Bitter Thirst

by SM Reine

  “So are we doing the talk with Pops tonight?” I whispered to Ofelia.

  “Maybe,” she said. “I don’t know if it’s the right time. After all the uproar today…”

  “There aren’t going to be a lot of days without uproars. Could be good as a distraction, actually.”

  “I guess.” She took such a big bite of pizza that it took a long time to chew, removing her ability to speak.

  “How’s the hotel treating you? I could hook you guys up with a better place to stay, if you want,” I said. I was pretty sure I saw a rat hiding behind the wood-faced mini fridge. Its eyes were glistening at us.

  “Do you think I want favors from you? Or pity? I’d have stayed somewhere better if I’d wanted to stay somewhere ‘better,’” Pops shouted from the bathroom. He grabbed a plate from the stack next to the sink. Knowing him, he’d traveled with two full sets of dishes so he wouldn’t have to waste money on disposable stuff.

  He served himself pizza and ate standing in the doorway.

  “I’m just saying, maybe you guys want somewhere with more room,” I said. “And with my job…”

  “Working for the enemy,” Pops said.

  “It’s a government job.” Cooper hadn’t taken any pizza. He sat on the couch, stuffing envelopes with newsletters. “It’s respectable and comes with benefits.”

  I really didn’t need support from a male stripper. “I’m happy to get you whatever you need while you’re here. That’s all.”

  “The hotel sucks, but it’s really not a big deal,” Ofelia said. “We’re just sleeping here. The rest of our time, we’re hitting the streets. We’re making our voices heard.”

  And that was the real problem. “It’s dangerous to be protesting. You guys have enemies—big enemies, ruthless enemies. The guy who tried to shoot me today—”

  “The one I killed for you,” Ofelia said. She shoved half a pizza slice in her mouth all at once. If she was eating like a pig in front of Cooper, then it really must have been true love.

  “This hasn’t been released in the news yet, but we have reason to believe that he was hired to discredit protesters,” I said.

  I knew that was going to go over like a fucking atom bomb, but I still jumped when Pops slammed his pizza plate into the counter. “I knew it! I knew it!” He stomped into the bathroom, grabbed candles, and started lighting them.

  I sneezed as magic powered up.

  “Whoa there!” Ofelia darted after him. “What are you doing, Pops?”

  “Hexing the White House! Should have done it from the start!”

  Oh shit.

  I sneezed into my sleeve a few more times as I went to grab Pops’s lighter arm. I was as tall as him now, probably taller, but I still flinched because I expected him to kick my ass for interfering.

  Ofelia had a death grip on his other wrist. “You can’t hex the president! He’s got counter-hexes for days!”

  Pops looked like he was about to argue. And he might have been right to argue. Because if there was anyone who could hex armpit hairs onto the president’s eyeballs, it was Pops.

  “If you want to help, I’ve got something you can do.” I pulled out my Steno pad, flipped the cover back. “I saw these marks at the house of a guy involved. They were carved into his windowsill. Do they make any sense to you?”

  He took the pad from me. “Where did you find these? Get specific.”

  “A suspect’s house,” I said.

  The answer wasn’t good enough for Pops. He flipped through my Steno pad, and stopped on a page I’d been drawing a few weeks earlier. “Did you see this at a suspect’s house too?”

  It was the circle of power that Weston Connors had used to cast massive magic in Hidden Hills.

  “Suspect in a different case,” I said.

  Ofelia took the notebook from Pops for a look. “This here…these lines aren’t traditional magic. They’re custom work. How’d the same custom work show up in two different suspects’ cases?”

  “I don’t see what you mean.” I tried turning my head side to side to make sense of the marks, but Pops yanked the Steno pad away before I could.

  “Hawke women don’t do magic,” he snapped at Ofelia.

  She folded her arms. “I was just looking.”

  “Just looking. Just looking!” Pops shoved the Steno pad into my hands. “Those spells came from the same person for different purposes. The circle is a funnel for bigger magic. The runes from a ‘suspect’s house’ are spying. Your suspects are connected. Now drop it.”

