Ask and Answer

by Clara Coulson

  “Liam, hey. Thought you could use some refreshments after the captain’s twenty lashes.”

  Liam spun on his toes and power walked down the hall. Two dozen gazes followed his retreat, but none of the other cops spoke to him. They would speak about him though, he knew for sure, as soon as he was out of earshot.

  Cops were terrible gossips.

  Graciously taking the cup from Franc, he fell into step beside her as they headed for a side exit that only employees were supposed to use. He took a sip of the coffee—it was just as nasty as he remembered—and then muttered quietly behind the rim of his cup, “What’s the latest?”

  Franc, in between bites of a glazed donut, replied in an equally quiet tone, “There are no viable records showing that Kat, Yun, or Hunt were at the Radigan estate. Your greasy hacker friend went back into the catering company’s system and email account, and deleted the digital copies of the employee list for the charity auction and brunch event.

  “He did the same for the Radigan email account that the list was sent to. All the computer records on Radigan’s end were destroyed by the fire, as were the printed copies. And after some cajoling, Radigan said that his home computers were only backed up to the cloud once a month. So we don’t need to worry about anyone digging up names that might get us into trouble.”

  “Good.” Liam took another sip of the muddy liquid that he still couldn’t believe the precinct passed off as a legitimate beverage. “What about the other cops who were on scene? Did they see anything?”

  “Technically, yes, but…” Franc finished off her donut and wiped her mouth with the napkin. “Several guys saw Kat, without her glamour, in the front yard. But when I questioned them about what they witnessed, all of them claimed they didn’t remember anything that happened after they got the call from dispatch to assist with the disturbance at the Radigan residence. According to Kat, the demon did another one of those ‘psychic attacks’ to get the cops off its ass, and a side effect of the attack on mundane humans appears to be memory loss.”

  “That’s a known phenomenon,” he said. “It’s just like when you experience sudden, severe physical trauma. You tend to lose a few minutes because the brain can’t quite process what’s happening. In the case of a psychic attack, the memory loss is usually permanent.”

  “Well, that’s a fair bit of luck, I suppose.” Franc waved at a pair of uniforms who were entering through the side door, and one of them, a woman, was nice enough to hold the door open. Though she flagrantly ogled Liam until he turned the corner of the building and disappeared from view.

  “Did we have any other luck?” Liam asked when they stopped at the crosswalk on the corner to wait for the light to change.

  “I’m afraid not.” Franc tossed her coffee cup into a nearby trashcan. “Hunt managed to exorcise the demon from Linda Cunningham without killing her, but she’s in bad shape. She’s in the ICU at Harlow General, and last I heard, she’s got a fifty-fifty chance of making it through the next forty-eight hours.”

  Liam sighed. “I guess you can’t win them all.”

  “No, you can’t—”

  A strong wave of magic crashed into Liam and Franc, nearly knocking them off their feet. Stunned, Liam dropped his cup of crappy coffee, and it rolled off into the gutter, drooling its contents out of the hole in the lid.

  “What the hell was that?” Franc said, righting herself using the crosswalk light pole.

  “A spell,” Liam replied. “That was a powerful spell, and it came from…” He peered over his shoulder. “It came from inside the precinct.”

  Franc shot him a look of panic. “Pearson.”

  In sync, they whirled around and sprinted back to the side door. Franc smacked her keycard against the sensor box. The instant the light switched from red to green, she heaved the door open so hard it rebounded off the wall and left a divot in the brick.

  They raced inside, passing the main workspace on their way to the lockup. Papers and people were strewn all across the floor. Everyone inside had been knocked down by the discharging energy of the spell. But no one looked seriously injured, so Liam and Franc didn’t stop.

  As they neared the heavy door that offset the lockup from the rest of the precinct, they found it hanging open. A uniformed officer lay just inside the threshold, holding a hand to his bloody head.

  Liam and Franc gently pulled the man into the hall, with Franc checking to make sure the head wound wasn’t serious. Since the man was still awake and coherent, they propped him up against the wall and continued into the lockup.

