by R Phoenix
“Having to sell off his assets or get tossed in jail for not being able to pay. But seeing as how the man runs a multi-million-dollar casino, it’s not very likely.”
“Hmm… and that wouldn’t get the slave out, just sold, right?”
“Depends on the judge making the call,” Emma replied. “Look, Bryce. Nothing about this is hard science. There are rules and laws, precedents and prejudices, and they all factor in. I can’t guess how it would go. The only two near-certainties would be if he was convicted or his assets were seized. Everything else…” She shook her head. “Like I said, the fae have been doing this for centuries.”
That was what he got for going in half-cocked, he supposed. He really had thought it’d be simple, on some level. Slavery was wrong. Anyone could see that, especially if Kolt was there against his will. He hadn’t expected all this red tape on something that was so fundamentally wrong.
“Right,” he said slowly, but he didn’t look or feel convinced. There had to be a loophole. “He came to me, you know. I mean, at first I was just—” He shrugged. “But he actually risked his neck to ask me for help. And I told him to—” He laughed shortly, and without humor. “—to sit tight.”
Emma fell silent, glancing away for a moment before looking back at Bryce. She met his eyes. “Get me a copy of the contract. I’ll see what I can do.”
Bryce blinked at her. He hadn’t said it to guilt her into anything — not that he minded if that was the unintended outcome of his words, of course. You didn’t look a gift horse in the mouth.
“How would I get one?”
“Your problem,” Emma said, looking back at her computer. “Not mine.”
Right. Maybe he’d just annoyed her into telling him something just to get him out of her office, and it wasn’t anything he’d actually said at all.
“Get to work, Ackerman, before you get fired on top of everything else.”
“Oh please,” he scoffed. “Like they’d fire me with how fucking desperate they are for field agents that they’d agree to take me in the first place.” He pushed himself up out of the chair he was in. “We should grab a drink sometime,” he said with a nod, but not actually making that an invitation before he headed for the door.
Chapter Nineteen
As usual, Gideon showed up precisely five minutes before the designated appointment time, checking in at the desk and settling in to wait for Bryce Ackerman to decide to grace him with his presence.
He sat down, but he didn’t bother getting too comfortable. The last time the detective had asked him here, he’d made Gideon wait, but he didn’t play those games. He’d waited his usual five minutes, added a sixth to be generous, then left.
If the human wanted to talk to him, he was going to have to try a whole hell of a lot harder than that. As it was, Gideon was still annoyed that he’d had to drive to the Organization’s building to be ignored.
This time, either Ackerman would be here on time or Gideon was leaving again — and the next time, the detective could go to him. He wasn’t in the mood for this shit.
Something had changed at the casino. Leandro and Kolt seemed…
He couldn’t tell what was going on. It seemed consensual again, like the problems between him and Leandro had finally resolved, and things had gone back to normal. But his vision had blurred with other possibilities of the near-future he hadn’t particularly liked. Kolt had wanted to leave, but after the incident with Barsum, Gideon wasn’t so sure what he wanted anymore.
Leandro had managed to mislead those who had question him about Barsum’s death. He half-wished he could’ve seen the Organization trying to interrogate the fae.
Everything had changed, at least in the otherkin’s part of the casino. The patrons who hadn’t been scared off were on their best behavior. The others would return soon enough, and everything would likely settle back into its usual rhythm. But Leandro was keeping his pet incubus to himself now. No more freebies, not even for the high rollers, and no one had dared ask for the incubus’ services.
The sound of a door opening interrupted his thoughts, and Gideon glanced up to see Ackerman, within the window of time he allowed. He rose, nodding to the man. “Detective. You wanted to see me?” As though the detective hadn’t tried to jerk him around the last time and he wasn’t still irritated about it.
“Yes,” Ackerman answered. “We seemed to have missed each other the other day,” he said shortly, grimly, clearly not amused, but Gideon hadn’t been either when he’d been left to wait on a lazy douchebag of a cop.
