Under Pressure (Moonlight Detective Agency Book 4)

by Isobella Crowley

  When he stepped from the car and locked it, he noticed that it was shaping to be another cold, nasty day. Yesterday had been relatively tolerable. Not that he’d been able to appreciate it much while bathing in hideous slime during his exterminator duties.

  Remy pushed through the front door and made eye contact with Bobby, who was seated behind the reception desk. She was an attractive blonde with a truly epic pair of business assets and, as usual, wore a tight, low-cut top to make the best of them. She looked surprised and even confused to see him.

  “Oh,” she stammered and frowned. “Uh…hi, Mr. Remington? I saw the car pull in so I kinda thought you were Ms Steele. Where is she, anyway?”

  He shrugged in an exaggerated, dramatic way. “I dunno. I think she ran off with an old boyfriend or something. No, she didn’t, I made that up. Her butler said she left last night on business of some kind and she isn’t back yet.”

  Bobby nodded, not greatly troubled.

  “Okay,” she went on as he hung his coat and scarf, “we have a pile of messages and stuff to go through. Honestly, it’d probably be easier if I put the answering machine on the speaker so you can listen to them all yourself while you get coffee. I still have to type the reports up anyway.”

  “Sure,” he agreed. “I don’t suppose the intern has procured breakfast of some kind?”

  “Um…” Bobby looked doubtful. “I’m not sure what ‘procured’ means, but last night, I think Taylor sent Alex off to do some kind of overnight errand so he isn’t here. Does that answer your question?”

  It did and he nodded. He frowned and reminded himself bitterly of how terrible and unhealthy donuts were, anyway, and especially when he’d eaten two-thirds of a pizza the night before.

  He trudged toward his personal office in the far corner and resolved to wait for a couple of minutes before he downed his second cup of coffee of the morning. Bobby, meanwhile, flipped a couple of switches and the answering machine disclosed its secrets to the entire office.

  Beep.

  “Uh…hi.” The voice of the first caller floated from the ceiling’s speakers. “I’m George Bilansky. I was in about three weeks ago? I was wondering…did you ever, you know, get the photographs and chatlogs I requested? I mean, obviously, you can’t take a picture of her if she didn’t actually go there, to begin with, ha-ha. But I kinda wanted an update as to whether you’ve found anything.”

  Remy sniffled as he stepped into his office. “Don’t worry, George,” he muttered. “If we discover that your daughter really is falling in with the ol’ Beelzebub worshipers up on 21st, you’ll be the first to know. Downloading black metal albums and the new Doom expansion doesn’t really count, though.”

  He dumped his minimal gear on the floor beside the desk and booted his computer up. In addition to the various cases they had in progress, there was also still accounting-type stuff to deal with. That was not his favorite task, although at least he was good at it. His parents’ business acumen had rubbed off on him over the years.

  Beep.

  “Okay,” said the next voice, which Remy identified as belonging to the third-party, conventional private eye to whom they’d outsourced menial tasks, “about the whole missing persons case.”

  The investigator sat and spread the papers Bobby had left on his desk so he could view each one individually while the PI’s message continued.

  “It seems like many of these people are either from northern Queens, or they were last seen in that vicinity before they disappeared. Also, one of my contacts reported seeing a group of suspicious characters—you know, dark-suit types dressed way too nicely for the neighborhood—standing around at an old warehouse in Flushing. I’d rather give you the address in person so you can look forward to me stopping by soon.”

  “Awesome,” Remy quipped. He stood and left his office, deciding the time had come to venture to the coffee machine.

  Beep.

  “Hello,” a silky, almost ethereal female voice said, and Remy froze in place. “I wanted to thank you for doing such a good job taking care of my…plumbing problem. I’d like to settle our bill via conventional mail if that’s okay.”

  He shuddered. Honestly, he should have expected that such a nice, beautiful Elven lady would end up being responsible for what he’d had to deal with yesterday.

  “Of course,” he muttered.

