A Girl’s Best Friend (Moonlight Detective Agency Book 3)

by Isobella Crowley

  “Of course, sir.” The lycanthrope hastened to the kitchen and placed the bundle of damp clothes down on a relatively clear space of the counter. He noticed that the smarmy bastard seemed legitimately sympathetic to his plight right now.

  No one liked to see their home destroyed.

  He turned a chair over, placed it upright, and slumped into it. Right next to his feet lay a miniature copy of a Greek nude in imitation marble made by the infamous art-faker Osman, who’d also conned the Guggenheim into purchasing his Egyptian Black Cat model.

  The small Greek statue wasn’t actually worth much but it was nice to look at. It added a touch of class to the living room, in his opinion. Now, it lay in four pieces, broken at the knees, neck, and one of the elbows. Parts of the edges had disintegrated amidst the general chaos, so it would be virtually impossible to repair without obvious fault lines.

  Additionally, the paintings and other objets d’art—the things that were worth real money—had also been reduced to rat-scraps and they’d broken his big flat-screen TV.

  “Well.” He breathed deeply. “That’s it. All the rich-guy stuff I once owned is ruined and gone.” Everything from his trust-fund days would soon collect grime and bird shit in a landfill.

  Conrad stepped out a moment later, holding a mug filled with steaming brown liquid.

  “Here you go, sir. I couldn’t find any hot cocoa mix at all, but there was some undamaged instant coffee and I added sugar to it. I hope that’s all right.”

  Remy normally preferred his coffee sugarless but today, he’d make an exception. He thanked the man, took the cup, and sipped it gratefully, still huddled naked under his blanket-wrapping like a homeless guy who’d been stripped, beaten, thrown into a drunken frat boy’s trunk, and dumped out in the wilderness for shits and giggles.

  His bodyguard drew up a mostly intact stool and sat beside him. “I’m inclined to suspect that this wasn’t the work of the dwarves,” he admitted.

  “No.” He finished his coffee but kept the warm mug between his hands. “It must have been Moswen’s thralls. She probably worked them into a frenzy, the idea being to kill me as gruesomely as possible. When they didn’t find me, they took their rage out on…well, everything I own, basically, aside from my cars and those wet clothes.”

  He suddenly froze and his stomach clenched. “Uh…wait. Could you check on my cars? Especially the Lincoln. I’ll look for a viable outfit in the meantime.”

  The lycanthrope nodded and retrieved Remington’s keys from his pants, then headed toward the elevator to head to the garage.

  Remy stood. He bit his tongue and tried not to look too hard at anything as he slogged through the devastation toward his bedroom.

  At least we now have no choice but to get Taylor directly involved in this crap. Of course, she’ll find a way to make everything my fault, but once she draws the sword, we’ll be able to settle the score with that fucking cartel.

  He thought back to the big, ugly dwarf who’d driven him into West Harbor’s deadly, frigid water. Imagining that prick’s head on a plate made him feel slightly better.

  Slightly.

  Moonlight Detective Agency Offices, Bushwick, Brooklyn, New York

  Before they’d departed the condo, it had occurred to Remington that Conrad had already gone above and beyond the terms of his contract. He’d helped him all night, even though he’d technically only been hired for daytime protection duties.

  Therefore, he had decided to give him the evening off.

  “Are you sure about that, sir?” the man had asked. He thought he could detect a hint of relief in his voice—he did look a little tired—but otherwise, it was merely his usual mixture of honest concern and slight condescension.

  “Yes,” he had stated firmly. “I have to admit, you’ve done an excellent job of keeping me from joining the preternatural realm as a ghost or whatever. I’ll go directly to the office, though, and the sun has already set, so Taylor will be right along. No offense, but she’s still top o’ the food chain when it comes to kicking ass, as far as I can tell.”

  Conrad had only nodded and said, “As you wish. I’ll be available for duty again first thing tomorrow morning.”

