Bitter Thirst

by SM Reine

  I stared at her, open-mouthed.

  Pops had never given us a reason why Hawke women shouldn’t cast magic, so as far as I knew, there wasn’t one. But even Abuelita hadn’t cast magic, and that was a woman who didn’t suffer being told what to do.

  Hawke women didn’t cast magic. Period.

  If Ofelia was practicing the craft, and using the craft to bond or mate or whatever with Cooper, then she hadn’t just gotten married in secret. She was violating every single one of Pops’s rules.

  “And you let me stand up for you without telling me this?” I asked. “Don’t you think that’s kind of shitty?”

  “Yes, but you understand, and you don’t blame me,” Ofelia said.

  “You’ve learned to read minds too?”

  “No. I just know you, Ceez. Neither you nor Domingo were down with ‘because Pops said so’ as a reason why I shouldn’t practice the craft. Plus, I’m your sister and you love me.”

  Goddammit.

  The reason women were so frustrating wasn’t because they were wrong about anything. Would have been a lot easier if they weren’t one hundred percent correct all the time.

  “That’s why I balked, though.” She hugged her jacket around herself. “Because I’m still afraid of telling Pops the whole truth. I’m sorry I left you hanging. I know it made things harder for you.”

  The knot in my chest unknotted. Hadn’t even realized how much I needed that apology from her, and not from a perfunctory, annoyed Agent Bryce. “Thanks, O,” I said.

  “I owe you,” Ofelia said. “That’s why I have to tell you to leave right now. You don’t want to be at the house.”

  “What? Why not?”

  She lowered her voice. “Something happened here and the other protesters are antsy. They’re afraid the government will find out. You’d throw everyone in a panic.”

  The knot in my chest came back instantly. “What happened?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, “but there’s blood in the back yard.”

  Because I couldn’t have one lucky break. Not even one. “I need to see the blood, O. I won’t flash my badge around. I’ll be quiet.”

  She worried her lip between her teeth. “All right. Give me a sec, I’ll have Cooper clear the yard.”

  It was more like five minutes than one second. Five was a lot of minutes standing in knee-deep snow while the wind blew flurries into my unshaven face. Then Ofelia poked her head around the side of the sagging house and waved to me.

  I had to scale a mountain of trash to get out back. The snow had been flattened by footsteps. Bare ground was exposed where the traffic had been thickest.

  What I didn’t see was blood.

  “It’s there,” Cooper said, hooking his thumbs in the loops of his jeans. He wasn’t wearing a jacket, the crazy fuck. “A lot of blood got spilled here last night.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said. “All right. So what’s the circle of power for?” Ofelia looked confused. She couldn’t see it. She’d been practicing the craft in her free time, but she hadn’t worked with a master like Suzy Takeuchi, so she couldn’t spot the nontraditional circle. “Look over there, and over there, and…” I pointed at each cardinal direction. There were rocks under the snow, creating a rough circle. The stink of magic lingered.

  “What are you looking at?” Ofelia asked when I crouched.

  I brushed the snow off of one of the rocks. There were runes cut into the stone—and they were runes I recognized again. “Do you know who made this circle of power?” I asked her as I flipped through my Steno pad.

  “Weston, maybe?” Cooper said. “He was working out here yesterday.”

  Damn it, he shouldn’t have been running free to cast more of these circles.

  At least I’d found this one before the Union wrecked it—which probably meant that it had been cast at the same time as Agent Bryce’s circle. We’d missed a magical surge because the other one had already tripped our sensors.

  I found the page where I’d drawn the runes from Weston’s circle. They were the same. He was still gathering enormous amounts of magic for some indeterminable reason.

  I stood. “Is Weston Connors here?”

  “Inside,” Ofelia said. “I’ll draw him out.”

  She leaped up the back steps, and the screen squealed shut behind her.

  “Sorry about this morning,” Cooper said.

  “You know what? It’s not okay. I don’t even know why Ofelia’s marriage problem has become my problem. She’s got you. You can just crush Pops’s hand bones until he gives you his blessing.”

