The Grendel Affair: A SPI Files Novel

by Shearin, Lisa

  “Better copy the boss lady,” Ian said.

  “Already done. I’m too pretty to be the breakfast special.”

  “Whoever sent her the letter that went poof would be way ahead of you on the menu,” I told him.

  Kenji arched one dark eyebrow. “Poof?” Minus the funky haircut, he looked disturbingly like a young version of the Mr. Spock candy jar he kept filled with wasabi-covered peas.

  “Incendiary,” Ian clarified. “Delivered to her home.”

  Yasha muttered something under his breath in Russian. I didn’t understand the words, but they sounded impressed.

  “He must be a major talent with an equally major death wish,” Kenji noted.

  I just stood there being confused. Ian noticed, and surprisingly, explained it to me.

  “Sending an incendiary note to Vivienne Sagadraco took balls and then some,” he said. “Sending one that could elude her detection took scary skill. And sending it to her at home was just nuts.”

  “So . . . the guy with the scarab tattoo and without a head was working for a magically talented nutcase.”

  “Or he could have been freelancing on the side and his boss took offense,” Ian said. He gave me a sidelong glance. “Like somebody else I know.”

  “Not gonna let me forget that, are you?”

  He jerked his head toward the screen. “Considering what happened to that guy, should I?”

  “No, I don’t believe you should.”

  Kenji turned his chair so we’d all have a front row seat for what was about to happen, then he leaned back, removed the top of Spock’s head, and started popping wasabi peas like he was eating popcorn at a movie.

  “Regardless,” he said, “Ollie had information on his computer that Dr. Falke—or whoever he was working for—wanted in a bad way.”

  “Can you hack into Ollie’s computer?” I asked.

  Kenji stopped popping and just looked at me.

  “Sorry. Let me rephrase that. Have you hacked into Ollie’s computer?”

  “Yes. Nothing even remotely interesting. Whatever this guy was looking for, Ollie didn’t keep it on a computer, or at least not that one.”

  Yet another reason to pull Ollie out from the rock he’d crawled under.

  On the screen, Falke stopped clicking keys and started listening. On the opposite screen, the camera focused on the front door showed me and Ian coming into the shop. Falke had heard the bell ring above the door. The camera captured video only, so while we couldn’t hear the word he spat, we saw it just fine. He listened for a moment longer, then having apparently determined that we weren’t coming upstairs, he went back to what he’d been looking for, but did it a lot faster.

  Seven and a half minutes had passed according to the clock in the corner of the screen when a huge shadow fell over the man.

  The creature had been in the office the entire time.

  I’d been in Ollie’s office before tonight. It didn’t even have a closet, so there’d been nowhere for the thing to hide. Dr. Falke had been nervous enough when he’d heard us, but apparently he hadn’t heard a ten-foot-tall monster so much as breathe before it started killing him.

  “I didn’t know veils could hide sound,” I said in a small voice.

  A single muscle twitched along Ian’s jaw. “Apparently this one can.”

  Yasha spat a single word in Russian. I didn’t need a translation for that one.

  Dr. Falke must have heard the floorboards creak when we did. The screams started right after that—when the poor man had seen what was about to kill him. The screams were silent in the video, but we’d gotten to hear it at full volume and in person.

  Now I was grateful the camera didn’t record sound. I’d heard it once, and it’d probably be the soundtrack for my nightmares until something even scarier came along. The camera’s field of vision was only what was directly in front of the window. Ollie’s office wasn’t all that large, so even if Falke had had a chance to run, there’d been nowhere to go, and in a matter of seconds, blood spattered in a sheet across the window, and even Kenji stopped eating.

  The monster was too fast—for Falke and the camera. It was almost like the thing knew it was being filmed and stayed just out of sight. When the slaughter stopped, the only movement visible through the bloody window was the overhead light swinging back and forth.

  A massive shadow loomed over the office door. The monster was standing just out of our view. Waiting.

