"Awesome," Beck said, bobbing her dark head. "What's the plan?"
Ness looked at Jason. "SA-7, I want you to remain lead on this case; therefore, the next step is up to you."
Jason resisted the urge to rub his temples; a bitch of a headache was growing there, and he knew it wouldn't be the last one before these bastards were put down. "Frog, can you run any further analyses on the samples for a manufacturing lab or anything else about where they came from?"
"I can try. I'll get the chem lab on it first thing."
"Good." He turned his gaze to one of the younger Agents at the table, none of who had spoken so far in the meeting. "SA-13, get in touch with the DEA, APD, ASH, and the local hospitals and see if any of their recent cases match the symptoms we're looking for. SA-15, get a sweep done for any energetic activity in the last, say, six months that shares characteristics with the formulas on the drug. Patel, keep looking for this Devouring Fire creature. All of you report with your initial findings at sunset tomorrow. We'll proceed from there."
A chorus of "Yes, sirs" followed the dismissal, and they all rose and filed out, leaving him with Ness and Beck.
His twin was standing up, too, but leaned in and said quietly, "You really need a shower, bubba. You smell like a blowjob."
He rolled his eyes. "Go away."
"Hope it was a good one," she sang, practically flouncing out of the conference room.
He heard Ness sigh, and looked over at her.
"I don't like the sound of this one," she confided, folding her hands. "There's a lot of potential for big and bad. I don't like that some drug dealer has the cojones to move into this town when we have the rep we have."
"We'll shut him down," Jason said. "We've dealt with that kind of arrogance before—the bigger the balls, the smaller the brain."
"I hope you're right. I suppose there's no sense worrying until we have more information. Keep me in the loop, SA-7, as always."
"Yes ma'am."
She started to rise, and then asked, "How's the trainee doing?"
"Sara?" He tried to sound strictly professional and unbiased. "Quite well. She got through the first three months, that's a good sign; she's exceeding standards everywhere but weapons, and even there she's improving. She's dedicated."
"Good, good. Send me the scores on her quarterly exams when you get them."
"Yes ma'am."
Ness departed for her office, where she'd no doubt be at work even later than he usually was, and he was left to switch off the conference room lights and AV equipment, thoughts wandering through the case and back again. He left for the locker room, where he disarmed, disrobed, and administered the oft-recommended shower, sniffing himself as he climbed under the spray.
Not so obvious. He needed friends who had neither psychic nor supernatural senses.
He pulled on his usual off-duty uniform, jeans and a faded Black Flag t-shirt from his punk days in California, and coded off, but didn't return to quarters; he went to his office instead and filled out the opening case paperwork for Pentecost.
He had to admit the case was making him a bit uneasy too, but he attributed that to the religious imagery—a Church holiday, speaking in tongues, visions of God. He wasn't a believer, in the spiritual sense; he'd seen both too much and too little. But he had been raised in a Catholic home, had spent most of his youth surrounded by nuns, and after being persecuted for his sexuality for most of his years, talk of God tended to bother him.
As he was finishing a few notes on the events of the evening, he sensed someone at the door. "You're up late," he commented, lifting his eyes.
"Says one who knows." Rowan leaned sideways against the doorframe, smiling, just the sight of him enough to make Jason's heart stumble drunkenly around in his chest.
It had been several days since they'd seen each other, and in that time the Elf's hair had faded to a sun-drenched gold with twenty shades of brown and a bit of stalwart green, and his eyes were the color of the reflection of trees in a puddle. He was looking even lovelier these days now that Sara's…efforts…were paying off. Again, for the thousdandth time, Jason debated saying something…asking…begging.
He shoved the need aside. Someday.
"You missed our date," Rowan pointed out. "We were supposed to meet for coffee an hour ago."
"Shit—I'm sorry." Jason looked at the clock on his computer; sure enough, he had lost track of time. "I had a briefing with Ness about a new case. I should have called."
A fluid shrug. "I know I'll never be your first love as long as there's mayhem," Rowan said, feigning offense.
Jason wanted nothing more, in that moment, than to step around the desk and shove the Elf back against the wall, take his mouth in a kiss, and show him exactly who his first love was.
"Well, I'm off now," Jason forced himself to say around the ever-present lump of suppressed emotion in his throat. "Or were you headed to bed?"
Rowan shook his head, the shining fall of his silken hair just itching to be brushed back past his ear. "I can stay up a bit later."
Soon after they were ensconced at their table in the lounge, Jason covertly watching Rowan over the rim of his mug as the Elf stirred sugar and some form of milk made from almonds into his. His hands were so graceful, they made everything a dance; how might it feel if they—
"…case," Rowan was saying, and looked up in time to catch the expression on Jason's face. "Are you even listening?"
"Oh, yes. Yes, the case. Ness thinks it's going to be a tough one."
"What do you think?"
Jason dragged his mind back to the conversation, and to the present, not a distant hoped-for future he could only dream about. "I think she's probably right. I know we'll catch whoever's doing it, but depending on the size of the operation it could take months. It's hard to speculate."
