by Melody Raven
She pouted, her bright-red lips shining in the red light. “That sounds like you’re not doing what I want.” She leaned forward, her bra of a top dangerously close to spilling more than drinks. “I’m used to getting what I want.”
“Stop harassing the customers, Cherry.” A man leaned on the bar top next to me, and I had to fight back a groan. Couldn’t I just get drunk without being hit on left and right? Literally.
I turned to the newcomer and smiled. “I’m good, thanks.”
He raised a brow at me. “I’m just helping you out. It’s not like I’m trying to buy you a drink or take you home.”
“I don’t care what you’re selling. I’m not buying.”
Honestly, the blond stranger was handsome enough, but I was nowhere near drunk enough to imagine some stranger touching me. I wasn’t sure there was enough alcohol in this bar. But I was going to give it a good ol’ college try.
I grabbed my drink and pushed away from the bar. “Thanks, Cherry,” I said before I downed the contents. Ugh. I swear, this one tasted worse than the last. But the warm fuzzies kicked in immediately. “I’ll be back for more,” I said with a cracking voice as I pushed away.
I stumbled toward the dance floor, and my fuzzy vision had me tripping over my own feet. Wow. That was really hitting faster than I expected.
The music around me seemed to pound louder as I stepped onto the pink-tinged dance floor. Everyone around me was so pretty and scantily clad. I didn’t know whether I’d rather dance alone or with one of the pretty girls with pasties over their breasts. Definitely not a dude. I couldn’t handle that kind of grinding right now.
But before I could decide, I swayed. I managed to catch myself and sucked in a breath, but I didn’t feel like I was getting any air.
I felt hands at my waist pulling me back and I broke free, but my vision swirled. The music and lights and dizziness all mixed up in my head. I winced as I tried to make sense of what was happening to me. Something was wrong. Something was very wrong.
Breathing was harder. I couldn’t see. I couldn’t walk. And when I fell back and slammed onto the dirty floor, all I could see were shadows surrounding me.
Huh. What a shitty last sight to see before I died.
15
I had no intention of getting to work on time. Hell, I didn’t know whether I was going to go in at all. But the incessant blaring of the alarm on my phone dragged me out of sleep.
For a moment, I lay there and debated whether I should just let unconsciousness take me over. But the anger drove me to slam my hand on my phone so hard the screen broke. But at least the stupid alarm shut up.
The hospital bands were still around my wrist. I gave them a quick and vicious tug as I pulled them off. I had no desire to work, but I also had no desire to stay in bed. The anger burned through me, and my head pounded with a mixture of exhaustion and tension.
Maybe if I went into the office I could take some of my frustrations out on a bad guy. Maybe beat the crap out of Dodge until he told us everything he knew.
I was in a particularly violent mood at the moment.
Oddly enough, I ended up being early for work. Mainly because I put zero effort into my appearance. My hair was pulled back into a messy ponytail, and I pulled on the first black T-shirt and slacks I found. I was by no means business casual, but I considered it a win that I wasn’t in my pajamas. Which was especially good because I just slept in an oversized T-shirt and panties.
I somehow managed to reach the office in one piece. I drove on autopilot. In fact, I didn’t actually remember whether I’d parked in a legal space or not. Oh well. I didn’t plan to be in the office for long. I had a lot of investigating to do and not a lot of time.
Because whether the team knew it or not, we had a new case. Her name was Amy Craster, and this was going to be her last day of freedom, if she was lucky. If I had my way, it would be her last day of breathing.
However, I knew something was wrong the second I walked in the building. I mustered halfhearted greetings to a few folks as I went by, but they all stared at me, their eyes following me as I moved. I knew I looked like crap, but this was something else.
And when I stepped into the Dangerous Magic Division, my heart sunk. There was a bunch of muscle around Carter and all their eyes went right to me. From the looks of it, these guys were from Dark Night.
My tension headache instantly got worse. “What’s going on, guys?” I slowed my pace. Should I run? I really felt as if I should run, but I knew that I would never make it to the stairs, let alone the exit.
“Morning, Sonia,” said Carter.
I noticed he didn’t say “good.” It was, in fact, a morning. He was right about that. I was quiet as I waited for the other shoe to drop.
“You’re being pulled for a random drug test,” he said. “These guys are going to take you upstairs and take a blood sample. It shouldn’t take more than a few minutes.”
With every beat of my heart, my head throbbed and a crackling came from my hands as my anger and magic mixed. The men who were going to take me upstairs all looked apprehensive. They knew that they couldn’t force me to come if I didn’t want to.
But I was able to pull myself back and clenched my hands into fists, immediately stopping the crackling. “I’ll let you do your stupid test. But I want Melanie here in ten minutes.” One of the guys came and started to reach for my arm, but I pulled myself away and glared at him, silently communicating exactly which body parts I’d remove if he even tried it.
Carter took a step toward me, and I took a step back. I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to stop the violence if he got within punching range.
“This isn’t personal,” he warned.
My nails bit into my palm as I kept my fists clenched. “Oh, you have no idea how personal it is.”