  It had heard us running up the stairs.

  I instinctively froze. I knew I was watching a recording, but that didn’t stop my survival instinct from telling me not to move or even breathe. Knowing that thing had been on the other side of the door from us was entirely different from actually watching it. My knees felt a little weak and I found a chair and all but fell into it.

  The monster made its escape out the window, easily leaping down into the alley two stories below, too quick for the camera to catch anything other than a blurry shadow. Suddenly something dark passed across the lens of the camera mounted on the roof of the building across the alley from Ollie’s office.

  “Now this is the scary part,” Kenji said.

  The camera automatically refocused. Filling the screen was an eye divided by a vertical slit pupil. The eye narrowed, and a blink of that monster eye later, the screen went blank.

  I just stared. “The second monster.”

  “Safe bet,” Kenji said. “I wouldn’t want to run into either one in a dark alley.”

  “Kanil already did,” Ian muttered.

  “My guess is that whatever it was ripped the camera out,” Kenji said. “We’ll need to fix that.” More clicking. “I’ll get the job req started.”

  I blew out my breath. “Crap. Time to go find Ollie.”

  Ian nodded. “The sooner, the better.”

  “I am your driver,” Yasha told Ian. “Dragon lady wants you to have both hands free.”

  “What for?” I asked.

  “Keeping you alive,” Ian said. “Whoever sent the boss that letter could have sent that thing to kill Adam Falke, or it could have been acting on its own. Either way, I think she’s right—our mastermind can’t risk those two things being found before New Year’s Eve. Kanil Ghevari was sharp; I can’t imagine anything that could’ve come up on him without him knowing. And you saw what it did just now. It’s got veils stronger than anything I’ve ever heard of.” Ian stood and instinctively checked to make sure his gun and knife were where they were supposed to be. I suspected he had more. My partner looked down at me, his dark green eyes unreadable. “Only one person here can see through those veils.”

  I knew what that meant. “That would be me.”

  “Unfortunately, yes. And the worst you’ve had to deal with so far has been a gang of horny leprechauns.” He reached for his coat. “We need to go.”

  I stood. “I have some ideas about where Ollie might be.”

  “Good. But we’re making a pit stop first.”

  “Where?”

  His scowl told me he didn’t like what he was about to say.

  “To see Sam and get you a real gun.”

  5

  JUST for the record, a real gun loaded with silver bullets is a lot heavier than a plastic water pistol filled with tequila.

  While we had no way of knowing if silver bullets could take out either monster, they would work on many of the supernaturals that the monsters’ host could have at his disposal and possibly send after us.

  It was eight o’clock in the morning, and Ian, Yasha, and I were staking out Li Fong’s just off Mott Street in Chinatown. We’d been here an hour.

  It hadn’t taken me long to figure out where Ollie was likely to be. I used simple logic then simply followed the bouncing ball. Almost every time I’d come to see him, regardless of the hour, Ollie had take-out boxes from Li Fong�
��s scattered around on the counter or his desk. For Ollie, Chinese food was comfort food. I was a hot and sour soup aficionado myself, and no one made it better than Li Fong, so I was a regular customer as well.

  Ollie had to have heard what happened last night at his shop; and if so, he was in hiding. Or he’d come to open his shop this morning, seen the police crawling all over the place, ran away, dug a hole, and pulled the dirt in after him. Regardless of which scenario Ollie was operating under, he needed comfort and Ollie had two means of comfort: money and food. He got twitchy at the mere thought of having to go for long without either one. The police still had his shop closed and surrounded with crime scene tape. That meant no money today for Ollie—and probably not for the rest of the week. He was probably holed up somewhere agonizing over the thought of all the potential after-Christmas shoppers he was missing out on; though most stores ran specials on tacky Christmas sweaters, not shrunken heads and vampire stakes. If he couldn’t be making money, food had just been bumped up the list to his number one comfort. And that meant Li Fong’s.