Rowan, thoughtful, noted, "It's a bit odd to see someone using a completely harmless medium to disperse a magical formula. Usually the drug makers start with a base like Ecstasy or meth."
"Which makes them easier to track," Jason said. "Start with a sugar pill and it's harder to pinpoint a source. Plain old sucrose can come from anywhere. Although…there are industrial sugars made only for the food trade, with differing levels of glucose and fructose depending on the desired product. The average consumer can't get custom-made sugar, but a big company could."
"Then comparing it to regular table sugar might be a place to start," Rowan nodded. "How do you know so much about sugar if you don't eat?"
"Alton Brown," Jason deadpanned, and Rowan laughed. "I may not eat, but I do drink.”
"I'll bet vampires are beverage connoisseurs, then. What's your favorite, besides coffee?"
"Blood."
"All right, then, do you have a favorite…blood type, or something? Is there a difference?"
"Absolutely," Jason replied. "No two people taste exactly alike, but there are definite similarities based on diet, ethnicity, region, even sexuality. The types themselves have subtle differences as well. It rather depends on what you're in the mood for—a strict vegetarian would taste…cleaner, say…than a Texas cattle-muncher, but sometimes junk food is what you want, so you'd go for something like a college stoner who never exercises and eats nothing but pizza."
Rowan toyed with his spoon. "Have you ever had Elven blood?"
He couldn't help himself, he just couldn’t. He leaned forward slightly, lowering his voice. "No, but I can tell you what it would taste like. Sweet, but not cloyingly so…like honey, maybe, or some exotic nectar. An undertone of vanilla, perhaps just a touch of spice. Cardamom. Cinnamon would be too sharp. Notes of clear water and cedar bark…and sunlight. You would taste like sunlight."
Pointed ears turned bright pink, and the Elf bit his lip, his hair falling over his face to cover how deeply he was blushing. "I…I didn't know sunlight had a taste."
"It does to us."
"But it's deadly to you."
"Yes. Imagine the taste of something you long desperately
to touch, even though it burns you to ash."
Rowan swallowed hard. "That's…wow." He peered out from behind his hair, and their eyes locked, an intensity in the Elf's that left Jason shaking internally. "Do you think you'll ever have the chance to try it?"
Jason leaned forward, extending one hand, fingers brushing lightly over Rowan's lips. "Someday."
The moment carried out forever, neither of them able to breathe, until finally Rowan broke eye contact and looked down at Jason's coffee cup. "Another?" he half-stammered.
Jason let out his breath slowly. "Please."
Part Four
One of Sara's favorite things about spending the night in Rowan's quarters was taking a shower, whether alone or otherwise.
Rowan was in the highest pay scale for Agents, and while on paper it might not look like their income was that impressive, when one considered that room, board, and healthcare were all paid for by the government, that left employees with a surprising amount of disposable income, compounded by the fact that few of them had lives outside their work.
Still, being immortal meant that he could outlive his job, and that meant thrift, or at least shrewd investment. Sara was fairly certain that the vampires were pretty wealthy, and that the Elf kept the lion's share of his paycheck back in savings.
Rowan had been a rethla, however, and part of his training involved knowledge of aromatherapy coupled with impeccable grooming. His one real extravagance, then, was in the form of bath and body products, which Sara indulged in with hedonistic delight every chance she got.
She stood under the steaming water—he'd had a shower head installed with about sixty settings ranging from gentle patter to skin-peeling thunder—inhaling the scent of lavender and chamomile, one of several body washes lined up along the shelf above the tub. There was a rosemary-mint concoction for early morning, which had woken her from a near dead sleep more than once; then there was a blend she didn't touch, as it was Rowan's personal scent, something involving woods and resins that barely left its signature on the skin, but would whisper from his hair or neck as he passed by her, kissed her, or she fell asleep on his shoulder. Just sniffing the bottle was enough to make her belly burn.
Sara scrubbed stubborn bits of dough from her hair and washed off a streak of butter that had found its way across her cheek, smiling. She was tired, and if she ever saw another cookie again she'd throw up, but she'd had a lot of fun—she couldn't remember the last time she'd laughed so much.
They hadn't gotten much planning done for the Lammas ritual, but that was all right; they'd set a date to meet again over the weekend when they both had a few free hours. That was just fine by Sara, who wasn't all that enthusiastic about the cat-herding frustration of dealing with groups of Pagans, but she was looking forward to hanging out with Sage again.
The girl was smart, funny, and one of the most upbeat people Sara had ever met, without being one of those sunshine-up-your-ass types. Being stuck in a windowless, hot kitchen up to her elbows in cake batter was her version of Eden.
"I mean, yeah, I'd love to have a funky little bakery somewhere in Austin, but there's so much stress involved in running a business like that." Sage had told her, in between batches of cookies going in and coming out of the massive ovens, about her grandmother, who ran a bakery of her own for twenty years before succumbing to Alzheimer's, and how Sage had learned to knead and measure at her knee. "She gave tons of bread away to the homeless and spent all her free time baking for soup kitchens. She taught me that there's no better way to show someone you love them than to feed them."
