His magic had weakened outside his body, but it was alive and potent enough to allow me to draw out the stone magic. Those glorious white clusters bloomed and ate the nasty shit up.
I was myself once more, flesh and bone with not a trace of rock. After placing an anonymous call to 911, I stood up and my right leg buckled.
Pain was a funny thing. In short bursts, like a headache, it was front and center. It sucked, but knowing there would be an end made it bearable. Unfortunately, my leg pain since the car crash and my surgery had been a fifteen-year slow grind wearing me down. I hadn’t lived at my fullest in happy Technicolor; life was blurred at the edges.
My newfound magic had pretty much done away with my pain unless I was severely overtaxed, and it had thrown my world back into sharp focus. Had the stone magic weakened me again?
I refused to return to that reality.
Sirens grew louder. I scrambled out a back exit, ahead of the Nefesh First Responders. Satisfied that the employee would be taken care of, I hit up a nearby corner store for Gatorade and some beef jerky to top up my electrolytes and get some fuel in my body. Sitting in a tiny deserted park, I wolfed it all down so fast that I was queasy. Better than dead.
All the while, I remained hyperaware of the feather, secured in the pouch and tucked into my waistband at the small of my back. I hadn’t been ready–or able–to let it out of my sight and stash it in the lockbox in my trunk.
A quick call to the Dershowitz house confirmed that they were still in Hedon. Might as well catch them there and conduct my interviews.
Before I could palm one of the bronze tokens that Moran had given me, my shoulder blades prickled for a third time. This wasn’t an overactive imagination. Someone was definitely spying.
A shadow fell over me and a figure, about six-feet-tall, with a lean build and white wings, flew down onto the grass. He wore a floor-length white robe with a mask obscuring most of his face and hair and heavy gloves on his hands. Worried I might recognize him? Regardless, I doubted this was standard Heaven-issue wear.
“I am Malach, Angel of Death,” he said in a low distorted voice.
Cowering wasn’t in my wheelhouse, but I wasn’t yet energized enough to menace. Door number three it was.
“I am Ashira, Private Investigator.” I held out a dried beef stick. “Jerky?”
Chapter 11
Malach’s eyes glittered fervently. They were black, not blue, and the hair peeking out from the edge of the mask was a dark blond. The incongruities were dismissible because if this was an illusion, everything was adjustable, including the build, which was similar to Levi’s but a couple inches shorter.
“Return that which is mine,” he said, “and I shall allow you to live.”
“You’ll have to be more specific.” I bit into the jerky.
“The feather.” His lips compressed into a flat line.
If I needed a final nail in the coffin against Malach being a real angel, I had it. The feather was so chock-full of power that it rolled off in waves, therefore, his magic should have overwhelmed me, but I didn’t even get a blip.
I didn’t have any radar to verify if someone was Nefesh unless they used their magic and I smelled it. Levi’s stupid magic excepted.
Wait. Malach had used his magic to fly here. I moved closer and inhaled. No oaky amber scotch and chocolate, instead, the peculiar combination of lilies and dust assaulted me.
Hope surged hot and bright in my chest.
After one last bite, which I took my time chewing and swallowing, I twisted the top of the jerky packaging and put the stick in my pocket. “Nah. Finders keepers.”
“Then you shall die!”
I manifested my spiky blood armor. “While I’m aflutter with anticipation, I don’t think you can do squat. Solid effort for the cover story, though. The Angel of Death did kill all the Egyptian firstborns in Moses’ time, and yeah, Omar is an Egyptian firstborn, and it’s Passover, which is a nice touch. But making him deep throat your feather is hardly murder of biblical proportions. Either you’re slipping or you’re a fake.”
Malach backhanded me. I crashed into a tree trunk and bounced onto the grass, silently blessing my armor. Fuck me. Did he have brass knuckles sewn into his gloves?
Despite the pain radiating in my jaw, I bounced on my toes in glee. Levi wouldn’t physically hurt me.
Come on. Get mad. Get sloppy.
