by Nalini Singh
“It would reflect poorly on our skills to return fewer leprechauns than we were assigned to protect,” he continued smoothly. “The best outcome of this evening’s shenanigans is political embarrassment. The worst would be if Prince Finnegan or his friends are captured by agents of the Unseelie Court. Leprechauns are the bankers of the Seelie Court. It could give those agents the means to send the economy of the supernatural world into a downward spiral should they gain access to the gold stores; but the security of those potential wishes is our paramount concern. The prince would have no choice but to grant his captor three wishes. And coming from a leprechaun prince, those wishes would carry world-altering power.” He leveled a stare at the assembled agents. “It is critical that those wishes not be made or granted.”
That explained a lot. I didn’t think folks would be getting so worked up if this was only about some leprechauns missing curfew.
“Specifically who can we expect to run into out there?” I asked.
Hand Crusher snorted, then grunted in pain as another agent kicked him under the table. Either I had a defender, or someone just didn’t like bad manners. I’d take either one.
“Any number of things that call a lair—or the underside of a rock—home. But for something of this importance, our most likely opposition will be goblins.”
Oh crap.
On the list of things your momma warned you about, goblins were in the same class as fast boys in faster trucks times a couple hundred. There were some things humans didn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell of resisting, and goblins lounged seductively at the top of the list.
“Photos of Prince Finnegan and his party—actual and glamours—are being e-mailed to your phones,” the ogre continued. “There’s not much chance of the boys running around town looking like the supporting cast from Darby O’Gill and the Little People, but you never know. His Highness and his companions were inebriated when they were picked up, and since drunk leprechauns don’t make the best decisions, their behavior for the remainder of the evening is an unknown factor. You’ll also receive a list of the clubs they wanted to go to, but if they want to throw us off, they won’t stick to the list. Most of the clubs on the list have surveillance cameras, though not all, as we’re not exactly dealing with high-class establishments.”
An agent laughed. “Just find the club where the girls are getting gold pieces instead of dollars.”
“They had us run by an ATM,” one of the original team muttered. “They’ve got cash.”
Laughs were joined by snorts. I couldn’t help it; I joined in.
“When a leprechaun goes out on the town or out of town, they have a bottomless money bag tied to their belts,” the ogre explained. “This pouch goes straight to their personal pot of gold.”
“Add muggers to the list,” Ian said.
“Then that mugger would be getting back fewer fingers than they went in with. Gold’s not all that’s lurking at the bottom of those bags. Flash the photos around to bouncers and bartenders. Five leprechauns on the town will definitely be making use of the bars wherever they go. Thankfully, there’s one thing we know for sure—they’ll be sticking together. Find one, and you’ll find them all.”
“Has the queen been told that they’re missing?” I asked.
“Not until this agency has expended every resource available to us to locate and apprehend them. As our seer, you are our best—and potentially last—resource.”
I caught a glimpse of yet another smirk from Hand Crusher. Someone wanted me to screw up even worse than he already had. Too bad I wasn’t close enough to kick him myself, or I’d have taken a shot.
“We thought the agents assigned to the bodyguard duty would be more than adequate for the task.” Moreau’s eyes narrowed at Hand Crusher. Busted. “We were wrong. We underestimated our charges’ craftiness—as well as our agents’ discipline. I, as well as Madame Sagadraco, am disappointed in how the situation was allowed to deteriorate.” His cold eyes lingered over the first team of agents. “Neither she nor I wish to experience that disappointment again.”
Silence. The scared kind. I joined in. The first team had failed their test. Mine was just beginning.
This was the kind of assignment no corporate newbie wanted to get on their first night on the job. A race against goblin agents of the Unseelie Court while we hit New York’s strip joints, and me with a partner who considered the assignment as glorified babysitting, searching for a pack of horny, shapeshifting leprechauns looking to get lucky.
