“It feels like it is,” Patrick said after Jono removed his hand. “I’m her twin.”
“That doesn’t make you responsible for her.”
“I’m older than her by seven minutes.”
“Being older doesn’t mean anything when you were that young.” Jono gently turned him around, cupping his face with warm hands. “Whatever Ethan has done to her is not your fault. He should’ve been a father to you both, and never was. You aren’t to blame for his selfishness.”
Patrick listed forward and let his head slide free of Jono’s hands to sink down onto his shoulder. “Still have to kill him.”
“Yeah, love. I’ll help.”
Patrick sighed. “Okay.”
Jono took charge that morning when Patrick would’ve preferred to stay in bed. He got Patrick in and out of the shower, made sure he brushed his teeth, and gave him tea instead of coffee, which Patrick thought was an utter betrayal. Patrick complained about the lack of coffee on the drive to Eiketre but still drank the damned tea.
Sunday morning had arrived with Chicago blanketed in snow and more still coming down. Ice was pushing against the shores of Lake Michigan, snow plows and salt trucks were running nonstop, and all flights in and out of O’Hare were delayed. Which meant Patrick’s meeting with the SOA’s only necromancer wasn’t happening until late afternoon at the earliest.
“Fuck,” Patrick muttered as he glared at the email from Setsuna while Jono parked in front of the bar. “Shit. I could’ve slept in.”
“But breakfast,” Wade whined as he got out of the SUV. “I’m hungry. Housekeeping wouldn’t refill my minibar snacks.”
Jono shook his head. “I told you not to touch the minibar in your room.”
“Yeah, but I was hungry.”
Patrick got out of the SUV, wincing at the cold that slapped him in the face. With all of the delays happening, Patrick should have spent his morning at the SOA field office working on the Westberg case now that it had blown up in everyone’s faces. Instead, he, Jono, and Wade were at Eiketre. Patrick would’ve declined the breakfast offer, but when a goddess demanded you show up for a meal, he knew better than to ignore the order.
The front door was unlocked, and they let themselves inside. Magic slithered over Patrick’s shields, making his headache spike and the tea he’d carefully sipped on the drive over threaten to crawl up his throat.
“Be welcome,” Frigg said from where she and Thor sat at a pair of tables shoved together and overflowing with food.
The spread of fresh bread, cheese, meats, pâté, jam, and enough coffee to drown in was almost enough to make up for driving through heavy snowfall, if Patrick felt like eating. It wasn’t quite a blizzard, but it was getting there. Patrick would give it another day, maybe less, before it reached whiteout conditions. The SOA’s weather witches were working double shifts to try to break up some of the weather patterns, but they wouldn’t be able to disrupt it all.
Patrick would choose freezing to death in a blizzard over breaking bread with gods, but Jono had vetoed that idea. Wade, however, was more than happy to eat what Frigg offered him.
“This is good,” Wade said after sitting down and filling up a plate. He took a bite of fresh bread laden with three slices of meat, a smear of brie, and enough jam to make Patrick worried about the upholstery in their new rental.
“I could’ve sworn we taught you manners,” Patrick said, keeping his head propped up with one hand.
Wade stared at him and took another overly large bite of his breakfast and chewed loudly.
“He’s a growing dragon. Let him eat,” Frigg said, giving Wade a motherly smile.
Wade smirked at Patrick and started picking out the next pieces of meat to go on another slice of bread. Patrick resigned himself to needing to pay a cleaning cost on the SUV when he returned it to the motor pool.
“It’s good of you to care for him, though I hope you’ll be able to tend to his needs,” Thor said.
Patrick shrugged with one shoulder. “A friend of ours is a billionaire who owns a tech company. His pack tithes ours. We’ll be able to keep Wade fed.”
“You hope,” Wade muttered around his food.
“Let’s not make it a contest, yeah?” Jono said mildly. “Chew with your gob shut.”
“Any news on Odin?” Patrick asked, leaving Wade to his food.