A cop in Leandro’s pocket who just seemed to have illusions of grandeur, no less.
“My time is valuable, I don’t like to see it wasted,” Gideon retorted with a shrug. “I don’t have much now either,” he added pointedly, and he could see the irritation in Ackerman’s face and bearing.
“This way,” the detective said. He held a hand out for the young woman at the front desk, who stoically handed him a visitor’s pass, which Ackerman handed to him in turn. “Visible, if you please,” he added before turning on his heel and heading through the big security doors.
It wasn’t Gideon’s first time in the building. Every time he went through those doors, he had to wonder if they were trying to keep something out or in. Maybe he’d ask Ackerman sometime.
The detective took him to the elevator then three floors up, to an open floor plan with cubicles and desks. He was already uncomfortable. He wasn’t going to say shit about anything to the likes of Ackerman in an area like this, where anyone could fucking hear.
But it seemed Ackerman knew discretion better than he’d let on, as he walked him through the floor to the back where a meeting room had been set up. No mirror, so not quite an interrogation room, but there were no windows either, and the interior was bare fucking bones.
It reminded him of the back room at the casino, where he beat the shit out of cheaters and those who thought they could use magic to get what they wanted at the games.
“Right in here,” Ackerman said cheerfully, letting him through the door first.
Gideon cast him a dark look but entered anyway, taking a seat right away— picking the chair that was facing the door, with his back to the blind wall. “Why am I here?” he asked bluntly as soon as the door closed.
Ackerman smiled sweetly at him and dropped a case file on the table before sitting down.
Gideon eyed the file but didn’t ask again.
“You’re my CI. Why wouldn’t you be here?” Ackerman mused. “Plus, you were a star witness in the incident at the casino. Oh, and,” he said, and then it really came, “Why the fuck would you send me into the bathroom with your boss’ pet incubus wantonly waiting there? I’ve been meaning to ask you.”
The reminder of that meeting threatened to send anger through him all over again. He’d put himself — and Kolt — at risk for nothing, and it had left the incubus looking more despondent than ever until he’d put himself together for Leandro.
Or at least, it looked like he had, but Gideon was questioning everything these days.
“Did he try to seduce you?” Gideon asked, arching a brow.
“In a manner of speaking,” Ackerman said. “Was that your intention?”
“He asked to talk to you. My intention was to get you two in the same place at the same time.” Gideon lifted his hands in a casual, vague gesture. “So I did.”
“Did you know what he wanted to talk to me about? Does he trust you, or are you just a flunky to him as well?” the detective, his eyes narrowing.
“That’s rude,” Gideon replied. Fuck, he was spending entirely too much time with Leandro. He sighed, leaning back in the chair. “Yes, I know.”
Ackerman stared at him, a little flabbergasted, but he said nothing for a moment — which had to be a fucking first. “So,” he said slowly. “You… know that he wants me to—?” The question wasn’t finished, but left dangling for him to fill in the blank in a very non-subtle sort of way.
“Does it
matter?” Gideon asked sharply. “Don’t fuck with his head, Ackerman.”
Leandro did more than enough of that as it was.
“I think he’s the one fucking with mine.” Ackerman retorted bristly. “What do you know about his contract with Leandro? Why is he enslaved to him?” he asked, speaking more or less freely again.
Contract. What contract? Gideon’s brow furrowed, and he shook his head. “I don’t know. Never really asked. Kolt always seemed…” He trailed off. He’d been wrong so many times — about the incubus in general, about his relationship with Leandro, all of it. “I don’t know,” he repeated.
“Seemed what?” the detective asked. “You do know that otherkin can’t enslave other otherkin, right?” he prompted. “So how Kolt became Leandro’s is a story worth knowing.”
“He seemed content to me,” Gideon finished his earlier sentence. He was already giving himself enough grief over not having seen the truth sooner. “He always adored Leandro. Kolt’s been with him since before I got there.”
