by Nalini Singh
Though after I told Ian how the little bastard had gleefully sold us out, Finn had better hope Rake Danescu used the Hand Wave of Destruction that he’d shown me on him. As a senior agent and chief agency ass kicker, Ian had first dibs when we caught up to him. If there was anything left, I’d gladly take seconds. Finn offered to put me to sleep so Danescu could have his way with me. That pissed me off; though I didn’t want to admit even to myself part of that was because I’d sleep through whatever the goblin did to me.
“I’ve so got to get a boyfriend,” I muttered.
“What?”
I winced at yet another pothole Yasha found. “Nothing.”
I was kneeling between the driver and passenger seats. The truck’s shocks were a thing of the past and were almost as worn out as I was.
Not that I wanted to watch the Russian werewolf’s kamikaze driving; in fact, I’d be happier not knowing how close we’d come to death any number of times. However, I usually called shotgun for a reason.
I was the poster child for car sickness. But with Ian literally riding shotgun, I made do the best I could and tried to convince my stomach and its contents of Coke and cookies not to leap into my throat every time Yasha found yet another pothole. I wasn’t even gonna allow myself to think about the state of my bladder. I’d been in a perfectly good ladies’ room, but thanks to the two leprechauns cuffed to one of the racks in the back of the delivery truck, I hadn’t had a chance to use it.
We were actually getting a signal from the tracking device, meaning that wherever Rake Danescu had taken Finn through the Rotten Egg Portal of Doom, at least they were still in our dimension. While we were following the flashing dot on Ian’s phone—yep, SPI had an app for tracking chips embedded in a leprechaun’s butt cheek—there was no time like the present to get some answers from my partner.
I was coming down from the effects of the clover weed, so while I wasn’t quite as forthright in my behavior and opinions, I felt like I was more than due some straight answers.
“When were you going to tell me I’m walking around wearing a bull’s-eye?”
With that, I had my partner’s full and undivided attention. I would have crossed my arms for visual effect, but they were occupied, death-gripping the cookie racks to keep me from ricocheting off the sides of the van, so I just went with a glare.
“Who tol—?” Realization hit. “Danescu. I should have known.”
“I should have known, too. You know, the boss knows, the hot bad guy—”
“Hot?”
“Hey, I thought we’d already established that. Besides, I’ll be honest if you will. I wasn’t told that taking a job as a seer at SPI came with an expiration date. Danescu told me I’d been lied to, and asked if I’d like to know why. I’d like that very much—without a side order of bullshit.”
Ian scowled.
“Sir,” I quickly added.
He ran the hand not holding the shotgun over his face, and for a moment, I got a look at Ian Byrne, just a tired guy with too much on his plate.
“There have been accidents—” he began.
“What kind of accidents involve exsang—”
“What at first were thought to be accidents.”
“You know differently now.”
“Without a doubt.”
“And I was hired to be the fourth sacrificial lamb because SPI needs a seer.”
“There were no sacrificial lambs. Yes, SPI needs a seer, now more than ever. My mission is to ensure that you’re alive to work for us for many years to come. Contrary to what Rake Danescu may have told you, and what you may now believe, Vivienne Sagadraco values each and every one of her employees. She takes the loss of any agent hard, and personally.”
At that, I felt bad about implying otherwise, but not bad enough to take back anything I’d said. They’d known what had happened to my predecessors. I’d been clueless, and they’d kept me that way. I’d signed on thinking I was getting a cool job with great insurance—not a ticking time bomb to a death sentence.
“We believe a powerful supernatural entity is planning a major event,” Ian said. “And they’ve killed three of our seers to keep it covered up. One death could be an unfortunate accident. Two is highly suspicious.”
“And three means an evil plot.”
Ian nodded. “That’s how we’re treating it, and that’s why Vivienne Sagadraco assigned me as your partner.”
“So you’re not a babysitter for the newbie; you’re a bodyguard for the next Dead Seer Walking.”