  “I want Ofelia’s family to accept me, not fear me.” He folded his arms across his chest. Bet he could bench press even more than me. Those pecs weren’t purely for aesthetics. “Ofelia wanted you involved because she wants your approval too. If I had my way, she wouldn’t give a damn about what any of you think, but this isn’t about me. My only job is to support her.”

  “Pussy,” I said with relish. I was always the one getting called names. Now the tables were turned.

  Cooper’s lip curled.

  Was he growling at me?

  Ofelia burst out the back door, cheeks flushed, braids swinging. “Weston Connors is gone.”

  Chapter 17

  Suzy was waiting in my room when I came back to look for Isobel.

  Technically, Suzy’s presence was probably a bad thing. She was still pissed at me. I could tell that by her expression. But I was so fucking relieved to see her that I didn’t even care what kind of ass kicking I was in for. “Thank fucking God,” I said.

  “Don’t you dare hug me, asshole,” she said, jabbing a hard finger in the exact center of my chest.

  “Wasn’t gonna,” I lied. At this point I wanted to get a giant man-bag and carry her around like a dog in a purse. Not that Suzy needed me going crazy protective over her. Just would have made me feel better. “Where have you been?”

  “Trying to get more information from the movement and failing.” She sighed. “They’re pissed off at me, so they’re uncooperative.”

  I settled on the edge of my bed. “What’d you do to make them mad?”

  “Does it matter? I’m good at making people mad. I do it all the time.”

  No fucking kidding. “It’s good to see you. I was worried.”

  Suzy punched me in the fucking face. Probably because I was sitting on the bed and that put me low enough for her to reach.

  “Hey! What was that for?”

  “Embarrassing me in front of my family,” she said.

  “This is absolutely partner abuse. If a man hit a woman like this, there’d be an uproar, and police action, and—”

  “You’re about ten feet tall and seven hundred pounds. I’m a tenth of your body mass. Suck on the uneven distribution of power, asshole,” she said.

  “That doesn’t make it better. Give peace a chance, Suzy. Make love, not war.”

  “If you say anything else that isn’t related to saving America, I’ll punch you again,” she said.

  The case. I could talk about the case all right.

  I showed her the rubbings I’d made of Weston Connors’s newest runes. They were a thousand times more accurate than any of the drawings I’d tried to make before, so maybe Suzy would see something new.

  “There were two new circles of power last night,” I said. “Big ones. Someone died at one. We’ve got the body, but all that evidence is trashed. I found the second circle. I got there before it could be wiped.”

  “Let me look at that.” Suzy flipped through the pages to compare again.

  “Does this look like warlock magic to you?”

  She shook her head. “It still doesn’t look like normal magic, either. But…” Suzy sighed. “Where did you find that?”

  “It was at the site of another magical surge.”

  “It looks like angel magic to me,” she said reluctantly. “Angels who do magic are called mages. And that resembles magecraft.”

  “Do you know if angels can do
portal magic, kind of like you do?”

  “It’s a mage-dominant trait.”

  “That’s what I was starting to think. So hey, what are the chances that Lucrezia de Angelis is an angel?”

  Suzy rolled her eyes. “Well, her name is a thing. She might as well be named Lucrezia de Bad Guy. Why? You think that she’s a mage or something?”

  “Or something.” I was pacing now, rubbing my chin as I thought hard, real hard. “Angels are the Batmans and Iron Mans of the preternatural world, right?”

  “You mean wealthy assholes with substance abuse problems? No, that’s Fritz.”

  “I mean they’re smart. Really smart. They can fight directly, but they don’t if they can avoid it. Lucrezia de Angelis is being distantly manipulative like that. She vanished as soon as the senator got assassinated, but her fingers are still in every pie. She had dealings with the House of Abraxas, but she’s not a demon herself.”

  “Just a bitch,” Suzy said.

  “The OPA is good at hiring bitches.” I was feeling bold. Maybe suicidal.

  Her eyes narrowed. “You’d know all about being a little bitch, wouldn’t you?”

  Ouch. I deserved that. “Lucrezia visited me today. She’s part of the Apple, Suzy.”