“How long have you been there?” Ackerman wanted to know.
“Five years?” Gideon guessed. “Six, maybe.” There had been signs. He’d seen them, possibilities in the future, but he hadn’t seen any evidence to back them up. He’d thought those were warnings of what could come rather than hints about what was going on.
“And what’s changed in those years that you’re now basically aiding and abetting?” Ackerman asked, narrowing his eyes a little at him.
Gideon didn’t even fully know the answer to that question. No, that wasn’t true. He’d had plenty of chances to think about it lately, and he was more than a little certain he knew why. Whether he wanted to discuss it with Ackerman was a different story “Why do you need to know?” he asked, his voice just shy of hostile.
“Because I don’t know the little shit. You just told me he’s been with Leandro for over six years, so I’d like to know if this is something he does a lot, or if there’s a reason why he wants out now,” the detective said, making an annoying amount of sense.
Kolt did have a lot of qualities he would normally attribute to the fae, so maybe it was all a farce.
A game.
Inhaling deeply, then slowly letting the breath out, Gideon contemplated how much he should share in silence. His own kind were as rare as the incubi, and they weren’t always viewed the most favorably.
Of course, Ackerman probably didn’t know a damn thing about the nephilim, so it was doubtful he’d put any pieces together even if he spoke freely about his motives.
“I don’t like what Leandro is doing to him,” he finally said. “He’s taking away too much.”
“Like what?” the human predictably asked. “TV, PlayStation, and no phone?”
Gideon stared at Ackerman, lip curling in disgust. Those were trivial things, things that he didn’t care about. Kolt’s continued enslavement, the denial of basic needs, or free will… Things that mattered.
“How the fuck you ended up here, I don’t even know, Ackerman,” he said testily. The guy was fucking useless. “Does it really matter? Kolt wants help. I’m helping.”
“As I keep telling you people,” Ackerman muttered. “No one else wanted me.” The man drew in a breath and looked at him, tiredly, almost. “Just fucking tell me what changed, so I can figure out how much energy I need to pour into this underground railroad shit,” he practically pleaded.
Gideon’s eyes drifted half-closed for a moment. Not many knew what he was or the visions of the future he could conjure. He was a hybrid between a celestial being and a mere human, a true abomination. There were those in the fae community who would happily see him dead for the angelic blood running through his veins.
“I keep seeing…” Gideon trailed off, not wanting to go into detail about his premonitions. “I had a choice the other night,” he said, seemingly changing the subject entirely. “When I helped you, I chose it. That’s free will. And he’s stripping that away from Kolt… Leandro doesn’t want to believe it’s a bad idea. He thinks because he owns Kolt, he owns his will.”
He was saying too much, and it could get them all into big trouble if Ackerman continued to be the moron he seemed to be. But if it would make the cop get off his fucking ass and do something for Kolt, he’d risk it.
“Kolt said he was there of his own free will,” Ackerman said, shaking his head. “Is that true then, or no?” He sat up a little straighter.
“I don’t know. They were together before I got there. It seemed normal. I told you,” Gideon said irritably.
“Well, fuck,” Ackerman said with a sigh. “So you’ve no idea how he got there?” he continued to ask, even though Gideon had already said as much.
Gideon gave him a look. “If you’re gonna repeat the same questions, we’re gonna be here a while.”
“So the odds of you getting me a picture of the contract, is like—” Ackerman wrinkled his nose and grimaced. He shrugged and held his fingers about half an inch apart. “This big?” he asked.
“Less,” Gideon said. “Even if I knew one existed, he’s fae. There’s no telling if it’s even in this realm.”
Leandro had countless places to hide things.
“Right,” Ackerman said. If he was feeling anything about the answers he’d gotten, Gideon couldn’t read them from his reaction. “So, I need you to go over the account of the other night,” he continued, business as usual. He flipped the folder open and handed him a document. “Just sign it, and it’ll serve as your testimony,” he explained. “And I’m sure Leandro is dying to have information,” he said with a slow inhalation.
