by SM Reine
The police station was so loud, so crowded. I was trapped in a sea of desks and concrete walls. Erin was still reaching for me with her cracked manicure, gazing at my ceiling with a look of postmortem horror, and I could smell that meaty scent of blood.
I didn’t even feel it when Ramirez took the phone from me and hung it up.
The Office of Preternatural Affairs thought I was guilty and they were shaking me loose before I dragged them down with me.
I was on my own.
+ + +
The holding cell was a temporary thing. Wouldn’t be long at all before I got face time in front of a judge and found myself in real deep shit—an actual jail, not a room with bars in the back of a police station.
I still wasn’t worried about being found guilty. I hadn’t killed Erin and the evidence would prove it. It wasn’t my Glock on the table—it wouldn’t even have my fingerprints on it. Plus, there were security cameras around the apartment complex.
We would find out that someone had come home with us. It would prove that I had struggled with the attacker, making the wreckage in my living room and kitchen. And then they would be able to prove that the attacker had knocked me out and shot Erin.
It was the only story that made sense. The only possible explanation.
But they would determine all of that after I’d been in jail for months. After I’d had a lawyer assigned to me and been dragged over the coals in a long trial.
By that time, my life would already be ruined. The killer long gone.
It wouldn’t be any justice for Erin.
No, I wasn’t going on trial. I wasn’t following the Bloody Douchebag Gang into prison. It wasn’t happening.
Someone had messed with Erin—had messed with me—and I was going to find out who.
That was the decision I’d come to after five minutes of pacing in the holding cell. It only took a split second after that to decide how I’d escape.
You see, I’d been able to escape this whole time. But Suzy had asked me to cooperate, so I had been cooperating. Why not? Someone had been going to save me anyway.
But since the OPA thought I was guilty too, there was no point in sticking around. There was only one person that could prove my innocence, and that guy was me. I wouldn’t be able to do it if I was stuck behind bars.
I climbed up on the bench. It had been bolted to the wall so that it couldn’t be used as a weapon. It wasn’t directly below the narrow barred window, but it was only a foot or two to the right, and I could reach it. I had long arms. And not just long—but muscular.
Three days a week at the gym hadn’t built me up like a bear. I mostly went to do the cardio machines. A few hours on the treadmill to help make sure that I could catch a suspect on foot.
What had given me these insane shoulders were the foul-tasting poultices that I chewed every morning, the potions brewed on my stovetop in Walmart cookware, and the charms I kept hidden in my gun safe.
I wasn’t a normal human. Not like these cops were, and not like the people they usually arrested were.
They weren’t ready for someone like me.
My hands tightened on the bars. My forearms flexed and the muscles bulged like steel cable under the skin. The scratches from wrist to elbow twisted and distorted. Magic surged in my veins.
Crunch.
I was holding the window in my hands. Pulled it free of the brick, steel frame and all. I dropped it to the bench and didn’t look behind me. I knew the cops were coming—that hadn’t been a quiet noise. I could hear them shouting, and I had about three seconds before someone freaked out and shot me in the back.
Hauling myself into the window frame, I wriggled my shoulders through. They almost got stuck, like a snake that had eaten a mouse too big for its maw. But once I had that part out, the rest of me was no problem. It was an easy drop to the ground outside.
I was in a parking lot. It was raining hard. There were police cruisers around—a lot of police cruisers. The fence was twice my height and topped with barbed wire.
It only took a second for a skull-shattering alarm to go off.
Jesus, my hangover wasn’t loving that.
Three long strides and I’d reached the fence. Dug my fingers into the chain-link, found a toehold, started climbing. Domingo would be proud to see how fast I moved.
At the joint where the fence formed a right angle, there were two posts right next to each other without barbed wire on top. Good handholds. Nothing sharp that could cut me open.
I leveraged myself over the top and dropped onto the street.
The alarm had gone off quickly, but the men who were following me were slow, sluggish humans, unprepared for a magically juiced witch on the run. I wondered what they thought of what they saw—how quickly I had crossed the parking lot and scaled the fence, how little the fall to the other side had fazed me. I wonder if they might have been thinking that something supernatural had been going on or if they just thought I was on speed or something.
Denial was a hell of a drug.
Either way, I was out of there in a heartbeat.
6
There was nothing free about being a man on the run. Hurtling through the streets, bolting down alleys to avoid cop cars, hiding behind Dumpsters that smelled like year-old milk—it was about as free as being in the holding cell with the Sureños.
But eventually the sirens faded. I was alone by midnight.
For now, alone would have to be as good as free.
It was rainy and cold. Shelter was gonna be priority soon, but my picture was out there and I needed to be careful where my face showed up. That meant no hotels.
There were other places I could comfortably disappear. Helltown was probably a relatively safe place to hide from the LAPD, and if I was feeling real bold I could even head to the undercity. Because the demons down below would never fuck with an OPA agent, right?
Little bit of sarcastic humor there, in case you didn’t catch it.
But I didn’t go to Helltown. I’d been running without a plan so my feet had taken charge, directing me back to my apartment. It was the only place I could think to start.
