Once we’d arrived, she’d insisted on guiding me up the three flights of stairs to my door. I’d agreed without a second thought; the lingering effects of the morphine had left me giddy and surprisingly pliant. Somewhere along the way, I’d asked about Serge and what Othello intended to do, but she’d told me not to worry, that she’d have her people remove him from the Academy’s custody and take him home.
“To the prison in Siberia?” I asked, half-jokingly.
“How did you know about that?” Othello had responded, leveling a suspicious gaze at me.
It was only then that I realized that, for this woman, knowledge was power—and I had just inadvertently flexed a little. I explained that I’d heard it from the kidnapper, a Londoner who’d worked for the Academy, with a major hard-on for her boss. Then I filled her in on a few other relevant details: how I’d tried to reach her after he’d called, the fallout from Gladstone’s use of the Gateway, and the conversation I’d had with Hemingway only a few hours before.
“Yes,” Othello said, her expression lightening considerably, “he filled me in on what you told him. In fact, that’s why I came. I thought I would apologize in person, especially for not answering. Getting licensed to perform marriage ceremonies is a pain. So many forms…” Othello’s eyes hollowed out, as if she were describing something much more horrific.
I snorted, drawing her back from the abyss.
“But yeah,” she continued, “when I got there and saw the damage outside your aunt’s apartment, I assumed something unfortunate had happened. It took a little digging to find out what, but by the time I discovered Serge and the Academy were involved, all I could do was track down the defunct bases the Academy had established in Boston before the formation of the Faerie Chancery in the mid-1800s and try to find out which one was currently in use.”
“And exactly how did ye find all that out?” I asked, arcing an eyebrow. From our previous interaction, I knew enough to guess she was a hacker of some kind; she’d obtained information that could only be gleaned from unrestricted data access. But in this case, there had been no eye witnesses to speak of and no way to know who had been involved or why. Not to mention the inexplicable fact that she seemed eerily familiar with the Chancery’s policies, as well as its history—neither of which could be accessed with a simple Google search.
Believe me, I’d tried.
“Traffic cameras, mostly,” she’d explained, idly toying with a zipper on the pocket of her leather jacket. “If they’d been able to Shadow Walk, I may never have found you, but because their abilities didn’t work in your presence—something Hemingway told me was likely—all I had to do was keep an eye out for a large, conspicuous car pulling into that neighborhood in the early morning. I had to guesstimate the time, but it didn’t take long to find the footage I was looking for.
“They cloaked themselves, of course, but they didn’t bother hiding the car once they had you. Rookie mistake, but then wizards aren’t usually as concerned with technology as they should be. In fact, hacking the Academy’s bank accounts to find out which car service they’d used was literally child’s play—I broke tougher codes than that in secondary school,” Othello mockingly brushed invisible dust off her shoulder and grinned.
“Anyway, after that, all I had to do was contact the driver and confirm that you’d been taken. He told me about Serge. Everything else I found out from reaching out to a friend in the Chancery, who had old records of Academy hideouts that had been abandoned. Only one remained in its original form—the Tremont tunnel.”
“Who’s your friend in the Chancery?” I asked, dubiously. As far as I knew, the Chancery rarely reached out to Freaks in town, much less Regulars—a status she’d confirmed shortly after we left the Academy hideout—from foreign countries. They preferred their anonymity, operating from the shadows, or through intermediaries—Faelings like Ryan, usually, who could pass for human most of the time.
“I’ll introduce you, sometime,” Othello said. “She’s a fan of yours, actually.”
“A fan?”
Othello grinned and shrugged. “We all have our kinks.”
I wasn’t sure what to say to that, but apparently Othello found my expression particularly amusing. She rose, still chuckling, and walked the length of my apartment.
“This is a nice place,” she said, from my bedroom. I realized she was one of those people—the ones who didn’t care about things like boundaries or privacy. Good quality in a hacker, I’m sure, bad quality in a human being. But then she had helped me up three flights of stairs…
“T’anks,” I replied.
My apartment—a remodeled, upscale loft in Beacon Hill that overlooked both a picturesque neighborhood and a quaint cobblestone courtyard, depending which window you looked out from—had been my first adult purchase. The furniture fluctuated between antique and modern and had a vaguely masculine air to it. I had impulse buying issues, which accounted for the brass phonograph I never listened to resting on the fireplace mantle in my bedroom, the Indian motorcycle I’d never ridden propped in the corner of the dining room, and the impossibly large LED screen I never watched mounted on the living room wall. But I kept it clean and clutter free, despite visitors being few and far between.
I was proud of it, of what it said about me.
“Will you be alright?” Othello asked, sauntering back into the living room. She did that a lot, I realized—moved her hips like their default switch was set on swivel. Most women looked ridiculous doing it; I saw it most often in the strut of a plastered sorority type, her eyes locked on either a man or a meal. But Othello didn’t seem to notice she was doing it. I found myself bizarrely glad I had the knee injury to contend with, or my mannish left-right-left approach would have been stark and unflattering by comparison.
“I’ll be fine,” I said. “As long as no one comes after me or mine here in the next few days, at any rate. That’s how long I plan on sleepin’.”
