Wretched Wicked

by S. M. Reine

  Scrying didn’t work when the viewer was moving at high speeds, so while Fritz was riding in the back of an OPA vehicle, he had no visual on events. Anything could have happened to Cèsar inside that beach hut. Fritz imagined his death as vividly as he had once imagined Cèsar eating a hoagie. More vividly. He didn’t want to think about what those kind eyes would look like once they were impaled upon stilettos.

  Fritz’s breath was too loud in the enclosed car. The assisting agents didn’t speak. They clutched sidearms and exchanged looks, afraid to ask why the director was riding along. They thought that they were being audited. Fritz didn’t even know their names.

  The driver parked, and Fritz flung open his door. He stepped out to survey the inevitable carnage on the hurricane-ripped beach.

  Exactly as Fritz had expected, there was blood.

  A lot of it.

  Except Cèsar hadn’t been killed by demons.

  The private investigator was knee-deep in the surf, knuckles bleeding, clothes plastered to his flesh by the waves and slamming rain. There was wildness in his eyes, a beastly hatred.

  At the sound of sirens, Cèsar woke from the violent reverie.

  He looked down at his hands, realizing that they were bloody. He looked at the collapsed skull of the incubus underneath him.

  Hatred turned to horror.

  He yanked himself out of the sand, making room for OPA staff to move in. He almost fell over, unsteady on the beach.

  Fritz was the one who caught him.

  “Careful,” Fritz said.

  Cèsar looked at Fritz with no hint of recognition in his eyes.

  Fritz knew this man’s preference for science fiction TV shows and that he had celebrated his birthday by buying a hardback edition of Watchmen. Cèsar didn’t even know that he’d met Fritz before.

  Now they stood together under a pier. The wind was screaming. Kelp clung to the left toe of Fritz’s loafers, and Cèsar smeared blood on Fritz’s lapels when he grabbed them for purchase.

  “Is he gonna be okay?” Cèsar’s eyes were puffy. His hair was limp over his forehead. “Are you guys gonna be able to help him survive?”

  He meant the incubus.

  “You won’t go to jail for this,” Fritz said.

  “But will he be okay?”

  Fritz realized, belatedly, that Cèsar wasn’t worried about being pinned with a murder charge. He was only worried that a worthless demon was hurt.

  The director extended a job offer to Cèsar Hawke that same day.

  Chapter 2

  One week after Cèsar finished his month-long training to work for the Office of Preternatural Affairs, Agent Swallow from Statistics reported that they had a traitor in their midst. “We can’t determine whom from existing data,” she said, presenting a folder to Fritz, “but we know it to be either Agent Banerjee or Agent Herd based upon the cases they’ve worked.”

  Agent Banerjee was a witch who typically worked in Accounting. During times of budgetary constriction and criminal expansion, Fritz had borrowed him from Director Gethin to help resolve cases. He’d often had access to evidence without oversight.

  Agent Herd worked directly under Fritz in the Magical Violations Department, more commonly called the MVD. Herd was a reliable agent who seldom called in sick, though he performed in the bottom twentieth percentile of turnaround on case closures. “Slow and steady, right?” Agent Herd had been heard to joke on multiple occasions. “There’s no point in racing preternatural crime. Half these guys are gonna live forever.”

  Whether Banerjee or Herd, the perpetrator had been seizing equipment from witches and reselling that equipment on the black market. It was legal to perform seizures against any preternatural, with or without reason, but seized assets immediately became the property of the United States government. These artifacts, on the other hand, had been disappearing without paperwork.

  The thief was stealing from his employers.

  Which meant that he was stealing from Fritz.

  “Interesting,” Fritz said, sitting back in his chair, smoothing hair back from his forehead.

  “You don’t sound surprised,” said Agent Swallow.

  He wasn’t. Fritz was a wealthy man. One did not maintain such status without being acutely aware of potential thieves.

  Agent Banerjee was an accountant—a foul breed, not far removed from private investigators on the scumbag family tree. Since he usually didn’t work with the MVD, he had no loyalty to the department, despite possessing elevated credentials. He’d have been a fool not to consider taking advantage.

