by Erin Embly
Dirk didn’t burst into flames at the touch of the phoenix’s magic, so I had to guess that meant he would live. Yippee.
I sighed, slumping my shoulders as I turned to look at Ray. “Thanks.”
“What happened, hermana?” he asked. “You get a little too rough in some role play?”
I chuckled. It was only funny because it was so far from the truth. There was nothing like that going on between me and the unconscious asshole on my roommate’s bed, and there never would be. He was a liar, and downright unpleasant. But since he was also my Guardian handler, I couldn’t just let him die outside my apartment without ticking off more of the people in charge of my life.
“I have no idea what happened. Found him outside like this. I need him to wake up and start talking.”
Ray followed me to the linen closet, where I kept my first aid equipment. “Hey,” he said as I grabbed an IV kit and smelling salts. “You can’t expect me to just drop everything and come every time you need to heal someone. Not with the life you lead . . .”
“This is the first time I’ve needed you to drop everything,” I said.
“But it won’t be the last.” He followed me back to Dirk and hovered over me as I positioned him appropriately and stuck a needle in his arm. I’d wait a few minutes at least to use the salts, see if he’d wake up quickly on his own.
“No, it probably won’t be the last,” I said, looking up at Ray.
“If you’d only—”
“No,” I snapped, not interested in having this conversation again. Not now.
If I’d only accept Ray’s god into my heart and become a good devoted witch like him, he was going to say, then we would both have much better control of the magic inside us and I could go back to healing people on my own whenever I pleased.
Yeah, I fucking knew that. He’d been telling me so almost every day for the past two months. But I wasn’t about to sign up to be some god’s slave. I already had the Guardians bossing me around; the last thing I needed was someone else expecting me to bow to their whims.
Luckily, I didn’t have to fend off any more of Ray’s proselytizing because Dirk blinked his eyes open then.
Ray made a frustrated sound at the back of his throat and clapped his hand on my back. “We’ll talk later,” he said before letting himself out of the apartment. Whatever drama Dirk was about to unleash on me, Ray was smart to not want to be a part of it.
I didn’t turn my head to look as he walked away, frustrated with myself more than I was frustrated with him. I shouldn’t be asking for his help if I wasn’t willing to help him in return. But I hadn’t needed his help before he’d forced his way into my life . . . It was a whole tangled up ball of crazy, and I’d need to find my way out of it soon.
I felt weaker as soon as the door shut behind him, a sluggish chill creeping over me to add insult to injury. We were stronger together, like he’d always said. But this work I needed to do alone.
Dirk licked his lips as he focused his eyes on me. “Good to see you found me, pretty lady,” he croaked.
“Oh, I’m pretty now?” I asked. “Wasn’t I just little before?”
He squinted at me and raised an eyebrow. “Well, you’re kinda blurry. How much blood I lose?”
“Not enough to kill you, unfortunately.” I shrugged. “Why’d you decide to lie down in the flowerbed with that lopped-off head? You were in the stairwell—I saw the blood.”
“I don’t remember flowers.” He groaned. “They were fucking with my head.”
“Who was?”
“Vampires, must be. I was after one and . . .” He paused and looked around. “I’ve been here before.”
“Um, nope. You have not.” I’d never brought Dirk to my place, and we’d only communicated indirectly since he’d shown up at my club all smug with his Guardian badge to re-recruit me.
“Shit, this is your place.” He struggled to prop himself up on his elbows. “You find me here?”
“Just outside,” I said, a little disturbed that he seemed sure he recognized the inside of my roommate’s bedroom. I frowned, making the connection in my head a little too late. “Seriously, Dirk? You were here with Etty? You knew her for less than a week before she was whisked away to fairyland.”
“Yeah, well . . .” He shook his head, refocusing his eyes on me with a scowl. “That’s none of your business. I need your help.”
“No shit,” I said. “Is it my group of vamps?” Per his instructions, I’d been casually socializing with a small circle of bloodsuckers for the past couple months, whom I’d met through Kat, the only vampire who danced at the club. I still didn’t know what the end goal of the mission was or if there would ever be one, but in this stage of the game it was safer if I only knew what was absolutely necessary.
“No—at least I don’t think so—but they might be able to help.” He sat up all the way and then swayed a bit, his eyes glazing over for a moment.
I pushed him back down and nodded my head at his elevated feet and the needle in his arm. “You’re not going to be getting up anytime soon, so don’t push it. Just tell me what’s going on.”
He closed his eyes and took a few breaths before focusing in on me again. “A couple months ago, we started noticing heightened vampire activity, and not in the usual places. Drained humans no one bothered to hide, more blood on the black market, an uptick in botched jobs.”
I shivered involuntarily at the last thing he’d said. Botched jobs. They were rare, but I’d seen one at the clinic when I was just a teenager.
One of the girls I’d gone to school with had binged on stolen vampire blood in an effort to become immortal without paying the hefty fee. Only problem was, vampire blood didn’t exactly have a shelf life. Its magical properties began to degrade as soon as it left the body of a live vampire—so unless you were drinking it directly from a pumping vein, it just didn’t work like it was supposed to. And the half-state this resulted in was not pretty by anyone’s standards.