“I’ll put one of my people on it,” Othello said, whipping out a tablet from her purse that seemed bigger than she was.
“Oh, that’s not what I meant,” I said, stammering.
Othello continued playing with the tablet. “It’ll make me feel better to know you’re safe until you recover. You and your aunt. I owe you that, at least.”
I didn’t feel like arguing. Having someone keep an eye on Dez, at least while I was out of commission, seemed like a great idea. “Can ye tell me somethin’?” I asked. “Why did ye come yourself? T’wasn’t your fault Gladstone got hold of the briefcase. And I stole from ye. I mean, I had no choice, but still.”
“I’ve stolen things from people before,” Othello said, after a brief silence. “I’ve taken their identities. Sometimes their livelihoods. I’ve taken their right to privacy. And every time I do, I wonder if I’m making the right decision. And then I think about the people I care about, and I realize I don’t care.” She took a seat across from me on the sofa. “If you had tried to come after someone I care about, I’d have ruined you. I’d have drained you dry and left you homeless, nameless, and wishing you’d never set foot outside your apartment door.” She held my eyes with her own. “I think you understand why. Because I think, if I messed with the people you cared about, you’d find a way to make me pay. You and I are alike, in that way.” Othello smiled. “Basically, I’m glad I didn’t have to come after you.”
I sighed and shifted, swinging my leg gingerly around until it settled on the arm of the couch. “Ok, one more question,” I said, propping myself up with a pillow. “Did we just become best friends?”
Othello chuckled at my remarkably well-timed Step Brothers reference. “I’d say let’s do karate in the garage, but I’ve seen your resume. No thanks.” She rose as if to leave, but seemed to remember something, “I’ve still got questions. About the wizard who blackmailed you, and what happened when you went into the other dimension.”
“I wouldn’t worry about him,” I said, confidently. “And trust me…yo
u’d rather not know what the afterlife is like.”
Othello blanched, started to say something, and then shook her head. “Yeah, once was enough,” she admitted.
Chapter 68
I spent the next three weeks hobbling back and forth between my bed and the couch. Othello promised she’d give me a call once things had settled down on her end—apparently St. Louis had more going for it than what little I knew, including a growing wereanimal community, a resident wizard overlord named Nate Temple, and a variety of demigods, heroes, legends, and even gods who called it home.
I wanted nothing to do with it.
The idea of running into mythical figures was appealing, sure, but I have more than enough on my plate stockpiling for the apocalyptic future to worry about taking a vacation. Judging from what Othello told me about the Midwest’s trajectory over the last few years—the multiple wars and other narrowly avoided world-ending catastrophes—I have every reason to believe that Ryan and Cassandra’s instincts were right on the money.
I still haven’t heard anything from Ryan, not that I expected to. Christoff hired a new bar manager, but I haven’t been by yet to see if he’s any good. Something tells me I won’t like him, on principle. Hank showed up for his next shift as if nothing happened, and Christoff has let that stand, for now. At some point, Christoff may reveal his secret to the new guy, but as a solitary werebear far from home, I doubted it.
We Freaks tend to hoard our secrets.
Speaking of which, Dobby the Big-as-a-House Elf seems to be acclimating to his role as warehouse poltergeist. A few members of Christoff’s staff claim the warehouse is haunted, but so far there haven’t been any incidents. I’ve let the little guy visit once or twice during the day. He insists on watching over me when I sleep—which I do often thanks to the pain meds I’m taking. It’s creepy finding him staring at me from across the room, I’ll admit, but somewhat reassuring at the same time.
All my contacts seem to be laying low at the moment, which makes sense considering the ruckus Serge, Gladstone, and the Academy caused in the span of a few days. In fact, the Chancery delivered a summons requesting I report to a hearing later next month; it appeared on my dining room table as if by magic. Frankly, I’m not sure I can refuse, or who I would call to refuse if I did. Was there a Faerie representative in charge of my district? Did Faerie representatives even have phones?
In other news, Jimmy seems to have lost his and hasn’t bothered to get a new one. I’d planned to visit the man once I’d recovered enough to move on my own power, but then Maria called to let me know the park incident had been resolved, and that I could come collect my personal effects, including my gun. When I asked her how Jimmy was holding up, she’d seemed surprised. Apparently, Jimmy had checked out the next morning, given his statement, and gotten right back to work as if nothing had happened. The only thing he’d done that was out of character, in fact, was not reach out to me.
It hurt.
Part of me wondered if he still held a grudge for me running out on him after we’d slept together, or if he held me responsible for the fallout at his job over Gladstone and Jacob. Another part of me hoped that was all it was, and that what the old man said about Jimmy wanting to die had nothing to do with it. And then there was the matter of his shifting eyes—I still wasn’t sure if I’d dreamt that or not.
Maria must have picked up on my frustration, because she’d insisted Jimmy had a good reason to avoid me—Gladstone was still at large and the whole department was intent on taking him down. She assured me she’d let Jimmy know we’d spoken. I wasn’t sure what upset me more, that Jimmy had brushed me off, or that Maria felt enough pity for me to soften the blow of his rejection by blaming his job.
