by Tegan Maher
You baited him, and you know he always has to one-up you. That was about ten up, but keep walking.
She was right, of course. I needed to learn to keep my mouth shut, but between our earlier exchange and the handsy incident, I wasn't feeling the love.
Fine. But I'm picturing him being crushed by a tsunami.
I'm okay with that as long as you don't actually conjure one. I hate getting wet. She shuddered.
I snorted. She never failed to make me feel better.
"You're a bigger woman than I am," Elsa, the elven woman, said when I stopped to greet them. "I would have turned him into a tree, then conjured pigeons."
Now there was a visual, along with a lesson. Don't mess with elves. They were beautiful to the point of being ethereal, but they were hard-core.
"He's a tool," I said, waving a dismissive hand in his direction. "You learn to live with him."
Tolthe, her husband, replied, "It took me three hundred years to reach your level of tolerance. You were not here the last time we were, but he heckled the poor brownie who'd taken your place to the point of tears. It's disturbing that he remains."
That was Cass, spreading sunshine everywhere he went. I suspected that played a huge part in why I was called back and why I had so much latitude. I don't think we'd had anybody stay there for more than a few weeks—other than me, of course.
"I wonder how Karma deals with angels," I said.
Elsa laughed. "I should hope the same as she does with all other beings. She is her own boss and a master bookkeeper."
"Then hope remains. It's nice to see you two, by the way." I smiled and took their orders, then headed to the bar.
I was surprised to see the hot werewolf was still sitting there. He hadn't spent much time at the bar beyond eating and sometimes working on his laptop. He glanced up and caught my eye, and I smiled. I was almost sure the corners of his mouth twitched into a brief smile before he glanced back down at his phone. That had happened a few times over the course of the week, and I couldn't help but wonder how he'd look smiling, his eyes glinting with humor.
He'd wear it well, I decided.
It took Bob a few minutes to make the drinks. While I was waiting, Stan tripped through behind me, spilling his drink down my leg and crashing into a table of fairies. Bamboo food containers flew from the table, and several drinks spilled.
"Dammit, Stan!" I snatched the glass out of his hand and swabbed the drinks off the table with the bar towel I kept tucked in my apron.
Fortunately, fairies are quick and they managed to escape before the liquid ran off and into their laps, but they didn't look pleased to have lost their lunches.
Stan's face reddened, and he began stuttering apologies. I waved him off when he tried to help. Bob came out from behind the bar to guide him back to his table, then returned to finish my drinks while I magicked the mess up. I'd worked in human restaurants before, and they’d sucked because I’d had to do everything by hand, sans magic. That had been such a time-suck.
It only took me a couple of minutes to have them squared away, including re-ordering the food, and Bob had fresh drinks on the bar a minute later.
Before I left to deliver the drinks, I glanced across the bar and was a little disappointed to see that werewolf guy was gone.
After dropping off drinks to Elsa and Tolthe, I made my way to Cass's table. Three ladies—the painted variety—had joined them. I set the drinks in front of them, biting my tongue to hold back the wide variety of snarky comments I was dying to make. Instead, I just took a deep breath, pictured the tsunami again, and asked if they were hungry.
The one with Cass licked her lips, then wrapped them around the straw in what I'm sure she thought was a sexy move. She missed the mark by about eight miles, at least in my opinion, but that was probably because I saw her glamour slip for just a second. I couldn't see what was under there, but if she considered what she was wearing an improvement, I'd hate to see her without the glamour.
I shuddered, surprised that as an angel, Cass fell for that trick. His beer goggles weren't doing him any favors.
Thankfully, not my circus, not my monkeys. I was the waitress, not the good-taste police.
A new couple had joined Amber and Dax out at the water bar, and I welcomed the chance to go out. My shoes were still a little sticky from the drink Stan spilled on me, and that would get miserable quickly.
