Hoffman’s voice broke through my racing thoughts. “We done here?”
I collected myself. “One more question.”
“That’s all I know about the case.”
“Not about the case. It’s about, um, Vega.”
“What, you got a little thing for her?” He smirked. “I’ll tell you what, buddy, she sure doesn’t like you anymore.”
“Did she say why?”
I got that we had hit a nasty bump in the spring, but that had been four months ago. Could she still be that upset? I considered how she’d treated me at the crime scene, the look she’d shot me at my presentation on the ghoul operation. There had to be another reason.
“Hey, your problem, not mine,” Hoffman said with a harsh laugh. “Ask me, she recovered her senses.” He finished off the rest of his coffee and held out a hand. “The photos.”
I pulled a stack of Polaroids from my satchel. “These are most of them.”
“What do you mean, ‘most of ’em’?” Hoffman snatched the photos away and flipped through them like they were playing cards.
“I’m keeping the rest. You can earn them back by finding me suspects.”
The thick flesh of Hoffman’s brow collapsed down. “Listen, you little smartass—”
His voice broke off as a large shadow fell across our table. The redheaded werewolf brothers were looming over us.
I reached for where I kept my revolver before remembering those two had destroyed it. For a moment, I remembered how Grandpa’s possessions had existed in twos. In his tool shed, he’d kept two sets of everything—hand drills, claw hammers, awls—and always the same kind. Ditto his night robe and slippers, his pocket watch, his fedora. I snuck into his bathroom once and discovered two identical shaving mirrors beside two identical straight razors. When I asked my grandmother about this, she told me he had always acquired things in pairs. His reasoning? If something broke or went missing, he had an immediate replacement.
Too bad I hadn’t adopted the habit. With the inflating costs of firearms, I wasn’t sure I could even afford a replacement now.
Muscles swelled beneath the wolves’ security guard uniforms, but I was preoccupied by the burn in their irises. Left to their pack instincts, the brothers would tear me apart. Hoffman must have sensed the potential for violence, too.
“Been nice chatting,” he said, scooting from the booth. “Gonna leave you to your friends.”
“Mayor wants to meet with you,” Flint said to me as Hoffman bustled away.
“We make appointments for those now.” I blew on my coffee and raised it to my lips. Werewolf or not, I didn’t care for his threatening tone.
Flint thumped the mug with a finger. It flew from my grasp and shattered against the tile wall. Hot coffee rained over the table. I looked down at my dripping hand, then over at Flint.
“Problem?” I asked.
“Next time, it’s your head,” Flint growled.
“Is that what you told Lady Bastet?” I asked, testing him.
The muscles around his nose bunched up. “Don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. Now let’s go.”
I searched Flint’s and Evan’s eyes. If either had been involved in Lady Bastet’s murder, they were disguising it well. I pulled several napkins from the dispenser and began drying my hands.
“Fine,” I said. “But I’m not riding with you. I’ll catch a cab.”
Flint snarled and lunged toward me. Evan caught him by the arm and grimaced, clearly fighting his own inner beast. Whoever was running the pack in Penny’s stead had forbidden them from exacting revenge against me. But who would that be? Budge? As a mortal, he wouldn’t wield that kind of power. There had to be a second in command somewhere.
Flint controlled himself and straightened. “One o’clock,” he growled. “Or we come back.”
I’d been anxious to return to my apartment to begin work on the sulfur residue, but I’d get nothing done with a pair of pissed-off werewolves in the back of my mind. Plus, I still intended to resign from the eradication team—something I could do in person. Though the press coverage had improved my position at Midtown College, any further attention would only hurt. I consulted my watch.
“Tell the mayor it’s a date.”
14
The cab dropped me off at the checkpoint outside the plaza that fronted City Hall. The guard, another werewolf, studied my ID with a snarl while a second wolf gave me a bruising pat down. They returned my ID and shoved me through. I limped over the plaza, squinting from the bright concrete.
