Going Under

by Lauren Dane

  He spread his hands, still wearing that smile. “Of course that’s wrong, Bridget. We at PURITY don’t condone that sort of violence. I’m just saying that I’m siding with decent human beings who feel threatened by these creatures. Decent Americans, human beings who want to protect their children against monsters like werewolves. We dealt with them a few times in our history, it’s only reasonable to expect we will again.”

  Loathing made Molly’s lip curl. “Yeah, by drowning us or burning. Is he aiming for a new Inquisition?”

  Eliza squeezed Molly’s hand. “Don’t joke. This guy is dangerous.”

  And he’d been the one who outed her. This filth sat there with his smile talking about decency this and that and he’d been personally responsible for the loss of her job. Clearly they owned two different dictionaries when his definition of decent meant people got killed and had their businesses burned down.

  It went on like this for another minute or two before the interview was over and Molly sat back, finishing her wine in one gulp.

  Her mother shook her head. “You can’t stay at your house anymore. Stay here with me. It’s too dangerous now.”

  “I’d say the same of you. It’s not just Others being targeted.” Molly flipped the channel and paused on a different news show. “Isn’t that the witch who runs Clan Owen?”

  The interviewer tapped a pen on his knee a moment. “There are those who say the paranormals are dangerous. That you’ve kept hidden because you have an agenda.”

  The Owen, as the witch who led Clan Owen was called, took a deep breath and maintained her calm. “I can’t speak for all Others, any more than you can speak for all humans, but I can tell you most of us kept our identities secret in fear of this exact reaction. If protecting my people is an agenda, I suppose those making such claims are right.”

  The interviewer smirked. “Meriel, if I can call you that, werewolves came out several years ago. Some of the other shifters have been making that slow process. They’ve been all right.”

  “Ms. Owen is fine.” Meriel smiled and Molly snorted a laugh. “All right is a relative term. While there haven’t been the same sorts of murders we’ve seen recently, they’ve faced job, health care and housing discrimination. Unfortunately they’ve also been the targets of hate groups like PURITY as well. The shifters who led the original coming out have been a model of how to do it, but they’ve not been unscathed.”

  They were sidetracking her, Molly realized. “They’re muddying her message.”

  “She needs a public relations whiz, clearly.” Her mother gave her the side eye.

  And then she sat back as Meriel Owen continued to be directed off the topic only to fruitlessly try to get back on track. “She totally does.”

  * * *

  GAGE stood off to the side, gaze flitting around the studio. Meriel had received a death threat just that morning. He’d advised against the appearance, but Meriel did what she wanted. Especially when she felt it was important.

  She’d finished her interview and he cleared the exit, checking in with the people posted outside to bring the car around.

  “You ready?” He took position in front of her, blocking anything that might come their way.

  “Dumbasses,” she muttered. “Yes, yes, let’s go.”

  Lark was there as well, and she got them all out to the newly armored car Meriel and Dominic now had to use.

  “I don’t think that guy likes you much.” Lark meant the interviewer who’d treated Meriel like she was overreacting, while simultaneously making her feel as if it was the fault of Others for remaining in the closet about their identities.

  They drove through a large protest of PURITY members, who banged on the car as they did. Decent of them.

  “He was photographed at a PURITY fund-raiser just a few days ago. So no, I doubt he likes me much. Which makes us even. Because I think he’s a scum-sucking pig.”

  Dominic Bright, Meriel’s husband, grunted, kissing his wife’s hand as he kept his gaze on the fracas outside.

  Lark gave him a look when Gage moved a hand to the window toggle. He really wouldn’t have rolled it down, but he wanted to.

  “Ignore them.” Meriel shook her head.

  “I’m ignoring my impulses, Boss.”

  Lark laughed a moment but quit on an intake of breath. She’d been shot multiple times just a few weeks before as they’d fought off the Magister and its minions. So had Gage. Lark had been in the hospital for several days and was still healing. She liked telling everyone she was too stubborn to die and too pressed to let anyone stop her from doing her job.

  Gage believed every word.

  There was a counter-protest just across the street, which gave him hope, even in such a dark time. Not all humans were bad and wanted to kill them. The humans out there protesting in support of Others could be the majority if they played it right. But it was hard to play anything when every single Other on the planet had lost someone when the Magister manifested itself. Hard to be smart and rational when they were getting firebombed and picketed and attacked.

  PURITY had picketed his uncle’s funeral. The thought of it still outraged him.

  Meriel spoke again, her voice strong and sure. “We need to continue a presence out there, keep going. Keep our message in the public eye. We’re going to get a few hits over it. But that interviewer in there can’t scare me.”

  Like so many others, Meriel had suffered a loss due to the Magister. Her mother, an incredibly powerful witch and the former Owen, had been assassinated just moments after Edwina had aided in shoving the Magister out of their world. Meriel had been trying to get her life back on track, but it’d been difficult when all this external stuff kept happening. When she had to go to funerals and meet with Clan members who’d been outed and faced problems keeping jobs and relationships.

