. Did you see him take that funny step? I avoided that spot because of the malice sign on the floor.”
    â€œMost people don’t see etheric emanations.” He leaned away from her, crossing the hook over his body, where it wouldn’t accidentally touch her.
    â€œHe saw it.”
    Jonah grunted. “It doesn’t show up on regular recording equipment.”
    â€œI remember stepping over it. Freeze-frame where the clerk pulls out the tray.”
    â€œThose were just watches.”
    â€œLook. When the clerk gets the second tray . . .”
    â€œDid the guy just reach into the case?”
    â€œIt’s hard to see from this angle. But I think that’s who has my anklet. How nice that he stole it. We can take it back, guilt free.”
    She jostled his arm and shot him a wide, wicked grin.
    â€œNow,” she said, “how do we find him?”

CHAPTER 7
    â€œ ‘Wait in the car,’ he says. ‘I won’t be long,’ he says. And since when do I believe anything a man tells me?”
    Down the far end of the street, morning sun glared off the blank windows of the warehouse where Jonah had disappeared.
    â€œNobody’d leave a dog in a car on a day like today,” she grumbled.
    There’d been some truck traffic earlier, but that had ended after the first fleet wave. A few dark, older-model sedans had ghosted past before that and disappeared down the alley that led behind the row of buildings.
    Which, now that she thought about it, was kind of peculiar.
    She drummed her fingers on the dashboard, the charcoal plastic—as nondescript as the cars that had passed—already hot under her hand. The problem with running around at night was that it was easy to forget the sunglasses. She squinted and concentrated this time. “Turn down the glare, demon.”
    Nothing. Maybe the unholy powers of darkness worked only at night.
    Much like the dour vehicles returning to this particular roost.
    She got out of the car.
    Jonah had said there were people here who might be able to help track down the man on the tape. Now she was thinking it was people like them. People he didn’t want her to meet.
    Well, fuck that. What had he said about nothing getting between them? Nothing except his pride, apparently.
    She gave her shirt a tug and marched toward the warehouse.
    â€œAt-One Salvage,” she murmured as she ran her finger over the palm-sized sign above a pass-card reader. The sign was so small, just big enough for the logo—@1. No wonder business sucked.
    Although if their business really was fighting evil, maybe business was booming.
    She’d told herself no more alleys, but she followed the path the small fleet of cars had taken behind the buildings. The cars were parked in a cramped, fenced lot topped with barbed wire. The rolling gate