Magic After Dark: A Collection of Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance Novels

by Margo Bond Collins

  He looked up at her outburst, guilt on his face.

  “He’s trying to help you,” Adele insisted, grabbing Brie’s arm.

  She pulled away, backing up, her head was spinning. If emergency services were already on their way, that meant that the paparazzi would be there within a few minutes. And that meant that some crazy story would be posted the next morning, and she would disappoint her brother, and she would be labeled a specific way.

  “I don’t need an ambulance,” she said, reaching the railing of the bridge. “That’s ridiculous. I can’t believe you guys would do this to me. I just want to stand on a bridge. You guys act like I’m trying to kill myself or something.”

  “You’re not?” Adele challenged her.

  “Of course not. I just wanted to do something crazy. It was just a dumb game.”

  “Well, it’s not a game anymore,” Adele said. “You’re not right in the head, Brie. You could have fallen and died—”

  “This bridge isn’t high enough to commit suicide,” Brie said. “Look at that. It’s not that far.” She hopped up on the railing, sitting on the edge.

  Adele’s eye bulged. “Brie, please, please get down from there. I’m begging you. Please don’t do this to your family, or to me.” She grabbed her arm again, but Brie yanked back.

  “No,” Brie shouted, completely repelled by the two of them.

  She didn’t know exactly how she landed in the water, but she knew she hadn’t jumped or fallen… she was just there.

  She crashed feet first like a bullet and didn’t rise again. She felt a deep sense of peace and quiet underneath the water rolling above her and the lights dancing along the surface. Down under, she didn’t need breath, didn’t need noise, didn’t need opinions of her. She could doze off in that moment, floating on invisible pillows, sinking away from the world.

  It was like the manifestation of her poem.

  … Waters dark and deep…

  … the brink of sleep…

  Just as she felt the soft shadow of slumber, someone grabbed her wrist, sharply dragging her back to reality.

  Sirena

  Sirena went straight from her dinner with Zane to a tarot shop in Queens, which she immediately transported into.

  She made her way down to the basement where she knew the six remaining brothers ran their weekly poker game and burst through the double doors without knocking.

  “Room for me at the table?” she called out to them, which started a chorus of groans from the men.

  “I thought you said she was gone,” the third eldest brother Emil said to Harmon.

  “She’s a bit like fleas,” Harmon said, shaking his head. “Takes a few cycles to get rid of her for good.”

  “So good to see you again too,” she said, flipping an empty chair around and pulling it up to the table. She straddled it, made a shooing motion with her hands, and cleared the table of chips, cards, and money.

  “Don’t worry, you’ll get it all back… as soon as I get what I want.” Her gaze shifted around the circle as she made eye contact with each of the brothers at the table, plus a few of their sons. Her eyes landed on Luca, who she nodded to, feeling only the smallest bit guilty at disturbing his night.

  The youngest of the six remaining brothers, Tamás, leaned back in his chair, folding his arms across his chest. “What do you want, Hallow?”

  “Same as what I always want,” she said. “Information.”

  Pesha, the second eldest brother, slammed his hand on the table. “You send a Nephilim witch to my place of business, my livelihood, and then come into my brother’s shop demanding information?” He pulled a blade from his back pocket, tossing it onto the table next to him. “You’ve got some nerve, Hallow.”

  “Ri,” Harmon said. “Come on. Give us back our game. Stop by my shop tomorrow like we agreed to. We’ll discuss this then.”

  She met his eyes. “I’m running out of time, so I thought I’d come straight to the sources and sort this particular piece of information out right now.” All of Zane’s confirmations had fueled her to work harder and faster at finding Milena’s murderer. She could feel that she was so close, but she knew the further she got away from the time of incident, the less likely she was to find the person who did it.

  “Get it over with, then,” Tamás said, pulling a pack of cigarettes from his jeans. “What is this information you need?” He took a cigarette, then offered one to Sirena.

  She reached across the table and took it, letting him light it for her, like men used to do in the past. She examined it quickly to make sure it wasn’t a trap—it wasn’t—then took a puff, exhaling slowly.

  “My sister took a trip to retrieve something. Whatever she retrieved, she took somewhere else for either storage or exchange. I think that’s likely when she was betrayed by her contact.”

  “What was the object,” Emil asked.

  “That I don’t know.”

  “Who’s the contact?” Pesha asked.

  “That’s what I’d like you to find out.”

  Tamás leaned onto the table. “Where was your sister going? Who was she with? Where was the drop?”

  “Well, those are all great questions. The drop was probably not in New York. She was in a plane crash, but she could have easily been put on that plane dead to begin with.”

  Harmon frowned. “We only have coverage of the city. Anything that happened outside of it, you’re on your own.”

  “Aw, come on. Your people are spread across the country. You must have some contacts in other cities.”

  “Which cities?” Tamás asked.

  “That’s the thing,” Sirena said. “I don’t really know.”

  “Was the object brought back to the city?” Emil asked.

  “That I also don’t know.” Sirena was starting to regret crashing this party.

  “So let me get this straight,” Pesha said, twirling his knife in his fingers. “You want us to find some object that may not even be in the city, or some person who many not even be in the city, so you can accuse him of murdering your earthlie sister, who went who knows where for who knows why, and died in a very earthlie way.”