  Gage had been giving self-defense courses, along with Lark, to their membership. First it had been to protect against the bands of mages who’d been bent on stealing their magick. But that had been before the Magister. Now it was also about protecting themselves from violence and intimidation from the humans like those in PURITY.

  And they’d grown more adept at using their power. All of them had. His powers seemed to have sharpened. What he’d been good at before, he was excellent at now. Desperation could do that, he supposed. Still, it seemed to be something many other witches were experiencing. Again, he wasn’t sure if it was that desperation gave them all a focus they hadn’t had before, or if it was some odd side effect of the Magister’s manifestation in their world.

  He squeezed his hands into fists. Needing the sharp pain of violence and not having an outlet. “I don’t know what they expect. We’re just living our lives, for fuck’s sake.” Maybe he should shoot a few fireballs at them, just to give them what they seemed to crave so much.

  “It’s fear. Fear makes people irrational. They’re scared and people like Carlo Powers manipulate that fear to their advantage.” Meriel sighed.

  “Whatever it is, it’s got to be dealt with. They’re not going to find it as easy to kill us this time.” Lark’s face darkened as she looked out the window.

  Gage understood that sentiment very well.

  Lark had them stop at the Owen offices to drop her off before he continued on to escort Meriel and Dominic home.

  Once they’d arrived at Meriel’s, Gage did a quick check with the guards posted full time, before heading out to do a sweep of his own around their property. Seattle hadn’t been nearly as bad as other cities across the world. While Meriel and Dominic had had to deal with threats and pickets, there’d been no overt violent acts or attacks on their home. That was something, he supposed.

  Still, Meriel’s father had set ward upon ward, all around the property. It was a magickal Fort Knox and it had given him something to do as he’d grieved over the loss of his wife.

  In addition to magickal protections, there were snipers stationed strategically as well.

  They would not si
mply lie down and let themselves be victimized. No one was going to harm Meriel and Dominic, not without a great deal of blood and pain.

  He checked in one last time before leaving and heading back to the office.

  He wasn’t surprised to find Lark was waiting for him there. “You need some downtime.”

  For a tiny witch with blue hair, she still managed to be authoritative. And she knew what she was talking about.

  “Says the witch who is here as much as I am. I’m going home soon. I just wanted to do one last check-in.”

  She looked him over carefully. “You’re here all the time. And when you’re not here, you’re on a patrol. Take some personal time. God knows you need it. Hook up with someone. Sex is a good way to blow off steam. I know . . . I know you’ve not been with anyone since Rose left. It doesn’t have to mean anything. But everyone needs some affection.”

  Rose. He snorted. They’d barely even started to date when the Magister had . . . happened. It wasn’t that he was heartbroken at her absence. She’d bailed, left town out of fear of what might come. But the guilt of her being right echoed through him.

  “This is not me being heartbroken over Rose. In case you hadn’t noticed, things got real around here lately. I don’t have time for fucking. Casual or no.”

  Lark rolled her eyes at his tone and it made him laugh. She didn’t take his shitty moods seriously. But she listened to him, was a damned good friend and someone he was proud to have at his back.

  She was also good at seeing right through any crap. Which meant he got away with little when it came to her. It made him miss his old partner Nell a little less.

  She tucked a pen behind her ear. “Your only stress relief can’t be this job. It’s going to eat you alive. And then they win. Right?”

  He shrugged. “I’ll probably stop by Heart of Darkness later on tonight. Maybe you can line up some suitable company for me.”

  She laughed. Her soon-to-be husband, Simon, was part owner of the Other-centric nightclub. Since the Magister, the club had expanded the small Others section at the back to the entirety of the space.

  “Ha. I’ve got enough to do with this job and handling a control-freak alpha male. I can’t be your pimp too. Anyway, you’re too pretty to need any help.”

  The club was full every single night. Turns out all this drama and threat was good for business. Many Others in the community were driven to be out and public, as if to say they were part of the city and would continue to be. A celebration of life. Some came to gawk at the spectacle of the pickets outside. Most just came to drink and dance and hook up.

  “How’s the new security protocol going?”

  All the attention had been good for business but also hell on security. They’d had to add more bouncers and the clan had to send out witches to place wards on what sort of magick could be worked there and by whom.

  But none of that stopped firebombs and bullets. So the bouncers had to wear body armor and carry weapons themselves.

  He was so over being on the defensive. Over being threatened. It was time for them to turn the tables. Others weren’t weak. They should stop acting like it.

  Chapter 3

  MOLLY had been advised to stay clear of the office that morning as her attorney and the firm’s attorney had been going back and forth. She’d accepted, after much discussion with her mother and her lawyer, that she had no real chance of keeping her spot at the firm. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t going to make them pay for it.

  That was fine because she’d made a decision last night after she left her mother’s house.

  Really, she’d decided after she’d driven around for hours, trying to pretend she wasn’t scared simply to go into her home, worried about what might be waiting for her. Even when she got home she’d checked all her smoke detectors to be sure they were working and checked her locks for the dozenth time.