“There aren’t going to be any more deaths.” His expression darkened. “At least not on our side.”
“So I take it that ‘major event’ hasn’t shown signs of happening yet?”
Ian hesitated. “No. It hasn’t.”
We both knew what that meant. As long as I worked for SPI, and as long as the unknown “they” were still weaving their evil plot, I’d still be sporting a bull’s-eye.
“Rake Danescu offered me a job,” I said quietly.
The only thing that little factoid got out of my partner was a raised eyebrow. “Interesting.”
“Just interesting?”
“Also unexpected. Danescu doesn’t work with humans. He must need a seer badly.”
“He said it’d be the same work I’m doing for SPI, with an immortality bonus clause. Don’t worry,” I hurried to add, “I’m perfectly happy with just plain old major medical.”
“Sounds like Danescu doesn’t know any more about all this than we do.” Ian’s eyes narrowed. “But if he wants you—”
“You’re preaching to the choir. My granny told me all about strange men offering candy.”
Ian almost smiled. “Your grandmother sounds like a wise woman.”
I shrugged. “She also said to punch ’em in the throat, not the nuts. Always lead with the unexpected.”
Ian didn’t have a response for that. Grandma Fraser affected a lot of people that way.
“Since Danescu wanted to hire you,” Ian said, “it’s unlikely that he’s our culprit. And our culprit wants Danescu either taken out of the game, or watched closely enough to keep him from interfering.”
“The goblin thinks Finn is in on it. Finn offered him wishes and all he wanted to know was who sent him. Why would someone send Finn to Bacchanalia?”
“To get the reaction from us that they got. What better way to force SPI to bring its new seer out of the protective confines of headquarters?”
“Wouldn’t sending him to any goblin business do the same thing?”
Ian shook his head. “Rake Danescu is the Unseelie Court’s most powerful and unpredictable element, which makes him especially dangerous. With either the Seelie or Unseelie Court, anything is possible. Intrigue is a full-contact sport in both. But the risk of losing a leprechaun prince’s wishes to the Unseelie Court was too great for us to ignore.”
“Danescu wasn’t happy to find Finn there. He didn’t want wishes. He wanted a name.”
“The prince’s bachelor party was supposed to be a week ago,” Ian told me.
“When I was hired.”
“Yes.”
“Why did he put it off?”
“Unknown. But it correlates to when I was called to Chicago for a mission that turned out to be a false alarm.”
“Someone wanted to get you out of town.”
“Not provable; but again, that’s what we believe.”
“So Finn could be involved.”
There was a commotion from the back of the truck.
“You want me to make a wish?” Mike shouted. “I’ll make a wish. I wish you would shut up!”
Nerves were on edge, and any patience any of us may have had was long gone. Any creature that reduced a sweetheart like Mike to incoherent screaming deserved anything they had coming to them—or anything coming after them.
“Maybe we can trade those two for Finn.” I said it loud enough to ensure they heard me.
Yasha gave a borderline evil grin. “Is good plan
.”
An instant later, something slammed into the side of the truck, and I was thrown across Ian’s lap and against the passenger window.
Ian swore. I would’ve made my own contribution, but the air’d been knocked out of me.
Just what we needed, an accident at o’dark thirty in the morning.
When I caught a glimpse of what’d hit us, my eyes danged near bugged out of my head. A face was pressed against the other side of the glass, leering at me as we were going seventy miles per hour.
It wasn’t a flying monkey.
It was a gargoyle.
Not that I’d ever seen a real-life, or whatever, gargoyle, but this thing filled out the checklist: all stone, freaking humongous, and uglier than homemade sin with a face only Quasimodo could love. Rake Danescu knew he was being followed and sent his minions to smash us into road paste.
I found some air. “Danescu?”
“He’s never used gargoyles before.”
