Bitter Thirst

by SM Reine

  Fritz patted me on the shoulder. “Women. Am I right?”

  “Women,” I agreed with gusto. If it wasn’t Suzy giving me the runaround, then it was Agent Bryce dragging me to ritual sites too late to catch Weston Connors.

  Thinking of Agent Bryce, a surreptitious glance at my cell phone said she hadn’t gotten back to me yet. No idea what that meant. Had she found something at the center of the circle? Nothing at all? I’d have to call her once we were done here.

  Fritz waited by the door as the protesters filed out. He smiled, nodded at their questions, shook lots of hands. He even shook Eyebrow Guy’s hand on the way out.

  But when Pops got to him at the back of the line, Fritz held on to his hand. Didn’t let him leave. “I was hoping to speak with you,” Fritz said.

  “Fuck,” Pops said. “Why?”

  “If I could just have a moment of your time, I’ll explain. Can you take a seat?” He swept a hand toward the desk.

  Pops folded his arms and didn’t move. “Fine.”

  Fritz shut the door so that there were only the three of us in the office. It was a “meet the family” I’d hoped we’d never have.

  “Would you like coffee?” Fritz asked.

  “Not from you, pig,” Pops said.

  “Bourbon it is, then.” Fritz poured two glasses and offered one to Pops.

  Pops didn’t take it.

  Fritz slithered into a chair beside the table, taking both glasses with him. “I’m Fritz Friederling, Director of the Magical Violations Department in the OPA.”

  “I know who you are,” Pops said.

  “I’ve worked with Cèsar for many years. In fact, I was the one who hired him, but we’ve since become close friends. More than friends.”

  I could see the ugly thoughts sliding across Pops’s features. “Oh, goddammit. You mean you’re fags?”

  “Wait,” I said. “Wait, wait, wait. What he’s saying is that I’m an aspis. I’m Fritz’s aspis.”

  “He’s saved my life hundreds of times,” Fritz said.

  I frowned as I thought about that. “Hundreds?” That seemed like a lot. “At least a dozen.”

  “Hundreds,” Fritz said firmly.

  “You’re not just with the enemy. You’re with the enemy.” Pops’s glare made me feel like I was a wayward kindergartner who’d gotten caught flushing cherry bombs down the toilet.

  “I mean, I’m not with the enemy,” I said. “Not gay. Although gay is fine! But you’ve known I’m working for the OPA ever since the thing with Domingo, so you shouldn’t be surprised I’d have found a kopis.”

  “A job’s a job. A kopis is your fucking life,” Pops said. “You’ve all but married one of these pigs who’re jamming unconstitutional laws down our throats while stealing all our rights for the mundanes.”

  “If you’d been listening to the interview, you would know I’m as firmly opposed to PRAY as you are,” Fritz said. “And Cèsar keeps refusing to marry me.”

  The blood drained out of my face. I gaped at my kopis. “You never—”

  “Kidding, sorry,” Fritz said. “Bad time for sarcasm, I see.” He turned to Pops again. “I wanted to apologize for what happened during your family breakfast and help explain.”

  “Oh, this will be fucking good,” Pops said.

  “You see, Isobel Stonecrow is my wife, and Cèsar is a dear family friend. He wanted to make a good impression because—”

  “Shut it. I don’t care. Keep your nose out of family business!” Pops grabbed my ear—hard. Felt like he was about to rip it off. “And you? You’re coming with me. We’re having a long overdue talk.”

  “But I’m working,” I said. I wasn’t whining, I swear.

  “There’s plenty of time to work for these dickless sons of bitches later,” Pops said. “Clearly I should have sat you down for the birds and the bees—or the kopides and the aspides—talk a lot sooner. I just never thought you’d be strong enough to pull it off even if you wanted to. And I hoped you’d never be that stupid.”

  “Let me explain,” Fritz tried to say.

  The door cracked open again. That nervous protester, Mack, was waiting on the other side. He was trembling wildly. “Hello?”

  “I’m coming, Mack,” Pops snarled. “Gimme one more minute.”

  But Mack, pale and nervous, didn’t seem to be there to get Pops hurrying. “I’m sorry.” He pulled his hands out of his jacket. He was holding two guns.

