“Shit.” The vervet had noticed me watching it. “Shit, shit, shit.” My cover was blown.
Cover? What cover? I was like a walking Popsicle in front of a swarm of starved two-year-olds. Two-year-olds with razor-sharp teeth and predatory tendencies.
Okay, Dice. Use that pretty little head of yours. I stopped jumping around and concentrated on my knee. The imp burst into glitter. My control was perfect. None of the other creatures looked my way. Apparently they’d all missed my friendly exchange with the vervet, too. Not wanting to question my good luck, I eased down the hall.
Medusa caterwauled. I yelped and jumped, then rifled through the small bag while the horrendous sounds ricocheted against the narrow walls.
“Hello?”
“Get your butt back out here, girl. Brad’s calling us back home.”
“What? Already? I haven’t learned anything yet.” Other than I needed to pick a ring tone for Rose. I peered down the hallway. Imps bounded ahead of me, disappearing around the bend.
“We confirmed that we’re in way over our heads and that our suspicions of demons were most likely right. You’re not ready for that.”
“Just give me another minute.” I forced my feet to trot down the hall. I glanced into the lounge on the way by. The small room had two refrigerators, four couches, two tables, a group of chairs, and three human snacks for a pile of imps and vervet. Would I ever get used to the sight of evil creatures feeding on people? I hoped not.
“No. That’s it. We’re leaving. Boss’s orders. If I don’t see you in thirty seconds, I’m pulling the fire alarm and blaming you.”
“You wouldn’t!”
“Don’t test me.”
I recognized my euphoric rush of relief for what it was: cowardice. I stalked back to the main door, my skin crawling with the feel of dozens of glowing black eyes on me.
Rose was waiting for me outside the door, glowing white and looking tense enough to levitate.
“Five more minutes,” I forced myself to say. I wasn’t a chicken.
“You’ve had enough fun for one day. It’s time to go home.”
“But—”
“No.”
“We could—”
“No.”
“How am I supposed to do my job if no one lets me!” It was whiny and childish, but it was the best I could muster. The evil hallway was scary enough; finding the source of all that atrum was downright terrifying. But that’s what I was supposed to do. If Brad would only let me, I could wipe out all the evil creatures and save this mob of nerds.
In theory.
The security guard cocked an eyebrow at me. “Need help, ma’am?” he asked Rose.
She gave him a coy smile. “Thanks, sugar. I think I can handle Ms. Legs. I’ll have to remind her who’s boss when we get home, won’t I?” She smacked my butt. I yelped and gaped her.
The guard grinned.
Rose pushed me into the sweaty masses.
“What the hell do you—”
“Like I said, don’t test me. I’m on edge.”
I gave the nice, blond-haired man a weak smile as Rose marched me past him. It was a marvel really: The crowds parted for Rose where they would have clustered for me, and I knew it wasn’t simply because I was in costume and she wasn’t. It had to do with presence. If she hadn’t been dragging me along behind her like a petulant child, I might even have enjoyed watching the acne-ridden geeks leap out of her way.
I was surprised to see the position of the sun when we exited the hotel. I peered at Medusa’s clock. We’d been swimming with the nerds for almost four hours.
Rose didn’t speak to me until we were in her Hummer. “Boy-howdy, I’m glad to be out of there! Are there any on me?”
“No.” I glared at the hotel’s innocent front. “You could have given me a few more minutes. I think I was close to discovering something really useful.”
“Or close to getting hurt.”
Or that.
“It’s okay, you know,” Rose assured me. “No one expects you to be ready for a demon on your third day. Hell, no one expected a demon to show up on your third day!” She sounded genuine, but I couldn’t help feeling as if I was failing. “You might want to give your approach a little more thought, though. Kyle was an ass, but Mr. Pitt kept him around for a good reason.”
“Is there a correct approach to being allowed to do nothing?”
“Hey, don’t get snippy with me. I’m trying to help.”
“Fine. I’ll take it under advisement.”