I waved the pouch. “Tell you what. I’ll consider handing the feather over if you tell me why you’re wearing a mask. Aren’t angels all ‘behold the glory of my being because I’m so pretty?’”
He rushed me. I suspect being hit by a train packed a similar punch. And that was with my magic armor. The breath was knocked from my lungs and I fell onto my back.
Either he was built like a brick shithouse or he wore some kind of fortification under those robes. The pouch slid free and bounced on the grass.
I grabbed it before Malach could and stuffed it under my body. He kicked me in the ribs with steel-toed boots. Was he in construction?
My armor was literally a lifesaver, but the pummeling still took it out of me, and my tank was perilously low. Rolling out of the way, I made the armor disappear, since I couldn’t ride magic otherwise, and jumped to my feet.
Malach expected me to run, but instead, I skirted in nice and close and hit him with a swift upper cut. He staggered back.
I manifested a blood dagger and slashed the side of his throat. Since I had to mainline into his blood to hook my magic to his, I pressed my thumb to the cut.
“Why did you come back for the murder weapon?” I said.
He roared, jerking sideways before I could get an answer–or a lock on his magic.
Malach extended his wings and with a flap that sent dirt and grass up in tiny whirlwinds, flew away. Or he made me think he did.
One way to test that.
I hurled the dagger, striking him in his side. A gun would have taken him down for sure, but there were too many moving parts to ensure I wouldn’t mangle its creation and blow my hand off. I stuck to creating simple weapons.
Despite Malach’s cry of pain, he continued across the sky until he ducked behind a building and was lost from view.
If I’d stabbed an illusion, would he have made a noise? No, because the caster would be down here hidden in the park somewhere.
I collapsed on the grass, limp with exhaustion and relief. It wasn’t Levi. I didn’t have to take him down or keep the Queen from beheading him. He had a very nice head.
A glint of white fluttered, caught on a stalk of grass. I picked up a lone white feather with caution, ran a finger over it, and frowned. That couldn’t be right. I slid my fingernail into its tip, making a tiny slit. The tip was plastic. This feather was a fake. Part of a costume.
Of course it was. It’s not like a real angel suffered from wing-based bald spots and used fake feathers to pad out his wings. I snickered, imaging the angel version of a Rogaine commercial. Hair Club for Angels.
Nor did an illusionist need a costume. If it wasn’t Houdini magic, then what? This second feather didn’t possess any of that ancient magic, but that didn’t negate this Malach having something. If this wasn’t an illusion, then he had some kind of magic allowing him to fly.
Except flight magic didn’t exist. Yeah, sure, neither did blood magic, supposedly, but that didn’t help me. Damn it. If I hadn’t burned Freddo, he could have gotten a read on this second feather.
Despite still having more questions than answers, I was elated. I’d crossed both Levi and a real Angel of Death definitively off my list. Levi was good. I was right. A dozen champagne bubbles, light and airy, rose through my chest and I told myself my dizzying euphoria was at the latter conclusion, not the former.
Plus, with this second feather, I had my first solid lead. I debated sealing the second feather up with the first in the pouch for safekeeping but opted against it. Should I find another Typecaster, I didn’t want the second feather magically contami
nated in any way, so I tucked it in my back pocket.
I took a quick breather to recover after all that, and then canvassed costume and theatrical supply shops in Vancouver. Aside from a store who’d sold a bunch of angel wings to a Catholic school for an Easter play, and another where the clerk remembered selling some for a bachelorette party, tracking the attacker via the costume wings didn’t pan out.
Time to lean on the families and see who was hiding things. Clutching a bronze token in my hand, I mentally ordered it to take me to the Queen.
Oddly, the world didn’t shift like it usually did when I went to Hedon. Instead, from one step to the next, I fell deep into a memory.
It was a week before my thirteenth birthday, and Dad was supposed to pick me up from elementary school and drive me to swimming lessons. I’d sat there on the edge of the soccer field until darkness fell and the playground was a nest of shadows, then I shivered all through the walk home, because I hadn’t worn a warm enough jacket. My swim gear weighed down my backpack almost as much as the heavy feeling in my gut that deepened with every step.