Frigg’s expression never changed, though Thor looked as if he wouldn’t mind murdering someone.
“The valkyries are still searching. Muninn and Huginn haven’t heard the Allfather’s thoughts since he was taken,” Thor said.
“That does not mean he is gone. We would know if he was.” Frigg arched an eyebrow at Patrick. “They said Chicago had visitors last night.”
“Persephone and Demeter say hello, and that you should maybe jail Freyr since he apparently performed a fertility rite on my sister.”
Thor grimaced, setting down his coffee mug. “Freyr would not abandon his convictions for the Dominion Sect.”
“The Norns weren’t worried about him. Maybe they should’ve been.”
Patrick eyed the whiskey bottle on the table, then his coffee mug, and wondered if hair of the dog might cure him or kill him that morning. He reached for the bottle of Jameson, managed to get his fingers around the neck of it, before Jono grabbed his wrist.
“You have work today, and you’re already hungover,” Jono said.
“I’m late already. What’s another shot?” Patrick protested.
“Going in with whiskey on your breath isn’t the excuse you want.”
Jono had a point; Patrick just hated it. Sighing, he let the bottle of whiskey go and accepted the top-up of his mug from the coffee pot on the table. “Westberg was brought in yesterday for questioning with his lawyer. The guy apparently owns three houses in Chicago just for him and his wife. They’ve been staying at their Gold Coast one for months due to his mayoral campaign. He swears he can account for every second of the last two weeks, but he missed an event one of the days. They’re blaming whatever happened at the one in Lincoln Park on disgruntled activists who are against him. Without evidence, of course.”
Jono snorted. “Convenient.”
“That’s politics for you. They’re more pissed about not being able to go home to a place they stay at for a quarter of the year and hadn’t been to since last September than they are about whatever happened there.”
“Were they arrested?” Frigg asked.
“No.”
She hummed thoughtfully, staring beyond where Patrick sat. “His fundraiser dinner is still set to happen tonight at Au Hall.”
“Seriously? In this weather?”
“The election is soon. Perhaps he believes he doesn’t have the votes.”
“He’s leading in the polls,” Thor said.
Patrick gently rubbed at his temples, wishing he didn’t feel like shit, knowing he only had himself to blame. “If the SOA waits any longer to charge him, he might get elected, and then removing him from office is going to be a pain in the fucking ass. Can’t you, I don’t know, cancel it because of the weather?”
“This is Chicago. A blizzard won’t stop its citizens from going out.”
“It should.”
“There are tithes he owes us. Thor will accept them in Odin’s place,” Frigg said.
Patrick bit back the argument about accepting souls in lieu of prayers as tithes because it wouldn’t get him anywhere except maybe thrown out on his ass. “Maybe I’ll send some agents in to keep an eye on Westberg.”
“Why not go yourself?” Thor asked.
“Because I have a dead body I need raised, and my necromancer is late flying in due to the weather.”
Thor took a baguette and broke it in half with his big hands. “I have done what I can to mitigate the effects, though it has taken great effort to do so. If I undo it completely, the effects of the reactionary storm will grow elsewhere, and be worse.”
Patrick was aware of that, but it still didn’t ma
ke doing his job any easier. The general rule with a reactionary storm was to let it run its course where it was if at all possible. Choking it off just made the magic and weather worse when it came back.
“Why has it been hard? I thought you were the god of thunder? That counts as a weather god, doesn’t it?”
Thor kept making his sandwich but didn’t bother to hide his grimace as he spoke. “In a way, yes, but rain obeys Freyr more than it ever will me.”
“No wonder the weather is shit,” Jono said drolly.
Frigg’s mouth thinned into a hard line. “I will speak to him.”
Patrick snorted, then regretted the way it made his face hurt. “Good luck with that.”
The door to Eiketre was pushed open, letting in a blast of cold air. Brynhildr and Eir walked inside, both brushing snow off their shoulders. Brynhildr carried her motorcycle helmet in one hand, which she placed on one of the brand-new bar tables. The scorch marks from hellfire had been cleansed, and while the foundation and walls of the place still stood, the furnishings had all needed replacing. Patrick was a little impressed at how quickly the place had been fixed up.