  The smell hit them like a physical object. The gut-churning smell of a perforated bowel, mixed with the cloying scent of copper.

  Franc staggered to the side and threw up the remains of her donut, while Liam bent over and dry heaved a few times, saliva dripping from his chin. By some miracle, he managed to hold down the bad coffee and hot acid.

  Once he was able to straighten up, he staggered over to the cell where Pearson had been placed yesterday. A fine red spray had painted the floor in front of the cell, and though Liam knew what horror he would witness, he made himself look into the cell anyway.

  Because he needed to see. Just how heinous an organization Advent 9 truly was.

  The curse that had struck Pearson could be best described as an internal bomb. A concentration of energy had built up inside the man’s abdominal cavity, then violently exploded.

  The man’s skin had torn wide open from groin to ribs. His internal organs, shredded to a pulp, had burst outward like a rain of gruesome confetti. Stringy hunks of intestine were now sloughing off the walls and ceiling, joining the growing puddle of blood on the floor.

  Theodore Pearson lay dead in the middle of that puddle, a gaping hole in his gut. Blood and bile leaked from his open mouth, soiling his gray beard, and his glassy eyes stared blankly at Liam.

  He hadn’t died instantly, Liam could tell. His hands covered the gaping wound, fingers splayed like he’d vainly attempted to cast a healing spell. But the magic-suppressing cuffs on his wrists had prevented him from doing so.

  Not that a healing spell would have done him any good. There was no healing spell strong enough to fix injuries that horrific before a human victim expired. With such catastrophic trauma and blood loss, he’d likely survived no more than a few seconds.

  Just long enough to comprehend what had happened. Just long enough to realize that Advent 9 had chosen to punish him for his failure rather than bail him out using their substantial influence.

  Captain Warhol, gun in one hand, rushed into the lockup and stumbled to a halt beside Liam, a cloth doused in strong cologne held over his nose. His murky brown eyes took in the gore-filled scene inside the cell, and shock rippled across his wrinkled face. “What the ever-loving fuck happened here?”

  “Someone decided to clean up their mess,” Liam said, “by leaving us a bigger one.”

  23

  Kat

  “Yun and Liam brought me back to Salem’s Gate, and I’ve been here ever since,” Kat said, finishing what she hoped was the last retelling of her experiences with Advent 9 for a long while.

  Across the kitchen table, Hunt sat hunched over, his hands wrapped around the mug of coffee that had grown lukewarm during Kat’s monologue. He hadn’t interrupted her to ask any questions, but his expression had gradually shifted from perplexed to pissed off as Kat described the various stages of her torture at A9’s hands.

  After a lengthy silence, Hunt gathered his wits and said, “I’ve known that there are bad actors within the Circle for some time. Their presence, among other long-running problems, is what influenced my decision to leave active service as an Enforcer. Never did I imagine, however, that any of those actors would involve themselves with an organization as insidious as the one you’ve described.

  “Theodore Pearson has always been the sort of person to stick a toe over the line whenever he thought he could ge
t away with it. But I hadn’t realized just how skewed his moral compass had become.” Hunt pushed his mug aside and wrung his hands. “The worst part is that Pearson has a number of likeminded contemporaries. They came up together as apprentices and frequently got into trouble for skirting the rules to dabble in banned magic practices.

  “I suspect that Pearson isn’t the only member of that group to have been recruited by this Advent 9. That ‘Marta’ character you described might very well have been a magician named Martina Thurman, who was a close friend of Pearson’s when they were teenagers.”

  Kat slumped back into her chair. “The higher-ups in the Circle, they have to know something is amiss, don’t they?”

  “Yes, they do.” Hunt scratched his chin. “And what disturbs me about it is that, although there is a great deal of corruption in the Circle, particularly in the lower echelons, where glory-seeking is a favorite pastime, many of its most venerable leaders are still sticklers for the rules. For them, of all people, to look the other way, those shadowy figures at the top of A9’s ladder must have leveled some serious threats against the Circle. Your supposition that high-level government officials are involved in the organization is likely spot on.”