She snorted. I let the silence ride until we were out of the parking lot.
“So you think you can tell how people are going to die, right? Was I in danger?”
Rose took her eyes of the road long enough to flash me a quelling glare. “Enforcers are complicated. And even if I knew, I wouldn’t tell you because you’re my friend.”
“That’s convenient.” I was a bit mollified that she considered me a friend.
We stopped at In-N-Out on the way back to the office. Rose threatened to make me go in if I didn’t stop whining about our lack of progress. I shut up and she took the drive-thru.
“Still horny?” I asked Rose cautiously.
“Nope. My priorities are firmly back in order.” She patted her stomach fondly and ordered an animal-style hamburger and fries. I couldn’t get the image of the imps moving like maggots on the stomachs of the businessmen, and I opted for my hangover food of choice: greasy fries and a strawberry shake.
While Rose drove back to the office, I forwarded pictures straight to Mr. Pitt in between bites of strawberry shake–dipped fries. I didn’t wait for Rose to catch up once we were parked. Scrolling through all the pictures again had only reinforced my need to go back to the hotel. I couldn’t let all those helpless people be harmed just because I wasn’t a veteran enforcer. I told Mr. Pitt as much when I stormed into his office. He listened until I got to the part about the vervet biting the booth babe’s butt.
“You saw what?”
“It waved at me.”
“It waved!” Spittle sprayed the desk. I realized too late that I’d chosen the wrong tactic. Again. “What were you doing, looking right at it?”
“I—”
“Now the demon knows of you for sure.”
“Isn’t that a good thing? Now it knows someone protects this region.”
“Twirling Twix sticks! Maybe I should keep running the ad if you’re so determined to kill yourself.”
“You haven’t given me the chance to get killed yet!” I crossed my arms around my padded chest. That had sounded better in my head.
“Where were you last night?”
The question threw me. “Uh, home.”
“You weren’t by chance trespassing, were you?”
“Is that what Doris told you?”
Mr. Pitt didn’t answer. I looked away from his florid face and accusing, bug-eyed glare.
“I needed to blow off a little steam . . .”
Mr. Pitt sighed and deflated. “You don’t know what steam is. You don’t even know enough not to be caught by the police.”
The way he said it made it sound like he’d seen toddlers commit crimes better than I had.
“It wasn’t my fault. I was distracted by the—”
“Don’t,” Mr. Pitt interrupted. “No more. The only thing that’s saving you right now is that you’ve got a fighting instinct. That, and I’m desperate. Don’t push it. You blew the infinitesimal advantage we had.”
“It’s gone underground,” said a voice behind me that made every nerve in my body hum happily.
Trying to be cool about it, I slowly turned to ogle Niko.
He stood propped against the doorjamb, looking as casual as a man with danger practically tattooed on his forehead can look. He was dressed in faded jeans that hugged in all the right places, a light green T-shirt with dark green at the collar, and a lightweight tan coat that he hadn’t bothe
red to zip. The T-shirt was thin enough that it clung to his stomach muscles, and I forced my gaze not to linger.
Niko was watching Mr. Pitt, not me, and I took a moment to admire how nice frustrated looked on Niko’s handsome face. I suspected there wasn’t an emotion that didn’t look good on him, and I was willing to be the judge.
Movement beyond Niko caught my eye. Rose was in her cube, either standing on her step stool or kneeling on her desk so she could peer over the top of the wall. She made a gesture at me to close my mouth. I wanted to stick my tongue out at her, but caught myself just in time as Niko’s gaze swept down to meet mine.
“A demon’s definitely taken residence,” he said, “and it’s not being shy about it. The entire hotel is crawling with its underlings, but it wasn’t home.”
I smiled at Niko, happy to be the center of his attention. Then his words sank in.
I flew out of the chair and rounded on Mr. Pitt.
