Chapter 77: For the Record, I'm Not Like That
The room stayed quiet for a beat longer than was comfortable.
Everyone had turned to look at Rango with the collective expression of people who had just watched someone step on a rake and were waiting to see if they'd noticed.
Rango stared at the projection. At the house on his old block. His old address.
Even Ted had gone still, which for Ted was significant.
"Okay," Rango said finally. "Two possibilities. One — this is a coincidence and Azazel happened to seed someone who happened to buy the lot where I grew up. Two—" He stopped. "Two is worse."
"Two is that he's been watching your family longer than you knew," Sam said quietly. "Same as us. Same as Emma."
Rango nodded once, put that in a box, and set it aside. He'd dig into it later — literally, if necessary. His parents had been hunters for thirty years and he'd grown up in that house and never once thought to ask why a family with their income had settled in Queens. He was asking now. Just not out loud, and not yet.
"Does anyone actually live there currently?" he asked.
Megan shifted the projection without being asked — the satellite image dissolved and was replaced by what looked like a social media photo. A family of four, bright kitchen background, the specific composition of a Christmas card. Two adults, two kids, everyone smiling.
Rango studied it.
"Normal," Dean said. "Like, aggressively normal."
"That's what's wrong with it," Rango said. "Look at the neighborhood. You know what it costs to buy a lot in Queens, tear down the existing structure, and custom build? That's not a cost-conscious decision. That's someone who had a specific reason to be on that specific block." He looked around the room. "Azazel doesn't do anything without a reason."
"Fair point," Sam said.
"Which brings us back to the seed," Dean said. He leaned back in his chair and turned a pen over in his fingers with the particular energy of someone who was about to say something they found funny. "Lust seed. Azazel plants them young — you know that. Emma got envy. The seed grows with the person, shapes their drives." He looked at Rango with a grin he was barely containing. "I'm just saying. You grew up in that house. You were in that neighborhood."
Rango looked at him.
"You know what envy did to Emma," Dean continued. "Made her need to compete, made her need to win, turned it compulsive. So theoretically—"
"Don't."
"—if someone in that area got the lust seed—"
"Dean."
"—I'm just doing the math here—"
"I don't have a lust problem," Rango said flatly.
The room did not immediately agree with this.
The silence that followed was the specific kind that has content in it.
Rango looked around at the assembled faces — Sam studying his coffee cup, Andrew suddenly very interested in the ceiling, Pierce examining his own hands, Big Eater placidly eating the last croissant.
"Seriously?" Rango said.
"I mean," Ted said, in the careful voice of someone choosing their moment, "there was the incident in Cape Town."
"That was—"
"And the situation in New Orleans."
"Those women were—"
"And if we're being thorough," Ted continued, "the Norwegian researcher, the park ranger in Yellowstone, the architect from—"
"Those are all separate and contextual—"
Dean pointed at the hallway leading to the bedroom where Gloria was. "Middle school. You told me personally. The Westfield varsity cheerleading squad, the equipment room after the homecoming game. You used the word legendary."
"I was fifteen and I was bragging—"
"You bragged with specifics, Rango. You used numbers."
Rango opened his mouth. Closed it.
"Africa," Ted said simply.
"You were there in Africa."
"I was there," Ted confirmed. "That is accurate. I was there and I watched you tell an entire tour group you were a licensed wilderness guide and then—"
"They invited me, it was a group decision, I was a guest—"
"You didn't speak a word of Afrikaans before that trip and somehow by the end of the week you knew fourteen—"
"Languages are practical—"
Michelangelo, who had been quiet in the corner with the patient energy of someone waiting for the right moment, raised his hand. "Can I say something?"
"No," Rango said.
"It's about the sewer."
A pause.
"The shower thing," Mikey continued. "In the lair. You know April mentioned — after you left, she said—"
"I was washing off demon residue—"
"She said," Mikey continued, with the gentle persistence of someone who has four brothers and knows how to wait out a defense, "and I'm quoting, 'he absolutely knew what he was doing.'"
"April O'Neill has an active imagination and I will not be held responsible for—"
"I have a question." Amanda, from the corner, raised her hand with the pleasant expression of someone who had been enjoying this enormously. "Last night during the interview. You kept—" she made a small gesture toward her general chest area.
"You were invisible for half the interview and then you materialized and I was startled—"
"You weren't startled, you were looking before I materialized—"
"I have good peripheral vision—"
"I have good peripheral vision," Amanda said. "I've been invisible in rooms my whole life. I know when someone's—"
"Meeting adjourned," Rango said.
"Rango—"
"Lunch. Everybody. Now."
He stood, pointed toward the kitchen with the authority of someone who was done with this conversation permanently, and walked toward the window with his back to the room.
From the corner, Nick — who had been silent through all of this, which was very unlike him — caught Rango's eye and gave him a slow, sincere thumbs up.
Rango pointed at him.
Nick lowered the thumb without guilt.
Clare, who had said nothing since the meeting started — since Gloria had walked through the door and the room had rearranged itself around that fact — looked down at her hands and said quietly, almost to herself, "For what it's worth. Last night in the car. I didn't think that."
Rango looked at her.
"I believe you," he said. And meant it.
She nodded once, not quite meeting his eyes, and stood to follow everyone toward the kitchen.
Rango turned back to the window and looked out at the street.
His old neighborhood.
Azazel's target.
Same address.
He stood there for a moment, alone in the empty living room, and thought about his parents choosing to settle in Queens, and all the things he'd never thought to question when he was young, and how many answers might be sitting three feet underground on that specific block of pavement.
After, he told himself.
Deal with Yellow Eyes first. Then dig.
"Rango." Ted appeared on the windowsill beside him. "There's leftover pizza."
"Yeah," Rango said. "Okay."
He followed everyone to the kitchen.
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