Head Honcho Sucks

I was early. I worked on the things Dae’lin had on my desk the bits and pieces of reports she wanted information on. Boring but mostly just notes on things I’d found out. And I hadn’t found much out working on this case so it was pretty quick work. I noticed Dad and Bernstein were doing a lot of meetings here recently and I figured I needed to follow up with Kai at some point soon. But not right now, one thing at a time. Bombs were first priority.

The fish bowl was still how I left it the day before when I stepped inside. Nobody touched anything which was good, but it also left me wondering if anything got handled.

I sat down and dialed Walker’s number. It rang four times before a very sleepy voice answered, “Yeah?”

I glanced at the time on my phone then put it back to my ear, “You always sleep past 9am?”

“Who is this?” He asked.

“Nox Sétanta.”

“Oh, fuck, yeah. No. I mean. I don’t usually sleep this late. Harvard and I were out late last night finding a fucking well disguised bomb in an equally well disguised tunnel. Was a fucking nightmare.”

“So do you know if they got them all?”

Walker paused. Probably shrugged his shoulders before he remembered I couldn’t see him, “I don’t know, man. We got three, we had cased. I think the other teams got theirs but I don’t know.”

I nodded, “Who knows who went out?”

“The legal lady?” Walker yawned.

“Alright. I’ll call her.” I didn’t bother waiting for a goodbye and hung up. I had to do a directory search for Anabel Dowager, I didn’t have her in my phone, why would I?

“Hello?” the phone picked up.

“I need to speak with Anabel Dowager.” I replied formally. I hated being formal.

“May I ask who is calling?”

“Nox Sétanta.”

“In reference to what?”

“Work!”

“She’ll be in her office in an hour.”

“Yeah well, I’m not going to wait a fucking hour for bombs to go off that should have been found last night, so why don’t you tell her what I said and get her on the phone so we don’t have a fucking legal nightmare and a massive coverup to do.”

The man on the other side of the held the phone against his chest and yelled. “Anabel, you’ve got some idiot boy on the phone saying something about bombs and messes. Do you want to take it?” Did they think we couldn’t hear? Fucking Venatori have good ears. I was a sour mood now. This was going to end badly now being tossed around with no answers.

I heard her reply but I couldn’t make out the words, but I didn’t need to with dick head repeating it, “She said she’d give you a call back in 5 minutes.”

“Alright, if something blows up in that time frame I’m blaming you.” And I hung up.

I knew I was in a rare mood. But I didn’t care. Having to follow up on people who didn’t give a shit was not a fun thing.

I sat down with my laptop and pulled up the feeds at all the red Xs and saw everything in tact at least nothing had gone off. The man planting them was dead and with them hopefully the detonator as well. I would hate to see a bomb go off now that we had no one to hand over to the authorities.

It was ten minutes when Anabel Dowager walked into the fishbowl with a glare directed at me. “You have no right to worry my husband.”

“And since when is any Venatori off duty?” I asked.

She gave me that look that said I was right but she wasn’t going to admit it and then sat down across from me, “What was so important this morning you had to call me.”

“Did we find all the bombs yesterday?”

Anabel shrugged, “How would I know?”

“You sent teams out, don’t they report back? You were handling the bomb tech? You are the one in charge of that. It’s your responsibility, I’m following up as is mine as lead.”

She signed and picked up the phone on the table and dialed a number then glare at me as she leaned back in her chair casually. “Dante, did you get everything done last night.”

I heard a heavy yet quiet voice on the other end. “Yes, Ms. Dowager, we did. All the bombs have been identified and brought in for testing. They are a curious make. We aren’t sure how they detonate.”

“You fucking brought bombs you didn’t detonate into the AU building where we have 80% of our future race living?” I growled.

“Who is that?” Dante asked.

“Nox Sétanta. Lead on the mission. He’s slightly rude.”

“Tell Nox that we got them encased in shields. He can come down and inspect them himself Ms. Dowager. I’m sure the boys would love to see if they hold a candle to him.”

I was confused. Ms. Dowager looked at me with a smirk that said she had no intentions of telling me. But she finished the conversation quickly and hung up. “You wrote a paper on how to control a fire? After the dormitory kitchen caught fire from someone else’s cooking.”

I nodded. It had been a punishment for cooking in the dorms and giving people the wrong ideas with my fancy shmancy cooking skills. Instead of flambaying the dish they flambeed the whole kitchen with a blow torch. “Your paper has since been extrapolated to containing explosives. The boys as Dante puts it are all Air and Earth Magnus who work together to understand explosives and how we can contain them, and assist the human bomb squads better.”

