Bitter Thirst

by SM Reine

  The envelope I found in my mail the next morning felt worse than giant spiders.

  It was from Krista.

  As in, ex-girlfriend Krista. Who I’d been with for about six months.

  I say “been with” rather than “dated” because we’d agreed not to have an actual relationship. Never went Facebook official. Krista hadn’t been explicit about why she hadn’t wanted a boyfriend, but I thought it had something to do with the apocalypse in Reno, where we’d first met. Something about watching demons glass a city completely blew a lady’s sense of romance.

  Anyway, we’d hooked up once on the case in Reno. Then we’d gone on a vacation to the Caribbean together. And then we’d split for a little while.

  Later I’d ended up working a case in Nebraska and Krista was handling a disaster there at the same time. I’d dropped her a line. And she’d dropped herself on me. Probably wasn’t coincidence that she’d ended up stationed in Los Angeles for six months after that case.

  Officially, Krista hadn’t moved in with me, just like she’d never officially dated me. See, Union kopides lived in the barracks. They were 24/7 military, not eight-to-fivers like me. But she also wasn’t required to sleep in the barracks, so she generally hadn’t. I was still finding bobby pins in my bathroom months after our last sleepover.

  “This looks bad,” I told myself in the mirror. I was shaving for work and hadn’t opened the envelope yet.

  It was a white envelope. There was a fancy sticker on it that looked like a wax seal. My name was written in calligraphy—actual calligraphy, done by hand. Whenever someone sent mail with calligraphy on the envelope, you knew it was serious.

  I was still working up the nerve to open the envelope on my commute to work. Even in the predawn hours, Los Angeles’s freeways sucked donkey balls. It seemed worse than usual. A half hour trip took ninety minutes. Ninety minutes of the envelope sticking halfway out of my CD player, shivering from the engine vibrations, taunting me with its existence.

  Krista had never struck me as the nice-stationary type. She liked shooting bad guys, not doing calligraphy.

  Maybe my ex had gotten replaced by an evil robot.

  My attention snapped back to the road. There were a whole lot of flashing lights on the shoulder. “Jesus,” I muttered, slowing to a crawl.

  Six cars were piled by the side of the road. Three of them were smoking. The others looked like they’d already been put out by our hard-working fire department. That was a nasty accident, even for my area.

  I blared my horn and jumped into the carpool lane. No, I wasn’t carpooling. But it was moving at a lazy walk rather than a crawl, and I had a fake FBI badge that I could use on any CHIP who tried to ticket me.

  Even the carpool lane stopped when we passed a bridge with protesters on it. I’m talking signs, arms waving, spray paint on the concrete. Probably a few hundred people.

  “You guys need to take some Vicodin and a nap,” I said as I inched underneath the overpass.

  A flash of shiny brown hair reminded me of Krista. Not that the woman looked like Krista, aside from the fact that she was a white brunette girl.

  Maybe I just wanted an excuse to think about Krista.

  Traffic was slow enough that I could have taken my hands off the wheel to open the envelope, but I didn’t.

  It wasn’t like I was upset over Krista. Let’s be real, she’d always been way out of my league. She wasn’t just a Union soldier who out-shot and out-performed most others, even with her palsy. She was one of a kind. A big goddamn hero who was loyal to an evil organization without ever losing sight of being a nice person.

  There’s only one woman kopis on the planet, and she’s fucking amazing at kegels, and she’d used them on me.

  Life with a hot military babe wasn’t for the faint of heart. Her request for those six months at the Los Angeles Union base had been granted, but the next request hadn’t. She’d moved to Italy where the Union had one of its headquarters.

  It had occurred to me for one brief, stupid second that I’d have been able to go with her if we got married. I’m pretty sure that it had occurred to Krista at the same moment. We’d been packing up her stuff and a commercial for a wedding dress shop had come on the TV.

  We’d stopped, looked at each other for a second, and thought…what if?

  She’d come to the same conclusion as quickly as I did. Whatever we had was good, but it wasn’t the stuff of marriages. I’d turned off the TV and she finished packing and that had been it.