  And he pointed them at Fritz and me.

  You’d think that I’d be used to attempts on my life by now. You’d think that my reflexes would be so good that I’d be doing back-bends to dodge bullets in slow motion like Neo.

  If it hadn’t been for Fritz, I’d have taken a bullet right between the eyes in that moment.

  Luckily I do have Fritz. He plowed into Pops and me, carrying the two of us behind the antique desk a heartbeat before Mack started shooting. The bullets hit mahogany and didn’t even get all the way through.

  “Stay down,” Fritz said, taking a gun out of an underarm holster. I hadn’t realized he was packing. I’d spent all that time staring at the protesters and hadn’t thought to stare at the guy I was protecting.

  He handed the gun to me.

  “What am I supposed to do with this?” I hissed.

  “Shoot him before he shoots you,” Fritz said.

  Bullets cracked into the desk. Magic sizzled, and I sneezed.

  The handguns were enchanted.

  Mack had been given guns by Weston Connors.

  Pops fisted Fritz’s jacket. “He’s a good guy. You can’t kill him.”

  “Good guys don’t shoot at politicians, no matter how righteous the cause.” Fritz twirled the head of his cane, and its base fell away, exposing a long blade. “I’ll try to leave him intact. Stay back here.”

  Fritz moved fast and smooth for a guy without a leg. Kopides were like that. Krista had been pretty badass at fighting too, and she had palsy on one side of her body. Intense daily conditioning and a natural physical advantage worked wonders for even the slightly less able bodied.

  Mack shot at him again, but Fritz didn’t need to move faster than bullets when he moved faster than protester’s aim.

  Fritz zigzagged across the office. His sword flashed.

  Gunshots rang out.

  “Fritz!” I leaped over the desk to get to him.

  But it was already over.

  Mack was on the ground, groaning, and Fritz was kicking the guns out of his reach as he polished blood off the blade of his sword. “I only cut him a little bit,” Fritz said when Pops emerged from behind the desk. “He’ll be fine. Just needs a few stitches.”

  Pops actually looked impressed. And he wasn’t an easy guy to impress. “Huh.”

  “Tie him up,” Fritz said.

  Took me a second to realize he was talking to me. I was still shaking from the adrenaline, my ears ringing from the close-quarters gunfire.

  I picked Mack up off the ground, dropped him in a chair, and grabbed the rope that Fritz offered me.

  Don’t ask where the rope had come from.

  Even if my reaction times hadn’t gotten better, my knots had gotten better thanks to Isobel. No, not because of bondage. Get your mind out of the gutter. Isobel had learned a lot of knots while sailing with Fritz, and in exchange for my continuing lessons on brewing potions, she’d taught those knots to me.

  Once I tied Mack to the chair, he wasn’t going fucking anywhere.

  Not that the old man could have broken free if we’d piled a few feathers on him. He was still moaning because of all the blood. Fritz had gotten him in the thigh, and it was enough to take the guy down for good.

  “You sure he’s gonna be all right?” I asked.

  “Yes, I missed the femoral,” Fritz said. Implying that he’d been aiming for the femoral.

  “Where’s your security?” Pops asked. “Why hasn’t anyone responded to the gunfire?”

  “Wards,” I said.

  “Someon
e made wards that block out the sound of gunfire?”

  “I made them.” I tried not to brag about it, but it was pretty great magic.

  And Pops did look appropriately impressed.

  Using a handkerchief, Fritz picked up the guns that Mack had dropped. He set them on a table that hadn’t been tipped over.

  “Yes, these were definitely Union property,” he said, flipping one of them over to see both sides. The runes were the kind of thing I’d had engraved in my Desert Eagle. They augmented aim, mostly. They also made the guns harder to “see” with metal detectors or spellwork.

  “Did Weston Connors give these to you?” I asked.

  Mack groaned again. “I need a doctor! I’m dying!”

  “Oh please,” Fritz said, rolling his eyes. “I’d never leave a man dying. With me, you’re dead or you aren’t. Now answer Agent Hawke’s question.”