Ian stood, pushed me behind him with one arm, and leveled the shotgun at the window. Before he could pull the trigger, a stone fist the size of my head slammed through the window, snapped open its huge hand to reveal claw-tipped fingers. The thing lunged right at me, the impact of its shoulder nearly bending the door in half. When the gargoyle couldn’t reach me, it started clawing at the steel door like it was a piñata and I was the chewy candy inside.
Holy mother.
Yasha was spitting a stream of nonstop Russian. I didn’t need translation to know he was cussing a blue streak.
The truck shuddered clear down to its axles when another gargoyle landed on the door, dinting the roof in a good foot. Me, Elana, and the boys hit the deck, and the leprechauns started shrieking their tiny lungs out as a fist the size of Yasha’s head slammed through the weakened steel and proceeded to peel back strips of metal, shucking the roof like it was an ear of corn.
Mike and Steve were firing out the shattered back windows at something I couldn’t see, and the leprechauns shrieked louder.
The gargoyle peeled off the passenger-side door in a scream of tortured metal, and Ian pulled me into the back of the truck.
Yasha retaliated by sharply jerking the steering wheel to the right and aiming the truck directly at a really solid-looking wall in what I assumed was an attempt to scrape the thing off like a cow pie off a boot.
It didn’t work.
Ian wasn’t so confident about the Russian’s plan. “Yasha. Wall. Wall!”
“I know. Hold on. Might hurt.”
Might?
The engine screamed past whatever limits it’d been designed to handle.
“Brace!”
It was all Ian yelled or needed to yell. The rest of us got the message—brace or be bounced.
The Russian werewolf continued to accelerate, surpassing any speed that was either safe or sane. The wall looked plenty solid. The truck was definitely decrepit, and I had a sinking feeling that rust was all that was holding it together.
The metal shelves looked sturdy enough and were bolted to the truck walls. Ian secured the shotgun, grabbed me with one arm and a shelf with the other. I grabbed a double handful of Ian as the right side of the truck smacked into the wall, raking the bricks, and raising a shower of sparks.
A third gargoyle landed on the rear bumper and punched out the last unbroken window in the truck.
One of the leprechauns fainted, and the other’s shrieks stopped as the little guy tried to hide behind a rack of cheese Danish. The gargoyle ignored him, Elana, and the elves.
He only had glowing eyes for me.
The gargoyle had his arm through the window to his armpit, or whatever gargoyles had, and was straining to get to me, stone fingers extended and grasping, the right-rear door panel buckling under the thing’s weight.
Elana pulled out a gun, the likes of which I’d never seen before, one that made Yasha’s look like a peashooter. She aimed, fired, and while I knew the gargoyle and the door it was hanging onto had to be clanking and pounding its way down the thankfully empty street behind us, I couldn’t hear a thing after the blast that’d come out of that gun. My eardrums felt like they’d exploded.
I guessed that was why I saw but didn’t hear the blast from Ian’s sawed-off shotgun that sent the gargoyle that’d grabbed at me tumbling ass over teakettle down the street after its buddy, minus its head.
Elana pointed the still-smoking muzzle up and at an angle toward where the second gargoyle had shucked enough of the roof to wedge itself through. She fired three shots in rapid succession, and after that, all I could see was empty sky.
Elana was looking around for more targets and seemed to be a mite disappointed that there weren’t any more to be seen—at least for now. And I didn’t miss her shooting a glance over at the two leprechauns, who during the ruckus had fainted dead away on a pile of squashed coconut-covered cream puffs.
I staggered up to where Ian was. “If Danescu didn’t send those things, then who did?”
Ian kept his eyes on the sky for gargoyle reinforcements. “I think those were an upgrade from sewer leeches.”
I felt the blood drain from my face. “That wouldn’t have looked like an accident.”
“I think our culprit has passed the point of caring.”
THE beep from the tracking chip was continuous and the dot had stopped blinking.
Yasha pulled over where Ian indicated.
McDonald’s?
