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My anger and snarkiness dried up. The Drozdovs. The Badicas. Suddenly, everything that had<br />
happened this morning seemed incredibly trivial. How could I have stood there arguing with<br />
Dimitri about romances that might or might not be happening when he and the other guardians<br />
were trying to protect us?<br />
"What'd you find out?" I asked quietly.<br />
"We've managed to track some of the Strigoi," he said. "Or at least the humans with them.<br />
There were witnesses who lived nearby who spotted a few of the cars the group used. The<br />
plates were all from different states—the group appears to have split up, probably to make it<br />
harder for us. But one of the witnesses did catch one plate number. It's registered to an address<br />
in Spokane."<br />
"Spokane?" I asked incredulously. "Spokane, Washington? Who makes Spokane their<br />
hideout?" I'd been there once. It was about as boring as every other backwoods northwest city.<br />
"Strigoi, apparently," he said, deadpan. "The address was fake, but other evidence shows they<br />
really are there. There's a kind of shopping plaza that has some underground tunnels. There've<br />
been Strigoi sightings around that area."<br />
"Then …" I frowned. "Are you going to go after them? Is somebody going to? I mean, this is<br />
what Tasha's been saying all along…. If we know where they are …"<br />
He shook his head. "The guardians can't do anything without permission from higher up. That's<br />
not going to happen anytime soon."<br />
I sighed. "Because the Moroi talk too much."<br />
"They're being cautious," he said.<br />
I felt myself getting worked up again. "Come on. Even you can't want to be careful on this one.<br />
You actually know where Strigoi are hiding out. Strigoi who massacred children. Don't you<br />
want to go after them when they don't expect it?" I sounded like Mason now.<br />
"It's not that easy," he said. "We answer to the Guardian Council and the Moroi government.<br />
We can't just run off and act on impulse. And anyway, we don't know everything yet. You<br />
should never walk into any situation without knowing all the details."
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