  As he passed through the lobby area, Bobby waved to him. “Mr. Remington. That last one reminded me of something I thought you’d like to hear about. I read about it yesterday after work.”

  Remy wasn’t sure he was in the mood but he slowed enough for her to at least begin to speak.

  The receptionist had never been initiated into the preternatural. As far as she knew, Taylor was simply a pale woman who preferred to work nights, Riley the fairy was a perky girl who showed up occasionally as a freelancer, and Volz was merely short.

  Curiously enough, however, she was an avid reader of The New England Inquirer and therefore believed in all kinds of loopy stuff, only not the correct loopy stuff, even when real evidence was all around her.

  But she was not the sharpest tool in the proverbial shed, anyway, so he wasn’t too worried about it.

  “So,” she began, “there’s this guy over in the East Village. He flushed his toilet and turned on the shower, and all this blood came out. He thought maybe an animal was stuck in the pipes or something. But he took a blood sample to a biologist at the college, and this doctor can’t even identify the species.”

  Uh-oh, Remy thought. That fucking blood golem a couple of weeks ago got farther than I thought before it dissolved. It sounds like we need to mindwipe a normie—except, of course, Taylor isn’t here to handle it.

  Ms Diaz continued to prattle away, essentially repeating what she’d read in the latest Jenny Ocren story.

  “…that when the Saturnians first made contact, they taught mankind how to genetically engineer androgynous warrior-angels out of blood that was contaminated with various STDs. Well, the people who are in the know suspect that this is tied to how the ODESSA organization was developing a new super-strain of AIDS and preparing to—”

  “Yes, intriguing,” Remy interrupted hastily. “I’ll have a look at this week’s Inquirer a little later. If you’ll excuse me, I need coffee now.” He hastened toward the break area in the back.

  As he rounded a corner, he passed Volz. The dwarf, relatively thin for his species but still short and as solid as a boulder by human standards, chuckled quietly as he plunked away on one of the general staff computers.

  “Hi, Volz,” he said. “How are all the improvements coming along? Usually, I don’t even notice when you add yet another one, which means you must be doing a really good job.”

  “Splendidly,” the dwarf rumbled. “I’m removing the ability of bumbling human hackers to acquire access to any of the audio recorded by our security systems. It’s quite easy. I simply hadn’t gotten to it before now.”

  Remy nodded and finally approached the short table where the coffee machine stood. He took a cup from those provided. “That sounds potentially useful, I think. By the way, it occurred to me that you never really commented on the matter of us…uh, you know, completely massacring the Surrly-Greyhammer cartel. No hard feelings, right?”

  A low grinding sound emerged from somewhere in Volz’s throat.

  “Hard feelings, yes, but not toward you or Taylor. Members of that very cartel were the ones responsible for ruining my prior business, as you ought to recall. It is not pleasant to see so many dwarves get themselves killed, but…”

  He trailed off and shook his head, then resumed. “If they play stupid games, they must expect to win stupid prizes. Such as death and destruction, for example. I thought they’d know better than to sell preternatural drugs to humans, not to mention declaring war on Taylor. Allowing that barbarian Greyhammer to lead them simply because he looked impressive was their first and last mistake.”

  The investigator considered this and decided h
e believed it. Volz wasn’t the lying type. Besides, the entire reason he worked for the agency these days was a direct result of the cartel’s perfidy.

  “So,” he added, “have you seen Riley? We haven’t really needed her but I get curious as to how she’s doing, et cetera.” He added a single packet of non-dairy creamer to the bottom of his cup and poured coffee on top of it.

  Volz replied at once. “I have not. I assumed she had returned to her nest, and I have been busy with other things.”

  Remy frowned. The fairy had…problems. He thought he’d helped her out of the worst of them, but it was tough to be sure.

  “Well…” He sighed. “The last I heard—as in a couple of days ago—she wasn’t home, so who knows what she’s out doing? I’ll check on her later. We’ve all been fairly busy lately.”

  As he strolled to his office, stray thoughts began to weave themselves together within his mind. Months before, he would have thought this was paranoia, but with all he’d learned since autumn, reality was a far more likely explanation.

