I paused my stirring, perking up. “Ooooh, yeah.” His nerdy role-playing had a deliciously filthy narrative. “’K. I pick door number two.”
Rohan snickered. “Phrasing.” I blushed from head to toe. “Don’t feel bad, Sparky.” He pushed my dinner to the far end of the island, ignoring my glare. “We’re two consenting adults with perfectly natural urges.”
“Yes, we are.”
Rohan opened the fridge, grabbing the bread, cheddar, and butter. “Except for that thing you beg for which is totally depraved.”
“Don’t forget the mustard. And fuck you.”
Rohan gave a smug lift of his right eyebrow, but pulled out the distinctive yellow squeeze bottle. “What? Again? Woman, you’re insatiable.”
“You are never getting laid again.” I motioned at him to put more cheese on the grilled sandwich he was making me, and helpfully retrieved two plates from the white cabinets.
Ro rummaged around on the fridge shelf. “Is there orange juice?”
I pulled an unopened carton out of the cupboard holding the pots and pans and put it on the counter. “I hid this for you. Kane was sucking back the stuff like there was no tomorrow.” I poured it into a glass over ice.
Once he’d chugged some back, I waved the vial in front of his face. “Thoughts. Go.”
Rohan slid a generous pat of butter into the cast iron pan he’d heated, before reading the label. “‘Sweet Tooth.’ Catchy name. Branding and everything.”
“It’s all about discoverability.”
“Did they snort this?”
“Licked it.”
“The initial effects kicked in pretty quickly for licking it. Another point for a magic source.” He placed the sandwiches in the pan, spatula in one hand, then pulled out my paper towel cover and, sniffing the drug, recoiled. “Gross. Cotton candy. Could be worse.”
“Yeah. Could be watermelon scent.”
“Exactly. Swear that’s a demon invention.” He sniffed again, more cautiously and gave me back the vial. “No other obvious chemical odor. I’d say test it and let’s see what we’ve got.”
I drummed the paintbrush against the counter. This was my first actual case and already I didn’t know how to handle this. I bit my lip and exhaled. “I’m not sure how to do the spell.”
“Because it’s crystals, not something solid?”
“Yeah.” The spell to test for magic signatures required the caster to paint a specific vine pattern on the object with the water/salt/hawkweed mixture. “There’s only a tiny amount here. The drug dissolves if it’s absorbed into the bloodstream, so if I add this liquid and the spell doesn’t work, we may lose what little Sweet Tooth we have to test.”
He flipped the sandwiches. “You want brown or golden brown?”
“Golden brown.”
Rohan checked both sides, then plated my sandwich golden brown side up.
We tossed out a few options while eating, like either of us ingesting the stuff and then testing ourselves for a magic signature. Dismissed that one pretty damn quickly, given what had happened to Naomi.
Belly pleasantly full, I poured half of the remaining crystals into a bowl. That gave us a smaller sample size, but also gave us a second shot if need be. Dipping the paintbrush in the water mixture, I did my best to swirl the pattern onto the drug, then said “gallah” to invoke the spell.
The crystals dissolved, leaving us with nothing for the spell to work its magic on.
“Damn it.” I tossed the paintbrush onto the counter with a clatter.
“Wait.” Rohan picked up the brush. The finely-bristled tip cycled through a rainbow of colors before settling into a pulsing blue. It had absorbed enough of the crystals to give us a result.
“Demon magic for the win,” I said.
“Too bad the spell can’t tell us which demon,” Rohan said.
“You need the magic equivalent of a forensic chemist,” Ari said, padding into the kitchen in pajama bottoms and a faded blue T-shirt, in dire need of a shave. He rubbed a hand over his short blond hair.
“What are you doing up so early?” I glanced out the window at the basketball court and press of dense cypress, arbutus, and Douglas fir beyond. My twin may have been a morning person but light was only barely leaching back into the world.
“Up late reading while waiting for the storm to pass so we can get clearance to fly in. I’m going on assignment. With Kane.”
There was a tense silence.
“Kane? With you?” Rohan repeated. “Wow, headquarters sure has our best interests at heart.”