I nodded rather impressed with my own work actually. But I was surprised they knew it was mine. Dorian passed along my stuff a lot of the time. He never claimed it, but it looked bad when the half human was showing up the full Venatori. “Maybe I’ll stop by and see their work then.” I said. “Thank you for the update. Anything else I should know?”

“I don’t know, is there, Mr. Sétanta?”

“I’m going to work on these other numbers see what we can get.”

• A Day In the Life… (5/14/2018)
• Meeting Up with Friends (5/15/2018)
• Decision: Flit or Aspect? (5/16/2018)
• What’s Your Name? (5/17/2018)
• The Card (5/18/2018)
• The Ritual (5/19/2018)
• Vampires, Werewolves and Venatori, oh my! (5/20/2018)
• My Brother (5/21/2018)
• New Job (5/22/2018)
• Grocery Shopping (5/24/2018)
• Panic Attack (5/25/2018)
• Atlas (5/26/2018)
• Elevator (5/27/2018)
• Linner? Lupper? Hell Food (5/28/2018)
• Small Talk (5/29/2018)
• The Setting Sun (5/30/2018)
• Me v Anxiety (5/31/2018)
• A Puppet (6/1/2018)
• The Tattoo (6/2/2018)
• Dr. Silverman (6/3/2018)
• Hangouts (6/4/2018)
• Childhood Bully (6/5/2018)
• Getting Ready (6/6/2018)
• You’re Late (6/7/2018)
• Train Ride (6/8/2018)
• Friendly Game (6/9/2018)
• Grocery Shopping Round 2 (6/10/2018)
• Falling Apart (6/11/2018)
• Breakfast for Dinner (6/12/2018)
• Heavy Burdens (6/13/2018)
• Time For Work (6/14/2018)
• Ugly Dog Saloon (6/15/2018)
• Run Away Dragon (6/16/2018)
• City Tracking (6/17/2018)
• No Hope (6/19/2018)
• Lost Phones (6/20/2018)
• Over Coffee (6/21/2018)
• Chocolate Cake (6/22/2018)
• A Walk in the Park (6/23/2018)
• Young Novices (6/24/2018)
• The Dragon Boy (6/25/2018)
• Negotiations (6/26/2018)
• Nothing But the Truth (6/27/2018)
• Groceries Round Three (6/28/2018)
• Alex’s Place (6/29/2018)
• A Tour (6/29/2018)
• It’s Early (6/30/2018)
• The Next Morning (7/1/2018)
• What About Me? (7/2/2018)
• Breakfast at Bonnie’s (7/3/2018)
• Emergency Session (7/4/2018)
• Lead Number One (7/5/2018)
• Lead Number Two (7/6/2018)
• More Than I Was Looking For (7/7/2018)
• Manhattan Wolfpack (7/8/2018)
• Happy Reunion (7/9/2018)
• My Nephew, The Intern (7/10/2018)
• My Big Bad Bosses (7/11/2018)
• Testing My Dragon (7/12/2018)
• Downright Weird (7/13/2018)
• The Rune on My Door (7/14/2018)
• Packing My Things (7/15/2018)
• Dusk Arrived (7/16/2018)
• A Pep Talk (7/17/2018)
• The Favor (7/18/2018)
• Friendly Dinner (7/19/2018)
• Clearing My Head (7/20/2018)
• My New Place (7/21/2018)
• Relaxation (7/22/2018)
• All Growed Up (7/23/2018)
• Before the Party (7/24/2018)
• It’s My Party (7/25/2018)
• Family and Friends (7/26/2018)
• Joe, The Doorman (7/27/2018)
• Nightmares and Comfort Foods (7/28/2018)
• Breakfast with Family (7/29/2018)
• Well Done IT (7/30/2018)
• Safe Harbor (7/31/2018)
• Unlawful Entry (8/1/2018)
• Things that Go Boom! (8/2/2018)
• Cleaning Up Your Mess (8/3/2018)
• Hacking the System (8/4/2018)
• It’s Underground (8/5/2018)
• Vampire Negotiations (8/6/2018)
• Finding a Dragon (8/7/2018)
• I’ll Never Tell (8/8/2018)
• The Grand Plan (8/9/2018)
• Many Firsts (8/10/2018)
• Where Are You? (8/11/2018)
• Returning the Favor (8/12/2018)
• Desparate (8/13/2018)
• Ant’s Favor Returned (8/14/2018)
• Head Honcho Sucks (8/15/2018)
• Hacker v Hacker (8/16/2018)
• Finding a Hacker (8/17/2018)
• Negotiating with Lives (8/18/2018)
• New Old Players (8/19/2018)
• Hacking the Fishbowl (8/20/2018)
• Walker’s Prognosis (8/21/2018)
• Where’s the Dragon (8/22/2018)