  “She was murdered,” Sirena said quietly.

  “Ri, this is unacceptable,” Harmon said. “It’s bad enough when you have us delivering specific messages for you, or finding specific people for you. But we’re not going to give you any information we can’t confirm. We’re not going to hand over every possible criminal we know of. Give us the object you’re looking for or give us a description of the person who’s trying to sell it on the black market.”

  She took a deep breath. “Okay, yeah. I don’t have much information to go off of. But come on. Your family has deep connections in all five boroughs. You guys have a pulse on things that other earthlies and even other Hallows and Nephilim have no clue about. People come to you for things, tell you their secrets. You’ve gotta have something for me—a small clue, a whiff of gossip, a hint of an object, a whisper of a name—” she didn’t know how long she could go on about this. They all stared at her like she was absolutely nuts.

  Harmon shook his head at her. “This is beyond us. Whatever the object, and whomever the person, I can guarantee they’re long gone by now, if they ever even landed in the city in the first place.”

  She looked around desperately, though she could feel that the energy had shifted in the room. The brothers had gone from angry and annoyed with her, to feeling pity for her. None of them would make eye contact with her anymore, and it was clear to everyone, even herself, that she was grasping at straws.

  She had no more leads, no more ideas. She had failed her sister completely.

  “I see,” she said softly, standing up. She put out her cigarette and returned their game to the table. “Then you’ll let me know if you come up with anything. She materialized a sheet of paper and pen and wrote down a number to one of her burner phones. “Give me a call if you hear something that might help me.”

  “Will do,
” Harmon said, taking the piece of paper from the table and putting it in his front pocket.

  Tamás gave her a nod as she stepped away from the table. “Thanks for stopping by, Ri.”

  “Thanks, and sorry for interrupting your game.”

  Pesha glared at her as she walked toward the doors. She wondered if he thought about throwing that dagger into her back.

  She transported out of the shop, dismayed about her prospects. The brothers were right—without knowing more about what Milena was doing or who she was meeting on that trip, she couldn’t really find what she needed.

  She felt overwhelmed and out of time to solve this. She had spent days gathering information, but so far it hadn’t gotten her much closer to figuring out what happened.

  She couldn’t give up though, and she didn’t have anything better to do anyway. She still had some options. If the Seven Brothers didn’t come up with any information, she could start interviewing Milena’s earthlie friends. She could go back to Zane and see if he remembered anything else. She could interview the people at the scene of the crime, who discovered what happened. She could attempt to trace Milena’s flights back through various airports through interviews with pilots and flight attendants. She could try to dig up information through the Archworld’s black market. She may have to disguise herself, she may have to co-opt some earthlies to her cause, or she may have to start building her alliances among the Hallows.

  She would not give up. She could not give up.

  “Sirena!”

  She turned around. Luca ran toward her, his eyes alight.

  “Something from Harmon?” she asked, her heart soaring with tentative hope.

  Luca reached her, breathing heavily. “Nope, he still knows nothing.”

  “Oh.”

  “But Jaelle’s aunty Beebee owns a pawn shop in Staten Island. She stops by there every once in awhile to verify the authenticity of certain… special items.”

  “Archworld items?” Sirena asked skeptically.

  Luca smiled sheepishly. “We don’t like to call them that, but yeah. My dad has banned all of the shops in the family from doing too much Archworld business, but Beebee is a bit special. She does some side deals, I think.”

  “I see,” Sirena said.

  “Anyway, Beebee had a guy come in today, trying to pawn off some weapons with the marks of the archangels on them. He didn’t bring it with him to show her, but she thought it was pretty shady. He also wouldn’t tell her how he obtained the items, who he obtained them from… pretty shady, like I said.”

  Sirena frowned. “Sounds like this guy has some secrets.”

  “Do you think he could be your guy?” Luca asked.

  She pursed her lips. “Possibly. He does sort of fit the description of the type of person I’m looking for, but I can’t imagine what my sister would want with archangel weapons.”

  “You also don’t know much about your sister,” Luca reminded her. “Maybe she needed something, and the cost was specific.”

  “No, you’re right,” Sirena said. “He is the kind of guy I’d be interested in. It’s just—you know, Harmon’s right. When I get information from the Seven Brothers, it’s always good. Your family goes to great lengths to make sure they’re passing along good information, and I always know that I’m not walking into a situation that could expose me. But if I start chasing down every questionable character like this guy—if we even could find him—I’m taking a huge risk. We don’t know anything about him. We don’t know if he could expose me.”

  “Okay,” Luca said easily. “I just thought you’d want to know about him.”

  “Of course,” Sirena said. “Thank you. Maybe you can ask Jaelle about it tomorrow?”

  He grinned. “I already texted her, and she texted me back with his name and information.”

  She did a double take. “Wait, what?”

  “Yeah,” Luca said, his cheeks dimpling. “Jaelle’s powers are a lot stronger than the rest of the family knows. If she knows a face or a name, she can find that person. We haven’t tested it for long distances, but we’ve tested it around New York. It works.”