“You had Niko double-checking on me?” I was furious, and it was completely misdirected. Niko should be watching what I do. Better still, he should have been handling this one himself. Yet Mr. Pitt had sent me in, making me wear this ridiculous outfit, acting like I was doing important work. Fortunately—or unfortunately—I remembered that I needed this job, maybe even wanted it, and I clamped my mouth shut before I could tell Mr. Pitt where he could shove his managerial tactics.
Mr. Pitt watched the muscle in my jaw tic, then switched his gaze to Niko. “She blew her cover today. The demon knows what it’s up against. Or not up against, in this case.”
I turned to see how Niko took this news. He was eyeing me, and I felt a blush rush from my toes to my crown, following his toe-to-head perusal. Damn Mr. Pitt and this degrading costume!
“She’s not dead yet,” Niko said to Mr. Pitt while holding my gaze. I shifted but refused to look away first.
“‘Yet’ being the operative word.”
Niko broke our staring contest and turned to Mr. Pitt. I swiveled to look at my boss, too. Silent communication passed between the two men. For all I knew, they were speaking telepathically. You’re paranoid, Dice.
“Is that it?” I asked. “Am I off the case?” I didn’t know if that was the right lingo, but it sounded good.
“Get changed, Madison,” Mr. Pitt said.
I opened my mouth to demand a more concrete answer, took another look at the vein standing out on Mr. Pitt’s forehead, and snapped my mouth shut. Niko moved aside so I could pass, then followed me back to my cubicle. I snatched my clothes out of the bottom drawer of an empty filing cabinet. Niko sat down in the desk adjacent mine and powered up the computer. His presence was the only thing that stopped me from stomping about my cubicle and slamming drawers like a frustrated child. I gathered the last shreds of my pride and tried to pretend I was invisible.
“Meet me out front once you’re changed,” Niko said over his shoulder as I slunk out of my cubicle.
I tripped and dropped my pants. “Uh. Okay.” He could have said “meet me out front once you’re naked” and I probably would have agreed. I snatched up my pants and did my best not to look like I was running.
You’ve really got to get a grip, I told myself, and felt ridiculously proud of the fact that I’d managed to berate myself silently rather than out loud.
I changed in record time in the large handicap stall. My jeans and lightweight long-sleeve buttercup-colored T-shirt felt bulky and as loose and relaxing as a muumuu after my miniscule spandex outfit. When I slipped my black jacket on, I felt comfortable for the first time all day. The fact that I could cross my arms over my chest again was the cherry on top.
I stuffed the costume clothing into my purse, but the guns, the holsters, and the gargantuan padded bra wouldn’t fit. It was a choice between stuffing the bra or the guns in the costume’s backpack. If it hadn’t been for Niko, I’d have hidden the guns, or better yet, returned them to Will and Joy, but I didn’t want to make Niko wait, and there was no way I was going to chat with one the most attractive men I’d ever met with a nearly solid foam double-D bra dangling from my fingers.
I gave the business woman washing her hands at the communal sinks a fright when I walked out with a gun fisted in each hand and the holsters slung over my arm.
“They’re fake,” I told her, but I don’t think she believed me, especially not when I whacked one of them into the wall as I tried to open the door, and it chipped the paint. I wedged the door open as she scurried toward the stall she’d just vacated.
Niko sat in one of the office building’s lobby chair. When he saw me, he stood and headed toward the doors. “I’m glad it’s Brad you’re upset with,” he said, and I thought I detected a hint of a smile at the corner of his mouth.
I tried to downplay it, like carrying guns was an everyday occurrence for me. “They don’t fit in my pockets,” I said. I shrugged, and one of the holsters fell to the ground. I bent to retrieve it, scrapping the gun against the sidewalk with a nails-on-chalkboard sound. Wincing, I tried to juggle the heavy weapons to one hand. Niko swiped the holster off the ground and handed it to me when I straightened. I said nothing and concentrated on dampening my blush as I followed him through the parking lot.
A car glossy black, four-door BMW chirped, and Niko opened the driver’s door. I eyed the expensive car, the cream-colored leather interior, then my reflection in the polished hood. I’d left my hair in braids because I knew it was going to look clownish when I finally let it down. They made me look younger despite the amount of makeup I still wore. I rolled my shoulders back and stood a little straighter to compensate.
