by Tegan Maher
I raised a brow. “That’s impressive considering you were sentenced to fifteen-hundred years.”
He crossed his arms and gave me a petulant frown. “Yeah, well I can tell you’ve never spent much time in The Valley.”
I huffed a breath out through my nose. “I’ve never spent any time in The Valley,” I replied. “Angel, remember?”
“We’ll take forty years off,” Callum said, stepping forward from where he’d been leaning against the wall.
I whipped my head around to glare at him.
“What?” I asked before I could stop myself. I wanted to haul him into the hall and demand to know what he was doing, but I didn’t want to show a crack in our defense. Demons sensed weakness like a miser senses gold, and he’d squeeze every drop of advantage out of that possible. It pissed me off though because now I was shooting in the dark. Had somebody given him permission to bargain? If so, why hadn’t they given it to me, or at least told me about it?
“I said we’d shave off forty years,” he replied, keeping his eye on Gregorius.
I bit the inside of my lip and struggled to maintain a neutral expression. Callum and I were going to have a Come to Jesus moment, but it wasn’t going to be in front of this dude.
Gregorius glanced back and forth between us, his expression shrewd.
“And I want moved to the top level.”
There were different levels of punishment in The Gate. Floors, so to speak. The worst of the worst were locked in a pit where they had zero access to any of the other levels. They were so evil that there was no hope for them. It was basically the hell that humans believed in.
Then there was a top level that was a whole lot less populated. It was reserved for the souls who truly had reformed. They were typically at the ends of their sentences and were waiting it out. Some wouldn’t ever go any higher than there. There was sunlight and fresh air and company. And of course, there were many, many levels in between.
“No deal,” I said before my so-called partner could agree to it. “You weren’t even out seventy-two hours before you went straight back to your old ways.”
“Those weren’t my old ways. If I’d reverted, there’d already be anarchy in that little armpit of a town. A guy’s gotta eat. I was just appealing to those who were already inclined to avarice. Those paws weren’t even charged.”
My brows shot up. “Excuse me, but aren’t you currently residing in a commandeered body? I’m pretty sure she didn’t give you permission to jump in and take over.”
He wobbled his head back and forth before he shifted his attention from me to Callum. “I suppose you got me there. Fine. Fifty years and you got a deal.”
“Forty years, take it or leave it,” Callum said, his voice flat. “All you’re doing is shaving a couple days at most off our hunt. We already know who it is. Dennis McDonald, so that info isn’t anything you can use for leverage. You have thirty seconds to decide before I take it off the table.”
I ground my teeth together at his use of the singular pronoun but managed to keep my face from showing it, or at least I thought I did.
Gregorius leaned back and hooked his arm over the back of his chair, knees spread wide. It was an obvious attempt to look aloof and in control, but considering he was in a middle-aged woman’s body and wearing a super-short sundress and combat boots that I was pretty sure the real Maisey hadn’t chosen for herself, the overall image was jarring.
“Deal,” he finally said. “The last time I seen him, he was wearin’ some freak suit. All pierced at tatted up. Goes by the name of Fish, and rumor has it, he’s holed up in some apartment over a psychic shop over on Meade. Or at least he was. I heard he got himself a broad.”
“Who? Where’s he working?” I asked. “Where’s he hang out?”
“I don’t know, man,” he whined. “I told you everything ya need to know. How hard could it be to find some weirdo goin’ by that name? Can’t be too many Fishes in the sea.” He tittered at his own perceived wit.
“You don’t know anything else?” I asked, and he shook his head.
I was still irritated over Callum’s unilateral call as well as his attitude toward me both when I first found this guy and at Bar None, and the garbage info this guy had just given us was like a thumb to the eye. No way was it worth forty years off a sentence, and I was tired of watching him control that poor woman’s body. Every second he was in there was one more second of her life that she was being tortured. I had no idea if she was even aware, but if she was, it was cruel to leave her like that.
I thought about the soul collector on my belt. No way would Adam have given me something that would only hold one soul at a time. That’s not how he worked, and if there had been a stipulation like that, he’d have told me.
Without giving it any further thought, I flicked the box off my belt loop, uttered the spell, and sucked him right out of the poor woman’s body and into the cell.
“Hey!” Callum barked. “Why did you do that?”
“Because I was tired of listening to him, and like you pointed out earlier, I have a job to do. He had nothing else of worth to tell us, so there was no need to mess around. And Maisie needed her body back.”
He raised a brow at me. “And you don’t think that was a decision we probably should have made together?”
“Nope,” I said, popping the p. “I made an administrative decision.”
“What if the containment unit wouldn’t have held both of them?”
“I don’t know you and I don’t trust you,” I said, point-blank. “But I do know Adam, and I trust him. He never does things by halves, and creating a box that would only hold one soul at a time would be, at best, inefficient.”
The poor woman sitting across from me shook her head as if to clear it and blinked a few times, interrupting our squabble. “Is he gone?” she asked, her voice shaking.
I nodded. “He is. For good. I’m sorry you had to go through that.”
She rubbed her head. “May I have some water, please? For two days, he’s done nothing but drink and eat junk food. I feel like hell.”