  She blanched. “You mean…?”

  “Yeah, those guys. The ones that were run by Cain.”

  “I don’t think that Cain ran the whole thing,” she said. “Not all parts of the Apple are the same.”

  “That’s what Lucrezia told me. She was spewing a whole lot of crap about how the Apple wants to protect humanity, so I should work for her instead of Zettel.”

  “Maybe you should,” Suzy said.

  Of all the reactions I’d anticipated, that hadn’t been one of them. “Seriously?”

  “I researched the Apple after the shit that went down with Cain. They’re an old group, really old. Witches have been allied with the Apple ever since the world was new. There’s been some message distortion over the years, but they’re legit. If Lucrezia’s with the Apple—if she’s an angel—then she probably adheres to the thing about protecting humanity.”

  “I can’t believe I’m listening to you defend Lucrezia de Angelis. Let me grab my camera phone, I want record of this.”

  “Don’t even fucking think about it,” Suzy said. “So what did Lucrezia do? Did she invite you to join the Apple or what?”

  “No, she told me that there are enchanted guns out there among the protesters. Gary Zettel stole them from a Union facility. If I don’t find those guns, there are going to be a hell of a lot more dead bodies soon.”

  “Then let’s go,” Suzy said, bolting to her feet.

  “Go where? My leads have dried up, and yours are even worse.”

  “Why don’t we try interviewing the dead body?” asked a voice by the door.

  I hadn’t locked the deadbolt when I came in. There was nothing to keep anyone with a key card from interrupting my conversation with Suzy.

  Isobel stood in the doorway.

  And Fritz was right behind her.

  Because our new dead body, Craig Kriste, was about to be released to family, we couldn’t perform our creepy interview at the penthouse. We had to go to a proper morgue. Fritz slipped a hundred-dollar bill to the lab tech, and the four of us were soon alone with a cold, dead body on the slab.

  When the door shut, there was an unusually mausoleum sort of sound to it.

  The four of us stood around the body. Me and Suzy on one side, Fritz and Isobel on the other.

  We’d come all this way managing not to speak to each other.

  Awkwardness levels were off the charts.

  Finally, Fritz broke the silence. “Where have you been?” He met Suzy’s gaze from across the table. Both of them stood by the head, which was covered by a blanket.

  “She’s been in my closet,” I said.

  The blood drained from Isobel’s face. “She’s been hiding in your closet? Which one? At your apartment, here in Washington D.C.—at the guest house?” She was worried I’d been packing Suzy around during all of our trysts. That would have been worthy of going pale over.

  “No, no, no,” I said. “I mean, yes, at my apartment and here at the hotel, but not the whole time, and—”

  Isobel rounded on Fritz. “How did we not notice a witch in Cèsar’s closet?”

  He serenely fussed with the matte black links of his watch, lying them flat over his wrist. “Agent Takeuchi specializes in magic that manipulates dimensions. I suspect that his closet leads into a pocket dimension.”

  “I wasn’t always in his closet,” Suzy said, arms folded across her chest.

  “It’s a recent development.” I was mostly talking to Isobel. I felt weirdly guilty, even though I’d already told Isobel that Suzy was around.

  “Interesting,” Fritz said. I might have been trying to have a semi-focused conversation with Izzy, but he seemed intent on having a conversation with me. The silent kind that went over the bond. His anger pushed against my forehead. “I shouldn’t be surprised. You did just buy clothing in Agent Takeuchi’s size.”

  “Wait, how do you know that?” I asked.

  Fritz’s anger pushed more forcefully against me. He didn’t speak out loud.

  An idea struck me. “Are you tracking my credit card usage?”

  “You’ve overcharged repeatedly,” he said. “I keep an eye on it so you don’t ruin your credit.”

  “You keep an—what the fuck, Friederling? I’m not a child! You don’t track my credit card usage and pay shit off when I go over!” How was I supposed to enjoy buying more Funko Pops than I could afford if I knew that Fritz was going to end up footing the bill?