Of course, if that was the reason, Jimmy might never call me back; Gladstone wasn’t going to be found anytime soon, if ever. I’d made sure of that. Last I heard, Gladstone’s corpse was on display at Magnus’ house—a rustic mansion in upstate New York. I didn’t want to think about the décor, but the concept gave me plenty of satisfaction.
Other than that, there’s not much to report. Dez has completely recovered, though she had a few choice words regarding the state of her neighbors’ yards—Patricia was convinced she’d been pranked by atheist teenagers on a drunken bender. I tried to explain that it wasn’t my fault, but Dez didn’t believe me. Fortunately, I looked pitiful enough when she visited that the lecture ended almost before it began. She and I have been watching a lot of old movies at my place, since it’s easier for her to come to me at the moment, although part of me wonders if it’s because she doesn’t feel safe at her house any longer. I wish I could tell her that the men who’d taken her won’t ever be coming back, but I know she wouldn’t approve. Thou shalt not kill is a pretty firm rule in her book, pun intended. And—while I hadn’t been the one who’d done the deed, technically—I had to admit I was partially responsible for their deaths. Not a great feeling.
But then sometimes I look over at Dez as she studies the tumultuous relationships of the silver screen, and a dark, inexplicable fear overshadows the guilt—the fear that one day I won’t be able to protect her. Her, Dobby, Christoff…even Jimmy. A growing list of people I’d hate to lose.
Thou shalt not kill, huh…
Good thing I’m not Catholic anymore.
Turn the page to read a brief excerpt from COSMOPOLITAN, the second installment of the Phantom Queen Diaries, and get a taste of what’s in store for the black magic arms dealer as she hits up the Big Apple.
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SAMPLE: COSMOPOLITAN (PHANTOM QUEEN #2)
The blubbery lip of the brutish, hulking bridge troll in front of me quivered in frustration. He gnashed his teeth together, staring me down with jaundiced eyes. I wondered, idly, how many people he’d eaten. How many bones had he splintered and mangled over the centuries with those elephantine tusks? My opponent fidgeted, and I could sense he was about to make his move; it was there, in his tensed shoulders, half as wide as I was tall, and his twitching hands, each large enough to palm a beach ball. I waited, pinned to my chair by his beady-eyed gaze, holding my breath. Almost a month’s preparation boiled down to what would happen in the next few minutes, and I couldn’t afford a single distraction. The gargantuan, green-skinned monster slumped forward, snorting through his pierced snout—the rusty septum ring as large as a bracelet—and rested his elbows on the table until it creaked from the strain.
“Fold,” he said, in a plodding, gravelly voice that would have done Andre the Giant justice.
I threw my hands up. “Ye can’t fold, ye idgit. You’re the big blind!”
Paul, the aforementioned bridge troll, studied the cards in his hand once more before nodding. “Fold.” He flipped them over and slid them across the table towards the dealer. Christoff, the owner of the bar and host of this little get together, glanced at me before collecting Paul’s cards and insisting everyone else return theirs. I rolled my eyes and tossed my hand on the table, face-up—pocket Aces. Paul didn’t even seem to notice, but the other members of our impromptu bi-monthly poker night certainly did; Christoff shrugged at me apologetically, but the other two—our newcomers, Othello and Hemingway—barely managed to stifle their laughter.
Othello was a charming Russian hacker who’d rescued me from a debacle several weeks back that had nearly put me in the hospital. We’d been in touch regularly over that span, exchanging information and gossip in equal parts, and she was fast becoming one of my very few friends, despite the fact that she was rarely around; she and her cohort of friends spent the vast majority of their time in the Midwest, oscillating between St. Louis and Kansas City.
Both cities had experienced more than their fair share of supernatural snafus in the last several years, most of which could be classified as Biblical in proportion; some of her stories made rivers of blood and locust plagues seem dull and mild by comparison. At this rate, I wa
sn’t interested in a Midwest layover, let alone a vacation.
I had enough drama in my life already.
Not that leaving Boston was on my agenda, anyway. Sure, Titletown came with its fair share of baggage, especially for those of us who’d grown up in some of the rougher neighborhoods. But there was something about it I loved—a brutal, vicious history which had bled into its foundations, many of which still stood. I could sense that same hard edge in myself, sometimes—that urge to provoke, to hit and get hit. I don’t know if that made me crazy, but it sure as hell made me a Boston native.
Thing is, you had to be a wee bit batshit to do what I did for a living; peddling magical artifacts sounds like an entertaining gig, I’m sure, but if you think selling drugs or guns on the black market is dangerous, you’ve never met a hungry Bandersnatch or pissed off a Jabberwock.
I’ve stared down creatures out of storybooks and squared off against nightmares, and I had the scars to prove it.
Which is why, as a black magic arms dealer, I knew it paid to have people you could rely on in a pinch; you never knew when you’d end up over your head or up to your neck and need to call in favors. Maybe that’s why I’d invited Othello to tag along tonight; I figured she and Christoff would get along, plus we were a man down what with Ryan returning to Fae at the behest of the King of the Faeries.
That’s right, I still believe in faeries. I do, I do.
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