  Moswen Neith was still out there. They did not know what she was up to yet and Taylor, Riley, and Alex were all unaccounted for.

  He didn’t want to get to his accounting work yet and also didn’t want anyone to hear him spamming Taylor with nervous check-in calls. It would look bad. So instead, he left the building via the side exit and wandered outside.

  Their office was positioned in a relatively disused part of town. The car park off to the side still enjoyed a little business, but not much. As he walked toward it, he saw only a couple of empty vehicles there.

  He pulled his phone out and dialed Taylor’s cell number.

  It rang, which was a good sign, he supposed.

  “Come on,” he muttered after the seventh ring. “Pick up, Taylor.”

  After the twelfth, the ringing stopped and was replaced by a prerecorded female voice. “The number you are trying to reach has been disconnected and is no longer in service. Please try again.”

  “What?” He snapped. “Try again when you literally said that it’d be pointless to do so? Who wrote the script for that recording? For fuck’s sake.”

  He slipped his phone into his pocket again. If he smoked, which he didn’t, he’d probably need a cigarette right now. He wouldn’t have minded a drink, either.

  Shaking his head in the cold air, he turned back toward the building to get to work.

  At that moment, something exploded. Vivid blue light flashed in front of him, above, and around him and streamed through the office’s windows. From within the structure came a rumbling boom.

  “Holy shit!” Remy yelled. Before he even knew what he was doing, he broke into a sprint and barged through the door. There was no obvious damage that he could see outside.

  As he burst into the building itself, the part of his brain responsible for things like rational thought reminded him that he might well have hurled himself directly into a trap.

  Despite the inner caution, he jogged down the hall and into the main central floor area, then he forced himself to a stop. His eyes attempted to scan everywhere at once.

  Everything looked essentially normal.

  Volz lay on the floor, though, having fallen backward in his chair. The computer he’d been working at was still on and the dwarf himself was alive and not visibly injured.

  “Volz,” he said and leaned forward with a hand extended to help him up, “are you okay? What the hell was that?”

  The dwarf’s big, strong hand engulfed his and he began to heave himself upward. “Uhhh…” He uttered what could have been a moan. “That…was…weeeeiiiird…” His eyes rolled and almost glazed over.

  Remy squinted. Something wasn’t quite right, but his best guess was that Volz was discombobulated. It happened to everyone, especially when caught in the middle of a strange explosion of light.

  Leaving the dwarf to recover, he jogged toward the reception desk to check on Bobby. She, too, looked more or less okay. From what he could guess, she must have kick-rolled her chair back when the blast had struck and was now perched awkwardly against the wall behind her desk.

  A parcel delivery guy stood near the entrance. His back was propped against the other wall, opposite Bobby.

  “Huh,” he mused, tapped his lips, and surveyed the scene.

  The delivery boy was someone he hadn’t seen before but judging by the stunned look on his face, whatever had happened had surprised him as much as everyone else. He must merely be a new guy.

  Logically, there was also a parcel on the reception desk. It was half-open and he walked toward it.

  “You,” he said to the parcel courier, “are dismissed. Thanks.” If by some chance they needed to check in on him, they’d have footage of him on the security cams and could go from there.

  The young man blinked. “Uhhhhhhhhh…” He stretched the sound out so long that Remy was afraid he might drool on the floor.

  With a sigh, he took his arm and more or less helped him out the front door. There was no delivery truck visible out front, so he must have parked around the corner. With him sent on his way, he hurried back into the office.

  By now, Bobby had rebalanced herself and regained her composure, although her eyes bulged and she looked around constantly as if this was the first time she’d ever seen their lobby—or any other lobby, for that matter.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  She nodded so he turned to the package.

  It was unremarkable—brown paper around an oblong cardboard box about a foot in length like something a thermos would come in. Within the box was absolutely nothing. It looked like there was a small coating of royal blue powder smudged against the inside in a couple of places, but that was it.