And as I started to follow the Dark Night guys to the elevator, I wondered what they would do when my blood tested positive for Solaris.
16
An interrogation room. I’d been in them enough times during my long and varied criminal career. But the stakes were different this time.
If I failed a drug test under normal circumstances, I’d be fired from the Dangerous Magic Division and the immunity deal Melanie had set up with me would be thrown out. And my encounter with Dodge yesterday had more than proved that there were no human prison systems set up for supernaturals yet.
I tapped my fingers on the metal table as Melanie and I passed the time in silence. I didn’t want to say that she was just as pissed as me, because that was impossible, but she sure as hell wasn’t happy. She stood, leaning against a gray cinderblock wall, tapping one of her black high heels against the floor as she studied her perfect purple manicure.
At least I knew my day was about to get a little better.
Carter pushed open the door and sat down across from me. “I appreciate you letting us do the test,” he said gravely to me as he set down a piece of paper in front of him. “I know you’re not going to be shocked to hear this, but there were trace amounts of Solaris in your blood. That is a drug that can’t be tolerated here.” I had to give him credit. At least he didn’t look happy about it. “We’re going to go through the process of clearing out your space, and I’ll see if I can put in a good word for you with the DA.”
I raised a brow as I waited for Melanie to cut in.
“You should’ve run this by me first.” She pushed away from the wall. “Sonia Shaw isn’t going anywhere.”
Carter looked between the two of us, the confusion plain on his face. “You can look at the tests if you want.” He slid the paper over to her.
“I don’t need to look at the paper. Sonia isn’t a Solaris addict.”
“Melanie—”
“I’m allergic to it, dumb ass. Someone slipped some in my drink last night and nearly killed me.”
“And I’ve seen the hospital paperwork to prove it,” added Melanie.
Carter shook his head. “No. She’s lying
to you. She’s just trying to get out of this.”
Wow. How quickly he’d gone from being my partner and telling me how good a job I’d done to being a backstabbing coward. But this was why I had Melanie here. So he’d listen to someone.
“She’s not lying. I knew about her allergy before she ever came to work here. There’s paperwork from her childhood that was uncovered in her background check.”
“Your little old lady set me up,” I said, finally telling him the truth about Amy. “She’s the one who told you to test me, isn’t she?”
Carter kept a clean poker face. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Dirty, rotten liar. “She told you I was some sort of addict, and she hired someone to slip drugs to me. Except the joke’s on her, because instead of just getting buzzed and barely noticing anything, I almost died.” Well, the way it came out really sounded as though I got the short end of the stick. But this was going to be my chance to prove what I’d always known.
Amy was an evil, conniving bitch.
He just kept shaking his head, refusing to acknowledge the truth sitting right in front of him.
“Give me one day. I’ll go back to Delirium and I’ll get all the evidence that we need that Amy is behind all of this. All I need is one day.”
His gaze fell, and I was sure I had him. He had no reason to say no. All I needed was a few hours and—
“No. I’ll do the investigation. You go home for the day.”
My mouth fell open in shock. He stood up to leave, but he forgot that he wasn’t the big boss here.
“You’re both going to go,” said Melanie sternly, offering no room for negotiation. “I want one of you to check in with me every two hours. I want this wrapped up by the end of the day. And if this woman is a rat, I want her in one of our traps ASAP. This division is less than a week old and we will not have infiltrators already. Am I understood?”
“This isn’t what you think it is,” said Carter, the desperation practically dripping off his voice.
Melanie tightened her mouth, but I knew she was on my side. “For your sake, I hope you’re right. I’ll talk to you in two hours.”
17
“So tell me, how long have you had it out for my fiancée?”
Okay. So Carter was mad at me. Which wouldn’t have been such a big problem if we weren’t forced to work together all day.
“Care to tell me who told you to drug test me today?” He didn’t answer, still not willing to admit that it was Amy who had tipped him off. Fine. If he didn’t want to help me, that was his choice. I was planning to bring her down on my own. And now that she’d gone and messed up, I was going to have my chance.
Carter brought his car to a stop in front of Delirium. “Sonia, I—”
I got out of the car. I didn’t care what he had to say. I didn’t care how he was going to try to convince me I was wrong. I’d almost died last night, and if he thought I could be talked down from the ledge I was on, he was more delusional than I thought.
Delirium was locked and this time there was no key around to open the door. Odd, considering the place was never supposed to be closed. Well, I was about to open this place up. I reared back and kicked at the door as hard as possible. But all it did was send me falling back on my ass, pain reverberating through my leg.
Carter strode over to me and looked down at my shame. “You realize this isn’t a movie, right?”
I snarled at him and held a palm out to the door, finally letting my magic out. The small blast I’d intended was more like an explosion, and the doors flew inward, coming right off the hinges as bricks, dust, and debris fell around the opening I’d blown into the side of the building.
The force of the blast blew Carter back, so now he was on the ground with me. We both coughed to clear the dust from our throats.
The training wheels were off. If I needed to use my magic to get this done, I was going to unleash my fury as much as I needed. I pushed myself up, brushed the dust off, and strode inside. The crumbling stones crunched beneath my feet. A gathering of a few people inside stared wide-eyed at the damage.