  We still talked sometimes. Always by phone. Never by letter.

  Definitely not letters on fancy stationary.

  We’d only been separated for…what was it? A few weeks? A few months? Less than a year, which was too little time for even the hottest lady kopis on the planet to have found marriage material. Especially when she hadn’t been interested in marrying me. Right?

  “You’re late. Did you have trouble getting in this morning?” Fritz asked when I finally walked into his office, envelope in one hand and latte in the other.

  “Nah, traffic just wasn’t any good,” I said.

  “Traffic was bad?” Fritz took the latte. If he had spent all night awake with a supermodel, he didn’t show any sign of it. He was even wearing his good artificial leg. The one wrapped in so much magic that I sneezed if I got too close to him. “That’s the only thing that was bad?”

  “I got a letter from Krista.” I flapped it at him.

  “That explains how you missed the complete chaos our country has fallen into.” Fritz poured liquor into his latte before draining the cup. Drinking at six in the morning was a bad sign, even for my kopis. Kopides could down whole wine barrels before feeling buzzed.

  “Is that what’s up with the burning cars?” I sat in Fritz’s executive leather chair, swinging around to grab the remote.

  His TV was already on a news channel. A blond reporter was being jostled by a crowd in front of an office I recognized—the office where I’d almost barfed on Senator Peterson’s body the night before.

  “Burning cars, overpass protests, looting, riots,” Fritz said. “It’s worse than I expected, but that’s likely because the executive order is worse than we’ve expected.”

  “Worse than PRAY? How’s that even possible?”

  “Temporary immediate restriction of covens organizing,” he said.

  Trying to ban covens from meeting each other sounded like a great way to get hexed. “And you’re in here drinking bourbon?”

  “You’re the one who suggested four years of sleeping potions last night.” He leaned on the edge of his desk, scooping up Krista’s letter. He swirled the bourbon in his glass as he looked at the address.

  “I know. I’m saying that sleeping potions are gonna be a lot more effective than bourbon.”

  “Neither is effective,” Fritz said. “The OPA detected a surge of magic locally. Agent Bryce is preparing to investigate the site as we speak. It seems unnecessary to me—it’s probably just a coven protesting. But Zettel wants someone looking at it.”

  “Why’s Bryce doing it?”

  “Because you were late to work. Want a drink?” He offered his bourbon to me.

  “You know I don’t drink. Have you been replaced by an evil robot resembling Fritz Friederling?” The evil-robot thing seemed to be going around.

  “This is a special occasion. You don’t realize what that envelope is yet.” Fritz passed it back to me. “You may feel differently about alcohol once you’ve opened it.”

  I kicked my feet up on his desk. “Nothing in this envelope could shock me. This is, what, a birthday card…?”

  My thumb broke the seal. The envelope popped open. There was a black-and-white photo of Krista inside, leaning adoringly against some guy in a button-down shirt. I didn’t recognize him.

  “A wedding invitation,” I said.

  I wasn’t actually surprised. I’d been trying not to think the word “wedding” ever since I’d found the envelope shoved under my door.<
br />
  “Bourbon?” Fritz asked again.

  I stared at the guy she was marrying. He was broad-shouldered and dark-haired, like me. Must have been tall if he could rest his chin on top of Krista’s head. “I’ll still pass on the bourbon,” I said, flicking the invitation to the blotter.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Actually…” I stared at the muted news for a minute, waiting to see if emotions were going to pop out of nowhere. They didn’t. I didn’t get why Krista had moved on so fast, but it wasn’t like I’d wanted her to move back in with me. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

  Fritz slipped into the leather chair by his window. “Compersion.”

  “Gesundheit,” I said.

  “Compersion is the opposite of jealousy. You get enjoyment from others’ relationships.”

  “I said I’m fine, not that I’m happy,” I said.

  “Are you happy?”

  “How could I not be happy with the news looking like this?” I waved at the TV.

  The news had switched from a reporter to a press conference. There was a family on the screen: a young guy, probably college aged, speaking on the lawn of a house with his family surrounding him. Looked normal enough, even if they were the whitest people I’d ever seen.