Seeing my apartment building rise out of the darkness didn’t give me the relieved feeling it usually did. None of that “the day is over, now I can chill in front of my Firefly DVDs for the seventeenth time” warmth. I was detached. This wasn’t my place; it was the scene of a crime.
I sat in the bushes across the street for an hour, waiting to see if anyone was coming or going, but didn’t spot a single cop. I didn’t see any unmarked black SUVs, either—dead giveaway for the Union.
How many hours had it been since the police hit my front door? Sixteen? No way they’d cleared the scene that fast.
But I didn’t see anyone, and I couldn’t question the why. Once the OPA caught wind of my disappearance, they would be back to look for me, and getting caught at my apartment would be a fast and embarrassing end to my night as a fugitive.
I was up the fire escape about as fast as I’d gotten up the chain link fence. The ladder hadn’t been lowered, but I was still juiced on magic and a ten-foot jump was easy for me. Then it was just a matter of going up seven stories and finding my window. I tried to pull out the screen without making a sound.
It felt like I was sneaking back into Pops’s house after a night out with Domingo again, except I didn’t have my brother’s jokes to keep the mood light.
My apartment’s furnishings were colorless in the dark. I stopped by the window and listened for any sign of investigators lingering in my apartment. I could hear the guy upstairs working out, like he always did at one in the morning. No better time to lift weights and grunt loudly, right? At least I had the tact to save it for the afternoons.
But he was upstairs, and there were no cops in my place. Didn’t mean they couldn’t sneak up on me. Had to go fast.
I’d lived in the apartment for as long as I’d worked with the OPA—two years. It wasn’t anything fancy, but it was the first pl
ace that I’d lived without Pops breathing down my neck, so it was mine. Those movie posters on the wall? The Blu-ray collection? All the Brandon Sanderson books? Mine. And it felt like a major violation to have that stuff taped and tagged. Bet you anything that they’d photographed everything, too. Even my damn underwear drawer.
Judging by the blood on my hallway carpet, the crime scene hadn’t been scrubbed yet. Guess they would probably leave that to the landlord so that he’d have to pay the cleaning bill, too. I didn’t really want to know if Erin was still there, but I checked—bathtub was empty. The blood smear was just the way I’d left it, but there was a clear spot where her body used to be.
Didn’t look real in the dark. Black blood, white floor. Looked like crime scene photos.
Yeah. A crime scene photo. I could keep detached.
What would I have been looking for if this had been an investigation?
I headed into my living room and looked around. Suspect was obviously a social recluse. Spent too much money on movies—definitely didn’t have a girlfriend. Had been three years since the last girlfriend, actually, which was something I acknowledged with a pang of annoyance. And none of that information helped me figure out who could have actually killed Erin Karwell.
Ah, hell, I couldn’t keep detached here. Not in my place.
Better get what I’d come for and leave.
They’d collected a lot of the objects in my living room for evidence, but the gun safe was bolted to the floor. It hadn’t budged.
I opened my gun safe by passing my hand over the handle. Magic flared and a lock clicked inside. The door swung open.
There was one gun in my gun safe, and I kept it there unless I was doing fieldwork. It was a Desert Eagle that Fritz had given me for my birthday. It wasn’t required for OPA agents to pack heat, so it was the first firearm I’d ever owned. I hated that thing. Felt like carrying it around meant I was expecting to shoot something, and I didn’t do that.
But I grabbed it, along with the belt. If someone was out to frame me for murder, I had better be ready to defend myself.
The Desert Eagle was the only weapon in there. Most of the space was taken up by trophies from resolved investigations. I had gris-gris, charms, potions, photographs, even one of Black Jack’s tarot cards. Call it research. In that theoretical “someday” where free time and motivation intersected, I wanted to figure out how to deconstruct the spells cast by the OPA’s Most Wanted and put them to practical use. For now, it was basically a big box of useless crap.
The drawer at the bottom of the safe, however, was filled with dozens of Steno pads’ worth of personal notes. I took those. If the OPA cracked my safe, they would put them into storage and I’d never get them back. Their warehouses were worse than the ones in Indiana Jones; once something went in, it never came out.
There was one active case file in there, too. I’d locked it up before heading to The Olive Pit the night before.
This new case was supposed to be my reward for taking care of Black Jack so quickly. An easy bag-and-tag. The suspect was named Isobel Stonecrow—possibly a necromancer, probably a fake—and she had been earning money by claiming that she could connect them with their dead loved ones. If she was a mundane human having fun, she would be shocked when the actual witches showed up at her door. And if she was the real McCoy, we had even more unpleasant surprises in store for her.
I took that file, too. Might as well. Hopefully I’d be getting back to work soon anyway.
After that, it was a matter of getting dressed in comfortable clothes again. Jeans, a black tee, my favorite leather jacket. The inner pockets could hold my notebooks easily. I threaded my belt through the Desert Eagle’s holster and wore it on my hip.
I was pulling the window screen down again when I heard the lock on the front door click.
I froze halfway out of the window, one foot on the fire escape and the other on the carpet. My hand went to my hip but my brain stopped working.