Wade perked up at their arrival. “Can I go say hi to Dynfari?”
“She’s outside with the others,” Brynhildr said.
Wade nearly tipped out of his seat in his hurry, snatching up another handful of meat and bread to carry with him outside.
“We’re going to need to check his flat for a motorcycle after this trip,” Jono said.
“He doesn’t even know how to drive,” Patrick muttered.
“That’s not likely to stop him.”
Brynhildr and Eir came over to the table. Patrick eyed Eir, who bypassed an empty seat to approach him. She reached for him, her hand hovering over his head. “May I?”
Patrick knew better than to accept help from gods, but the general grossness he felt at the moment from being hungover was enough to get him to cave. “Yeah. Have at it.”
She brushed her fingers over his forehead, and a cool wave of magic washed through him. It dragged away his headache and lingering traces of nausea, took away the foul taste still coming up on his tongue from too much whiskey.
Patrick straightened up, feeling mostly human again. “Thanks.”
“We need you in one piece,” Eir said.
Patrick was never surprised by that answer. Jono shoved his plate over to Patrick and pointed at it. “Eat.”
“Any news, Brynhildr?” Frigg asked.
The valkyrie dipped her head out of respect to the other goddess. “Nothing worthwhile, my lady. We believe Hades is helping to keep the enemy hidden from us, along with Odin, and the veil is thick in this city.”
“Hades will die by my hand if need be,” Thor said as he stood from the table.
“Persephone might beat you to it.” Patrick paused before shaking his head. “Or she’ll kill you.”
Thor’s smile was condescending. “I will welcome her attempts if she tries, for she will not win that fight.”
Patrick wasn’t so sure, but it wasn’t worth arguing over. He pushed his chair away from the table and got to his feet. He grabbed the slice of bread with meat and cheese on it from Jono’s plate and folded it in half. “I need to get going. I’ll let you know if the dead have anything useful to say. Maybe see if you can’t find Freyr and get any answers out of him.”
Jono followed him out of the bar back into the snow. Wade was crouched between two motorcycles, petting the seats under the watchful eyes of a couple more valkyries.
“Let’s go, Wade,” Patrick called out.
Wade craned his head around to look at them. “Wow. You no longer smell like a distillery.”
“Funny. Get in the car. I’m dropping you both off at the hotel.”
Jono shook his head. “Drop us off at a coffee shop near your work.”
“You’ll be more comfortable at the hotel than in a coffee shop. I have a lot of work ahead of me.”
“Yeah, and you might need us. We’ll stick close by. It’ll be cheaper to feed Wade at a restaurant rather than through room service or the minibar.”
Patrick shrugged. “If you say so. I don’t know how long I’ll be.”
“It doesn’t matter. The hotel is too far away if something goes wrong.”
“It might not be.”
Jono smiled tightly. “Best not tempt fate.”
Patrick would rather shoot the Fates, but he knew bullets couldn’t kill a god.
Special Agent Anika Dandridge didn’t make it to the Chicago SOA field office until close to 1700. Patrick felt her presence before he even saw her.
Is this how I feel to everyone?
Even through his shields Patrick could sense the shroud of death that surrounded Anika, saturating her aura with a darkness that wasn’t bad, just cold. Patrick stood to greet her as she entered Dabrowski’s office, eyes flicking from her dark face to the psychopomp trotting at her feet. It took the shape of a fat little pug, gray in coloring, with keen, otherworldly eyes.
Anika herself was an African American woman in her late forties, tall, her graying hair twisted into dreadlocks pulled back in a thick ponytail. Born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana, Anika was a necromancer who owed her life to the government—literally. As with most black magic, it was illegal, but she had been granted a reprieve of life as a child after her case was appealed through all levels of the courts until it reached the United States Supreme Court. The nine justices had ruled unanimously to allow her to live.