Sara listened to her stories, rapt and mystified as she always was when she heard someone talk about having a real family. "It sounds like you loved her a lot."
"Yeah. When she was in the hospital I took her food all the time. I remember…” Sage brushed her forehead with the back of her hand, and Sara saw the ghost of tears in her eyes as she went on. "The last time I went to see her, she didn't know who I was, but when she took a bite of the bread I brought, for just a second, she was there—my Nana. She smiled, and told me she was proud of me. After that she went downhill fast."
"So…how did you get into the SA?" Sara asked, hoping to steer the conversation somewhere happier.
"Luck. The SA contracts its Food Service, Housekeeping, and other service staff out through a company called ServCo. That way you never actually apply for a job directly with the SA, you get hired by ServCo, where you're basically a temp while they figure out a permanent job for you. I worked in a couple of schools and a hospital first. They saw that I'm good at tailoring recipes to fit special dietary needs, and offered me a job here. It was just after Nana died, so I wanted to go somewhere really different. I guess I got my wish."
"No kidding. But it seems like you like it here."
"God, I love it. Like I said, it's not glamorous, but it's really satisfying. Where else would I get the chance to make a potato-kelp birthday cake for a Naiad?"
Once she got to Rowan's apartment, Sara stripped off her sweat-soaked and flour-encrusted clothes, and took the longest shower she could justify, thankful to smell herbs instead of chocolate, which was an unfortunate side effect of Sage's job.
She climbed out, humming, and pulled on one of Rowan's bathrobes; another place he refused to skimp was on his off-duty wardrobe. This one was dark green, and so soft and light it barely felt like wearing anything. She padded through the apartment, lighting candles, turning on the stereo, and getting herself a glass of wine. By now she'd lost her discomfort at making herself comfortable in what was, after all, the Elf's inner sanctum. She had a toothbrush here, after all.
She settled onto the couch, sipping her wine, feeling more content than she had in a long time. Perhaps it was the novelty of finally having a female friend, someone she could talk to about religion and work and not feel like she had to explain so much. They'd even discussed Rowan, somewhat, though Sage had been careful not to ask too many questions even as curious as she obviously was.
"Speaking of which," Sage had said casually later on, "are you and Rowan, like…” She quirked her eyebrows suggestively, and Sara laughed.
"Sort of. I mean, we're not, like, a couple couple, it's more of a friends-with-benefits situation. Except not."
Now Sage laughed. "All right. One thing I've learned here—relationships come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. It's hard to be a stodgy traditionalist when you're talking about Elves and vampires and whatever else we have here." She lifted an eyebrow again, and asked archly, "So as a friend, how are the benefits?"
Sara grinned. "Un-fucking-believable."
She found herself grinning again, leaning back into the sofa cushions, wondering if Rowan would be too tired when he got in to extend some of those benefits. It was finally getting to the point that sex with him was more enjoyable than stressful—she didn't worry constantly that the minute they were done he would have an episode, though she kept a loaded syringe on the bedside table just in case.
A few minutes later, she got her answer. The door lock beeped, and the Elf appeared, looking…flustered, which was not something she had thought him capable of.
"Hey, stranger," she said. "You okay?"
He nodded, but he looked confused, almost bewildered. "How was baking?"
Sara frowned. "Fun, actually. Are you sure you're all right? Would you like some wine?"
"Um…yes, that would be good."
She got up and went to pour him some, knowing quite well that all was not right with the world, but not wanting to prod—whatever it was, he'd tell her when he was ready.
As she corked the wine bottle and set it back down on the counter, a pair of hands seized her by the hips, roughly turning her around. Rowan's mouth took hers with an almost desperate urgency, and she was so shocked she could barely respond at first. His hands snaked up to untie her robe, pushing it back off her shoulders, and his lips traveled down over her neck, her shoulder, back up to her ear.
Sara had no idea what to mak
e of it—this was not how Rowan did things. He was never aggressive unless she initiated it, and he was certainly never in a hurry.
His tongue flicked out against her earlobe, and electricity crackled through her.
She decided to worry about it later.
Sara looped her bare legs around him and hauled him closer, her hands reaching down to strip off his shirt. They worked each other's clothes off with hands gone clumsy with haste, his touch possessive and almost painful, nails digging into her sides as he kissed her again and again, his tongue delving into her mouth, any hint of training and finesse buried beneath something so alien to his nature that Sara could hardly believe it: need.
Her body responded in kind, and after months of slow-burning sex that took hours of caresses and nibbles to build to a crescendo, being pounced on and manhandled in the kitchen had her wet and practically screaming before he grabbed her shoulders, wrenched her to face away, and pushed her facedown on the counter. She gripped the edge, arching her hips back to meet him as he entered her so hard she cried out with pain. The noise brought no hesitation, however, as she made it clear with her mind and her body that yes, this was exactly what she wanted, don't stop, god, don't stop—
The Agency, Volume I Page 19