I didn’t recognize any of them except one. My laser focus settled on Cherry. She was dressed in plainclothes now: skintight jeans, ankle boots, and a loose black tank top. She seemed to have wiped off most of her makeup, not that it detracted from her beauty at all.
And she was going to be less pretty by the time I was done with her.
She took a step back when she saw me, but I shook my head. “I want you to really think about your life choices before you move one more inch away from me. I’ve had a shitty night.” I took a step forward. “I’ve had a shitty morning.” I took another step. “And right now, you can be on my good side or my bad side.” Another step. She took a nervous gulp and glanced toward Carter. “No, honey. He can’t help you. Eyes front and center.”
I couldn’t help but notice that everyone who had been around her had scattered away. Let them run. If I needed to talk to them, I’d find them. They could bet on that.
“Now, I want you to tell me, in explicit detail, what happened last night.”
She crossed her arms over her chest, and I immediately knew she was going to lie. “I don’t know what you want me to say. You were here. You were rude. You passed out and we had to have you shipped off to the hospital.”
By shipped off, I was assuming she meant teleported. There was no way I could’ve survived otherwise. “I feel like you and I have very different definitions of the term ‘explicit detail.’”
“I’m just a bartender.”
For the love of all that’s unholy…. “I can’t deal with your lies right now. Either come clean or show me the cameras.”
She scoffed and shifted her weight. “Are you kidding? Of course we don’t have cameras. Delirium wouldn’t work if we were narcing out on our customers.”
That’s it. I was nuking this place. I opened my hand, but before things escalated, Carter stepped between me and Cherry.
“Hey,” he said, obviously taking on the role of good cop. “I’m here to make sure nothing happens to you. We’re not here to hurt you. We just want to get to the bottom of this. Do you know why my partner here passed out last night? Had she drunk too much?”
I didn’t know whether it was possible to roll my eyes any harder. Was he seriously still trying to blame this on me? Even if I had drank too much last night, it wouldn’t explain how Solaris got in my system or why Amy had told him to have me tested. Granted, he still hadn’t admitted the last part, but I had zero doubt about it.
“I really don’t—”
Carter took out his wallet and flashed his badge. I wanted to tell him just how little a siren would care, but he said, “Sonia works for my department, and if she was threatened last night, I’m not going to let them get away with it. So if there is even the possibility of cameras that would’ve recorded what happened, I’m going to tear this place apart brick by brick until we find those recordings. And when I do that, I’ll make sure to have fifteen squad cars in front of the building while I do the search. Now, I know you can use your voodoo to fix your door by sundown, but that kind of damage to your reputation will take years to fix. So are you going to let us take a look at those videos and leave without any more fuss, or do you want to make this a bigger deal than it needs to be?”
Be still my beating heart. Boy Scout grew some balls.
Cherry let out a deep sigh. “Fine. Follow me. But don’t touch anything.” She narrowed her eyes in my direction. “And you keep your shit tight.”
“And here I thought we had a real connection last night,” I said with a mock smile.
She turned and led the way down one of the hallways. They were lit by normal white fluorescent lighting today, but yesterday they were the green halls.
I kept one hand on my gun in case we were being lured into a trap. I wasn’t about to take any chances today. I’d almost died last night. I’d lost control. I’d lost any power over the si
tuation.
That wasn’t going to happen again.
Luckily for Cherry, she did lead us to an office and took a seat behind the computer. “All of our recordings are kept on a cloud storage system.”
I loved when the supernatural and technical mixed. What a world.
“This had better be high-quality footage. None of this CCTV crap.” And if they were kept for information gathering and blackmail, like I expected, then it should be footage I could actually see.
“Listen, whatever happened last night, I didn’t have anything to do with that.” Cherry pushed away from the desk and stood from the chair. Before she offered it to me, I was already walking around the desk and sliding in. She pointed at the screen. “Here’s the folder for this week. The date and times are in the file names.”
“I got it. Thanks. Have a seat and don’t leave.” I started clicking through. I didn’t want Cherry to use this as an excuse to run.
Carter wordlessly moved to stand behind me as I started to go through the recordings. It wasn’t hard to find the right ones. Soon enough, I saw myself on the screen. When I’d entered, I must have really been radiating bad energy because people cleared out of my path as I made my way to the bar.
Yep. Figured. I made the screen as large as possible, but there was no way to zoom in. I knew what I was looking for: the drinks Cherry made me. I studied her hands carefully, but I didn’t see any fishy behavior.
“What was that stuff you gave me?” I asked her as the digital version of Cherry placed the drink on the bar.
“It’s like a fancy absinthe. It’s not anything weird.”
It sure as hell tasted weird. “I’m going to need to grab a bottle of that to analyze.”
She scoffed. “Sure. To analyze.”
I rolled my eyes. If she thought I was drinking more of that shit, she was out of her mind. The first drink I downed immediately, and I watched Cherry as she poured me the second. Once again, I didn’t see anything suspicious from her.