A group of us took the elevator down to SPI’s parking garage in silence. Moments later, a pair of steel doors slid apart in a whisper of air, opening into one of the city’s many abandoned subway tunnels. In this particular tunnel, the tracks had been removed, and the ground smoothed and paved into a parking garage. Beyond, what looked like a perfectly normal street—except it was more than five stories underground—stretched into the distance; I’d seen it once on my orientation tour of the complex.
A shadow suddenly loomed in—and over—my peripheral vision.
“This is Yasha Kazakov,” Ian said from beside me. “He’ll be our driver and backup.”
I turned in the direction Ian indicated, extended my hand, and froze.
Yasha Kazakov was a werewolf.
At least that was the aura my seer vision showed me.
Though, believe it or not, that wasn’t why I was staring. I’d seen werewolves before; I’d just never seen one carrying a massive .45 in a shoulder rig, and wearing fatigues and a T-shirt that read: “Don’t run, you’ll only die tired.”
And if that wasn’t enough—and it was plenty—he was big, somewhere between six foot seven and Sasquatch. His hair was brown trying real hard to be red. Add the werewolf aura my seer vision showed me, and Yasha Kazakov was well over seven foot tall.
“In a city where there are more supernatural perps than parking spaces, having a reliable drop-off and pick-up guy’s a must-have,” Ian told me. “And there’s no one better at turning a rampaging monster into a hood ornament.”
The Russian stuck out a paw that promptly engulfed mine. “I am Yasha.” His accent was almost as thick as his chest. His grip was human firm, not werewolf crushing. I was glad he’d learned to ease up before he got ahold of me.
“Makenna,” I managed, my voice sounding almost as small as I felt. “Call me Mac.”
The Russian gave a quick nod and a smile, and gave me my hand back with everything intact. “Mac.” He looked at Ian and the smile broadened into a grin on the verge of becoming a laugh. “Which den of sin do we visit first?”
“We’ll assume the leprechauns didn’t go back to the club they vanished from. Regardless, the first team will stake that one out.”
Yasha gave a single, booming laugh. “This time they can watch, yes?”
One of the elven agents gave Ian a wave as he, the second elf agent, and the human female agent who’d given Hand Crusher a hard time, got into one of the sedans.
“Mike, Steve, and Elana will be teaming with us,” Ian told me. “Mike knows our contacts in the clubs and can talk his way into or out of anything. Steve has enough mage skill to convince anyone that anything they saw has a perfectly normal—and non-supernatural—explanation. Comes in handy when things get too strange for civilians.”
“And Elana?” I asked.
“When there are dark alleys that need investigating, she goes in first.”
“Preternatural night vision?”
Ian shook his head. “Just mean.”
“And I am the extractor,” Yasha told me. “There is trouble, I am called.”
I gave a couple of slow nods. “I can see that. Why have an entire extraction team when you really only need one?”
WE took the biggest SUV in SPI’s fleet. With the huge Russian werewolf as our driver, it wasn’t like we had a choice.
Yasha drove the Suburban in silence down the subterranean “street,” and after about half a mile, he flipped open a panel on the dash, pus
hed a button inside, and a section of wall opened to our right that was just large enough to hold the SUV. Yasha pulled in, stopped, and turned off the engine. The doors closed behind us, and Yasha pressed a second button. Almost immediately, the car began to rise; the only sound the low rumble of some serious hydraulics hidden under us. The elevator stopped with a disconcerting jerk, and a pair of doors in front of us opened, revealing another parking garage.
There couldn’t have been more than a few inches of clearance between the top of the Suburban and the concrete slab above it. I didn’t have claustrophobia; I just didn’t like the thought of heavy things squashing me, and concrete slabs certainly qualified. Yasha drove the SUV upward through the parking deck in nearly nauseating spirals until we exited the garage on a familiar section of West Third Street, a block from Washington Square Park.
Ian Byrne took a case out of his jacket pocket and handed it to me. “You’ll need these.”
I opened it. Inside were sunglasses, really cool and expensive sunglasses.
“These clubs will be dark,” Ian began.
I grinned. “It’s dark and I’m wearing sunglasses.”
My stoic partner didn’t get The Blues Brothers reference; or if he did, he wasn’t amused.