  Since, mercifully, the enraged thralls hadn’t dared destroy his cars out in public, he at least still had his wheels. Thus, his bodyguard said his goodbyes and drove himself home while Remy took the Lincoln out to Bushwick.

  It was well past dark when he pulled in at the office. Regular business hours would be over by now and Taylor ought to be on duty but he didn’t see her car in the lot. Perhaps she had other business to deal with before she arrived.

  He parked his Lincoln, stepped out into the cold, and locked the doors. Quickly, he ran his hands over his suit. Amidst the carnage of his possessions, he’d managed to find an outfit that was in acceptable condition, albeit a tad grimy and wrinkled for his tastes.

  “At this rate,” he mumbled, “I’ll probably have to start doing laundry twice a week. Which will increase the power and water bills and make it that much harder to buy new clothes.”

  He sighed, wondering if this was how normal, non-rich people lived most of the time.

  As he opened the front door and stepped through, he almost literally ran into Bobby, who had glanced over her shoulder as she approached from the opposite direction. A ring of keys dangled in her hand.

  “Oh, Mr. Remington.” She giggled, a little startled. “Ha, sorry. I was about to lock up and head home…if that’s okay?”

  He took her aside toward the reception desk. “It should be but hold on a minute. Have you seen or heard from Taylor yet? It’s late for her to still not be here.”

  “Um…” the woman responded and raised a finger to her full red lips, “you know, she never showed up, or called, or left any messages. I thought about calling her myself, but I assumed she, you know, took the day off. It seems like Ms Steele is always here most nights, so she probably needed a rest, the poor lady.”

  “I see.” His gut tightened again. It was probably nothing, but given the multitude of threats arrayed against them, he could not help fearing the worst. “Yes, everyone needs the occasional break. You may go, Bobby, and have a nice evening and so forth.”

  “Thanks!” she smiled. “So yeah, I guess we’ll have to wait until tomorrow to see what she says about that article. Volz was going to show it to her, but he already left, too. Anyway, goodnight, Mr. Remington.”

  She turned, waved, and left.

  Remy heaved a sigh and stared at nothing as he stood in the dimmed lights of the empty office.

  “Well,” he said to himself, “as long as I’m here, I might as well…do something.” It took him about twenty seconds to decide what.

  He walked over to the office phone, opting to use it instead of his personal cell, only to realize that he’d forgotten the numbers for both Taylor’s mobile and her house. Muttering profanity under his breath, he pulled his phone from his pocket and looked them up.

  Somehow, it did not shock him when Taylor failed to answer her mobile, even after two separate calls during which he allowed it to ring a good twelve times.

  He sent her a text message instead, saying simply, Contact me ASAP, plz. Before he pressed the “Send” button, he added the word bunkmates on the extremely unlikely chance that she might worry about someone else having acquired his phone. Since they’d recently talked about him moving in with her, that ought to act as a clue that it was really him.

  When he tried her house phone, it also rang a dozen times without an answer.

  “Come on, Presley, pick up,” he urged. “The old chap isn’t going deaf, is he? That would be sad for someone who’s technically a canine, I think.”

  He hung up, waited two or three minutes, and tried again. The result was the same.

  “Damn.” He ran a hand through his hair and debated turning on the office’s coffee maker, even though it was a little late for that.

  They’re not in trouble, he reassured himself.
Taylor and Presley are in far less danger than I am, probably. They know what’s coming and they have experience with this kind of thing. In fact, they’re probably planning something or carrying out some big scary maneuver against the enemy right now.

  But what?

  It’s not like I would have expected them to tell me about it or anything.

  He slumped into Bobby’s chair and absentmindedly turned the swiveling seat from left to right as he pondered his next move.

  It seemed that they’d all hit an impasse. So much important shit was going down, but there wasn’t much he could really do at the moment. He hated the thought of having to simply sit there and wait for it to happen. It went against the grain to let someone else be the main player, while he merely reacted.

  His right hand clenched into a fist.