Talia was cooking dinner. I don’t remember what the meal was but I’ll never forget the way her smile at seeing me turned to a puzzled frown at my lips that were blue with cold. How she asked me where Dad was and I couldn’t answer. The hours that stretched into forever that night when she called everyone she knew with a forced cheerfulness to ask if they’d seen Adam, or the desperation when all that was left were hospitals and police stations.
I came out of my reverie in a formal parlor with tears glistening on my cheeks and the feeling I’d woken from a vivid dream. Except it wasn’t a dream: it was the cost of using the bronze token, just like Moran had cautioned. My body crumpled in on itself, and I brushed the tears away with the back of my hand. There was the soft click of heels behind me. “Got what you wanted?” I said.
“Knowledge is power, blanquita. You of all people know that. And you can’t say you weren’t warned.” The Queen of Hearts stood in the doorway. Her dark red hair was twisted in a chignon and her violet eyes betrayed no hint of emotion. Dressed in her signature red, today’s outfit was silk men’s pajamas that hugged her curves, her feet stuffed into fur-trimmed slippers with kitten heels.
Plus-size women didn’t have it easy, but the biggest hater would think twice before tangling with the Queen. Even in leisurewear, intelligence and power radiated off her, from the shrewd cunning in her eyes to the total ease with which she lounged, as if it was on the world to earn its place around her.
Stiff red curtains blocked the windows, but the rest of the room was white and airy. A crystal chandelier twinkled softly above us, while the floor was covered with a Persian rug in rich jewel tones around which lushly upholstered furniture in red and white brocades were grouped.
“Can any rando show up at your door or did the token give me access?” I said.
“I gave you access. The tokens are another way to keep tabs on who is coming and going.” Her Spanish accent flavored her words. She sat down on a white loveseat and patted the cushion beside her.
I lowered myself onto it, ignoring the twinge in my right thigh. A tête-à-tête with a self-declared monarch with a fondness for beheadings–just the pick-me-up my day required. “I need to interview the families.”
“In a moment. This Angel of Death is causing me problems.”
I threw my hands up. “Please tell me you don’t actually think there’s an honest-to-goodness Angel of Death running around?”
She raised a sculpted eyebrow and I swallowed, modifying my tone.
“If the attacker was truly the Angel of Death,” I said, “he should have radiated the same magic that came off the feather that I pulled from Omar’s throat. I recently tangled with him and he didn’t. Then, there’s this.” I showed her the second feather. “It fell off his wing. See the plastic tip? It’s a fake. Omar’s attacker was a human with a grudge and an Old Testament fetish.”
Her gaze sharpened. “Do you have the other feather on you?”
I could have said no, but she could see into the deepest recesses of my heart. I had no desire to test whether she could spot a lie. I handed her the pouch. “Don’t open it.”
“I was advised not to. What is this magic?” She flipped the pouch over, tracing a finger along the etchings.
“I’m working on it.” I held out my hand. Seeing it in her grasp, even sealed, made me twitchy. “Can I have it back? It’s central to the Tannous investigation.”
There was no way the Queen should have handed over something this powerful and dangerous and yet she did. This wedding had to be important to her. Why else would she have involved herself to begin with? Why these two families in particular mattered remained a mystery, but I didn’t care so long as I got my payment for services rendered.
I tucked the pouch in my waistband against the small of my back.
She watched me like I’d been put on a set of scales and she was waiting to see if they balanced. Creepy.
I pushed to my feet, pleasantly surprised when my thigh didn’t ache. Fingers crossed I’d merely overtaxed myself. “I should question the families. Pin down the attacker’s motive.”
“¡Claro!” She smiled beatifically and I backed up a step. She threaded her arm through mine. “Walk with me.”