“Everson.”
I looked up to find Caroline descending from City Hall’s columned portico, one hand forming a visor above her eyes. She was dressed in business attire and carrying a black leather briefcase over one shoulder. She looked like a lobbyist, which I supposed she was. Among other things.
I met her halfway up the steps.
“You came,” she said.
“Yeah,” I replied, not sure what she meant. “I’m supposed to meet with the mayor.”
She angled herself so the sun was no longer in her face and lowered her hand. When her blue-green eyes searched mine, a keen pain pierced my chest. I looked back at her neutrally.
“My offer still stands,” she said.
“You mean the vacation in the faerie realm? I’m handling things pretty well up here, thanks.”
“That could change.”
“So you’ve said.”
Her lips pressed together. “Everson—”
“I’ve worked out something with Budge,” I said, cutting her off. “I help him, he helps me. And as much as I dislike the press attention, it now means he hurts me at his own risk. Same goes for Penny, if she ever wakes up.” Though the rationale sounded good, I still intended to resign. I just wasn’t going to tell Caroline that—for no other reason than to challenge her.
“Were things to go wrong,” she said, a thin comma forming between her eyebrows, “do you have somewhere you can go? Someplace safe?”
I thought of Arnaud’s offer of a renewed alliance.
“It won’t come to that,” I said.
“I see a lot more than you can.”
“Care to share?”
A breeze blew a strand of hair over Caroline’s cheek. I had to restrain myself from brushing it back behind her ear. Too much had happened since the night we’d held each other. She fastened the hair away herself, eyes flicking to the bottom of the steps. My gaze followed. A tall, striking figure in a Cambridge suit leaned against a flagpole, his copper hair shining in the sun.
The sight of Angelus kicked me in the heart with both legs.
“You should probably go,” I said, already starting to leave. “Don’t want to keep hubby waiting.”
She seized my arm, the force turning me so I was facing her again. “You’re standing on a precipice, Everson. And it’s crumbling.” The aggression in her voice and grip surprised me.
“What are you talking about?”
“You’re not as safe as you think you are.” She released me. “Let me help you.”
A determination in her eyes seemed to be masking a deeper conflict. For a moment, I thought she was going to lunge at me—though whether to strangle or kiss me, I couldn’t tell.
I glanced over at Angelus, who was still watching us.
“I don’t need your help,” I said, and paced up the steps.
This time, Caroline let me go.
I groaned when I spotted the werewolf brothers waiting for me beyond the scanners inside the City Hall building. “What are these two?” I muttered. “Part retriever?”
“You’re late,” Flint said. “Follow us.”
“Thanks, but I know the way to the mayor’s office.” I stepped around them toward the elevators.
“We’re not going to the mayor’s office.” Flint grabbed my right arm above the elbow. Evan took my left, and the two began marching me down a long hallway. I twisted my shoulders, but their large hands held me like a pair of man
acles, fastening me between them.
“Where are you taking me?” I demanded.
Flint touched an earpiece. “We’ve got him.”
Who was he talking to? The pack’s second in command?
Evan drew a key and unlocked a door that opened onto a narrow, empty corridor. The wolves turned their wide frames such that Flint was pulling me, Evan pushing me. They hadn’t confiscated my weapon, which seemed odd. Still, Caroline’s warning flashed hot in my mind.
You’re not as safe as you think you are.
“Respingere!” I cried.
From the opal in my cane, white light detonated. My arms wrenched violently as the force blasted Flint down the corridor and Evan back into the door we’d just entered through. The pain in my left shoulder registered a moment later, as well as the familiar clunk of dislocation.
Dammit.
Supporting the infirm arm at the elbow, I ran back toward the door. It had collapsed out into the main hallway with Evan’s impact, along with Evan. But in the next instant, Evan sprang up and activated his earpiece. If he was calling for backup, the hallway would soon be swarming with wolves. He pawed for his holstered firearm. Another deal breaker.