  “Yes, okay, it was Weston,” Mack said. “He said that the guns were meant for Craig, but Craig got cowardly—he got second thoughts. And Craig turned up dead.”

  “Did Weston Connors kill him?” I asked.

  “I don’t know! I wasn’t there! He just showed up on my doorstep yesterday and was like, ‘Take these to your meeting, take out as many OPA employees as you can.’” Sweat was rolling from Mack’s hairline.

  “Why would you do that? What’d he offer you?”

  “Nothing! He said he’d kill me if I didn’t do it!” He whimpered, sobbed, shoulders shaking. “Oh my goddess, this is so much blood.”

  He sure didn’t seem like a willing murderer. If Weston Connors was intimidating people into shootings rather than bribing them, then that was a horse of a different color. It meant we couldn’t kill anyone who attacked us. No more blowing away bad guys like Lawrence Lefebvre.

  That made things a hell of a lot more complicated.

  “Weston Connors overtly said that he would kill you?” Fritz asked.

  “Yes! And he meant it! There’s a charm down my shirt—look at the charm!”

  I unzipped Mack’s jacket, fished a chain out from around his neck. The cord was too small to lift it over his head. It burned with magic.

  The runes were just like the ones that I’d seen at Weston Connors’s first circle.

  And at Tate Peterson’s house.

  “You should have told me, numb nuts,” Pops said. He actually sounded a little sympathetic. I hadn’t known my grandpa was capable of such human emotions. “Neutralizing this is easy. Hang tight.”

  He pulled a drawstring bag out from underneath his shirt. It wasn’t small, but I hadn’t noticed that Pops was smuggling magic supplies, just as I hadn’t noticed Fritz was packing heat.

  Apparently I was the worst security ever.

  Pops used salt and some kind of tincture to destroy the magic on the charm. Then he cut it off and tossed it to me.

  “What’s this for?” I asked.

  “Evidence,” he said.

  Right. Evidence. Because I investigate things. “You know we’re going to have to take Mack away for questioning, right?”

  “No,” Mack said. “No, please.”

  Pops didn’t even glance his way again. He was pissed. “Yeah, take him away.”

  Chapter 22

  I didn’t feel good watching Mack disappear into a black bag. Especially because I looked at the Union guys taking him away and wondered if they were hiding Apple tattoos anywhere. And then I started wondering if Apple tattoos were really a sign of anything bad.

  Life was a lot easier when there were no shades of gray.

  Fritz, Pops, and I didn’t move or speak until Mack was gone. We just…watched.

  It felt like someone should have done something.

  The van doors slammed shut and the vehicle peeled away.

  Fritz checked his watch. “Sorry to run, but I need to prepare for my next meeting. It was an honor meeting you, sir.” Fritz extended a hand for Pops to shake.

  Pops spat on the snow.

  Fritz gave me a small smile. “I’ll catch you back at the penthouse.” And he left.

  That meant I was alone with my grandpa, which wasn’t my favorite thing. Not that we could really be alone on the stairs looking out over Capitol Hill; we were surrounded by Union staff and politicians and enough cameras that surely someone would rescue me if Pops grabbed my ear again. But any time I was with Pops, I felt alone.

  “Lucy, you’ve got some ‘splaining to do,” Pops said.

  He didn’t sound as angry as he had before.

  “I guess I do,” I said. “Wanna walk?”

  “As long as the walk takes us to a bar and you’re buying lunch.”

  “Sounds fair,” I said.

  We headed down the hill. I searched for words, ways to explain the decisions I’d made, and the life I was living.

  The problem was that I didn’t even have words for these things. I didn’t know how to describe the relationship I had with anyone. Kopis and aspis was one thing. Everything else that happened with Fritz, Isobel, and me was a whole other experience.

  Plus I wasn’t even sure if I had a relationship with Isobel at this point.

  “The Friederling guy could be worse,” Pops said when I didn’t speak.

  I looked at him, startled. “Yeah?” That was high praise coming from my grandpa.

  “Isobel’s not a hooker, though,” Pops said.