It was scathing, but fair. Our friend and fellow demon hunter Kane Hashimoto and Ari were no longer exactly on speaking terms after a disastrous kiss a few weeks back. Not like their dysfunction would stop them from having each other’s backs, but the timing was awful.
“No way,” I said, waving my hand. “I forbid this. Veto. No.”
“Don’t worry, Nee. Even if the weather was fine, I still have a few more days here for obvious reasons.” He picked up an uneaten thigh. “Is that maple syrup? Awesome.” Dipping the chicken into the golden pool, he devoured half the meat in one bite.
We Katz twins made it a point to be impressive.
Rohan winced like he was in genuine pain.
I hugged Ari around the waist, burrowing my head into his chest. My brother was the best. We’d had a bumpy few months what with me becoming Rasha during his induction ceremony, then our growing pains working together after I’d finally found a way to make him a hunter, but our “don’t mess with us” status quo was restored.
“Quit smothering me.” Ari wriggled free.
“What’s happening in a couple days?” Rohan asked.
I snatched the paintbrush away from him using it to jab him in the chest. “There’s a countdown widget on your phone.”
Rohan’s brows creased. “Are you sure?”
“And a back-up countdown widget.”
Rohan shrugged. “Not ringing any bells.”
“The reminder taped to your dresser?”
“Must have missed it under all the mess.” As if. Snowflake was anal-retentive tidy.
I slapped my hand against the giant paper calendar pinned to the fridge with magnets reading Yeah, bitch! Magnets! The calendar contained a single entry. The large square for Monday June 19 was festooned with gold stars. “Nava’s 21st birthday! Commence adoration!!” was written in all-caps black sharpie. In smaller penciled letters someone had added, “And Ari’s.”
“You do know the last person who joked about forgetting Nava’s birthday was never seen again, right?” Ari dumped the detritus of the meal in the trash.
“Don’t worry.” I threw a pointed glance at Rohan. “I’ve already got the remote gravesite picked out should people fail in their duties. Back to this forensic chemist idea.” I motioned at Ari. “Expound please.”
Rohan, eating his sandwich, nodded in agreement.
“I’ve been thinking about it since I heard the gogota attacked you and your scientist witch,” Ari said.
“Dr. Gelman. This isn’t a case of She-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named.” She’d gone off-grid after the attacks. Rabbi Mandelbaum, head rabbi on the Brotherhood’s Executive, maintained she was dead. While I was getting increasingly worried about her failure to surface, no way did I believe him. Dr. Gelman was a badass witch, and she was probably taking her sweet time getting back in touch just to annoy me.
“Then those yaksas attacked the village in Pakistan. That makes the sites of the attacks crime scenes.” Ari always talked faster when it came to chemistry stuff. Hand gestures, intense eye contact, the whole nine yards–it was actually kind of adorable. “Essentially, with both the gogota and the yaksas horn fragment, you removed material from those crime scenes to cast the spell. A forensic chemist does the same thing at a non-magical crime scene; they work to identify material found there. The spell that you and Ro cast was like basic magic chromatography. It led you to the discovery of the purple magic signature on bo
th. The initial identification. Now you need someone who can dig deeper and isolate the specific components.” He pointed at the vial. “Same with this. If a forensic chemist specializing in magic existed, that person might be able to tell you which type of demon was behind this. The specific component, so to speak.”
My brother was a chemistry major. I’d bet a kidney he was dying to find a way to combine that passion with magic.
“That would be extremely cool.” I finished up my sandwich, licking buttery crumbs off my fingers. “I wish I could do that.”
“You have enough of a revolving list of powers,” Ari said dryly. “Electricity, magnetizing shit, however you’d oscillated your power to almost kill Malik. It’s weird.”
“You’re jealous that I keep rolling out new tricks.”
Rohan snorted, reaching for a napkin that he used to meticulously wipe off his hands. Fine. Maybe my magic was kind of weird, being variations on a theme rather than one ability gained all at once. But considering that all the other Rasha had ages to understand magic and what would happen when they came into their powers, and I was just mastering it on the go, I was acing the catch-up.
“How do we know these magic forensic chemists don’t exist?” I asked.