  “Drop it?” I asked.

  “Custom work like that comes from strong witches. You’re not strong enough to fuck with them.”

  I’d have been offended if he weren’t completely right. I could still feel the weight on my chest from Weston Connors’s working, whatever it had been. “Don’t worry Pops. I’ve got backup from the OPA.”

  He snorted. “I’m not worried. If you die because you go toe to toe with witches better than you, it’s on you, kid.”

  Heart-warming.

  “Thanks.” I flipped the notebook shut. “Helps a lot.”

  “Don’t fuck with the people who wrote that spell,” Pops said. “Last warning. You’ll regret it.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “Don’t take it back to your evil bosses either,” he said. “Show those spells to the wrong person and you’re gonna fucking regret it.”

  “I know who the wrong people are,” I said. “I’ve been working for a fractured agency for most of my adult life.”

  Pops’s eyes narrowed. “Which side of the fracture are you on?”

  “This isn’t about me.”

  “No?” Ofelia planted her hands on her hips. “You haven’t changed, Ceez. This is just like how you never bet on a team to win the Superbowl. You won’t stand up for anything.”

  “This is nothing like the fact that I hate team sports,” I said.

  “It’s exactly like it.”

  “Okay, fine, it’s exactly like it.”

  “See?” Ofelia scoffed at me, flipping her braids over her shoulder. “You won’t even stand up for yourself and your own opinions!”

  “Sometimes I’ll stand up for shit. Like when I promise someone I’m going to stand up for my sister.” I gave her significant look, eyes wide, mouth twisted. I couldn’t project thoughts at her psychically like I could with Fritz. “This would be a great time to talk about what we stand up for.”

  Ofelia’s mouth opened.

  And closed.

  She looked down at the floor.

  Pops was oblivious to her mood. “She’s right about this. Think of all the change you could make in the government if you actually stood up for us.”

  “I’d get myself killed,” I said.

  “Is it worth living if you’re being a chickenshit?”

  “Yes. I have had over thirty fantastic years of life as a chickenshit, and I’d like at least another twenty.”

  “So you’re just going to let us get walked all over?” Pops asked.

  “I didn’t say that. I promise you, Pops, there are a whole lot of people working to fix the issues with the OPA and PRAY. My boss is trying to fix it. My girlfriend Izzy. Most of my department. And—”

  “You have a girlfriend?” Ofelia’s eyes had gone bright.

  It took me a second to realize what I’d done.

  I’d called Isobel my girlfriend.

  In front of my family.

  Play it cool, Hawke. Nobody knows who you’re talking about. For all they know, your girlfriend isn’t a married woman. “Is it that weird to think I’ve got a girl?” I asked loftily.

  “I’m just surprised,” Ofelia said. “Not because I don’t think you’re not date-worthy, because I’ve always said you’re very pretty, but—”

  “Pretty?” I was a government agent over six feet tall who benched his body weight even when I was groggy off sleeping potions. I could accept descriptive words like intimidating, grizzled, or even terrifying
beyond all reason. But pretty? That was the kind of word that should only get attached to wussy boys like Cooper.

  “You didn’t mention it to me when we were talking earlier,” Ofelia said. “Is your girlfriend working in town too?”

  “Yeah,” I said reluctantly.

  “That’s great news.” Before I even realized where she was going with that line of thought, she suggested the most horrible thing. An awful thing that should have never even crossed her mind, much less her lips. “We’ll all have breakfast together tomorrow! Cooper and me, you and your girlfriend—”

  “No but—”

  “Great idea.” Pops was looking at me suspiciously. It reminded me of the time he’d found an eighth in my room back in high school and I’d been trying to convince him it was oregano. “Family breakfast. That sounds like a great idea.”

  I’d have told him that I didn’t have time, or that my girlfriend didn’t have time, or that I straight up didn’t want to.