  Agent Herd, on the other hand, was sloppy with his paperwork. His inventories were incomplete. The errors meant Fritz had already suspected him of misbehavior for months.

  “You’ve placed surveillance on Banerjee and Herd?” Fritz asked.

  Swallow bobbed her head. “We should have a single suspect soon.” She set a folder on his desk. “I’ve opened a separate case file for recovering the artifacts themselves. It would be more suitable for one of your agents to address than one of ours.”

  Fritz’s chair swiveled so that he could look out into the cubicles beyond. Agent Banerjee was, coincidentally, talking to a woman a few desks away. Herd was much closer. One of the two was working his final day with the OPA and didn’t know it yet.

  Fritz was just shutting the case file into his briefcase when a knuckle rapped on his door, and the newly anointed Agent Hawke leaned against the frame. “It’s six. We’re clocking out and heading to the Pit,” said Cèsar.

  “Is that so?” Fritz’s blank expression had been cultivated over decades of terse conversations with his father. It fell into place as he swept a jacket over his shoulders, seized his briefcase handle, and tucked his chair underneath his desk.

  “Are you going to the Pit too?” asked Cèsar.

  “Are you?” asked Fritz.

  “Agent Herd asked me, so yeah.”

  Fritz almost said, But you never go to bars. “You’re only a week into working here. Do you already need to drink the pain away?”

  “No, working here is great. Definitely worth all that time training with the Union,” Cèsar said hurriedly. “There are so many cases. Don’t think I’ll ever get bored, that’s for sure. The other guys just asked if I wanted to go across the street, so...” He lifted one shoulder in an uncomfortable shrug. He was obviously unaccustomed to wearing suits all day. He never stopped fidgeting with the collar.

  “It sounds like a good opportunity for team building,” Fritz said. “Don’t drink too much. You have work tomorrow.” He cursed himself for the words as soon as they slipped out. It was too familiar for a boss to say to an employee. Fritz knew Cèsar better than any other of his employees, granted, but the road didn’t run both ways.

  Cèsar’s nose wrinkled as he yanked on his necktie again. “I don’t drink alcohol, actually. Heard the Pit’s got good wings, though. You like wings? Beer?”

  Fritz had an entire cask of century-old whiskey aging in the temperature-controlled basement of his family’s New York condominium tower. “I’ve been known to drink beer.”

  “You should come.”

  “I should?” That slipped out of him too. He didn’t school his expression in time to hide his surprise.

  “Like you said, it’s team building. You’re on the team too.” The new agent shrugged. “But if you’re busy…”

  Fritz had planned to spend his night naked, trapped between at least three peroxide blondes. “Sure,” he said. “I’ll come.”

  It was common practice for the witches within the Magical Violations Department to get drinks at The Olive Pit after work. They didn’t seem to need a reason for it. The parties were rowdier when celebrating a closed case—something that had taken months of research, stake-outs, and logistics to resolve—but they also often performed a mass exodus when nothing of interest happened. Sports games, maybe. Avoiding families, probably. Fritz didn’t know. He never went. Nobody had ever invited him.

  The o
ther OPA agents didn’t seem excited for their director to appear at The Olive Pit for post-work drinks. They watched him out of the corners of their eyes, got quieter when he passed, and never took off their ties.

  Fritz tactfully positioned himself on the glass mezzanine so that his employees would feel more comfortable conversing downstairs. He didn’t need to listen directly anyway. The OPA internal security team had placed bugs in most of their homes by now, and Fritz could get into the logs whenever it suited him.

  Cèsar carried a basket of wings to the mezzanine, set it on the table in front of Fritz, and sat down. “The waitress will bring your beer in a minute,” he said, tucking a napkin into the collar of his button-down and spreading another across his lap. “Two beers, actually. You can have both of them if you want. I’ll buy one. The waitress bullied me into getting it.”

  Fritz frowned. “She bullied you?”

  “Well…” Cèsar said.

  Fritz understood once the waitress delivered their drinks. She had huge tits, which were assets that could bully men like Cèsar into doing a great many things.

  The waitress was closely followed by Agent Mack Herd, a narrow, nervous man who tried to drown his fear in cologne. “Hawke,” greeted Herd.