  The numbness she’d felt since that call from Rosa telling her Anthony and Emma were dead had been washed away by righteous anger. Anger at her termination, at losing what she’d built herself, at losing the life she’d had before the Magister had taken it all from her. And what the Magister had left, the humans she’d grown up among had been working day and night to destroy.

  It was time to stand up and fight. To use her gifts to help her people. For a long time it had been that she’d been living a human life for the most part. But now she had to stand up for the other part of her identity.

  It had been a while since she’d woken up with such a sense of purpose and it felt good. She took that as a good omen as she’d managed to charm her way into getting the direct line to Meriel Owen’s office.

  People didn’t really understand the benefits of manners. Being gracious, having manners and treating others the way you’d like to be treated garnered you a lot in life. A lot more than rudeness or clumsy attempts at bribery.

  She picked up the phone and made the call.

  “Clan Owen, Meriel Owen’s office. How may I help you?”

  “My name is Molly Ryan and I’d very much like to speak with Meriel Owen.”

  The assistant’s voice went very cool. “And what is this concerning?”

  “Public relations. As in, I think I have something to offer Clan Owen.”

  “As you can imagine, Ms. Ryan, we get many such calls each day. Clan Owen has no need for your services. If you’d like, you can mail your résumé in.”

  Secretaries were key. Molly had a great deal of respect for the men and women who ran the lives of their bosses. Especially the part where they kept away any wastes of that boss’s time.

  But if she couldn’t get around this one, Molly didn’t deserve the job anyway. Besides, it had been at least three or four months since she’d had a challenge like this one.

  Five minutes later Molly found herself speaking to Meriel Owen and laying out her backstory.

  “So they fired you? Really? God, that makes me so mad. This is your firm and they just tossed you out?”

  “The price of entering into a partnership is that the others can toss you out if you break your contract. Of course, I tend to take exception to the idea that being a witch is akin to being a drug mule or sending harassing texts to clients.”

  Molly sobered and changed the subject.

  “I saw your interview last night. You’re good in front of a camera.”

  Meriel laughed. “There’s a but coming.”

  “If that was all you needed to do, you’d be fine. More than fine, actually. You’re mediagenic. Intelligent. Articulate. You’re relatable and yet you’re also aspirational. This is all good.”

  “Mediagenic? Aspirational?”

  “You look good in front of the camera and people admire you enough to want to be like you. But what happens when these sorts of interviews are done is that you’re dragged off message by having to respond to idiotic things. It muddies the point, which is what they mean to do, as their point is usually stupid. The interviewer had an agenda, so he pulled you off yours.”

  “What’s the solution? And you’d do this then? Be the face?”

  Molly was glad to hear the hesitation in Meriel’s voice. She wouldn’t want to work for someone who’d just say yes without some back up of who Molly was and what she could do. “I don’t know enough about your organization there to say for sure. I’d need to dig in, get a feel for you and your clan before I could make any recommendations.”

  “Would you be willing to come out for a face-to-face interview? We’d need to check your references and your background first. I’ve been trying to figure out how to handle this better, but it’s been spinning out of control faster than any of us could deal with. You might be what we need.”

  “I can come out, yes. I’ll email my résumé to your assistant so you can start that.”

  “I already think you’re pretty amazing to have gotten past her the way you did. She’s pretty formidable.”

  “Part of my charm. I can do that with the media too.” Just a fact. Conf
idence was a positive as long as it wasn’t a brag.

  “This is more and more tempting. Yes, email that information to my assistant and she’ll get back to you with some times for you to come out.”

  “I’m going to suggest you do this as soon as possible. New things happen every hour it seems. You need to get a handle on this before it spins out of control and you’re in the weeds.” She’d already sent the email along with some links to her television and other media work.

  “You’re correct. Expect a call by the end of the week and if you can get us in your schedule to come out then, we’d appreciate it.”

  Molly hung up and didn’t quite know what to do with herself so she headed over to Rosa’s.

  * * *

  IT was hard still, to pull into that driveway and see Anthony’s truck off to the side with a tarp over it. To know he wouldn’t be in his workshop in the garage or out back working on his garden.

  Everything was so different now.

  AJ, the only other surviving member of the Falco family, met Molly at the door with a hug and a kiss to the cheek. “Good to see you. Come on in, she’ll be happy to see you.”

  Rosa was in the kitchen, her favorite room in the house. She looked up from the counter where she’d been rolling out dough and smiled. “Hi there, doll. Come give me a hug.”

  Molly did, filching a slice of apple afterward. “Pie. Yum.”

  “Good thing you came over. I haven’t been able to get used to having two less people eating my pies. I make too much.” A cloud passed over Rosa’s features briefly, before she went back to work.

  “Not like it’s a chore to eat pie. So”—Molly hopped up on a chair—“I called Meriel Owen today and offered her my services as a media relations person.”

  Rosa looked up, surprised. “Look at you. What did she say?”

  “She asked me for my résumé and all that stuff and said if it checked out to expect to come out later in the week to be interviewed.”

  “You’re going to move to Seattle? Just like that?” AJ poured himself a cup of coffee and got one for his mom and Molly as well.