  “No, she’s not.” I took a deep breath, let it out. “It seems I’ve somehow accidentally become polyamorous. That’s where—”

  “I know what that is. I wasn’t born yesterday.” Exactly nobody would mistake Pops as being born yesterday. He was made of beef jerky and ill will.

  “Yeah, well, that’s what’s going on.” It was the first time I’d really admitted it. I was telling the guy who raised me that I was fucked up on every level. Professionally, personally, whatever. “Isobel is my girlfriend. And she’s also married to my kopis. We all know about it, we’re fine with it, and it’s cool.”

  Pops rested his hand on my shoulder and opened his mouth to tell me that he wasn’t going to have anything to do with me ever again. Ever.

  But what came out was, “As long as you’re happy and safe, I don’t give a fuck.”

  “What?” I asked, stopping on the street corner to stare at him. “Really?”

  “I wouldn’t care if you were getting gang-banged by the Raiders every week,” Pops said. “As long as you’re happy and safe, and not getting gang-banged by the Niners, you’re good.”

  I’d gone from optimistic to grossed out in record time. Less than three seconds. “Gotta say, I’m surprised to hear that coming from you.”

  “Why? You think that I’ve always been an old guy saddled with kids? There was this one time in college where I fucked six women at once. Six of ‘em! It’s not easy to pleasure six women, but when you’re a witch like me, and you get real creative—”

  “Stop. Please God stop.” I didn’t want to hear about how all the punishments that had been rained on us as children had been developed in pursuit of pussy.

  Pops scratched his chin. “You know, one of them might have been a lady-boy. Never was sure about Buffy.”

  “Stop,” I said, with all the force I could muster.

  He laughed and slapped me on the back. “I’m happy you’re not buying hookers. At least you’re not so pathetic you gotta pay for it.”

  The light changed. We walked across the street to the nearest bar. “It’s amazing how this conversation hasn’t made me feel in the littlest bit better. It just keeps getting worse.”

  “The one time I paid for clam chowder, I ended up getting a serious case of sausage chowder, if you catch my—”

  “Okay! Well! Pops! It’s so nice you came out to talk with my boss.” I put an arm around his shoulders and steered him through the door to the bar.

  He was shaking under my arm. Pops was laughing. He was fucking with me deliberately. “Tell the truth next time, dumbass,” he said. “Long as you’re happy, I’m happy.�
��

  The weird thing was that it really did make me feel better. “Thanks.”

  “You’ve gotta be careful, though,” Pops said. “Nothing I say now can get you away from that kopis. Nothing you do can get you away from him. You’re stuck with him for the rest of your goddamn life.” He sank onto a bar stool with a sigh. “I should have talked to you about this a long time ago.”

  “One of your protester friends just tried to kill us. It seems like I’m not the only one who has to be careful.”

  “Seems like it,” he said.

  Once I got over the shell shock from Pops’s tales of orgies and venereal diseases, I found that there was still a whole lot of unresolved baggage weighing me down.

  That unresolved baggage had a prosthetic leg, a two-hundred-dollar haircut, and a shit-eating grin when I returned to his office after lunch. We had more meetings for the afternoon. A relentless parade of meetings. I couldn’t get away from this guy if I wanted to.

  “The fuck was that?” I asked him, quiet enough that people wouldn’t hear us from the other sides of closed doors. Everyone was working hard in D.C. these days. There was a first time for everything. “You only met with protesters so that you could talk to Pops.”

  “Good thing that I did. I haven’t seen you looking so unburdened in months.”

  I did feel lighter. Just like Ofelia, I’d never grown out of needing Pops’s approval, no matter what I said on the subject.

  Worrying about his opinion had only been replaced by being really fucking pissed at Fritz.

  “First of all, thanks,” I said, and I meant it. “Now that’s out of the way, never do that again. Never. You don’t run my life.”

  We broke through the doors into the bite of cold winter sunlight. Fritz flicked a scarf around his neck. “You’re my aspis. I have significant stake in making sure that our lives run smoothly.”

  “My life,” I hissed. “My life. If I get in fights with Pops, it’s up to me to fix them. If I run up credit card debt, I’ve got to pay it off. If I want to take a fucking month-long trip to Timbuktu, I don’t have to talk to you about it first! Because this is my life!”