  Ollie had an apartment off Canal Street. Not surprisingly, he wasn’t there this morning. Considering the type of people he did business with, it’d be in his best interests to have a hidey-hole on the side. For Ollie, there was comfort in proximity, so he’d want to be close to his food source. There were rooms for rent above some of the restaurants and shops close to Li Fong’s, so I was betting that Ollie was hiding in one of them. And he had to be one of Mr. Fong’s best customers, so if Ollie wanted takeout first thing in the morning, Li would accommodate him.

  I was quite proud of myself for my train of thought. What made it even better was that Ian had agreed with me. Though after sitting for the past hour, the shine had started to fade from my choo choo and my butt was asleep.

  “Who orders Chinese at eight in the morning?” Yasha asked.

  Ian shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “A man who thinks it might be his last meal.”

  We sat some more, and watched and waited for almost another hour when there were signs of life just inside the front door of the still-closed restaurant. A tall and lanky teenager came out and shut the door securely behind him, insulated delivery carrier in his hand.

  Finally.

  “That’s Scott, Mr. Fong’s grandson and delivery boy,” I said. “Looks like Ollie just ordered breakfast.”

  I reached for the door handle; Ian’s hand over mine stopped me.

  “But we’ll lose him,” I said.

  “We won’t lose him,” Ian said. “And if we wait, he won’t see us—which is the point of following someone.”

  Scott went less than a block, stopping in front of a narrow brick building with no windows and what looked like a steel door. Balancing the takeout in one hand, Scott punched numbers into a keypad.

  I swore. “See? Now we can’t get in. If we’d followed him when I—”

  “Not a problem.” Ian kept his eyes on Scott, and extended his hand back to Yasha, who flipped open a small case attached to the underside of the dash.

  “One super-secret spy gadget coming up,” the Russian said.

  He passed something to Ian that was about half the size of a smartphone, and Ian wrapped his gloved fingers around it before I could get a good look.

  Ian started to open the door. “Okay, Mac. We’re going to get out, and once you have a clear view down the street in both directions, I want you to take a good look. I’ll check out the humans; I need you to ID any supernaturals who don’t look like they’re minding their own business.” He opened the door and got out. “Let’s go.”

  “I will make sure no one follows you,” Yasha said. “Let me know if this Ollie does not want to leave. I will help change mind.”

  Ian grinned. “I’ll do that.”

  The market down the street had opened, and two clerks were setting up a fresh fruit and vegetable display just outside the door. Despite the freezing temperatures, folks were out and about, opening their businesses, shopping, or just getting outside. The sun was out for the first time in days, and people were taking advantage of it. Unfortunately, they were all bundled up like they were setting out on an Arctic expedition. I could see through veils, but I couldn’t see through five layers of sweaters, coats, boots, hats, and scarves wound around faces so only their eyes were peeking out. And since most everyone I saw was wearing sunglasses against the snow glare, I couldn’t even see eyes. It was funny; I could see the supernaturals’ auras floating around them, so I knew what they looked like. But the humans all looked like loaded and walking coatracks. I didn’t know what the heck the humans were up to; but the trio of gnomes, the two elves, and the one troll seemed intent on their own business.

  “Clear?” Ian asked.

  “As far as I can tell.”

  We crossed the street as quickly as the icy slush would allow. When we got to the door, Ian pushed a button on the device and held it up against the keypad. It beeped, and Ian turned it around to look. A tiny display showed the keys glowing in various degrees of brightness. Ian quickly pushed the keys beginning with the dimmest to the brightest.

  “Heat detector,” Ian explained. “The key showing the faintest glow was pressed first, the brightest, last.”

  “But it’s freezing out here and Scott was wearing gloves.”

  “It’s that sensitive. Though at this temp, it wouldn’t get a reading after about two minutes.”

  The door clicked and we were in.

  I glanced over at Ian. Black leather coat, black jeans, black boots, black watch cap, unshaven face set on scowl.

  “Could you at least try to look harmless?” I whispered. “You’ll scare Scott.”