I'd barely made it to the end of the dock when a high-pitched scream pierced the air behind me, nearly rupturing my eardrums. I handed Dax and Amber their drinks, and then, since the screaming hadn’t abated, I raced back toward the beach. It crossed my mind that maybe one of Fiona's girls had come back and accidentally turned somebody to stone. I was always a little on edge when the gorgons were around. Great gals, but just thinking about their idea of fun gave me hives. And if that was what had happened, it was going to be a PR nightmare.
It only took me a few seconds to reach the end of the dock, and the screamer was still hard at it. I cringed, and several emotions flitted through my brain when I saw Cass slumped over the table, his fingers draped over his knocked-over daiquiri glass. Everything was still, until a tin of breath mints slipped out of his sagging shirt pocket and hit the concrete tiles.
The sticky, half-melted mango goo pooled under his face, and the eyes staring at me were sightless. I'd never seen his face relaxed and peaceful, and I realized for the first time how beautiful a man he must have been at some point.
A ray of golden light began to stream from the center of his back, pulling upward into a string until, as the last of it trailed from his body, it shot straight toward the sky, disappearing into the rays of the sun.
"Well," said a bored voice behind me, and I turned to see Steph, a Valkyrie, leaning on the bar with one elbow, rockin' the daylights out of a black and gold bikini. "It looks like this place is about to get a lot more pleasant. Which one of you finally manned—or womanned—up and did it?"
I looked around, wondering the same thing, and was surprised to see that everybody else was looking at me.
CHAPTER THREE
"OH, NO," I SAID, SHAKING my head. "I've wished for it a thousand times, but I didn't do it."
"Nobody would cast blame if you did, lass," Tolthe said gently. Faerie law was much different than witch law, the rules I had to abide by. By their law, I could have called Cass out a hundred times over and been within my rights, but witches had, by necessity, modernized. Also, I was pretty sure there was a policy somewhere in my employee handbook that made it against the rules to kill your boss.
I held up my hands. "First things first. How do we know he didn't just ... I don't know ... choke to death or have a heart attack?"
One of the women who had been with them glared at me. Probably because she and her gal-pals weren't going to get paid now that he was dead. "He didn't choke or have a heart attack. We were sitting right there. He just dropped dead midsentence." She preened. "Right when he was tellin' me how sexy he thought I was."
Another of the gum-snappers, this one wearing a shimmering blue beach wrap that was three sizes too small, shook her head, her huge hair barely moving. "Nope. Wasn't no heart attack I've ever seen, and I've seen plenty."
Heaving a huge sigh, I glanced down at Tempest.
Will you go tell Blake we need him?
She gave a curt nod and disappeared into thin air. A year ago, I would have told him myself, since we'd been engaged. But I sort of lost the desire to deal with him at all when he confessed he'd kissed his secretary. I'm odd like that.
Still, he was the executive director of the resort—the reason Cass had made the crack about sleeping my way to the top.
I picked my way around the table because nobody else was moving and placed my finger on his carotid. Nothin'. Nada. Zip.
"Oh, he's dead, Des," Amber said, crossing her arms and biting her lip. She and Dax, along with their friends, had assumed human form and followed me up the dock. "We all saw his essence leave. There's no putt
ing that genie ... err, angel ... back in the bottle."
"Then everybody needs to stay put," I said, trying to get a handle on the situation. "Blake's gonna want to talk to everybody here. Did anybody see anything?"
A popping noise behind me was followed by a deep voice that still gave me chills as well as pissed me off. "Excellent question, but our security team will take it from here. I'm sure they'll want to talk to everybody individually rather than as a group."
His sharp blue eyes turned to me. "Destiny, I believe you'd be a good place to start. I'll meet you in the office in five minutes."
"I need to clean this up," I protested, a little bit in shock. The waitress in me had apparently taken over because all I could see was the mess. The whole situation was beginning to feel surreal. He’d complained about a couple cups on the ground earlier, yet there he was, sprawled on his table in a puddle of orange.
