This living room decorated in the French style of white with gold gilt and too many spindly legs was as much a battlefield as any muddy trench. There was even a dead body upstairs, and if the animosity down here got out of hand, more casualties to come. The fluttering in my stomach did double duty as nerves and a coiled excitement.
“I’m not trying to be facetious,” I said, steepling my fingers and leaning back in a fancily embroidered chair. “But I do need the facts.”
“The facts are that it murdered my brother!” He shook his fist. “And I will avenge him!”
His cousin, Chione, slowly stroked a finger over the handgun in her lap, all the while sucking butter off her toast.
I leaned in, fascinated by her particular brand of multitasking.
“Big talker, Husani. How will you find this angel? Are you going to fly up into the sky?” Chione said in Arabic-accented English.
“Don’t be ridiculous. Flying magic doesn’t exist.” Rachel Dershowitz, early fifties and mother of the bride-to-be Shannon, was as bitter as the gin and tonic she gulped down. The gaudy rock on her finger had fewer facets than the sneer she shot Chione–and appeared less carbon-dated.
Chione’s hand twitched on her gun and I stepped between the two women. “Did Omar have any enemies? Any reason why anyone would come after him?”
“Omar is a good boy. No enemies. This is a hate crime. Those sons of dogs killed our firstborns before and they’re doing it again!” This from Masika Tannous, the grandmother and matriarch of the clan visiting from Cairo. While the little old lady was knitting a sweater like many a sweet grandma, she wielded her needles with a savage ferocity that scared me more than the Uzi of questionable origin propped against her side.
Between Masika, Husani, and Chione, this mercenary family packed more firepower than the Canadian Armed Forces, but like I’d always said, Mundanes didn’t require magic to be dangerous.
The physical weapons from the Tannouses were countered by serpents made of light magic that writhed above the table, ready to pounce on their victim and squeeze the life out of them. Mr. Dershowitz, the fleshy home-owner on my left, sat next to his wife and daughter on a high-backed chair that strained under his weight.
The amped up bravado demonstrated by both families reminded me of those old cartoons where one side would brandish a gun only to be countered by a cannon on the other, escalating until they blew up the world. I wanted to smack sense into all of them, but it was hard enough doing my job, never mind exuding enough badass vibes to keep these two families in line.
“You brought death into my home. Jews shouldn’t mix with Egyptians,” said Ivan Dershowitz. His light magic bobbed like a cobra.
The two families hurled racist epithets back and forth, this season’s bridal registry must-have.
I whistled sharply. “Assuming we take the story of Passover literally, Malach, that Angel of Death, killed all the firstborn sons to free the Jews from an oppressive slavery. While it is Passover this week, we have only the one death, though I’m monitoring that.”
While it wasn’t the most conclusive research, I’d done a quick search before I came over to see if similar deaths had popped up anywhere online. They hadn’t. I’d then called a former client of mine, a woman in her seventies whom I’d reconnected with her high school sweetheart–the two were now happily shacking up. A retired police dispatcher, she still monitored both the local Mundane and Nefesh police scanners as a hobby. No crime of this description had been reported, and she’d promised to phone if one was.
I turned to Masika. “I’m deeply sorry about the loss of your grandson Omar, but one murder isn’t exactly mass smiting, not to mention, the Jews are sitting right here in their own home.” Low class, but hardly enslaved. “We need to keep an open mind. Perhaps it’s an Angel of Death and perhaps someone is using a good story, preying on centuries of superstition and hatred to hide what’s really at play.”
You point out one hard truth and suddenly the place was all twitchy gun fingers, snaky beams of light, and a knitting needle jabbed at you like a curse.
My command to shut it down was ignored. Fantastic.
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Acknowledgments
All the thanks to my beloved daughter Kiki, for always being willing to spitball plot and mythology ideas with me. How clever I was to train you in character and three-act structure growing up! Lol You are my joy and my delight, kid.
To my editor, Alex Yuschik, we are now officially into crazy amounts of books together and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Thank you for being so brilliant that I get excited for your notes because they will always push me and make my stories better.
And to all my amazing readers, my beloved Wilde Ones, I win, because I have all of you. Thank you for being so passionate about my characters and for keeping me sane while I talk to them. You are all truly the best!
About the Author
I’m Deborah (pronounced deb-O-rah) and I write sexy, funny, urban fantasy.
I decided at an early age to live life like it was a movie, as befitted a three-syllable girl. Mine features exotic locales, an eclectic soundtrack, and a glittering cast–except for those two guys left on the cutting room floor. Secret supernatural societies may be involved.
They say you should write what you know, which is why I shamelessly plagiarize my life to write about witty, smart women who kick ass, stand toe-to-toe against infuriating alphas, and execute any bad decisions in indomitable style.
“It takes a bad girl to fight evil. Go Wilde.”
www.deborahwilde.com
Blood & Ash: A Snarky Urban Fantasy Detective Series (The Jezebel Files Book 1) Page 28