  “Herd,” replied Hawke, standing up. They gripped hands, bumped chests, and slapped each other’s backs in a tersely masculine greeting. “Keeping on?” When he spoke to Herd, Cèsar used a gruffer tone than he did with Fritz. It was more similar to the way that Cèsar spoke to his brother, Domingo.

  “Keeping on,” agreed Agent Herd. A flush climbed his forehead. He was drunk. “Is one of those beers for me?”

  “Get your own, mooch,” Cèsar said, feigning a volley punches at Agent Herd.

  Herd boomed with laughter. “Right, right. Hey, miss, another beer pronto. I’m thirsty.”

  The buxom waitress had moved on to wiping down the next table. “Will you be sitting here for a few minutes? Should I bring it to this table?”

  Herd’s eyes flicked to Fritz.

  Fritz held Herd’s gaze as he took a slow sip of the cheap beer, which tasted like dollar hotdog night at the baseball stadium, like green smoothies in a strip mall, like a private investigator who couldn’t stop pulling at his necktie.

  Agent Herd had unbuttoned his shirt and rolled up his sleeves. His armpits were stained. He sweated pure Jovan Musk. “Naw, I’m not sticking around up here. I was in the middle of something with those guys.” He nodded toward the other agents. He turned back to Cèsar and said, with forced bravado, “Wouldn’t want to drink with a dick like you anyway. You’ll scare off the ladies with that mug.”

  “There aren’t a lot of women in this bar in the first place,” Fritz said over the rim of his glass. “I don’t think you’re at risk of scaring anyone off.” The chill burn of Fritz’s gaze must have been stinging Herd’s skin. The agent slapped his neck and scratched his nape.

  “Uh, yeah,” Agent Herd said. “So, I’m gonna go?” He pitched it like a question.

  “Yeah. See you in the morning,” Cèsar said.

  Herd bobbed his head and shuffled down the stairs. He kept glancing over his shoulder at their table.

  “You seem to be getting along with your new desk mate,” Fritz said.

  “Like blueberries in a muffin.” Cèsar stripped a wing bone with his teeth, cartilage and all, and dropped the remnants in the other basket.

  “Don’t get too attached to him,” Fritz said.

  Cèsar looked up, as if startled. “Firing me already?”

  “I’m rearranging the office soon.” It would have to be rearranged if Agent Herd was the thief. There was no version of reality where the culprit kept his job. “Speaking of work, two new cases crossed my desk today. You can have first pick.”

  Cèsar brightened. It was amusing to see someone who didn’t yet dread his job. Someone who hadn’t learned that interest was rewarded with more burden without more money.

  Sucking his fingers clean of sauce, Cèsar grabbed the folders from Fritz and flipped through them.

  One case was easy. A witch named Suzumi Takeuchi had been caught using magic to augment her townhouse, and they wanted a full profile on the woman to determine if she posed a public threat. It would probably end in an arrest but nothing dramatic.

  The other case was to search for the stolen artifacts that had been taken by Agent Banerjee or Herd.

  “I’ll do the stolen artifacts. I can take the other one if I wrap it up fast enough.” Cèsar peeked at the townhouse file. “Suzume Takeuchi… Hmm. What kind of name is that? Japanese?”

  “She’s American of Japanese descent,” Fritz said. That was all he knew. He hadn’t done as much research into her file as he had with Cèsar.

  “Her magic must be pretty strong. I’ve never heard of witches distorting three-dimensional space.”

  Fritz made a noncommittal noise. “She hasn’t attacked anyone that we know of, so you shouldn’t be in any danger.”

  “Can’t say that’s one of my big worries.” Cèsar stuck the file on the stolen artifacts under his chair, on top of his jacket. “So, I’m with Agent Swallow on this one?”

  “She’s working from another angle,” Fritz said. “Given that we’re dealing with internal corruption, I want multiple eyes. You should execute an independent investigation for security purposes.”

  “Say no more.” He leaned his elbows on the table, fixing Fritz with a firm, brown-eyed stare. “Since we’re talking work anyway, we’ve gotta talk about that one thing.”

  An electric jolt slithered around Fritz’s spine. “What one thing, Agent Hawke?”