  But Ofelia was looking at me over Pops’s shoulder. She looked so hopeful. This would be the perfect situation for her to tell Pops about her wedding. I’d deflect some of the blow with my secret girlfriend. “Yeah,” I said weakly. “That sounds great.”

  Chapter 12

  By the time I’d eaten a piece of meatza and gotten across town to Senator Peterson’s house, I was beginning to despair. I’d hoped the pizza was going to result in having Ofelia’s problem fixed, and instead it had made more problems.

  My family thought I was chickenshit. They thought I should fucking die instead of working for an organization I didn’t like.

  But they wanted to meet my girlfriend first.

  There was no way that I could introduce Pops to Isobel. He would never fucking forgive me.

  Pops wasn’t an unreasonable guy. But he was experienced. He knew what happened when relationships went awry because he’d lived that reality. He’d seen his kid marry a loser, breed three children, and then ditch them in his lap.

  He’d never gotten an adulthood where he didn’t have to deal with his family’s bad decisions.

  If I told him I was with a married woman, all he’d hear was that I was about to give him another generation of kids to raise for the next twenty years. For sure it wouldn’t help lube him up for Ofelia’s dramatic announcement.

  I couldn’t introduce Izzy to Pops.

  Which meant I needed a Plan B.

  My brainpower couldn’t commit to resolving family drama. I had to focus on solving my actual case, chickenshit or not. The memorial was starting at Senator Peterson’s house, and I was going to investigate despite Pops’s warnings.

  The line to get in wrapped all the way around the block when I got there. Maybe I could have flashed my OPA credentials and jumped in at the head of the line, but then it would have gotten back to my agency that they had an agent at the memorial, and Secretary Zettel would know I was investigating.

  So I got in the back of the line. I waited my turn.

  It wasn’t a bad place to be, all things considered. It was cold as balls, but it was crowded enough that bodies blocked all the wind. As long as I ignored the B.O. stink, my cold blood could survive in a crowd.

  “Who died?” asked a woman at my side, loudly.

  I was already giving my nervous, situation-defusing laughter when I turned to face her. And then I saw the oversized sunglasses, the hat, the black lipstick, the hooded sweater overwhelming a petite feminine figure. Suzy had found me.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  “I’m mourning just like everyone else.” She really didn’t look much like herself bundled up in all those clothes. She looked like a cotton-swaddled caterpillar.

  “I thought we agreed you wouldn’t come.”

  “You agreed,” she said.

  I dropped my voice even lower. “I also thought you were going to get a glamour.”

  “Didn’t work out.”

  “Did you find everything else you needed?”

  “Kinda. Can’t talk here.” We were mostly surrounded by government employees, so that was probably smart.

  I let Suzy move ahead of me on the sidewalk, where I could watch her and make sure that nobody assassinated my partner. It also conveniently gave me a fantastic view of her ass. The extra weight she claimed to have packed on looked fantastic from this angle. I could have spent the next week doing nothing except walking behind Suzy and I’d have been in heaven.

  I’d almost forgotten about Suzy’s waspish figure. In her absence, I’d mostly missed how good she’d been to have at my back. Not just during cases. Suzy had committed a lot of time to making me a better witch, and a better agent, and I’d desperately wanted her voice of reason in my life.

  But my memory for her butt was coming right on back.

  Which was what made a really terrible idea occur to me.

  “Hey,” I said, “what do you think about meeting my family?”

  Suzy slid the sunglasses down her nose so that she could fix me with a hard stare. “Did you forget I’m on the run?”

  “They’d never report you. For all our problems, I know I can trust them with your safety.” The line inched forward. We were almost to the doors of Senator Peterson’s house. “The problem is, they want to have a family breakfast with me…and my girlfriend.”

  Suzy’s mouth twitched. “You’re asking me to pretend to be your girlfriend for a family breakfast.”

  “Yes, I know, I’ll owe you forever. You’ll have my balls on a platter. You’ll own my soul. I’ll have to take out your garbage every week for a year.” I clasped my hands together in a prayer position. “Help me, former Agent Takeuchi. You’re my only hope.”