  “That’s what I was afraid you were going to say.” She splayed her fingers out across the tabletop to stop her hands from shaking. “If A9 really is that powerful, then how can we possibly stop them?”

  Hunt cocked his head to the side, pensive. “Well, if push comes to shove, there’s always war.”

  Kat started. “What?”

  “Advent 9 might have unfathomable political power, but they only have so much magic power,” he explained. “Cruel as the fae are, they think humans so far beneath them that they would never agree to a joint venture involving magical experimentation, even if they would perform such experimentation on their own inside their hidden hills.

  “As for the vampires, well, they might revel in violence, but their violent acts follow a strict code that’s been set in stone since human civilization was still centered in the Indus Valley. No vampire faction would dare involve themselves with A9. The other factions would tear them to pieces if they found out.

  “Furthermore, while the Circle may be teeming with corruption, at the end of the day, the majority of the Circle magicians will not tolerate black magic practices—and more so, the bad publicity that such practices would bring down on the Circle’s reputation. So if they are forced to make a choice between defending rogue elements like Pearson to the general public and throwing them to the wolves, perhaps quite literally, they will choose the latter. Even if that means resorting to full-on battle in order to cleanse the Circle of those elements.

  “What this means is that, if A9 is ever publicly exposed as a real threat to the supernatural community, and no small-scale solution presents itself, the sup community will go to war to destroy Advent 9.”

  Hunt ran his tongue along his swollen bottom lip. Glasya-Labolas had gotten in a few good punches before Hunt sent it packing to the Inferno. His face was black and blue all over, a butterfly bandage stuck to his left temple, another to the opposite cheek.

  “The problem with a full-scale war against Advent 9 is that the human public would inevitably be caught in the crossfire,” he finished, “especially if A9’s government connections run as deeply as we believe. Depending on how serious a defense A9 mounts, the fallout could be disastrous to mundane society.”

  Kat sighed. “We were afraid of something like that also, which is why we haven’t made any moves against them so far. Not to sound whiny, Hunt, but you’re really discouraging me here.”

  He raised his hand in a placating manner. “These are just my knee-jerk thoughts on the matter, and while I do admit I sound a bit doom-and-gloom, I have always preferred to err on the side of caution. In this case, the potential consequences of confronting A9 without a solid plan to keep that confrontation on the down low could be so severe that I believe we should approach this problem with a ‘light touch’ for as long as possible.

  “To begin with, I think we should do more research into A9’s operational structure. If we can find out who exactly is involved, we may be able to dismantle the organization from the inside out, rather than hack and slash our way through their armor.”

  “It’s really difficult to find information about them though.” Kat grabbed a donut from the box on the table that Hunt had politely brought over for this morning meetup. Nervous as she was, her appetite hadn’t diminished in the least. She’d expended a lot of energy yesterday, and her body was crying out for sustenance.

  So in between bites of the glazed goodness, she added, “A9’s really skilled at plugging leaks, and if they find out we’re sniffing around, they’ll bring down the hammer on us.”

  Hunt nodded. “I did get that impression from your story. But I was an Enforcer for a long time, and even in ‘retirement,’ I still have my fair share of resources. Right now, I think we’re all too discombobulated from this shifter murder business to mount any organized effort to root out A9’s secrets. But while we’re recovering, I’ll put out some feelers with people I trust, see what information we can skim off the edges of the organization without drawing their notice.”

  Kat finished off the donut and picked up another. “That sounds good. Thank you.”

  “No need to thank me, Kat. A9 is a threat to us all, human and nonhuman, sup and mundane. Something needs to be done about them before they achieve whatever sordid goals they have in mind.” He cracked a wan smile. “Plus, I honestly find retirement a bit boring. The day-to-day of running a hardware store doesn’t quite compare to bringing down the forces of evil.”