"That's not really the priority," Blake said, a ghost of a smile on his lips. I wanted to punch him because there was also a huge dose of concern on his face, and the last thing I wanted was that.
You need to get your poop in a group, Destiny. Tempest butted her head against my leg.
I glanced down at her deceptively innocent face into her translucent green eyes and struggled to pull myself together. It wasn't like me to fall apart in a crisis. I sucked in a deep breath through my nose, then blew it out through my mouth, centering myself.
"Okay," I said to Blake. "I'll be in Cass's office."
"Wait," he said, realizing at the same time I did how compromising that could be. "Just take a seat at the bar until I can get to you."
Security personnel rushed past me to the body on my way to the bar. I scooted up onto one bar stool, and Tempest jumped onto another. Bob pushed a glass of lime water toward me, and I took a gulp, my mouth as dry as sand.
"What do you think happened?" I asked, more to fill the silence than anything else.
"From what I can see, somebody up and killed him," he said, raising a furry shoulder as he wiped the bar.
"No shit, Sherlock," I said, rolling my eyes. "But how, do you think? It almost had to be poison."
"Yeah," he said, drawing his bushy eyebrows down, "but what type of poison kills an angel?"
“I didn't know you could kill an angel, period," Tempest said. She didn't usually speak in public, but it was more because she was a bit of a snob than because she couldn't. The attention made her nuts. Bob was an exception though, and I suspect it had as much to do with the food he snuck her as it did with the fact he was just a nice guy all around.
I turned the question over and over in my mind. I wasn't an earth witch, so I had no idea what blend of herbs would be lethal to an angel. I had some friends and family who were hearth witches, but I sucked at herbology. I mean, I knew deities were pretty much immortal unless you had their Kryptonite, so to speak. But angels may be another story altogether.
"Oh, that's easy," Elsa said as she and Tolthe joined us at the bar. Elsa was right in her element; as an elf, nature was her thing.
"Not for all of us," I said, smiling down into her crystal-blue eyes. "Care to enlighten the rest of the class?"
"None," she said, shrugging.
"What do you mean, none?" I asked.
Tolthe smiled. "No poison—at least none in the traditional sense—could kill an angel. They're immune to everything in nature. The only lethal concoction he could have ingested would have been a death elixir."
She had me stumped. "Okay. That sounds suspiciously close to a poison."
"No," she said, shaking her head. "Well, yes, but it has much more than just herbs in it. It has to be brewed using death essence."
Elves were exhausting. They were quite literal and, because they were also brilliant, tended to assume everybody else knew exactly what they were talking about. This time, though, I had an inkling.
"You mean it can't be made by just anybody. Or, more accurately, it can't be made using anything the average person has access to."
"Exactly," Tolthe replied.
"All right," Tempest growled, scowling. "Plain English."
Surprisingly, it was Bob who answered. "It had to come from an angel of death. You know, a reaper."
Despite what most humans believed, there wasn't just one reaper. It was one of the sillier beliefs, in my opinion. I mean, thousands of people died every second. Let's be realistic. Even assuming one being could manage such a colossal task, the overtime pay alone would be off the chain. And what if the poor guy caught the flu or something?
"Come again?" I said. "You're saying a reaper did this?" As far as I knew, reaper magic was genetic, just like my magic. They touched somebody with the intent of separating the soul from the body, and poof—the person was a goner, but I was almost positive they couldn't transfer their magic or have it stolen.
"Not necessarily," Elsa said. "Reaper magic leaves a residue in the body for a minute or two just to make sure it takes, so to speak. Death essence can be harvested from the body after the angel leaves, but it's complicated. I can only think of a handful of people, elves included, who could do it."
"Okay then, so we're dealing with either a reaper or somebody with some powerful juju," I said.
"Yeah." Bob nodded his head, causing a clump of hair-gelled fur to fall forward over his forehead. "Or somebody who bought it off the black market."
I threw my hands in the air. "Oh for crying out loud! You just told me it was rare and special, and now you tell me you can buy it at the same place you buy knock-off Rolexes and TVs that fell off the truck?"