Michael, who hadn’t said anything during our exchange, slipped out the door.
“You knew what he was doing?” I asked.
She curled her nose and shuddered. “Every second, and he was disgusting. I’ve spent my whole life helping people, and what he did … feeding those people’s basest desires. That was despicable. I don’t think there’s a shower hot enough.”
“Are you going to be okay?” I asked, a little worried about how frail she appeared. Her face was an unnatural pasty white and her whole body was shaking.
Michael stepped back into the room and handed her a big bottle of spring water.
“Oh, I’m going to be,” she said, taking the lid off the water and draining a quarter of it in one go, “but I’m gonna get even. I’m no wimp; he just happened to catch me off guard because I haven’t dealt with a loose soul in several decades. It won’t happen again, and unless I’m mistaken, you’re gonna need all the help you can get.”
Whoa. That wasn’t what I’d been expecting.
“Well, yeah. I’m in a bind and on a timetable, but I can’t expect anybody else to put themselves at risk,” I said. “You’ve been through enough.”
“Oh,” she said, her cheeks now flaming with anger, “I’ve been through more than any person should ever have to, but they picked the wrong chick to pull that shit on. I’ve dealt with souls my whole life since before I can even remember. I’m no sideshow hack, and now they’ve made one bitter enemy. I can see them, and I’m on a mission.”
She motioned toward the soul collector. “You got any extras of those?”
Her gaze was intense, and I could sense the righteous intent within her. She meant business. I opened my mind up and examined her soul. It was battered and bruised but was one of the most wholesome ones I’d ever felt. This woman had no ill intentions at all. Well, unless you count demons and evil souls. She was also powerful, savvy, a
nd in a unique position to help us. After all, her primary gift was to see and speak with souls. Who better than that to pick out ones that didn’t belong?
I narrowed my eyes at her, pondering my options. “I don’t right now. But I could probably get one.”
“What?” Callum asked, his voice an octave higher than normal. “Excuse us, Ms. Stackpole. Kira, can we speak in the hallway for a moment?”
I sighed and pushed to my feet, making it to the door before he had a chance to push out ahead of me. Michael joined us.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Callum hissed, his face red and pinched with anger.
“I think I’m taking a very powerful woman with a unique drive to help us up on her offer,” I replied, my hackles rising. I knew when Michael assigned me a partner that this wasn’t going to go well.
“She’s a civilian, and a witch at that.”
Michael interrupted. “I take exception to that. And it’s not like you’re exactly above us. I was born with magic. You had to learn it. I don’t think less of you, and I find it damned ironic that you somehow view that woman in there as beneath you.”
That was a valid point. I saw everybody as equal, even humans, and if Callum didn’t, then we had a fundamental problem that we weren’t going to get past.
“That’s not what I mean and you know it,” he said, raking his fingers through his hair.
“Then what, exactly, did you mean?” I asked.
“I meant that she doesn’t know what she’s up against.”
“And I’d argue that she knows that better than you do,” Michael snapped. “She’s a middle-aged medium who, according to some of her references, is probably close to a hundred years old, if not older. She was just possessed, even as powerful as she is. I’m pretty sure that qualifies her to know what she’s up against, and for what it’s worth, I say you let her help. I’ve built an entire network of people here. It’s how I’m so successful. You have a mountain ahead of you, and if you’re going to make it to the top, I don’t think you’re going to do it alone.”
“She’s not trained. What if something happens to her?” he asked.
I rolled my eyes. “Something’s already happened to her. I’m not saying we take her with us and throw her in front of the biggest, baddest demons we run across, but she works with souls for a living. She’s in the perfect position to spot our targets, and there’s no reason not to let her help. Do you honestly think she’ll just let the next one she sees walk away? She won’t. And if she doesn’t have a soul collector, she’ll find another way.”
Michael sighed and changed his tone. “Look, talk to Adam. See what he thinks. I’ve met him a few times, and he seems like a solid guy.”
I wasn’t so diplomatic. “The woman’s going to help us. We’d be stupid not to take her up on it, and we may as well equip her so she can do it safely and in conjunction with us.”
Callum flexed his jaw for a minute but then gave a curt nod. “I don’t see how I’d be able to stop either of you, so I suppose I’m outvoted. When something happens to her, I want you to remember that I was dead-set against this.”
I wasn’t entirely happy with that answer on a number of levels, but until we had time to sit down and hash some things out, I’d have to settle for it.
12
“I set some wards over your place so that nobody would bother it,” I told Maisie several minutes later as we exchanged information. “As soon as I speak to Adam about you, we’ll work something out. You have no idea how much I appreciate your offer.”
She smiled, and I was surprised again by the power that rolled over her. I couldn’t believe Gregorius had been able to overcome her will. It just went to show what exactly we were up against and what could happen if you let your guard down for even a minute.
“I appreciate it,” she said. “In the meantime, if I see another, I’ll be in touch. You’ve got a long row to hoe, and I’m happy to help. Now, I’ve got to get home to shower and change out of this god-awful outfit. You take care of yourself.”