I stopped and reversed course. Down the narrow corridor, Flint was slower to recover. He staggered to his feet, blood on his brow. If I could get past him, I could search for a rear exit. When he saw me coming, he sank to his haunches, a deep growl growing from his chest.
Have to keep going. Have to hit him hard enough to make him stay down.
Fumbling my cane apart, I held the staff weakly in my left hand. Manifesting a shield, I used additional Words to shape it into something resembling a battering ram. I sensed Evan bounding up from behind. With my right hand, I aimed the sword behind me at an acute angle to the floor. I’d managed this once before in a car but never while running.
“Forza dura!” I shouted.
The power that stormed from the sword hit the floor and launched me forward like a rocket. I hurtled down the corridor. Flint tried to throw himself out of the way, but in an explosion of sparks, the battering shield rammed into him and left him tumbling in my wake.
The floor rose quickly as the blast from the sword petered out. My front foot caught the carpet, and I was thrown into a bruising roll that shot fresh pain through my shoulder. My head absorbed some solid shots as well.
I stood and staggered in two nauseating circles to collect my weapons and orient myself. My casting prism was shot, but behind me, Flint was still down. I turned back toward the end of the corridor, where a door with a red crash bar read: EMERGENCY EXIT.
Just need to get out of here.
I shambled toward the exit—and nearly collided into a side door that swung out in front of me. A man wearing a headset and Prada sunglasses peered out. “There you are!” he exclaimed in a prissy voice. “Get in here!”
I stared for a moment, trying to figure out if I should know him. The man’s frosted hair stood in a voluminous coif, while his black designer shirt opened on a thin, hairless chest. His sleeves flapped as he motioned for me to come. Though the eyes beyond the tinted lenses were animated, I could discern no werewolf in them. A touch of faerie, maybe.
“Come on!” He seized my wrist with dainty, but insistent, force.
I glanced back at the wolves. Flint was struggling to his hands and knees, and Evan had disappeared from view, probably to intercept me on the other side of the emergency exit. In my still-woozy state, I allowed the man to pull me after him. He led me through a warren of corridors.
“I’m Marcus, by the way—goodness!” he exclaimed, glancing at me over a shoulder. “You look absolutely hideous.”
“Huh?” I was still struggling to work out who the man was and what he wanted.
“I have him, but he needs work. Can you hold them off for another ten.” I realized Marcus was talking into his headset. He let out a dramatic sigh. “I need to work on him, Dwayne. He’s an utter disaster.”
I pulled against him. “Look, this is where we’re going to have to part ways.”
Marcus pushed me into a brightly lit room and looked me up and down. “Wrong hair, wrong fashion, wrong, wrong, wrong!”
He stamped a foot for emphasis, making me jump back. I bumped into something at thigh level and lost my balance. A padded chair caught me. Marcus swiveled the chair until I was staring at a dressing-room mirror. He frowned studiously over my right shoulder as he turned the chair each way and then began finger-teasing the hair on the sides of my head.
“Ugh. I can’t work with this,” he decided.
Before I could stand from the chair, it collapsed backwards and I was looking at the ceiling. Warm water gushed against my brow. In the next moment, Marcus was massaging cold conditioner into my hair. “I want elegant for you,” he said, “with a touch of rakish, a touch of … le mystérieux.”
I struggled from Marcus’s fingers and threw myself over the side of the chair. I landed on my hands and knees, sputtering as conditioner streamed down my face and into my eyes. Someone jerked my cane away, and a pair of hands seized me roughly by the arms. I was lifted into the air and slammed into the chair with enough force to relocate my left shoulder.
“Stay put until he’s done,” a gruff voice ordered.
I squinted my stinging eyes open to find Flint and Evan standing in the doorway, wearing pissed-off expressions. But they weren’t coming at me. I looked from their earpieces to Marcus’s headset. Was this who they’d been trying to deliver me to?