  “Of course,” he mumbled, “if Taylor had told me what the hell her strategy was, I might be able to help. Instead, she sent me off to start a war with the dwarven cartel and locked me out of the loop with regards to Moswen.”

  And now, he’d been left on his own by everyone. It almost made him wonder if he was once again being used as bait.

  “Maybe that’s her whole ploy. She wants me to get the attention of Moswen and her underlings, then have me move in with her so that they can try to eliminate both of us at once and she springs the trap. Or something like that.”

  If she couldn’t even bother to inform him of what part he was to play in their overall battle plans, he sure as hell wouldn’t shack up at her place. She had proven that she couldn’t be trusted to treat him like an adult.

  He recalled, though, that they’d made a deal. While he could argue the specifics and try to get a few provisos inserted, he couldn’t outright renege. Thinking about that would only make him angry enough to start flipping desks, so he forced his mind toward other subjects.

  “Presley,” he said aloud. “The genial old Limey ought to be able to tell me something about what’s going on.”

  And he ought to check on them, anyway. He had almost made up his mind to drive to Harrison and try to wring information out of the butler when, to his surprise, the phone rang.

  “Whoa,” he exclaimed. The chair made a loud creak as he straightened it and bolted to his feet. He snatched the receiver off the hook. “Hello? Moonlight Detective—”

  “Hi,” a man’s gruff voice replied. “I’m Officer Macchio, with Best-Kept Security at the Mall of Manhattan, Park Avenue. Are you…uh, Remington Davis?”

  Oh, crap. Now what?

  “Yes, I am. How can I help you, Officer?”

  “Good,” Macchio went on. “We didn’t think anyone would be there at this hour and were gonna leave a message. See, we picked up this girl, name of Riley, making a scene and—don’t take this the wrong way or nothing—acting like she’s off her meds, you know what I mean?”

  Unfortunately, he did.

  “So,” the security guard continued, “we found this business card on her and thought we’d reach out to you guys before we turned her over to the cops. She doesn’t have no ID on her, so that complicates things. It seems like a mental health case, though. We didn’t want to send her to jail if, you know, someone could pick her up and get her some help.”

  Remy sighed. This was bad but not a fiasco. “Yes, thanks. You did the right thing. If you can hold her for another…uh, forty minutes or so, I’ll be right over to collect her.”

  “No problem.”

  Macchio hung up, and he quickly looked up directions to the mall in question. It didn’t sound like Riley had done anything too flagrantly stupid or illegal but he still didn’t want to delay.

  At least I have something to do again.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Abandoned Subway Tunnel, Lower Manhattan, New York

  Taylor clutched her left arm to the deep, oozing gash on her right side. It went from her navel to her hip and had missed her spine by inches. Her right arm had also been broken, although the tingling itch meant it should be about half-finished repairing itself by now.

  The tunnel was blacker than a tomb, sealed off beneath the earth as it was, and all the lights had been left to die when this part of the subway system was cast aside.

  Fortunately, her eyes gave off a faint rosy nimbus as they sometimes did and cast the terrain and obstacles of the environment before her in varying shades of deep-crimson, scarlet, brick-red, and vermilion. She was used to it and able to operate equally as well in pitch darkness as she could in dim candle-glow or the bright glare of electrical modern lighting.

  She staggered a few steps farther ahead. Her destination was not too far now so she ought to be there in five or six minutes. She’d staunched the bleeding some minutes before and the gash was about a quarter of the way healed.

  It had been a long time since she’d been so badly wounded—and in an attack that took her by surprise, no less. She made great efforts to never, ever be surprised if it could possibly be helped.

  The essence of evil, the smell and vibe of the threat, had been diffused throughout much of the city, eluding her attempts to track it to its source. And then, all at once, she had come face to face with it.

  A whirlwind of violence had engulfed them both. The result was a storm of contesting energies and wills, as much a duel of claw and fang as it was of sheer physical power.

  And yet, she’d survived. The whole encounter had taught her much of what she needed to know.