“They’re not sunglasses,” he said. “Put them on.”
I did. Suddenly I could see every detail inside and out of the Suburban as if it were broad daylight instead of o’dark thirty. “Nifty.”
“Does your seer vision work with the glasses?” Ian asked.
I glanced up front at Yasha. His werewolf aura was hunched to fit in the big SUV. “Like a charm.”
“Good. You’ll be wearing those in the clubs.”
“Gladly.”
My partner gave me a quizzical glance.
“If strange men are going to see me in a strip joint, at least they won’t get to see me seeing them. And it’ll make it easier for me to ignore them and anything they may be . . . doing. I can guarantee you I won’t be looking at anything but leprechauns.”
“You won’t just be looking for leprechauns,” Ian said. “Any agents of the Unseelie Court will be glamoured as well; unless they’re using humans, in which case we’re looking for suspicious behavior.”
“There’re behaviors that aren’t suspicious in a strip club?”
Yasha snorted from the driver’s seat. “All behavior is suspicious in hoochy-koochy parlors.”
I sat up straighter and grinned. “That’s what my grandma calls ’em.”
“They’re probably the same age,” Ian muttered.
I considered that possibility. If they kept their snouts clean and didn’t go on people-eating binges, werewolves could live a long time. I studied our werewolf driver/extractor. Yasha seemed to be nice. Though as with all werewolves, I imagined that changed during “that time of the month.” Mood swings, cravings, anger, and irritability—trust me, you ain’t seen cranky until you’ve seen a werewolf trying to force down their natural inclinations during a full moon. I knew better than to ask an older woman her age, but I didn’t think a werewolf would mind; at least I didn’t think this particular werewolf would.
“How old are you?”
“Next month, I am ninety-six.” The big Russian grinned in the rearview mirror at Ian. “For surprise party you are planning, hoochy-koochy parlor will be fine, but make sure is good one.”
“For the last time, I’m not planning a surprise party.”
Yasha glanced over at me and winked. “Your new partner is very good at keeping secrets.”
I slid my Go-Go-Gadget sunglasses up on my head. “That doesn’t surprise me.”
“How much do you know about leprechauns?” Ian asked.
“Just what they taught in orientation,” I said. “What they are, where to find them, how to catch one—and to watch out for those wishes. Usually a supernatural doesn’t use a human glamour unless they have a good reason. Are leprechauns up to no good, or do they interact with humans on a daily basis?”
“Yes.”
“Pardon?”
“Yes, to both,” Ian said. “Leprechauns typically work in the Financial District. They have a sixth sense about which way the market’s going to go. If you can get a leprechaun as a financial advisor, your investments are guaranteed to thrive. Though you should always get their commission amount agreed to in writing sealed with a blood-pricked thumbprint, drawn up by a lawyer mage. Otherwise, your leprechaun money manager will skim off the top to top off his pot of gold. Some of the commodities companies that went belly up a few years ago due to creative accounting?”
“Yeah?”
“Because there were leprechauns high up in the companies. They’re great at making money—but they’re even better at lining their own pockets. Vivienne Sagadraco has used leprechauns in the past at Saga Investments, but got tired of having to watch their every move. She prefers to make her own investments with the help of a team of clairvoyants.”
I nodded in approval. “Nice to know the boss doesn’t take risks with our 401ks.”
“Our leprechaun nobles shouldn’t be difficult to spot, even using human glamours. It’s a bachelor party of five guys. There can’t be that many of them making the rounds tonight. And when we get them cornered, remember that leprechauns will promise anything to gain their freedom, and their loyalties are to themselves and that’s it. To trust a leprechaun for an instant means you’re either a fool or suicidal.”
“Is like playing Russian roulette,” Yasha said. “On the upside of playing with a gun, you only lose once.”
“What if the prince and his boys decide to split up?” I asked.
“Then it’s going to be a long night.” Ian paused and looked away from me. “Go ahead,” he said.