  “Shit,” Remy mumbled. Was it some kind of gift from a client that had accidentally teleported itself to its home dimension? An anti-vampire neutron-bomb-type weapon sent by Moswen that didn’t harm other species? If that was the case, Taylor was right to be far away.

  He was still considering the possibilities when Bobby wheeled herself to the desk and contributed to the examination.

  “Wait,” she said, her voice sharper and more hurried than usual. “I get it! Seriously, it’s obvious when you look at it. Look—no postmark. This was never processed by an actual parcel delivery service, let alone the post office. And that return address is bullshit. That ZIP code doesn’t even exist. It’s a Jersey ZIP but they attached it to a town in upstate New York. And last but not least, I’ve never seen that delivery man before. We were targeted by someone who tried to cover their tracks.”

  Remy’s mouth had fallen open in the middle of her spiel and for a second, he was afraid that he, like the parcel guy, was on the verge of drooling.

  “Bobby,” he asked, “are you…on something? No offense, but—”

  “Shit!” she exclaimed and pointed out the front door, “he’s getting away! We should question him.”

  He spun and barged out the door, but the unmarked pickup truck containing the delivery gentleman was already rumbling out into the road. It wove alarmingly as it barreled down the street as though the driver was drunk.

  Irritated, he smacked himself on the forehead. Bobby was right, he should have pursued him. He’d merely been so surprised. Normally, Ms Diaz couldn’t deduce that a hamburger had once been a ground beef patty and now, suddenly, she’d deduced what had happened even before he had.

  And, he marveled, since when is she an expert on ZIP codes? When we first put her on the payroll, she screwed up her own address.

  Back inside, Bobby had come out from behind the reception desk and held her head in her hands. “My God.” She gasped. “It’s all coming together. This isn’t a regular detective agency, is it? That crap I read about in the Inquirer—half of it is true and you guys are the ones who deal with it!”

  Remy stared at her for a moment. Ohhhhh, hell.

  “Bobby,” he stated, “since you…ah, no offense, but seem to have suddenly gained a considerable
number of IQ points, I think we need to have a talk. Will you step into my office?”

  She took a deep breath. “I can tell from your body language, timbre of voice, and facial micro-expressions that you’re probably not lying and it’s not a ruse to kill me for having discovered the truth,” she said, “so okay, sure.”

  They flipped the sign on the front door to CLOSED and sat in his office. He told her everything, basically. Not the juiciest details—particularly those that might have made him look bad—but enough.

  “Taylor, you see,” he concluded as he twirled a pen between his fingers, “has essentially kept a lid on all the preternatural stuff in the Greater New York Metropolitan Area for, like…I don’t know, a few decades, at least. I’m not even sure how old she is. In any event, this agency is her front. And all of us—especially me, of course—are on the front lines, keeping order, maintaining plausible deniability, and protecting the good people of this fair city or whatever.”

  He paused and exhaled. “Welcome aboard.”

  Bobby nodded. She seemed to be taking it well.

  “So,” she surmised, “Taylor must have hired you as bait since you’re good at doing irresponsible things that draw tons of attention. And you must have hired me to distract any male human officials who come in.”

  Remy suddenly broke the pen in half and showered his right hand with spilled ink. “I—whuh…no,” he stammered. “You don’t—fuck—ahhh…” He trailed off and hung his head. “Never mind.”

  “It’s okay, whatever,” she went on. “That package must have contained some kind of…magical bomb, a spell triggered by opening it, which affected the cognitive abilities of everyone in the building. I… God, I feel like I’ve woken up from a really good dream.”

  She grinned openly. “And I knew it. I knew that there was way more going on in our world than most people think. Most people always thought I was fairly dumb but I was right, goddammit! Okay, the Inquirer has to be wrong about some of it but at least I was on the right track.”

  Remy had to smile. “True.”

  Bobby’s face fell back into seriousness as her souped-up brain returned to overdrive. “But who could have sent it? Moswen? It augmented me with no negative effects, at least not so far. Why would she help us?”