  “I think your anger in this moment is misplaced,” Fritz said. “I don’t expect your thanks, but I’ve saved you from losing what little you already own multiple times. I’m surprised you didn’t notice.”

  “I have way better things to do than worry about credit card bills. This is creepy, isn’t it, Suzy?”

  Suzy folded her arms. “Very.”

  At least someone was on my side.

  I rounded on Isobel. My anger vanished the instant I saw her, turning into something that felt much more like guilt. “How’d you know about the dead body we need to interview?”

  “Agent Bryce called me.” Isobel wrung her hands as she gazed at the shrouded corpse from the other end of the room. “She sounded like she thought I should already know about this.”

  “Yeah, I tried to call you,” I said. Tried being the operative word.

  Fritz lifted an edge of the blanket to peer underneath. “Cause of death?”

  “Unknown because someone refused to let us autopsy the body,” I said.

  “Do you know who signed off on that?”

  “No idea. Probably the same unknown higher-up who’s been fucking with all the crime scenes.”

  “Perhaps Craig Kriste will have answers,” Fritz said.

  Isobel still hesitated. “Are you sure I should speak to this one?”

  “Yes,” he said, “please do.”

  It didn’t take much for Isobel to raise a spirit from a dead body. She didn’t have to do a ritual for this kind of magic. Her eyes unfocused, magic filled the air, and I started sneezing.

  “Craig Kriste,” Isobel said softly. “Come to me, Craig. I want to talk with you.”

  His spirit rose from the body. He was a fat guy, big and round and hairless in his spirit form. Looked like he could have tanked his way through even heavier weights than I could with magical augmentation.

  If he’d been a member of the Apple, we’d have been able to tell. Ghosts appeared without clothes or hair, but there was something about the tattoo that carried over to the other side. It glowed when Isobel summoned their spirits. There was no glow on Craig.

  “I’ll take care of this,” I said, stepping forward to address the ghost. “Hey Craig.”

  Blank eyes turned toward me. When he spoke, it came out of Isobel’s mouth. “Who ar
e you? Where am I?” The dead never seemed to realize they were dead at first—not unless they were kopides, who clung to their last memories clearly.

  Yeah, it was creepy. I hated it. Made my skin crawl.

  “I’m Agent Cèsar Hawke with the Office of Preternatural Affairs. I’ve brought you in for questioning in regards to your involvement with a circle of power.”

  “Oh man,” he said, stroking a hand over his bald head. Isobel’s hand lifted like she was going to mirror the gesture. “Don’t tell my parole officer that I was casting. I’m a solo practitioner, I swear. I wasn’t breaking the law. I wasn’t casting with a coven.”

  Suzy stepped up next to me. “You cast the circle that caused a huge surge in power last night? Alone?”

  “It’s easy when someone gives you a kit,” Craig said.

  “And who did that?”

  “Weston Connors. He said that if I did this thing, if I opened a portal to receive a package—”

  “Package?” I had to interrupt him. I had to know. “What’s in the package, and where does it come from?”

  “Weston said there’d be a gun, instructions, and a whole lot of money. I need the money. I haven’t been able to get a job since I was released from prison, and Weston said it’d be enough to keep my whole family fed for two years. I had to do it.”

  I brought up what few records the OPA had about Craig Kriste’s murder scene. There was no mention of evidence retrieved, including a gun.

  “Where’s Weston Connors now?” I asked.

  “He’d be with the others, I guess.” Craig blinked at the many narrow refrigerators around the room, confused in his deadness. “Where am I?”

  “What else did Weston Connors tell you?” Fritz asked. “We need every single detail.”

  “That was about it.” Craig’s ghost rippled when he shrugged. Isobel shrugged too. “He said that I was going to have to go the same way as Lawrence, but…I mean, for my family…”

  “I don’t wanna hear this,” I said. I didn’t want to hear about how Craig had been prepared to give his life up for his family. How he’d died trying to get them money to eat.

  “I’ll make sure your family is taken care of, Mr. Kriste,” Fritz said. He wasn’t just trying to reassure an anxious ghost. Fritz could have adopted half the families in America without noticing a dent in his wealth for a few weeks.