Our footsteps echoed over white marble tile in a brightly lit corridor. It was filled with paintings of beautiful landscapes, from rolling hills to still lakes, all depicted in full sun. To the casual eye, the Queen was a warm, engaging host, her fifty-something years giving her an almost grandmotherly feel as she escorted her guest on the grand tour. From my close-up perspective, her light grip was more inescapable than a dungeon. Great. Bet she had those, too.
“I persuaded the families that Omar would be safest here in Hedon,” she said.
Made them an offer they couldn’t refuse. “Because of the Black Heart Rule. You’ve put him under your protection.”
“Precisely. Attacking him would be foolish, and since they all decided to accompany Omar, I am hosting everyone.”
“They couldn’t bear to have him out of their sight after his miraculous escape from the jaws of death?”
“Something like that.” Her full lips pursed. “They wanted to postpone the wedding.”
We strolled through a large sunken living room, decorated in all-white but with a red accent wall and red cushions on the furniture. Billowing white curtains framed a set of sliding doors leading out to a large terrace.
“They’d had a shock but I insisted that it was no reason to put off their beautiful day,” she said, leaning into me like we were confidantes. “They agreed with my assessment.”
What a mitzvah. “Mazel tov.”
“By the time Shannon walks down the aisle, you will have found the attacker and handed him over to me. I assured them that five days was plenty of time for you to achieve this, no? The young couple wishes to feel safe moving forward with their new life.”
I’d already pulled one miracle out of my ass and saved Omar. Now I had to find his attacker by Sunday so the Queen could have this ceremony? “There was no agreed-upon deadline.”
The Queen waved her hand like this was of no consequence. “Now there is.”
I stopped and tugged my arm free. “No disrespect, but the deal was I solve this and in return you give me the vials. I didn’t have a due date and the wedding isn’t my problem.”
“If you have not wrapped things up for the wedding to happen as scheduled, you will not get your vials.”
“Are you reneging on the terms of our agreement?”
“I merely want Omar and Shannon to start their new lives together free from worry.” Her kitten heels clacked ominously along the tiles. “Get me the attacker in time and those vials will be yours. Fail and I’ll begin negotiations with potential buyers.”
I went cold. “You said you weren’t interested in that kind of chaos.”
The Queen unfurled a Cheshire Cat smile. “My int
erests change over time.”
“Five days it is. Do any of them know about my magic?”
“No. Moran–” The Queen smirked as if it amused her to call him that. “He assured them that Omar was choking on the feather and that all you did was pull it out. That is the extent of your involvement in his recovery.” She motioned me out on to the terrace. “The families are down by the gazebo. I’ll leave you to it.”
Yeah, right. More like you’ll watch my every move.
“I will endeavor to live up to your confidence in me,” I said.
She inclined her head. Not in acknowledgment of my efforts. More in “yes, of course you will or I’ll crush you.”
I stepped outside.
Hedon was a never-ending humid summer’s night, the air sticky and velvety against my skin. At first, its magic had nauseated me, now it merely set my teeth on edge. It was a cacophony that I had to force to a dim roar each time. Its magic smell of axle grease and vanilla ice cream had subtly shifted, the ice cream now soured.
Gagging, I crossed the flagstones to the low stone wall with stairs leading down to the extensive gardens.
Lights twinkled through the park grounds. In the distance, above the trees, was a wash of neon floating above the stalls and shacks in the “business district” that I’d encountered on my first visit here. The electric blue ramen bowl was orange tonight, joined by a steaming coffee cup, and a pair of flashing blood-red pickaxes.
The garden was filled with night-blooming plants and the scent of jasmine. There were no walls enclosing it and people made free use of the space. A person of indeterminate gender and glowing gold eyes cycled past on one of those wacky high-wheeled bicycles from a bygone era. Another couple practiced their water magic on a fountain.
Picking out the slanted roof of the gazebo over to my left, I descended the stairs and ran into Moran coming up from the bottom. We did that side-to-side dance for a moment until I laughed and put up my fists. “Fight ya for passage.”
Death & Desire: A Snarky Urban Fantasy Detective Series (The Jezebel Files Book 2) Page 12