Gideon grunted instead of speaking, taking the document and starting to read. He took his time, making a few corrections in small, blocky handwriting. “Need to retype this, or will it work this way?” he asked.
He’d get back to Leandro’s interest in the Organization soon enough.
“It’ll need to be retyped, but I can have Dave do it. He’s pretty quick,” Ackerman said, holding his hand out for the papers.
He handed them over, watching Ackerman as he got up and stepped out of the room. He wasn’t gone long, though he was empty-handed when he rejoined Gideon.
“The information for Leandro,” Gideon prompted as soon as the detective returned to his seat.
Ackerman looked up at him with a sigh. “Leandro’s going to be fucking disappointed. Not much to tell. Gathering information takes time. Some things might end up speeding it up, though. Like… whether a fae murdered someone at his casino. The death at the casino got everyone’s attention. There’s talk of an investigation,” the detective said, before looking him straight in the eyes. “Did he do it…?” he asked plainly.
Gideon only gave him a blank look. “I’m not the one who interrogated him. Shouldn’t your people know if he did it or not?” he countered.
“We’re not the ones to clean up his messes,” Ackerman responded shortly.
“So, they don’t know,” Gideon concluded. Really. Like it was that hard to figure out that Leandro would’ve killed someone in the middle of the fucking casino without hesitating. He wasn’t going to be the one to spill on this, especially not when Barsum had put his paws all over Kolt against the incubus’ wishes.
Though if he had to believe Ackerman, and perhaps even his own assessment, the incubus’ will might’ve been in jeopardy for a while before even that. If it wasn’t all an elaborate game between fae and incubus, designed to fuck with people like him and Ackerman.
“Fuck, man. Everyone knows he did it. Just no one is talking, and there’s no evidence. Someone did a good job getting rid of it,” Ackerman finally snapped, clearly already tiring of the games.
He and Leandro were going to clash even more than he’d thought, if this was any indication of things yet to come.
“You should remember I’m not really your informant,” Gideon warned him softly. “You should also remember that your ass belongs to Leandro, so asking too many questions isn’t a brilliant i
dea.” Not that he thought the detective was smart enough to back off. He was like a dog with a goddamn bone.
“It’s cute,” Ackerman responded with a sneer. "The both of you seem to think I’m going to be brilliant. I’ll remind you that’s not how I got here,” he said snidely. “Tell Leandro that any other murder sprees need to happen outside of his fucking casino, because before long, they’ll declare the whole place a hazard to human-otherkin relations and shut him the fuck down. Alternatively, if it’s a big enough crime scene, they’ll use it as an excuse to look for other shit. He needs to stop acting like he’s fucking God in that fucking casino of his. Basically.”
Gideon would almost like to see them try to shut the fae down. Almost. That would be a nightmare, and one he didn’t want to be even remotely involved with. He wished he could believe that Leandro wouldn’t kill anyone else so publicly, but he knew better. This wasn’t the first time someone had died on the grounds. This was just… the first time he’d made a fatal example of someone on the floor.
“One suspected murder doesn’t constitute a murder spree,” Gideon said, keeping emotion from bleeding into his voice. “I’ll pass your message on. I’m sure he’ll be as impressed as I am.”
“I wasn’t aware there was an acceptable number of murders,” Ackerman retorted, deadpan. “Make sure he knows I can’t make anything go away. I don’t have that kind of pull. If that’s what he’s after, he needs to find himself another Organization monkey.” The detective leaned back in his chair and pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his jacket pocket.
“For a spree, there’s a minimum number,” Gideon replied without missing a beat. “As for what he expects, you’ll do what you can to make him happy unless you want things to get pretty fucking difficult for you.” He glanced at the cigarettes. “Didn’t know you could smoke in the building,” he remarked.
“You can’t,” Bryce said, but lit one up anyway.
Gideon rolled his eyes.