“Oh, I just asked Rabbi Abrams.”
“Ari!” I jumped off the bar stool, my heart hammering.
“Calm down, stress case, I didn’t tell him. But hasn’t he risked enough for us already? He deserves to know.”
“Save your breath.” Rohan removed the canister of ground coffee from the freezer, slamming the door. “We’ve had this conversation a dozen times.”
“And for the dozenth and first.” I stacked our dishes in the dishwasher. “I’m not saying anything until we know who’s responsible for the purple magic. The man is a billion years old. I’m not potentially causing him to stroke out based on supposition.”
They turned identical scowls on me. Even Kane had been nagging me to bring the head of our chapter on board. I was terrified to tell the rabbi. Partially because I didn’t want to upset him, but mostly because he was the one rabbi in this entire Brotherhood that I trusted. How was I supposed to tell him the core of the cause that he’d devoted his life to was rotten? It didn’t matter that I wasn’t the one responsible, I knew what they did to messengers, and I wasn’t ready to give up the fond smile he bestowed on me whenever he saw me.
“We don’t have a forensic chemist,” I said, “but we do have drugs with demon magic all over them.” I sealed up the remaining crystals in the vial once more.
“What happened?” Ari asked.
Letting me relay the events of the night, Rohan filled the coffee machine with a new filter and grounds, sliding the empty glass carafe onto the base. He flipped on the power switch, the machine gurgling to life.
Ari squeezed my shoulder. “Geez. That’s rough. Sorry to hear it.”
I didn’t even like Naomi, so why was I obsessively checking the clock on the wall to see if it was late enough in the morning to call Christina’s brother Henry for an update? I turned away from the clock with purpose. The only thing I could do to help right now was find the demons responsible.
“We’re going to need a new paintbrush.” Since the crystals had dissolved into the brush and saturated it with demon magic, it was now officially useless for further spell casting. Thanks to the spell, it would forever remain the color of the magic signature.
Generally, this didn’t matter, like with the gogota’s finger or yaksas horn, because we wanted that proof of the magic signature to remain, but sometimes it sucked. No amount of dry cleaning had changed the coat that I’d tested back to its natural pale green. I could have lived with a red coat, the color that Dr. Gelman’s witch magic had turned the fabric, but it looked like a bad dye job and was now unwearable.
I was so done with my ongoing loss of clothing.
I took a few deep breaths, letting the sweet burbles of the coffeepot melt away stress and tension better than any ylang ylang shit. Meditation with hippy oils was all well and good for people with no worries more pressing than destressing from their morning commute, but for those of us with hellspawn breathing down our necks on a regular basis, mainlining caffeine was a must.
Rohan got two chunky ceramic mugs out of the cupboard and held up a third. Ari nodded at him. “Oh, hey. I got a lead from Christina while I was consoling her,” Ro said. “She said she bought the Sweet Tooth from some skater kid who lives on her block. Told me where he hangs out. We’ll start there.”
“Leo and I have plans. As you very well know.”
“Nava,” he said, all blustery stern. “You’re still going there?”
“Rohan,” I mocked back in a deep voice. “We still need answers about the Brotherhood.”
He sighed and passed me my coffee with its correct 3:2 ratio of milk to sugar and a sprinkling of cinnamon on top. “It’s not that I don’t believe you can pull it off.”
I smiled at him. “I know.”
Ari scrunched his nose. Initially he’d been hardcore Team Brotherhood, but after I told him the truth about nearly being killed by a modified demon, he’d come around to Team Nava. He still had some issues accepting that the organization he’d been a member of since birth wasn’t squeaky clean, but actually fixing the problem was much more important to me than sweeping it under a rug to spare my twin’s feelings.
Rohan took a sip of his disgusting black coffee. “How’s Leo doing? Her midterms last week sounded rough.”
I tipped my mug to my lips, watching him through lidded eyes. See? This. How many other guys would show compassion for a demi-goblin’s summer semester course load? “She’s good.”
Ari dumped more sugar into his coffee. “Is there a Plan B for today?”
“Yeah,” Rohan said. “Be careful. That’s also plans C through Z.”