Bob made the iffy gesture with his hand. "Not quite that simple because you need a ton of money and the right connections, but you have the right idea. Reapers are supposed to stay around long enough for the essence to evaporate, but they have huge caseloads."
"Could a reaper have been the one responsible?" I asked.
Tolthe pressed his lips together. "It's possible, but I can't imagine it. Reapers are rigorously vetted, and the penalty for killing even an excommunicated angel is ... far worse than death. They'd be insane to risk it."
Elsa cleared her throat loud enough to catch my attention and tipped her head toward the whole hot mess behind me. "Your former beloved is on his way, along with his head of security."
I scowled. "Please don't use that term. I prefer the loathsome lip-locker, or you can just say asshat ex."
She laughed, the sound tinkling. "Well, whatever your preference, Blake is on his way over here, and he doesn't look pleased."
CHAPTER FOUR
I TOOK A DEEP BREATH and turned in the direction she was looking. Sure enough, Tall, Dark, and Despicable was stomping toward me with a muscle-bound meathead, and both of them looked like they'd just sucked a lemon.
I crossed my arms, put on my best bored expression, and waited for them to come to me.
This is not the time to cop an attitude, Tempest reminded me. You and Cass weren't exactly BFFs, and now somebody's pulled his plug.
Yeah, yeah, I replied, knowing she was right. It was impossible for me to smile at him, though, so “bored” was the best expression I could manage.
"Destiny," Blake said, inclining his head toward me. Muscles didn't bother to say anything.
"Blake," I replied, trying to read his expression. Normally, he could control everything except his eyes; they were always a combination of regret and sadness when he looked at me. Today though, they were inscrutable.
"If you'll follow me, I have some questions."
He led me back to the office, and the guard followed, sandwiching me in between the two of them so I couldn't run even if I wanted to. Tempest kept tight to my ankles, trotting along beside me.
There was barely room for all of us in the cramped, cluttered office space, so Blake moved around behind the desk and motioned to a chair across from him. Cass, being the overbearing jerk that he was, always had the seat adjusted so that it was lower than his was; a mental mind-screw meant to intimidate. I chose to sta
nd, placing my hands on the back of my chair instead.
"Cass is dead," he said, stating the obvious.
"Yeah, I gathered as much from the lack of bitterness on his face and the mango slush dripping unheeded off his nose."
Blake slammed his fist on the desk, causing a container of breath mints to bounce. My mind disconnected for a second and focused on the metallic clang rather than the anger and frustration oozing from Blake's every pore.
Tempest shot me a glare.
I sighed. "Look, I don't know what you want me to say. I was out on the water bar talking to Amber and Dax. I heard a scream and came running back to shore, and that's when I saw him. A couple seconds later, his essence left, and that was it. I asked Tempest to get you."
He rubbed his temples. "See, the thing is, a couple of patrons heard you wish him dead not fifteen minutes before he keeled over."
I snorted. "If me wishing him dead actually caused it, he'da been a goner the first day we met. You know as well as I do he's hated me from day one."
"I realize that and also know why, but that's beside the point. What matters is that the feeling was mutual, and—"
He turned to the guard. "Step outside for a minute, please."
For a second, the guy hesitated but then turned and did as he was told.
Blake leaned his elbows on the desk, moving closer to me. He lowered his voice. “You have ... access to death essence."
"Me?" My voice was about three octaves higher than normal. Blake glanced toward the door, and I lowered my voice. "How do you figure I have access to it? I didn't even know it was a thing until five minutes ago when Elsa explained it to me."
He drew his brows down. "You and I both know how you have access."
I ran my tongue over my teeth and struggled to maintain my cool. He was talking about my brother, Michael. In his misspent youth, he'd wasted quite a bit of his time in unsavory places. When his best friend was killed in an alley, it scared him straight and he became an agent with the Paranormal Criminal Investigations Bureau.