“You too,” I said, smiling.
“And Kira?” she said. “You’re gonna have to cut Callum some slack for a while. He’s in over his head with you because he still has some healing to do.”
“Healing?” I asked, and she shrugged.
“I can’t say for sure, and I wouldn’t if I could. But his soul has scars, and a few of them are fresh. Go easy on him. I sense he’s trying.”
Well, that wasn’t cryptic at all.
“I’ll do my best,” I said. “Patience isn’t exactly my thing.”
“No, but I have a feeling doing the right thing is, even when you think you’re being a rebellious badass,” she said with a ghost of a smile before she disappeared.
Michael came outside and stood quietly beside me for a minute.
“Are you here to give me sage advice, too?” I asked.
He huffed a breath out his nose. “Oh, hell no. I’m the last person to offer that to anybody. There’s a reason I work alone.”
“Yeah,” I said, my tone bitter. “Me, too. This isn’t optional.”
“Ah,” he said. “So it’s like that. I wondered. Then the best advice I can give you is to hammer it out. Don’t let things simmer. I have a feeling he’s no more used to working as half of a team than you are, and I don’t envy either of you. For what it’s worth, he doesn’t seem like a bad guy.”
I sighed. “No, I don’t think so either. We’ll figure it out, I suppose. We have to. Either that or kill each other, and I don’t think that’s what Adam had in mind when he paired us up.”
Callum came outside. “I’m sorry, about the Maisie thing, and about what I said in the alley,” he said, his tone gruff.
“And I’m sorry for sucking the dirtbag into the collection box without conferring with you first,” I said. If the guy was willing to meet me in the middle, the least I could do was close the gap.
“Well good,” Michael replied. “Now that we have that out of the way, I believe we have a demon to collect.”
I gave a sharp nod and glanced toward the sun. It was sinking toward the horizon, and we had less than an hour of daylight left. This was a bad time of year to be hunting souls considering the veil between the worlds was thinner now than at other times. That meant the living was more susceptible to possession, and souls had a little boost to their mojo. I’d rather deal with them in daylight if possible.
I was already getting a feel for the city, so when we ported back, I didn’t need Michael to tell me what direction to go. When we drew close to the psychic’s shop Gregorius had pointed us to, we crossed the street so we could get a feel for the layout.
“Aren’t the alleys where the bodies were dumped right around here?” I asked recognizing the Italian restaurant.
Michael nodded, his expression thoughtful. “They are. One’s on either side of the building, in fact. And the tattoo parlor is one block down.”
And the apartment Gregorius claimed he’s occupying is in the same building?” Callum asked, adjusting his knapsack.
“Yeah. If the building is like most of the ones around here, each of the three floors is divided into four tiny apartments. Since we don’t know which one he’s in, we’ll have to either wait for him to come or go, or ask someone. I’m not inclined to ask, though. This isn’t exactly the suburbs, and there’s a good chance that whoever we talk to would know him and alert him.”
“Then I suppose we wait,” I said. “But not for long. What if he has another victim in there?”
“What do you propose we do, then?” Michael asked. “I’m open to suggestions.”
Callum’s expression was thoughtful. “What if we were to use the scanner?”
“What?” I asked. “You mean, just scan every person coming and going?”
He shook his head, but before he could explain, Michael interrupted. “There he is, I think. Speaking of the scanner, we need to get close enough to him to use it.”
A muscled man wit
h lots of tattoos and several facial piercings had stepped out of the building. He was wearing a dirty white tank top and green work pants that hung low on his hips. Another man had been waiting for him, and he had his back to us talking to him.
“What makes you think that’s him?” I asked.
“Look at his back,” Michael said.
I had to squint to see it, but the tee-back of the shirt revealed a huge blue gamefish of some sort. The head of it took up most of his shoulder. When he turned a little, I could see an anchor tattooed on his forearm.
“Looks like a guy that would go by Fish to me,” Callum said.
Rather than follow my instincts and run straight for him, I took a breath and scanned the area. Michael had been right; it wasn’t exactly a high-end location, and unless I missed my guess, half the people gathered round had at least one crime on record.
“How should we handle this?” I asked.
“Swing wide and we’ll box him in,” Callum said. “The building will provide a barrier behind him, and we can cover the other three sides.”
“What about causing a scene?” I asked.
Callum pressed his lips together. “I don’t know that we’re going to have much of a choice here unless we make ourselves known and drive him back into the building.”
“You think he’d be that dumb?” I asked, and he shrugged.
Michael shook his head. “No, wait for him to start moving, then we push him into an alley. There’s a dead-end one one block down. Let’s hope he goes that way.”
The guy talked for a couple more minutes, then pulled a cigarette from a pack he’d fished out of his back pocket. Once he’d lit it, he started off, heading in the direction we’d hoped.
“Now what?” I asked.
“Now we box him in. I’m gonna teleport one street up and get ahead of him. Callum, you stay on him from this side of the street, and Kira, you follow him. When you come to the first alley, we move on him.”
Callum and I nodded, and Michael disappeared.
“Luck,” Callum said, then took off up the street.