It was four in the morning. I was in a stolen bakery delivery truck that’d been nearly totaled by three gargoyles. In the truck with me were two hungover elves, a pair of stoned leprechauns with the munchies, a naked Russian werewolf, and a hot partner who was actually more of a bodyguard, in a race against a goblin dark mage to retrieve a leprechaun prince with a tracking chip embedded in his left ass cheek.
And the trail ended at a McDonald’s in the Bronx.
This had to be weird, even by SPI standards.
Thankfully the parking lot was empty. I scanned the roof anyway.
“No gargoyles,” I noted. “Or monkeys.”
Ian and his shotgun slid smoothly from the truck. “Maybe.” He held the barrel next to his leg, the stock resting against his hip. I had no doubt he could snap it up and take out any gargoyles like picking off ducks launching from a pond. I almost hoped they were hiding on the roof, just to watch him do it.
The agitated owner was pacing in the parking lot. To the guys, he was a middle-aged, balding man. I saw the hobgoblin that he really was. Ian started walking over to him; presumably to get some details and calm him down.
“Check it out,” Ian called back to Mike and Steve.
“Sir.”
The stolen Suburban was parked next to the door. Elana had retrieved Yasha’s clothes and was transferring the two leprechauns into it from the remains of the delivery truck. Yasha was presently being reunited with his beloved SUV, murmuring what must have been Russian endearments. He started to follow us.
“I need you to stay out here,” Ian told him. “We need to apprehend the leprechauns inside and take them home with all the pieces and parts they started the evening with.”
“I can leave arms and legs attached.”
I wasn’t convinced.
“I’m sure you can, my friend, but we need them not broken, too.” Ian wasn’t buying it, either.
“That could be a challenge,” Yasha admitted.
Mike and Steve opened the glass doors and stopped. Staring.
I walked up behind them. “They in there?”
Both agents jumped. “We’ll take care of it,” they said entirely too fast. “You don’t need to go in.”
I tensed further. “Danescu?”
“No, ma’am. Just two leprechauns, not veiled.”
“Where’s Finn?”
“Don’t see him.”
“What?” I pushed past them.
Mike was right. There were two leprechauns, and they weren’t veiled. They were in the indoor PlayPlace playground.
McDonald’s had rules about kids taking off their shoes before entering the PlayPlace. It was obvious that the leprechauns had decided to keep on going.
Thank God it was four in the morning. If it’d been an hour later, this neighborhood would be waking up and grabbing a coffee and a McWhatever to start their day. Anyone who set foot in here now would lose their appetites and wake up without the aid of caffeine, seeing things that were best left unseen.
One leprechaun was in the ball pit and the other was coming down the slide, his bare butt cheeks squeaking on the plastic. Neither one was Prince Finnegan.
Mike’s expression was a frozen grimace of disgust. “The owner’s going to need to hose down that ball pit and slide.”
Steve nodded. “More like powerwash. With Clorox.”
The leprechauns saw us and their eyes widened, and with a simultaneous squeak, both dove into the ball pit. Without hesitation, Mike and Steve ran across the restaurant and jumped in after them.
I came inside, letting the door close behind me. Ian would be in here any second, but in the meantime, I was going to find myself a leprechaun prince. I scanned the interior of the restaurant. The owner was still outside with Ian, and from all appearances, there wasn’t another soul in here. Behind me came the sounds of thrashing and balls being thrown.
“Son of a bitch bit my ankle!” Steve spat. Then he switched from English to Elvish for a few more choice words.
I detected movement behind the counter. Thankfully, it wasn’t tall enough to be Rake Danescu. Though I couldn’t imagine the goblin in a Mickey D’s in the Bronx with naked leprechauns. No amount of wishes could be worth that.
I peeked around the edge of the counter. Now that was a health code violation.
Prince Finnegan’s bare butt was perched on the edge of the steel counter, head tilted back with his open mouth under the nozzle of the soft serve ice cream machine.
He saw me and sat up, but took his sweet time doing it. He smiled and wiped the chocolate ice cream from the corner of his mouth with the back of one hand, leaving a smear across his face.