  “Okay,” she said. “On one condition. You don’t owe me for the rest of your life, but you have to come with me to meet my family. My parents live in D.C.”

  “They do?”

  “Yep. I haven’t seen them in forever and a day because of, you know, but I’d like to swing by and see them. I want them to know that I’m okay. And introduce you to them.” She bared her teeth at me in a predatory grin.

  “That’s it?” No cock-and-ball torture, no humiliating myself, no need to tattoo owned by Suzy Takeuchi on my ass…

  “That’s it,” she said.

  I held a hand out. “Deal.”

  We shook.

  Memorials are boring when you don’t know whoever kicked the bucket.

  I was back in Senator Peterson’s house again, and it was a hell of a lot more crowded. There were also a lot more people crying than earlier. They were fixated on the portrait of an old guy who had an open, expressive face a lot like Tate Peterson’s. I’d seen that face dribbling blood onto a desk just a couple weeks earlier.

  Tate himself was hanging out by the portrait ringed in flowers. He looked as miserable in his suit and tie as he had during our interview. Probably even more miserable. Which is, I guess, the inevitable outcome of being at the memorial of a family member, even when you didn’t like that particular guy.

  “What do you expect to find in here?” Suzy asked as we edged along the back wall, herded between velvet ropes. It felt a lot like waiting for Space Mountain, except that the end of the line was going to be a portrait of a dead senator instead of an awesome ride.

  “I don’t expect to find anything in here, where the public has access,” I said. I was hoping to find something useful on the other side of the warded wine cellar door.

  The trick would be reaching the wine-cellar door without being seen.

  “He’s staring at you,” Suzy said.

  She meant Tate. And he was staring at me. I’m too tall to be subtle. Curse the Hawke genes.

  The last thing I’d wanted to do was make Tate uncomfortable. He was only twenty years old—almost the same age that Ofelia had been when she’d gotten tortured by incubi. He didn’t need a scary government agent lurking around his house.

  When our eyes met, Tate started around the edge of the room to greet me.

  �
��Red alert,” Suzy muttered under her breath. “Let’s save this for later.”

  But I didn’t know when I was going to have access to the Peterson house later. Outlaw Suzy might have been down with B&E, but I tried to avoid it.

  I pulled her sideways into a closet and hid behind the door. There wasn’t enough room for one Cèsar, much less one Cèsar plus one Suzy. Suzy had one hand on the door to keep it wedging us into the corner, and the other hand on my chest.

  “Get off me, Hawke,” she said, eyes glimmering with dangerous mischief. I could tell I was about two seconds away from getting my marbles kneed through the bag.

  The idea of reacquainting myself with Suzy’s knees—easily as sharp as her knuckles, except at a better height to attack my manly parts—was almost enough to make me jump out from behind the door.

  But then I saw motion.

  Tate Peterson hesitated in the entrance to the closet. I could only see a thin slice of his face, but I could tell that he was looking around, seeing if we’d gone in there. It wouldn’t be hard to guess where we were hiding. There was only one place that two adults could fit.

  He moved on after a moment. He went into the hallway past the office and kept going.

  I counted to ten. And then, “We have to move fast.”

  “Move fast? Where?” Suzy asked.

  Before she could even get out the last word, I yanked her around the door. “Sorry, sorry,” I muttered.

  We didn’t have much time before Tate came back this way, so I basically carried Suzy under my arm down the hall, around the corner, and to the basement door. I set her down in front.

  “Open it,” I said, and I covered my nose and mouth with my sleeve.

  She opened it.

  I sneezed. I kept sneezing while we headed through the door because the wards were so strong that a single hard jab from them was enough to close up my throat. Suzy shut the door behind us and she put her ear to the door. “Quiet,” she said. I couldn’t stop sneezing. “Quiet!” she hissed again. I clapped my hand over my mouth and did my best to suffocate myself.

  Footsteps passed through the hallway. The slow gait sounded like it belonged to a tall person who weighed about a hundred sixty pounds—someone like Tate Peterson.