  The chain of events leading up to this point had begun only a few hours before. Taylor cast her thoughts back to the inciting moment and reviewed all that had happened, the better to ensure that she gleaned as much information as possible.

  Presley had woken her about two hours before nightfall—something he only did for emergencies or other matters of extreme import.

  “Miss Steele,” he’d said calmly as she drifted up from her stone coffin enclosure, “Alex has called us and he insisted on speaking to you alone. He says it’s urgent.”

  She wasn’t pleased by having her rest interrupted, but the butler had shielded her from what little sunlight penetrated into the mansion’s interior as she took the call.

  Alex had sounded on the verge of panic. There could really be only one reason why.

  “She’s on the move,” he’d told her. “I can feel it. The burning—not to the point of when she tried to kill me, but my chest hasn’t stung like this since you removed the brand.”

  “Alex, take a deep breath,” the vampire had replied. “Moswen cannot harm you via the brand beyond the echoes you might be feeling. Now, tell me everything.”

  He’d seemed reassured and complied.

  She’d hurried him through the predictable narrative of chest pains and sweaty feelings of unease—which he had peppered with not so subtle, snarky comments about his unfair duties around the office—and he’d quickly reached the point.

  Images and words had flashed in his mind along with the burning sensations, things that almost resembled intentions. He had glimpsed what Moswen planned to do. Namely, she was herself on the move and her thralls were again fanning out.

  “Remy,” Alex had told her. “She’s going to move against Remy. I kept seeing his face and a building. I think it’s the one where he lives. I don’t know what she plans to do with him, but I can feel her anger.”

  “Is she going there herself?” Taylor had asked. “If not, where will she be? It’s possible she’ll only send thralls to harass or distract him while she moves against me.”

  The man wasn’t sure. There was something else he’d glimpsed, though, something that was of value. A brief flash of a sealed-off tunnel and a couple of nearby street signs. Moswen’s malevolent attention seemed to be moving there as well, treating it as an avenue by which she could seek her prey.

  Both fear and excitement had risen in her upon hearing that. She knew the derelict old subway system well.

  She had instructed Alex to come to her house so that she could have Presley put him somewhere safe. Then, s
he’d prepared to go out on the hunt.

  It was possible that Moswen tried to lure her into a trap and that she had deliberately sent these images to Alex, knowing he’d report them to her, to draw her attention and lay an ambush.

  But somehow, she hadn’t thought that this was the case. Her adversary was cunning but based on what she knew, she lacked the subtlety for multi-layered plots. It was the primeval, old-world aristocratic arrogance and entitlement of hers, the belief in her own superiority and in the primacy of brute force.

  Accordingly, Taylor had driven to the tunnels, although she entered them by a smaller, less-obvious route about a quarter-mile from the sealed entrance Alex had glimpsed.

  She’d worn her comfortable, multi-purpose black suit and brought only her sword and a discreet, short-barreled semi-automatic pistol. The handgun was fitted with a silencer to slightly control the sonic chaos that would result from firing it in an enclosed underground space.

  Before taking the plunge, she’d thought about Remy. If Moswen’s forces were after him again, she’d not make the mistake of only sending two low-level thralls. This time, her human friend could expect a full assault.

  It almost irked her to admit that she thought of David as a friend—not that she would have admitted it to his face. His original purpose at Moonlight Detective Agency had been a mixture of odd jobs, deniability, expanded daytime operations, and, of course, to act as bait for Moswen. That was all.

  But somewhere along the way…

  Yes, she’d realized, there was no denying it. He was her partner. And she didn’t want him to end up dead as a result of all this.

  He was so stubborn and cocky. If he’d only taken her up on her offer and moved in to where she could see to his protection, she’d only be risking herself in the struggle against her vampiric rival. But with his insistence on maintaining his precious independence, he was perpetually one minor slip-up away from death.

  Preoccupied with these ruminations and noticing no particular aura or scent as she snuck into the black and musty tunnels, she’d been caught off guard when Moswen herself had attacked.