My visitors were probably the cops or the Union—neither of whom I wanted seeing me here—and that meant I should probably run. But there was a small chance that it was whoever had killed Erin coming back to look at his handiwork. Witches would do that sometimes. Go back to where they performed a ritual, clean up their residual energy, collect supplies. Made it easy to catch them.
In the time it took me to realize there was a decision to make, the door opened. A small shape slipped into my living room.
It was Suzy. Ah, Suzy. She was obviously working because she was wearing professional attire. Tailored black suit, white shirt, black necktie. It was meant to make us all look uniform, but there was no hiding the waspish waist and incredible legs underneath the comfortable cotton. Even with her hair up, you could tell she was beautiful.
She looked shocked to see me. Her hand was already in her jacket, reaching for her shoulder rig.
“Oh, Cèsar,” she said. “You idiot.”
She wasn’t wrong.
There were people moving behind her. I couldn’t tell who, but she wasn’t alone. That made the decision for me.
I was out the window, over the side of the fire escape. Flying. Falling.
As soon as I hit, I was running again.
7
The Olive Pit was a mix of old and new, hip and nostalgic. The first floor had wood paneling and leather furniture. The second-floor balcony, on the other hand, was all acrylic—you could look through it to see the classier decorations below.
When it was running hot on a Friday or Saturday, they would get the spotlights going, and the transparent floor and chandeliers looked insane. But when I reached The Pit after fleeing from my apartment, it was quiet. You didn’t even notice the second floor with the lights off. It just looked like a cigar bar or something. Glistening wood floors, shelves of old books, outdated maps on the walls. The kind of place you could kick back with a martini and a cigar for hours of bullshit with the guys.
On a Wednesday night—or Thursday morning, take your pick—there was nobody there but the staff. One of the girls was leaning on the handle of her mop like she wouldn’t be able to stand without it. Mascara striped her cheeks.
I didn’t know her name. I’d only ever paid any attention to Erin. I wished I knew her name, wished I knew her well enough to tell her how sorry I was. Hated seeing girls cry.
Shaking the rain off my lapels, I headed in.
The waitress noticed that I was approaching and fixed a polite smile to her face. “We’re closing.” Didn’t even sound like she’d been crying. Good at covering up.
“I know. I’m here to talk with you.”
Her cheeks went pale. She ran a hand over the curls trimmed short to her scalp. “Is this about Erin?” She knew what was up. I probably wasn’t the first one here to talk about her. Luckily, she didn’t recognize me.
“Did you know her well?” I asked, extracting one of the Steno pads from my jacket. The most recent one was only half filled. I found the line that said “Black Jack got nailed,” skipped to the next blank page, and wrote “The Olive Pit” at the top.
“Guess so,” she said. She rested her cheek on her hands, wrapped around the mop, and gave me a scrutinizing look. Like she was trying to decide if she recognized me.
“Erin was in trouble. She came in last night with a black eye.”
“Did she?”
“Yeah, right eye.” I pointed at mine to illustrate. “Had you seen her with signs of abuse before?”
“No, she wasn’t abused. Not Erin. She’s not that kind of woman.” Her throat worked as she swallowed. “She wasn’t that kind of woman.”
“What kind of woman was she?”
“Smart. She always knew what she wanted and stood up for it. She worked hard. She took all the extra shifts without complaining.”
Yeah, Erin had looked like a smart girl to me. I believed it. And I wrote that down, too. It felt important to make note of what was good about her, the things that had marked her as special when she had stil
l been breathing. “Was she hard up for money?”
“I guess so, but who isn’t these days?” The waitress pointed at the bar with her mop handle. The half-light from the lamps highlighted red on her high cheekbones, the bare curves of her shoulders. “Nobody worked the bar like she did. She was very dedicated to her job, and she got tipped like nobody else because she was such a delight to spend time with. If she was here just for the money, then she faked it well.”
“So you don’t think that she was abused,” I said.
“Not a chance. She wouldn’t have put up with it.”
“Did you ever spend time together outside of work?”
“I work three jobs, brother,” the waitress said. “The only thing I see outside of work is my pillow.”
I laughed at that. It felt good to laugh. Made my face ache a little, but the weight in my chest lightened a few ounces.
I only realized that the front door had opened again because I could hear the patter of rain on the sidewalk outside. Then the waitress’s eyes focused behind me. She stepped back, propped her mop against the bar, disappeared into the kitchen. She was fast. I’d barely reached for her and opened my mouth to ask her to stop before she was gone.
And then something hard pressed into the small of my back.
“Freeze, a-hole,” said a woman behind me. “Your nuts are mine.”
The moment of paralyzing fear instantly melted away. There was only one woman that obsessed with anything below my belt, and unfortunately all she wanted to do was chew it up and spit it out.
“Suzy,” I sighed. She let me turn around. She didn’t have a gun—she had jammed the hilt of a folding knife into my back. I lifted my hands to my shoulders in a gesture of surrender and arched my eyebrows in a gesture of, Are you kidding me?
Even if she was serious, there was nothing intimidating about a five-foot-tall woman. My reach was at least twice hers. I could have knocked her out before she got close enough to stab me. Not that I would have ever knocked Suzy out, mind you—but I could have.