  Kat let out a faint chuckle. “I don’t know. You seemed pretty imposing when I visited the store. Like you were guarding—”

  The chime on the door to the bookstore sounded off, and Kat flew out of her seat, nearly toppling her chair. She hurried downstairs, Hunt hot on her heels, and swung around the corner into the store in time to see Liam close the door behind Gabby and Yun.

  Liam was dotted with bandages and dark bruises, but his injuries weren’t what concerned Kat. It was the grave look on his face that told her something terrible had occurred, something more than the smoldering mountain of problems they were left with after yesterday’s fight.

  Kat had spent half the night wide awake, pondering how to tell Liam about the chilling comment Glasya-Labolas had made about him. But it seemed that conversation would have to stay on the backburner until the turbulence from A9’s latest venture died down. They had more-pressing issues to work through right now.

  “What happened?” she asked, padding barefoot across the cold tile floor.

  “Yun generously used her local real estate connections to find an affordable apartment for Nick with only a few hours’ notice, but he complained that the nice, clean studio in a good neighborhood was too small. So Yun shocked him in the ass so hard he can’t sit down.” Liam smiled bitterly. “In other news, A9 murdered Theodore Pearson with a death curse. His mutilated corpse is currently being mopped off the floor of his cell.”

  “A bold move.” Hunt propped his shoulder against the wall and crossed his arms. “People will ask questions after a spectacle like that.”

  Gabby tugged off her gloves and set them on the checkout counter. “But will they get answers?”

  “Probably not.” Liam stomped his boots on the mat, dislodging bits of icy slush. “From what I’ve gathered, Sally Radigan knows practically nothing about A9 other than their name and that they have a connection to one of Radigan’s donors. But that donor’s a dead end. Not ten minutes after Pearson bit the dust, Captain Warhol phoned Samuel Radigan to get the donor’s contact information. But when the captain called the guy’s cell phone, a woman picked up. That woman turned out to be the guy’s daughter.”

  “Let me guess,” Hunt said, “the man mysteriously dropped dead around the same time as Pearson?”
/>
  “Yup.”

  They’re just going to keep on killing anyone who threatens to expose them, Kat thought, no matter how high the death toll rises…

  Yun tugged her messy bun in frustration. “Damn, these people really do work fast to sweep up any dirt that concerns them.”

  “That’s how they’ve remained in operation for years,” Kat said. “If they didn’t go to such lengths to keep their secrets, they would’ve already been destroyed by sup powers they can’t yet overcome.”

  “Do you think Daphne Radigan is in any danger?” Gabby asked, pointedly avoiding asking after the well-being of the wolf girl’s mother, who caused all this grief.

  Hunt made a low hum. “Does she know any more than her mother?”

  “No.” Gabby ran a hand over her hair, knocking off bits of melting ice. “I handed her off to Simon Lancaster, the local wolf leader, and he interviewed her while he was in wolf form. She caught bits and pieces of information about what her mother and Pearson were up to, but she was kept in that…that cage around the clock, so she didn’t know the whole story until Lancaster got her up to speed. She was suitably appalled and made no attempt to defend her mother.”

  “In that case, I doubt A9 will pursue her further.” Hunt tapped a finger against his elbow. “Based on what little we’ve learned of A9’s goals, it seems to me that Pearson was here to field test some sort of experimental process meant to permanently convert shifters of mixed ancestry into humans. I doubt Pearson revealed any more than necessary to either Sally or Daphne, so the critical information relating to that heinous process is still firmly in A9’s hands. Thus, they have no reason to assassinate either woman.”

  Yun pursed her lips. “But if Sally releases A9’s name to the public—”

  “She won’t be able to,” Kat said. “A9 has a stranglehold on the news, on the internet. They’ll censor anything that risks publicly exposing them in even the smallest of ways. Their name might get around in the sup circles, thanks to fae and vampire spies, but the ones in this city already know about A9 because of what happened last month. So the status quo will remain the same.”