  We were in a relatively short hallway with four doors, two on each side. Scott was standing in front of the farthest door, hand raised to knock. Good. Ollie hadn’t answered the door yet. Scott saw us and recognized me. I gave him a big smile and a little finger wave. He’d seen me in Ollie’s shop before in addition to delivering to my apartment. Which boded well for the success of what I was about to try.

  The kid’s mouth gaped open. “How did you—”

  “It’s okay, hon,” I said as casually as I could. “Ollie told me the code. He’s expecting us.” That last part had to be true. Ollie wouldn’t be hiding in what was essentially a vault if he wasn’t expecting visitors.

  Scott visibly relaxed—and I reminded myself to breathe.

  “What’s he owe you?” I asked.

  “Twenty-five ninety-eight.”

  I whistled.

  “He ordered the lobster Cantonese, six crab rangoon, four eggrolls, and a—”

  I held up a hand. “That more than explains it.” Ollie was going all out on his last meal.

  I turned to Ian. “Pay the man.”

  “What?”

  “And give him a big tip. Scott’s putting himself through NYU.”

  Ian reached for his wallet, muttering under his breath. “Ollie’ll pay me back if I have to turn him upside down and shake it out of him.”

  Scott pocketed the cash and emptied his delivery bag on a table in the hall then knocked on the door for me. “Li Fong’s,” he shouted. Then he grinned, winked at me, and left.

  We heard at least three dead bolts slide back plus an iron bar.

  Ian rolled his eyes.

  Ollie cracked open the door to peek out, saw me, and his eyes widened. But Ollie’s survival instinct was no match for Ian’s determined steel-toed combat boot.

  “Scott, you little—” Ollie shouted.

  “Miss Mac tips better than you,” Scott called back over his shoulder.

  “I told you being cheap was going to get you in trouble,” I told Ollie as Ian forced our way in. “This time it might save your life.”

  • • •

  Oliver Barrington-Smythe was on his fourth egg roll and third crab rangoon.
I was on my second wave of nausea. I made a mental note never to eat Chinese food for breakfast.

  “You have to believe me,” he said around a mouthful of egg roll. “I didn’t know Adam Falkenburg would break into my office, and I have absolutely no idea why he would have a photograph of you.”

  I didn’t have to believe him, but I did. However, the late Dr. Falke’s trust didn’t go nearly that far. He’d added a couple of extra letters onto his last name just to keep Ollie from knowing who he really was.

  What I couldn’t believe was why Ollie would even consider having what Dr. Falke had been in the market to buy. My nausea might have been caused by something other than the smell of Chinese food in the morning. I thought monkey brains had to be the nastiest thing Ollie had for sale.

  I was wrong.

  Oliver Barrington-Smythe was in possession of a mummified and preserved monster arm.

  Dr. Adam Falke had been looking to buy one, and Ollie had it to sell.

  That didn’t explain why the Danish historian and archaeologist had broken into Ollie’s office to get at his computer, and it did nothing to clear up why Falke had a picture of me. But it did confirm that no object was too bizarre or disgusting for Ollie to try to make a buck on it.

  My British friend and his aliases had a pricey lifestyle to support, and had no qualms about what he did or who he conned to keep himself in the style to which he was accustomed. However, pricey didn’t necessarily mean tasteful, as was evidenced by a toupee that sat on his head like a squirrel with Taser-styled fur. I didn’t think Ollie was particularly vain; he just knew he looked like Humpty Dumpty without his rug.

  Ollie was digging into the lobster Cantonese with a spork. “Falkenburg told me he represented an interested party who wanted to buy the arm.”

  Ian and I exchanged glances. We both knew that Ollie’s interested party had to be the same person who had sent Vivienne Sagadraco a present that went poof.

  “There’s a head that goes with it. He wanted that, too. It’s a matched set.”

  I experienced wave of nausea number three. “Well, of course. You couldn’t break up a set.”