  “Jaelle sounds really special,” Sirena said. “There are some Hallows with special gifts. No one knows why or how they manifest out of specific bloodlines or bloodline combinations, but if she works at them, she could be one of the greats someday.” She smirked. “That is, if she weren’t going the barefoot and pregnant route.”

  He ducked his head. “Actually, we decided that we’re not going to have kids right away, no matter what our parents say. I’m going to help her protect her powers.”

  Sirena smiled at him. “You’re a good kid, Luca.” She felt a tug to do something for him, though she knew she would regret getting more involved when Harmon already wanted his kid out of Archworld business.

  Still, she liked Luca. She liked that he wasn’t afraid of her. She liked that he understood and cared about protecting the beauty of the Archworld, when so much of it had shadows draped over it.

  “Do you want to go stake out this address you got from Jaelle?” she asked impulsively.

  His eyes lit up. “Sure. 1111 South Mulanix. In Staten Island.”

  She held out her hand. “Have you ever transported?”

  He shook his head, taking her hand tentatively.

  “Hold on,” she said, moving fluidly to the street of the address he’d given her. She had gotten so used to the cold wave that vibrated through her body and the whooshing sound that blew through her ears that were just a part of transporting.

  They arrived at 1111 on the opposite side of the street.

  Luca immediately keeled over, throwing up on the neighbor’s lawn.

  “Yep,” Sirena said. “Probably should have warned you that transporting is not the most pleasant experience for earthlies their first time around.”

  He wiped his mouth. “That was the coolest thing that’s ever happened to me.”

  Sirena smirked, focusing her attention on the house in front of her. The entire house was lit up, and the curtains were all drawn to the sides, even though it was evening. She didn’t have to look too hard to recognize several of Milena’s paintings hanging on the walls.

  Her body tingled. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing. Earthlies had their coincidences, but Hallows and Nephilim had their synchronicities, those clues that pointed them in the right direction.

  This was definitely the type of guy she was looking for.

  “Stay here,” she told Luca. “Holler if someone comes near you. I just want to get a peek inside the windows to see if I can find him.”

  Luca nodded, still looking queasy.

  She balled her fists, ready for a fight—though she didn’t know if she was ready to face her sister’s killer. Her mind was spinning with questions. Should she kill him the minute she had enough evidence that he was involved? Should she try to get a confession from him and risk his escape? On the one hand, she wanted his blood and suffering for what he did. On the other hand, she wanted to know what happened to her sister in as much detail as possible, no matter how much it hurt to hear it. She wanted closure. She wanted to know why he killed her, who he was working for, when and where he encountered her, what she was doing before she died.

  She inched closer to the house, moving up the dimensions to disguise herself. As she neared the windows, she found the blatant and obsessive display of Milena’s paintings troubling, even gauche. She peeked into the main window at the front, finding nothing out of the ordinary. She didn’t know what she expected to find. Maybe the weapons? Certainly not physical evidence of Milena’s death.

  She sighed, knowing she needed to take this lead slowly. She needed to stake out the place, talk to Jaelle and Beebee and collect some information about this guy, break into the house and look around.

  She backed up, flipping to collect Luca and get out of there, when she saw him.

  “Come out, come out, daughter of Michael,” he said in an odd, modified voice,
holding a very afraid Luca by the shirt. “You wouldn’t want me to pull your pet earthlie into another dimension, would you? I’m not sure that he could survive it.”

  She froze. The man was dressed in all black, wearing a ski mask over his face.

  Was this Milena’s murderer?

  This wasn’t how she wanted this to go. She wasn’t ready to confront him, but he seemed more than ready to confront her. He even knew who she was.

  As she moved down through the dimensions, she panicked over what to do. She reached the earthlie dimension. “Who are you?” she demanded.

  “You know,” he said.

  Rage rushed through her veins, but she didn’t move. She couldn’t attack him, couldn’t capture him. Why had she brought Luca? Why had she put his life in danger so carelessly?

  “We both know how this ends, Sirena,” the man said.

  “That’s not my name,” she said, feeling unnerved. Who was he, and how did he know about her? From Milena? Was he sent by Vega?

  “Let’s make a deal?” he asked. “I’ll give you back your earthlie pet, and you’ll stop chasing me.”

  “Why would I do that?” she asked angrily.

  He laughed. “You may be able to save this one for now. But I know his family. Harmon, Ros, Jaelle. I can end any of them at any time if you don’t let me go.”

  “Just tell me why you did it,” Sirena said, trying to contain her fury.

  “No,” he said plainly, gripping Luca tighter. “Do you want him or not?”

  Before she could answer, he lifted Luca, twirled him in a circle, and launched him high into the air in the opposite direction she was standing from them.

  She immediately transported forward, caught Luca and kept going to lessen the impact of landing on his organs. Hallows and Nephilim could handle abrupt starts and stops and also healed quickly. Earthlies, on the other hand, were much more fragile to their physical realities.

  She set Luca down quickly—he had passed out, but appeared relatively unharmed—and transported back to the house.

  But it wasn’t there anymore. The house, the man, Milena’s paintings were gone, leaving just an empty lot in the middle of New York.