Then I realized he was on the phone. I’d never used those little Bluetooth earphone thingies, and I wasn’t about to. They made you look like you were walking around talking to yourself. Though I could see where they’d come in handy in the monster hunting/supernatural sleuthing business. If I was being chased down by something with six legs and a hankering for people sushi, I know I’d want to be hands free.
“I am from Saint Petersburg.” Yasha made no effort to keep his voice down or to stop Ian from hearing his caller. Apparently the Russian was more interested in talking to me than being considerate of Ian. It sounded like someone was miffed at potentially being stiffed for a surprise party. Since Yasha was our driver and backup, my partner might want to rethink that.
“I’m from a little town called Weird Sisters. It’s in the far western point of North Carolina.”
Yasha cocked an eyebrow. “Weird Sisters?”
“It was named after the three witches in Macbeth, and weird does describe most of the townfolk. It’s on a ley line that magnifies psychic and paranormal energies. I don’t know if there’s anything to that or not, but something attracts people—and non-people—to stop and stay.”
“Is your family people or not-people? My pardon, but I am not a seer, so I cannot tell if you wear glamour or not.”
I smiled. “That’s okay. Me and my family are plain vanilla human.”
“Plain vanilla?”
“Just regular folks. A lot of my family are seers who’ve gone into law enforcement. As long as anyone can remember, there’s been a Fraser as marshal, then sheriff. Right now, my aunt Vicki’s the police chief.”
There’s a hesitation in Ian’s phone conversation. I couldn’t hear anyone speaking on the other end of the line, so it was Ian who did the pausing. Then “Sir, are you there?” said a tinny voice on the other end.
“Yes, I’m here. I heard what you said,” Ian told the caller. “First three clubs on the list have been eliminated.”
My new, and apparently curious, partner had also heard every word I had said, too.
“When I was little, I wanted to be an investigative reporter for our local paper,” I continued to Yasha, talking just a wee bit louder so my partner wouldn’t have to work so hard to eavesdr
op. “Protect the prey from the predators in my own way, without becoming a cop. But in a town with more than its fair share of actual psychics, unsolved crimes were gonna be few and far between.” I shrugged. “So I decided it was time for me to leave for good.”
“Little town in mountains sounds nice. Peaceful,” Yasha said almost wistfully. “Why come here?”
I shrugged again. “I wanted to use my journalism degree but all I could get was a job at a seedy tabloid called the Informer. You heard of it?”
The Russian chuckled. “And not in a good way.”
“That’s the place. Only stories like ‘Donald Trump is a werewolf lovechild’ had any hope of making it to the front page. If a story was the truth, great; if not, lies worked just fine. Our readership was gullible as hell and thought everything we printed was the gospel truth anyway.”
Yasha snorted in derision. “No werewolf would have hair like that. Would look foolish.”
“Lucky for me, one of my stories put me in Ms. Sagadraco’s sights. By that point, I’d take any job that’d let me regain some self-respect. When the HSR ladies called me with an offer, I couldn’t resign fast enough.”
Yeah, I’d traded the scent of mountain laurel for diesel fumes, and a ley line running under the mountains for a subway line running under the city, but New York had an energy all its own. The mountains had a heartbeat, a soul. Maybe it was the ley line, running under them, maybe it was something else.
I had the same feeling when I’d arrived in New York. It was alive. The city lived and breathed. It could also devour, but so far, it’d kept its fangs and appetite to itself. I hadn’t been chewed up and spit out in the general direction of the Mason-Dixon Line, so I considered my move north to be a success.
THERE it was, glowing in all its purple-neon glory over a door that was intended to look like something you’d find at one of those medieval-themed places that served dry turkey legs and cheap beer in even cheaper plastic tankards.
Fairy Tails.
Oh Lord.
“Seriously?” I asked.
“I’m afraid so,” Ian replied.
The bouncer was predictably huge and surprisingly human. He was also dressed like the Jolly Green Giant complete with a club that I hoped was as plastic as the tankards inside; though when he set it down to open the door for us, it made a disturbingly solid thud on the sidewalk.