  “There were some photos of dead bodies in my inbox today. Old cases that Agent Herd suggested I look at.” Cèsar gave a charming grin and shook his finger at Fritz. “You said I wouldn’t have to deal with dead bodies.”

  Once Fritz had made the job offer, mere hours after Ofelia Hawke was rescued from the Silver Needles, Cèsar had asked three questions: Could he tell his family that he was going to work for a secret organization? (No.) How good was the pay? (Bad, but the benefits made up for it.) And would he have to kill anyone or solve murders?

  Fritz had only expected the first two questions, based on what he knew of Cèsar. The last one was less orthodox.

  “The Magical Violations Department doesn’t often handle murders,” Fritz had said. “We have a separate tactical branch that handles dangerous perps.”

  “So I wouldn’t have to ever be assigned to something with dead people?” Cèsar had pressed.

  In truth, Cèsar couldn’t pick his cases. Fritz had absolute discretion over assigning them to his agents. Since high-priority cases always outnumbered employees, he tended to pile the next case on the first person to come up for air, with no time to consider whether it suited an agent’s preferences.

  But his mouth had opened, and in the chilly blue fluorescence of the hospital, he’d promised Cèsar, “You’ll never have to do a case involving dead people.”

  Cèsar wasn’t there to accuse Fritz of lying, though. He flashed a genuine smile without a hint of sarcasm. There was nothing but honesty in his open expression, in fact, and the lamp by the pool table made his jawline shimmer bronze. Cèsar had missed several patches while shaving. He’d have benefited from a better razor.

  The expectant tension in Fritz’s shoulders unraveled. “If you can’t even look at photos of dead bodies, I’m going to have serious concerns about your constitution, Agent Hawke.”

  “Naw, I can be a second pair of eyes on cold cases. I can do that. I might peek through my fingers at the gross pictures.” Cèsar mimicked the action, guffawed, and then shredded the meat off of another drumstick with his teeth. Barbecue sauce flecked onto his napkin-bib.

  “What’s your aversion to bodies?” Fritz said.

  Cèsar shrugged. He wiped his hands clean and pulled on his necktie. “I didn’t take cases like that as a PI either. It’s not my expertise.”

  “Nor are preternaturals in gen
eral,” he said.

  “Sure, but I can learn that. Hell, I already learned a lot riding along with the Union during my training period.” Cèsar shuddered. His fist was wrapped tight around the tie now. “Maybe I learned too much. They spend a weird amount of time around Helltown.”

  Yet he hadn’t issued a blanket rejection on dealing with demons.

  “Stop that,” Fritz said. He reached over and yanked on the knot of Cèsar’s tie—not even a single Windsor. There was no word for the “knot” that the former PI had probably twisted into place while driving to work in Los Angeles traffic. One hard jerk loosened it most of the way. “Just take the damn thing off.”

  Cèsar grinned wryly and tossed his tie onto his jacket, too. “I wasn’t sure it was okay. Damn, it’s hot here.” He opened the top buttons of his shirt and took a long drink of water. He was a disarmingly wholesome analog of Agent Herd, who was throwing back a pint while other MVD agents cheered him on. “Honestly, I just don’t wanna work on cases with dead people because it’s depressing.”

  Fritz blinked. “How’s that?”

  “There’s no upside to people dying, right?” Cèsar asked. “I don’t want to deal with that much misery. At least when I’m chasing cheating wives, the wives are having a good time. Someone’s happy.”

  Fritz took a sip of the beer. It was terrible. When Cèsar glanced up from demolishing his wings, he had a barbecue sauce mustache. He was grinning. He shouldn’t have been working for the Office of Preternatural Affairs.

  Cèsar didn’t stay at The Olive Pit for long. He made excuses, gathered his dismembered uniform, and left. Once he was gone, the rest of the employees hurried away too. It was typical for Cèsar to get home early. The rest of them usually stayed until nine or beyond. Obviously, they really didn’t like Fritz watching over them.

  “Did they already leave?” asked the buxom waitress, who’d returned to collect empty glasses. “All of them? Even the one with the blue tie?” She was asking after Cèsar.