“Sweet boy.” Mug cradled in one hand, I headed out, swinging around the island for a quick pit stop. I rose onto tiptoe and kissed Rohan on the cheek. Damn. Even that gave me a short, intense rush of sunshine. “There’s only one Plan B. Don’t fuck up Plan A.”
Chapter 3
Leonie and I braved bumper-to-bumper traffic along the highway and out over the Portman Bridge, its coiled steel cables stretching like sails above the cars.
Eyes closed, she tilted her face toward the open window, her straight red hair streaming and her Sexy Ruby perfume scattering the scent of apricot and jasmine through the car.
The cool nip of the morning summer breeze had burned away by the time the car bumped over the pothole-ridden dirt parking lot for Eddy’s Scrap and Salvage Yard, located out in the valley. Heat shimmered up in waves from the endless lines of cars.
Throwing the car into Park and cutting the engine, I pushed my oversized, black vintage sunglasses up my nose and winced when I touched my cheek, flushed from the sun streaming on it during the drive. Damn. I really needed to remember to sunscreen or I’d look like a Coppertone toad.
“You got it?” Leo scrambled after me, her flip flops thwacking softly.
I popped my trunk and unlocked a small iron box. A blue velvet bag was nestled inside. “Curious to see what a cursed diamond looks like?”
“Like that’s a question.”
I turned away so the reveal wouldn’t affect me but at Leo’s “Whoa!” glanced back.
The diamond was the size of a fat chestnut, uncut and flawless. I leaned in to admire it. To adore it, grateful that this puny being could bask in its splendor.
Leo smacked me across the face, snapping me out of the gem’s compulsion. Good thing. I didn’t have time to rip her to shreds for ownership, which had almost happened with Rohan when we’d first retrieved it.
I rubbed my cheek. “Thanks, you sadistic freak.”
“Humans,” my half-goblin bestie scoffed. “So weak.” She put the diamond away, stuffing the velvet bag into her orange cotton sundress, and lovingly cupping her now oddly-shaped tit. “I always wanted a Cubist boob.”
&nbs
p; I snorted.
We made our way to the entrance of the salvage yard, my Sketcher high tops becoming more black-and-brown than black-and-white. I scanned for any hint of motion. The zizu demon we’d come to see would sense the diamond’s presence any moment now and come for it.
“Hi.” A cheerful middle-aged guy in a faded ball cap, his beer gut straining his dirty green coveralls with the word “Eddy” stitched in black across his heart, stepped out of a small trailer at the front gate. A wooden sign with “Office” painted on was nailed to the dusty aluminum siding. “Looking for car parts?” He chewed a toothpick between fleshy lips.
If Eddy was the demon, he should have been acting twitchy, trying to get to the jewel, but he looked like the last time he experienced tension was being squeezed out the birth canal.
“Transmission,” I said as Leo chimed in with “Engine.”
Eddy’s brows creased, but he shrugged. “Well. Sounds like a car in need of some TLC.” He took out his toothpick and jabbed it at the lot. “Use whatever you need. Engine hoists, wheel carts, we have it all. Let me know if you need a hand.”
The hoists, strewn around the lot, resembled primary-colored metal swing sets mounted on fat tire wheels. In the center of each was a lift secured with heavy chain and huge hydraulic pulleys.
“Thanks,” I said. “It’s a bit of a project. Might take us a while to find what we need.”
A boy and a girl, maybe five years old, both with wheat-blonde hair, barreled out of the office. The two stared at me with identical grave stares, dressed in gender-assigned T-shirts and shorts. Aw, the universal color-coding of fraternal twins.
Then the girl whipped a red foam block at her brother. Yup. That was universal, too.
Without missing a beat, he grabbed it, yelled, “Mine!” and ran.
Memories.
Setting his toothpick back into chew mode, Eddy grabbed the boy with one meaty hand, spun him around, and nudged him back toward the office. “Tony, Clea, cut it out. Both of you.”
He herded them back inside and shut the door.
“Hug right wall?” I asked.
The Unlikeable Demon Hunter Collection: Books 1-6: A Complete Paranormal Romantic Comedy Series Page 87