Best-case scenario, it meant you’d become a bloodsucking vegetable, cursed to shrivel for eternity with your consciousness trapped in your body unless some kind soul decided to bring you a bloody breakfast in bed. Worst-case scenario, you’d lose your mind and all sense of control, becoming a psychotic predator who would end up dead or in jail sooner rather than later. Most cases were somewhere in between, with a sprinkling of gruesome side effects you could never really predict. “Wait,” I said, making the connection. “Is that what bit you? The head out there, with the crazy mouth—a botched vamp?”
Dirk rubbed his head, then looked at his palms for a moment as he opened and closed fists. “Yeah, I think. I think I had a knife . . .”
I shivered again. “An uptick in botched jobs” was one thing, but a dead one in my flowerbeds made it hard to think of the matter in terms of statistics. It made my skin crawl to know something like that had been here, so close to my home and the child that lived in it, and in broad daylight no less.
Swallowing my discomfort, I tried to refocus on what Dirk had been telling me. “So there’s disorder in the vampire ranks.”
Dirk nodded. “And then, last week, we got a call from a local client with a lost daughter. Little girl, missing with no rhyme or reason, and they didn’t trust the cops to find her.”
I got quiet again, shifting my jaw as I thought about the sobbing woman I’d just met and her missing kid. He wasn’t a girl, though, so statistically his case was probably unrelated.
“They didn’t trust the cops, but you’re a cop . . .” I said, narrowing my eyes. I still wasn’t entirely clear on how Dirk’s job worked as both a secret Guardian and a police officer.
“Yeah, but I never saw this case until the Guardians handed it to me. Police don’t have the same resources we do; they can’t always afford to investigate every lead in every case.”
“So you’re like a dirty cop that’s secretly for hire to give a damn when you normally wouldn’t?”
He glared at me but o
nly said, “Sure.” After briefly rubbing his temple, he continued, “So, I start comparing this girl’s case to every other missing child report I can find in the area in the past month, talk to all the families and I notice a connection. Eight of them went out to eat the day of the disappearances, and the restaurants they went to are owned by the same group.”
I pressed my lips together. Eight missing kids, then. I pulled out my phone and brought up the sobbing woman’s number, trying to refresh my memory. It said: Brady’s mom.
“Brady Lee,” I said, and Dirk raised his eyebrows.
“Yeah, that was one of ’em. How’d you know?”
“Just met his mom. Told her I’d see if I could help.”
Dirk chuckled. “That was a dumb move, but you’re in luck—you’re damn well going to help. Just won’t be able to take the credit.”
I frowned, then put away my phone. “You said the disappearances were all linked to the same restaurant group. Which one?”
“Soma Hospitality.”
“Huh.” The name rang a bell, but I couldn’t figure out where I’d heard it before.
“Which is owned by vampires,” Dirk added. “The head of the company is rumored to be the oldest in the city. Soma himself.”
“So you think the odd vamp behavior is connected to the missing kids?”
“Yes, and I need you to get close to Soma. I don’t want him to know we suspect anything, but I need someone on the inside to find out what he’s up to.”
“Okay . . . except if these vampires just tried to kill you outside my apartment, they’ll definitely suspect something when I show up suddenly wanting to be friends.”
He shook his head. “They didn’t try to kill me here. I . . .” He sighed. “If I’m here, it’s because of this.” Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a small pouch. The fabric was black, and the way it glimmered in the light gave it a strange sense of depth, like my eyes might get lost in it if I looked at it too long. It was the same feeling I’d gotten whenever Becca or Etty had put on an especially over-the-top fae glamour.
I frowned, amazed at how great this guy was at finding new ways to piss me off. “That’s Etty’s.” I wasn’t sure exactly what it was, but I’d seen it in her room before. “How do you have it?”
“She gave it to me. Fairy dust.” He shrugged. “Said she might as well leave some behind because she was screwed anyway and I’d probably need it.”
“You? Why would she care if you needed it?”
“I mean, she might have meant both of us. Or all us sorry mortals. You know how she is.”
Dirk was lucky he was effectively my patient right now, or I’d have been tempted to hit him. Yes, I knew how Etty was. But how did he know? I hated this guy, would have given anything to have my roommate sitting here with me in her room instead of him, and here he was telling me Etty had invited him here and given him a bag of fae dust before she’d gone away forever? She hadn’t left anything for me besides an empty room. She hadn’t even said goodbye.
I took a deep breath to clear the emotional chaos out of my head. “Well, don’t get addicted to the stuff,” I told Dirk levelly before standing up. “If you used the dust to get here right after cutting off that thing’s head, then at least you weren’t followed. You can stay until you’re feeling better.”
“Where are you going?”
“Work. I’m already late because of you.”
“Don’t forget—”
“I know. Go after Soma, make friends, be a good little spy,” I said, already texting Kat out of the corner of my eye to see if she could make an introduction. “But my job is my cover, remember? And in this case, it’s perfect. He owns restaurants, I run a club—I’d bet anyone in my position would want to schmooze with him.”
“He owns clubs and bars, too.” Dirk flashed me a grin, his near-dead expression brightening for just a moment. “Including one of the best strip joints in DC.”