Marcus sighed as fresh water showered over my face and hair. “Are all wizards this difficult?”
With the werewolves standing guard, my cane in their possession and my casting prism offline, I had no choice but to let Marcus complete his work—to what purpose, I still had no idea.
Following a quick washing, Marcus scrubbed my hair with a towel and used a brush and blow dryer to give it a feathered look. He moved to makeup next, smearing a base layer over my face. He then came at me with various stencils, brushes, and lip glosses—“Or else the lights will reduce you to a corpse,” he said. Rather than explain further, he talked into his headset in emotional bursts, demanding a few more minutes from this Dwayne.
“There,” he said at last, standing out of my view of the mirror.
I hardly recognized the face staring back at me. “What in the hell?”
“Don’t touch it!” Marcus squealed, swatting my hand down.
I pursed my lips to make sure the copper-colored reflection was mine. In addition to the fake tan, Marcus had drawn over my eyebrows, making them more dramatic, with little curls on the ends. The harsh rouge along my cheekbones complemented the bright red of my lips.
“There’s nothing elegant or mysterious about this,” I said, searching around for something to wipe it off with. “I look fucking ridiculous.”
Marcus nodded at Flint and Evan, and they pulled me from the chair. Marcus reappeared with a black cape. “Here,” he said, fastening it around my neck. “There’s no time to change you out of that shirt, so keep the cape closed. Oh, and let’s get this on you.” He turned and reappeared with a leather hat with a huge brim and tall bulbous crown, which he set atop my head.
“Now you look the part,” he said.
“For the hundredth time, what’s this for?” I demanded.
Marcus tilted the hat slightly. “He’s ready,” he said into his headset.
Flint and Evan escorted me from the dressing room and up a short flight of steps to a door. Flint knocked, and another man with a headset answered—Dwayne, I presumed.
“Great, thanks, guys,” he whispered to the wolves.
The wolves slammed the cane against my chest and shoved me into the dark room after Dwayne.
“Don’t worry,” Dwayne said in a breathless voice, “you’re not going to have to speak. After your introduction, you’re to stand behind the mayor, a bit to his right. We’ve marked the spot with tape. Try to affect a mysterious look. Better yet, brooding. The
y’ll eat that up.”
“Who?” I asked.
“Ooh! They’re ready for you.”
Dwayne led me around a corner until we were peering out onto a small stage from the side. The mayor, who stood at the podium where he gave press conferences, glanced over at us.
“And here he is, ladies and gentlemen,” Budge announced. “The man—or rather, wizard—of the hour, Everson Croft!”
Oh, hell no.
I tried to turn around, but Dwayne blocked me and pushed me out onto the stage. I emerged into the packed press room to a detonation of camera flashes and shouted questions. Budge seized my hand and pumped vigorously. “Thanks for coming,” he whispered. The handshake went on for several seconds as he smiled toward the cameras. He finally released me, nodding toward the X taped on the floor behind him. Stunned by the sudden attention, I dutifully took up my position and faced the press in my makeup and hat.
“Mr. Croft!” a reporter shouted. “Where did you learn your magic?”
“I, ah…”
“C’mon, guys,” Budge answered for me. “You know a good magician never reveals his secrets.”
“How powerful are you?” someone else shouted.
Budge laughed. “What do you think? I went out and found some weakling wizard? He’s the most powerful in New York. And he’s working for me and my administration.”
I grimaced at the lie—I may not even have been the most powerful on my block—but I saw what Budge was doing. He was fanning the positive interest in me in order to claim the glow for himself.
“Can you give us a demonstration?” another reporter asked.
An excited chorus of “yeah”s followed.
“No, no,” Budge said, waving his hands, “there’ll be none of that. Everson needs to conserve his power for the next phase of the eradication program. And if you thought the ghouls were something, wait till you see what’s coming up.”
The Prof Croft Series: Books 0-4 (Prof Croft Box Sets Book 1) Page 62