Government interference at its finest.
“Special Agent Dandridge,” Dabrowski said as he stood. “I wish your first trip to my field office was under better circumstances.”
Anika left her carry-on by the door to come greet them. She didn’t extend her hand in greeting, but Patrick did. She eyed him for a moment before accepting the handshake. Even through his shields, he could feel the pull of her magic, a hunger in her power that reached for his soul despite his shields.
“Thanks for coming on such short notice,” Patrick said.
Anika shrugged, the ankle-length wool coat she wore shifting with the motion. “A judge signed off on my services. It’s not like I could say no.”
“I know how that is.”
“Let’s get you and your companion to the body,” Dabrowski said.
Anika glanced down at the psychopomp sitting politely by her feet. “Selene. Is the body onsite?”
“In our morgue.”
“And the supplies I requested?”
“Waiting for you. The videographer arrived about two hours ago and finished setting up the camera.”
“Excellent.” Anika graced them both with a polite smile, her eyes crinkling at the corners. “Then let’s go wake the dead.”
The SOA’s morgue in the basement reminded Patrick of the one at the PCB back in New York. The dead always had to be handled with care, and the wards embedded in the walls and floors of the morgue were different than the ones sunk into the building’s foundation.
Anika brought her luggage with her, and Selene never left her side. Patrick kept pace behind the psychopomp. As a pug, it was cute and would probably go unnoticed to mundane humans for what it truly was—a spirit guide for the dead.
Psychopomps were rare and only appeared to people whose magic dealt with the dead. Patrick had only met one before this. Spencer Bailey was an old friend from the Mage Corps and a soulbreaker with an affinity for the dead. His psychopomp had taken the shape of an ocelot with an attitude.
The head medical examiner had come in on his day off to oversee the resurrection of the body found at the Westberg home. Dr. Aaron Sheehan was a reedy man in his early fifties, a warlock, and greeted Anika with a smile that didn’t look forced.
“Thank you for your help with this matter, Special Agent Dandridge,” Dr. Sheehan said.
“Of course,” Anika said, slipping out of her wool coat and handing it to Dabrowski. “Is that the body?”
Patrick looked over at the
corpse laid out on an exam table, white paint having been brushed over the burned skin. The sigils on the corpse’s chest were there to keep the body from turning into a zombie and walking out of the building.
The videographer had set up in the corner, his camera aimed at the body. He had a visitor badge clipped to his suit jacket, a coffee cup by his feet, and looked a little nervous.
“We have, uh, the chicken?” Dr. Sheehan said.
He pointed at the cage sitting on the adjacent exam table. The chicken standing inside it blinked at them and fluttered its wings before pecking at the metal cage. It let out a loud squawk before going to the bathroom.
Anika nodded. “Yes, that will do. Let me get out my tools before we officially begin the session.”
Patrick took up a position that put him outside the frame of the video camera. He didn’t care if his name was on the record for this, but he didn’t want his face anywhere viewable. He watched as Anika knelt and opened her luggage. Inside were the personal supplies she used to do her magic, nestled inside padded pockets and boxes secured in the luggage with a multitude of straps.
Magic was personal, and always would be. Necromancy was a mystery to Patrick, mostly because it was rarely performed. Messing with a person’s soul, whether they were alive or dead, was illegal. Necromancy was restricted for a reason, not the least for the blood magic it involved.
He watched as Anika pulled out a marble mortar and pestle set, two vials of different-colored liquid, a packet of dried ingredients, a box of matches, and a sharp, clean machete, its blade etched with spellwork. She laid everything out at the foot of the exam table, then clucked her tongue at Selene.
“Please come here,” she said.
Selene trotted over to her, and Anika leaned over to pick up the psychopomp. The pug settled between the burned feet of the corpse, tongue lolling out as she looked up at Anika. Anika absently pet the pug as she glanced over at the videographer.
Anika nodded at him. “I’m ready.”
A Vigil in the Mourning Page 24