  These white people were with Gary Zettel and members of the Union.

  “You haven’t seen it yet, have you?” Fritz asked.

  He unmuted the TV.

  “Evil is real,” said the young blond guy. He was neatly groomed, like a model, but even the makeup couldn’t hide how puffy his eyes were. “I’ve seen it myself. Evil took my mother—a respected county commissioner—and now evil has taken my grandfather, too. The man that you all know as Senator Peterson.”

  “Tate Peterson,” Fritz explained. “The barely adult son of the budding Peterson political dynasty.”

  They needed a better name if they were going to try to turn into a dynasty. Peterson sounded like the guy down the street, not a president to come.

  Tate Peterson kept talking. “Evil comes in many forms. There’s evil in the hearts of men. The kind of evil that makes families fight, or forces us to commit crimes. I was a troubled kid. I knew that kind of trouble intimately before I found God.”

  “Aww, he found God, how sweet,” I said.

  “Wait for it,” Fritz said. “It gets better.”

  “But there is a more literal evil in the darkness, too. It doesn’t care if you smoke pot or engage in homosexual behavior. There are creatures that want your blood, life, and soul. A thousand different kinds of demons: incubi, strigoi, mara, werewolves,” Tate said.

  “Wait. Is he comparing being a gay pothead to being a demon?” I asked.

  Fritz took a very long drink of his alcohol. “I thought you’d like that.”

  “Is this bullshit endorsed by Zettel?” I asked. “The guy’s an asshole, but…homophobe? God-loving? Is this Tate kid going to turn into Joan of Arc?”

  “He’s actually going on a publicity tour in support of H.R. 2076, funded by Lucrezia de Angelis.”

  “That can’t be legal,” I said.

  “Why not? Because you don’t like it?”

  “It’s like buying loyalty!”

  “Everyone can be bought, Cèsar. Especially the American people. Tate Peterson is a dancing bear entertaining the commoners. They’ll be so amused by arguing over his rhetoric that they’ll print team jerseys.”

  Gary Zettel—Secretary Zettel—took the podium a minute later, letting Tate Peterson fall back with his family.

  “Evil is real, but there’s no reason for the American people to be afraid. Yesterday’s attack represented more than just an assassination of a respected senator. It’s an attack on our very freedom. Our nation has come face-to-face with evil, and we will respond from the core of America’s good heart. We’ll respond with the Preternatural Registration Act.”

  I turned the TV off.

  I looked at Fritz.

  “PRAY,” I said. “Zettel is responding with PRAY, which he’s also trying to take down.”

  He nodded slowly. “I know.”

  One question rattled between us in the bond: What does Zettel really want?

  Fritz’s desk phone rang, and I picked it up by habit. I’d gotten so used to answering the phone at the Friederling mansion that I didn’t even think about playing secretary at work. “Friederling’s office. What’s up?”

  “This is Agent Bryce,” said the woman on the other end. “I’m ready to roll out if you want to give the green light, sir.”

  She thought I was Fritz. I glanced at him. He nodded.

  “Go ahead. I’ll be in touch.” I hung up and sat back in my chair.

  Fritz stood over me.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Why don’t you supervise Agent Bryce’s preparations for the case? Make sure that everything is going to plan.”

  “She’s a big kid. She doesn’t need me.” Agent Bryce wasn’t as good as my last partner, because literally nobody was as good as Suzume Takeuchi, but she was good enough for this shit.

  “Check on her anyway,” Fritz said.

  “Because you don’t trust Agent Bryce?”

  “Because I want my chair back.”

  I stood up. Saluted. “Sir, yes sir.”

  He spoke when I was halfway out the door. “Cèsar? Isobel wants me to pass along an invitation for dinner tonight.”

  I missed a step. The envelope from Krista was on the desk, bright-white paper on a field of mahogany. The fancy sticker curled up at its edge like burning paper.

  “I don’t know about tonight,” I said.

  “Maybe another time,” Fritz said. “When the world isn’t ending.”

