Aaron opened the door to Christian’s lab while knocking on it, expecting to see the tech guru sitting behind his giant computer analyzing data or messing around with his test beakers on the table behind the monitor that took up much of his desk. Instead, the other Guardian was in the back, in a small space he used to install the IACs, looking at something through the large magnifying glass he used to see into a person’s eye while he was installing the miniscule computer chip. Despite the knock, Christian didn’t look up, so Aaron waited a second before entering, saying his name quietly at first so as not to scare him and potentially make him ruin whatever he was working on. When that didn’t work, he tried the IAC, which was ignored. “Christian?” he finally shouted, standing about two feet away from the man in the lab coat.
Christian jumped, knocking the magnifying glass with the small instrument he’d been holding, dropping whatever he’d been looking at. “Goddamnit,” he muttered, turning to look at Aaron with a scowl on his face. “You could’ve knocked.”
“I did knock. And that wasn’t the first time I said your name. What are you working on?”
Christian hesitated, looking from the table in front of him to his boss and then back again. He used what Aaron could now see was a pair of tweezers to pick up whatever he’d dropped. It was hard to say what it might be—a tissue sample, perhaps? Placing it carefully in a petri dish, he took off the latex gloves he’d been wearing and turned to face Aaron. “It’s nothing. Just a tissue sample.”
Aaron nodded, thinking Christian was acting odd—secretive. But then, what else was new? “Do you have a minute?”
“Sure. What’s up?” Christian walked toward him, and since Aaron was standing in the doorway, he had no choice but to step back out of the way. Christian proceeded through the crowded room to his desk and sat down behind his computer. Aaron shook his head and went around to the other side, sitting down in one of the chair across from him. The seats were set to the sides of his desk because otherwise he wouldn’t be able to see around his monitor.
“Do you happen to know of anything particularly peculiar involving the full moon coming up at the end of the month?” Aaron tried to keep his inquiry as innocent sounding as possible. The last thing he wanted was to clue Christian in that he was concerned himself.
“The one on the twenty-ninth?” Christian asked, as if there might be more than one full moon in the next few days. “Why do you ask?”
“No reason, not really.” It would be impossible to keep the information from him indefinitely, but until he had an answer to his initial question, Aaron didn’t want to say anything more.
Christian studied him for a long moment, clearly not convinced. “I’m not aware of anything.” He started typing into his computer, and Aaron was sure the tech guy come up with the same information he’d gathered himself a few minutes ago before he’d left his office. “It’s a blood moon, but I don’t think that’s anything to worry about.”
“You’re not aware of any folklore or anything associated with a blood moon?” Aaron asked, steepling his hands in front of his face and hoping for a candid answer.
“Not really.” Christian shrugged and clicked around on his computer for a few more moments. Aaron could only see part of it from the angle where he was sitting, but it looked like the same page he’d just visited himself. “I mean, Vampires love blood moons for the sake of everything being cast in an eerie red glow. My understanding is that a few hundred years ago, it was a good night for them to go out and victimize anyone and everyone, even if their victims were Innocents. But I don’t think that’s been the case recently. Why do you ask?”
Aaron shrugged and dropped his hands. “I got a call today from a Compliant I hadn’t heard of before. A little bit of research showed she’s been a Vampire for several years and has never done anything against the rules.”
“What’s her name?” Christian asked quickly, before Aaron could even finish his answer.
“Uh, Mika Ito,” he replied, wondering why he wanted to know. Christian scribbled the name down on a scrap of paper, like he might need to know it later. “Anyway, she’s calling for an Eidolon Festival that night. I just want to make sure we cover our bases, that there’s nothing suspicious about any of it. She made a good point in that we’ve taken out a lot of Compliants recently. The least we could do was let the remainder get together in peace. And since there hasn’t been an Eidolon Festival in the Northern Hemisphere since Villisca, I’m inclined to say yes.... But not if we think this could be a danger to anyone. And not if Holland is even remotely involved.”
“So you think this is on the up and up, but you want to make sure?” Christian clarified.
“Essentially, yes. I’ll have Cass double check that Mika has no connection whatsoever to Holland, but I do remember Cassidy thinking that Hines had something planned for late summer, something involving a passage of some sort. I don’t want to put any of us in jeopardy.”
“Maybe he was talking about passage to the US or back to Australia,” Christian offered.
“It’s possible. It could be a lot of things. But Cassidy was under the impression this passage had something to do with Guardians, that it was a weapon or a tool of some sort. The last thing we need is to walk blindly into a situation we could prevent.”
“As far as I know, there’s nothing involving the blood moon that has anything to do with a passage or a portal. It’s not like the Blue Moon, if that’s what you’re worried about. I’m pretty sure I’d know it if it was.”
Aaron nodded. He thought he would have heard of itself, too. But there were centuries of history and Vampire lore he wasn’t privy to because he hadn’t been around forever, and Christian’s connections outdated his. “Okay—well, if you’ll check the archives, I’d appreciate it.”
“Sure. I’ll see if I can dig up anything else on this Mika Ito, too.”
“Thanks. I appreciate it.” Aaron stood, thinking this was something he could trust Christian with. If anyone was good at digging up obscure information, it was the tech guy.
“By the way, where do they want to gather?” Christian asked as Aaron made his way to the door.
He paused and turned back to face the other Guardian. “Shepherdstown, West Virginia.”
Christian chuckled. “Is that the best they could do? At least Villisca had an ax murderer. Shepherdstown is just fake scary.”
Shrugging, Aaron said, “I’m not sure why they picked that location, but it works for me. It’s small enough we should be able to handle it, and it’s close enough to some of the major cities on the east coast, we can get a decent amount of people there to handle keeping everyone under control.”
“But we’re going, too, right?”
Reluctantly, Aaron nodded again. “Yeah, I’ll have to go. I’m required to be there. I’ll take a small team from here. You can go if you want to.”
“Yes!” Christian declared, pumping his fist like he’d just hit a home run. He’d missed the last Eidolon Festival, the one where they’d witnessed Cadence ending Carter the first time, because he’d been in Roatan.
Smiling at his enthusiasm, Aaron said, “Let me know what you find,” and then headed out the door. He’d need to stop by and check with his sister-in-law, who didn’t even know she’d gained that status yet, and see if she could pick up on anything he needed to be aware of. And then he’d have to go tell his wife he’d bee MIA a few days before their wedding. That would be the tricky part. He’d rather face a Vampire army then tell Cadence McReynolds there would be a change of plans....