I put my phone away, hoping Kat would see the text before coming in for her shift tonight. I had a feeling Dirk would be sticking around until I could get him the information he needed, especially if my apartment wasn’t currently on his attackers’ radar. And I wanted him out of my hair as much as I wanted to take down any vampires that were nabbing people’s kids.
“Here.” Dirk fetched something else out of his pocket and handed it to me, a small box.
When I opened it, one of Miriam’s pink squishies stared back at me, the jelly-like translucent lump pulsing subtly with life.
Gross. I’d hoped to never see one of these things again.
“That one goes the other way,” Dirk said when I looked up at him. “Doesn’t read your thoughts. More like an information injection.”
I wrinkled my nose, not sure that sounded any more pleasant than the mind-reading thing.
“That’s everything we know about Soma so far,” Dirk added, gesturing at the squishy. “You’re lucky you don’t have to memorize the file.”
When he put it that way, I didn’t mind quite so much. At least it was smaller than the alien monstrosity Miriam had stuck to my neck the first time I’d met her.
I pulled the tie from around my knotted hair, letting the curls fall free in a chaotic mess. After sticking the squishy behind my right ear, I gathered my hair again and twisted it into a bun at the side.
“How do I look?” I asked Dirk, flourishing my hands around my face with an exaggerated smile.
“Well-informed,” he said. “Now get out of here so I can sleep.”
He didn’t have to tell me twice.
4
By the time I got to the club, an hour late, the new chef I’d hired a week ago was waiting by the door with her hoodie pulled tight around her face. Damn, it was easy to forget I wasn’t the only one who needed to show up early these days. I should probably give Kiri a key of her own.
“I’m gonna need a key if you want to see me here again tomorrow,” she said as soon as she saw me.
I smiled at the way it seemed she’d read my thoughts, then snapped my serious face back on. “You got it—sorry. Should’ve thought of that before.”
I might technically be the boss here, but Kiri had all the power in our relationship. That was fine by me. When Baz had been running the place, we’d had an empty kitchen doing nothing but attracting cobwebs. And with him gone, along with whatever mysterious magic he must have been using to keep the business afloat, I needed someone in there making food who knew what they were doing. Couldn’t attract a lunch crowd if I had no lunch to offer.
But there was a shortage of good chefs in the area, and not many of them were interested in putting a supernatural strip club on their resume. Although she was human, Kiri had been a dancer before she’d become a cook, so finding her had been miraculous.
She disappeared into the dark depths of the club as soon as I got the door open, and I turned on the stage lights to kick off my opening ritual. It was different, now that I was more of a manager than a bartender.
The bar called to me, enticing me with gleaming glasses to be polished and fragrant citrus to peel, a world of new recipes waiting to be concocted. But today I didn’t even have time to make myself an espresso and soak in the violet lights glinting off the chrome poles before I had to hurry into the back office, with its white walls and buzzing electronics and creaky rolling chair.
I grimaced as I sat in the fuzzy torture device, my head already starting to ache. Baz the bawdy genie still owned the club, but he couldn’t actually run anything from prison. And he’d set it up so I was the only one authorized to act in his name—with a whole boatload of limitations and a ridiculously small operating budget, of course. I could barely afford to pay myself for my time after all was said and done, and I needed more money than ever now that I had a kid to feed and no roommates to help with the rent.
Could I just wash my hands of it all and get a better-paying job elsewhere? Yeah, sure.
But I didn’t want to. The club would have to close if I abandon
ed it, by Baz’s orders, and I couldn’t let that happen because of me.
As imperfect as it was, this place had been a refuge for me when no one else would hire me, and I knew it was the same for many of the dancers. Clubs that didn’t discriminate based on species were still few and far between, and there were a lot of shifters and fae who worked here that couldn’t hide what they were—not in this day and age, when any human who cared would know exactly what to look for to see through a glamour.
Trying to keep a broken business afloat definitely kept me busy, but it took so much of the fun out of bartending and made it even harder to feel like myself where no weapons were involved.
As much as I resented the Guardians forcing me to work for them covertly, and as much as I wished they’d pay me with cash instead of untraceable “investments” I couldn’t touch for years, at this point I knew I needed them to keep me sane—probably more than they needed me.
An hour went by before I stood up and stretched, what with all the answering emails and placing orders and crunching numbers that had to get done. I was about to head to the bar and finally treat myself to that espresso when Kat came bursting into the office.
“Hey birdie,” she said, giving me a wide smile. With her hip cocked and her eyes sparkling, she seemed even more self-satisfied than usual today. The tips of her fangs gleamed behind her lips, putting me on edge. She normally kept those well hidden unless she was playing to someone’s kink.
“Did you get my text?” I asked.
“Yep, and you’d better load up on the coffee, cause you’ve got a long night ahead of you.” Kat’s smile widened even more.
I narrowed my eyes at her. “What—”
She tossed a fancy paper bag at me, but not before reaching in and pulling something out of it.
When I looked up at her after catching the bag, she had a silky G-string dangling from one of her absurdly long red nails. After a couple twirls, she threw it at my face and giggled. “You like?”