  “Sure.” That was what I said out loud.

  Inside, I asked, Why?

  Chapter 4

  I knew most of the covens in the Los Angeles area by now. I wasn’t on good terms with most of them, seeing as how most people didn’t like the government dropping in to tell them that they were casting illegal spells. But I did know them and they knew me, for better or worse.

  The surge of magic came from Hidden Hills, of all places, and I knew what that meant without referring to the OPA database.

  No wonder Fritz had sent Agent Bryce out ASAP. Hidden Hills was a rich-people neighborhood. Most of Fritz’s friends who weren’t named Cèsar lived there.

  Witches in Hidden Hills meant the Los Angeles branch of the Half Moon Bay Coven. It was run by a white-haired woman named Lenox who loved tea and hated me. I liked to think we were frenemies on the better days. She’d only tried to kill me a couple times. It was all good.

  Things were feeling not-good as we tore through the city toward the core of the magical surge. The car’s sensors were screaming. I’d made the mistake of putting on one of those Union headsets and was deaf from everyone shouting at each other. Everyone on the channel was freaking about whatever magic was happening in Hidden Hills.

  And that still wasn’t the worst of it.

  On my way through town, I spotted two scenes of rioting. Two. And another four demonstrations besides. We weren’t exactly sightseeing, and there were six incidents between me and the explosively bad magic.

  Everyone had learned the truth of the preternatural, and everyone was pissed.

  “You can wait in the car. I’ll take the lead on this,” I told Agent Bryce.

  She had driven us out to Hidden Hills. She’d kept her cool on the ride out, but when I suggested leaving her alone, she looked like I’d threatened to dump her in a war zone. She clutched the steering wheel with frightened animal eyes, gazing out at the line of mansions as more of our team pulled up.

  This was where all that magic had exploded. This was why we had two-dozen neutralizing charms ready, just in case we needed to quarantine the area.

  “Very good, sir,” she said.

  “Stay in the car and on the line—I’ll tell you if I need help.”

  It was a cool morning in Hidden Hills. Los Angeles didn’t
do seasons, exactly. Just stupid hot and less hot. This wintery morning was a less hot day, meaning that I didn’t sweat through my jacket between exiting car and ringing doorbell.

  I also didn’t sneeze. With the amount of magic our sensors had detected, I should have been incapacitated by sneezing. Yet somewhere between exiting the OPA facility and driving through riots, the magic had stopped. Nothing was left at the house.

  Had the spell already been cast?

  I had my hands in my pockets, palms filled with charms, ready to cast my way out of the situation.

  Lenox answered the door.

  “Hey honey, I’m home,” I said.

  Her lip curled. “I shouldn’t be surprised.” Lenox stepped aside. “Come in.”

  I signaled to Agent Bryce that I was going in. Through the tinted windshield, I saw her waving her hands frantically, indicating that I should stay where she could see me.

  Then I went inside.

  Lenox had transplanted from her Bay Area home with all furnishings intact. She had a telescope positioned by the window like she was going to look out at the ocean instead of dusty hills, and her shelves were scattered with seashells.

  She was having tea in a breakfast nook with a handful of other witches. Two of them were old ladies I’d seen her with before—old ladies with stupid names, like Butterfly and Fleece or something—and another was a mustached man who looked like an old lady named Fleece was his spirit animal. One of them was a sexy strawberry-blond. I didn’t stare at her. Last time I’d stared at a sexy woman from Lenox’s coven, I’d gotten KO’d.

  Lenox sat down without making room for me at the table. “What do you want?” She dipped her cookie in her tea before eating it like some kind of animal.

  “You know, I’m not sure,” I said.

  This wasn’t the scene I’d expected to encounter. The sensors in the car had been screaming, warning me that we were about to jump into a magical maelstrom, but the visit was more like sticking my toe into a tepid pool than a storm.

  “Who is this?” I asked, eyeballing Mustache Guy.

  “This is my current high priest, Weston Connors,” Lenox said.

  “Another one?” Her high priests were like Spinal Tap drummers. “What happened to Scott Whyte?”