I met Niko’s expectant gaze and waited for him to tell me whatever he’d called me out here to say.
“Get in,” he said. He slid into the driver’s seat and shut his door.
It took me a moment to get my legs to work. Niko was sexy as hell, and he made me nervous just by looking at him. Not only did his stellar looks have a numbing effect on my thoughts, but he was also the epitome of everything I wasn’t when it came to being an illuminant enforcer. There was no doubt in my mind that he could have taken care of every single imp and vervet at the convention—blindfolded and while eating with chopsticks. It was one thing to bumble along with Rose at my side and only three days on the job under my belt. But when I thought of how I must look from his eyes, my ineptitude was painful. He couldn’t have been much older than me, and he’d already been promoted to the highest enforcer level. I cringed to imagine what he must think of me.
Niko popped the passenger door open from the inside, which I was pretty sure he’d done more to save his paint after having seen my dexterity with the guns than out of courtesy. I slid awkwardly into the seat and piled the guns, backpack, and my purse onto the floorboard at my feet. I pulled the door shut, then looked at Niko to find him watching me with an unreadable expression.
“Um, are we going somewhere?” I asked.
“I talked with Doris this morning,” he said.
“Oh?” My mind raced. Doris no doubt told him how incompetent I am, which wasn’t a newsflash to anyone. She also could have told him about the hound. It seemed she’d already ratted on me to Mr. Pitt.
“How long have you known what you can do?”
“Not just the vision but the whole lux lucis–manipulation thing?”
He nodded.
“Three days.”
He turned on the car and buckled his seat belt. I pulled my own on and tried to guess what he was thinking. For all I knew, he could have been contemplating the diversity of his 401(k) portfolio or what he wanted for dinner.
“Doris said she did some training with you.”
“Yes.” I answered, though it wasn’t a question. My neurons finally squirmed through the miasma of hormones and registered the obvious. “Are we going to train?”
“We’ve got work to do, but I guess it’ll work as on-the-job training. All this time that you’ve been logging at the convention hasn’t help
ed the rest of your region. Especially not with a demon in town.”
“Oh, good. I’d really like to take care of some of those smaller problems,” I said, thinking of the construction site and the hoodlums that were raising the evil in the region. Plus, the thought of cleansing that area and then returning to rub it in Mr. Pitt’s face sounded pretty good right about then.
Niko cocked an eyebrow at me. “Doris also told me that you don’t have anything in your arsenal more potent than pet wood, which makes me think those guns aren’t loaded with anything special.”
“Uh, no.” That was an option? “They’re props.”
“Why are you leaving yourself so vulnerable?”
Confessing that knives scared me and that carrying around even unloaded guns made me nervous was out of the question. I was trying to project an aura of confidence, especially since no one else seemed to have any confidence in me. Plus, if word got back to Mr. Pitt that I was scared, I was pretty sure he’d take back that comment about keeping me around for my fighting spirit.
“I didn’t think I’d need them.” I realized that I’d admitted more than I’d wanted to and quickly added, “This soon. I didn’t think I’d need them this soon.”
Niko let that one ride without comment and finally backed out of the parking space. The parking lot was only half full since it was a little past four thirty on a Friday. I eyed the pink horizon and the warm glow of the setting sun behind the clouds on the horizon.
It was shaping up to be a nice November weekend—not too cold, and only a partial chance of showers. Normal people were cutting out of work early to head up to the slopes for some weekend skiing or to the grocery store for weekend supplies. Freed from the chains of work, people were headed out to movies or the mall, or to mow the lawn or whatever homeowners did on the weekend. Not a single normal person driving the crowded streets was plotting how to remove a demon from their backyard or track down a roaming hound of evil and some wayward teens.
A Fistful of Evil: An Urban Fantasy Novel (Madison Fox, Illuminant Enforcer Book 1) Page 16