Spellbinding Starters

by Annabel Chase

  He'd arrived home from work only twenty minutes before and was trying to decompress with the help of his game console.

  "I mean, it's too much of a coincidence, right?" I said, as I opened a can of fake spaghetti in fake tomato sauce and dumped it evenly into two bowls. Magical drugs made me hungry.

  "You showing up at multiple crime scenes?" he asked.

  "Not that. Mages start working with mobsters and chaos ensues. Maybe O'Leary's involved and has Pinky helping him."

  "And they're using you as a distraction?" he queried.

  "Possibly, but why commit the murders? Is he trying to muscle into the organ guy's turf? Oust him as the leader?"

  I placed both bowls in the microwave and covered them with a plastic lid. Mix wasn't big on cooking so his food options were limited. I briefly wondered whether Paulette cooked.

  Mix cast a sidelong glance at me. "Why didn't you run straight to Farah with all this?"

  "You were closer."

  "There's beer in the fridge," he said, heading back into the living room.

  "Don't you have any vodka?" His silence answered my question.

  I opened the fridge and pulled out two bottles. Now where was the bottle opener? It sucked to have to look for things and not simply summon them into my awaiting hand. I peered inside the top drawer and my hand froze.

  A semiautomatic handgun rested on top of a notepad in the drawer. I yanked it from its hiding spot and marched into the living room.

  "What's this?" I asked sternly.

  Mix glanced up from the video game he'd started. "A gun." He continued to play his game.

  "I can see that. What is it doing in your kitchen drawer with the crossword puzzles? Any why do you have crossword puzzles?"

  "It's Paulette's."

  "The crossword or the gun?"

  He gave me a pointed look.

  "Why does your human girlfriend need a semiautomatic?"

  "So she should have a snub-nosed revolver because she's a girl?" he countered. "Alyse, you should be ashamed of yourself."

  I blew the air out through my nose. "Jeremy Mix, are you dating a Republican?"

  Although he tried to keep his attention on the game, he was failing miserably. "In case you haven't noticed, we live in a rather crime-laden town."

  I examined the weapon. It was good quality. I wondered if it had been part of Farah's collection. I checked the chamber and was surprised to see copper bullets.

  "Why does she need copper bullets?" I asked. "Who exactly is she protecting herself from?"

  Mix stopped his game and stood to take the weapon away. "I doubt she's even aware there's copper in the bullets. It'll work just as well against a human."

  I bet Mix would be more concerned if she'd stuffed it full of cold iron bullets.

  I frowned at the gun. "Why is it here if she wants to have it for self-defense?"

  "Not that it's any of your business, but she sleeps here most nights," he told me and placed the pistol back in the drawer.

  "Do you know how to use it?" I asked.

  "Of course I do. Now leave it alone. I thought you were making dinner."

  "I am. I needed a bottle opener. I can't summon one anymore, remember?" I held up my aggrieved wrists.

  "You could've asked me," Mix pointed out. Mix was a Jann like Flynn and, as a caste, their summoning powers were pretty solid. Bottle openers would not pose a problem for them.

  "Can you summon me a new bank account?" I asked, only partially joking. If only it were possible. Even the most powerful djinn had their limitations. No djinni could summon a vault full of gold bars or boatload full of cash. Our powers didn't work like that.

  "You've got a job now," he said. "It'll work out."

  Although I hardly thought that one assignment from O'Leary would keep me above the poverty line, I didn't argue.

  "What about you? Are you making enough at your job?" We were eating canned pasta for dinner so the jury was most definitely out on that one.

  "For once, I feel like I'm getting somewhere," he said. "My job is good. Paulette is great." He smiled at me. "You're back in town."

  I held up a finger. "Temporarily."

  Mix returned the weapon to the drawer, grabbed two spoons, and removed the bowls from the microwave.

  He handed me my bowl. "Why are you focused on Pinky and the mob, anyway? What about Flynn?"

  I followed him into the living and plopped on the couch beside him. "What about Flynn?"

  "If you think someone's trying to frame you, why not him and his girlfriend?"

  Flynn and Tessa? I shook my head with the spoon still in my mouth. Not possible.

  "You dumped him at the worst point in his life, Alyse. He took it pretty hard."

  "So you think he wants revenge and he's using his human girlfriend to rip the organs out of supernaturals in order to frame me?" It sounded over the top, even for Flynn.

  "How do we know Tessa's human?"

  "She is," I insisted, although her flexibility did strike me as superhuman. "And I don't think she knows who I am, other than the woman she ejected from her yoga class."

  Mix scraped the bottom of his bowl. "Maybe that's what she wanted you to think. Maybe she's known who you are all along."

  I tapped the spoon against the side of the bowl. Okay, maybe it wasn't impossible.

  "But she broke up with him the night we trained together," I said. "Would she have done that if she wanted to frame me?"

  He shrugged. "Maybe she's emotional and dumped him in anger. It doesn't rule her out."

  And I hadn't heard from Flynn since the morning after the Viper Pit -- a sure sign they were back together.

  "I don't think Flynn is involved," I said. "He doesn't hate me the way you think he does."

  Mix stepped over my legs and brought his bowl into the kitchen. "Doesn't mean she's not involved. And if she's an unregistered mage, she wouldn't need Flynn to help her. She could have anybody doing it who's strong enough or skilled enough to carve into the bodies. It's not like they need to keep the victims alive."

  He made a good point. Flynn was the one who sent me to the warehouse. He knew I was going to run at the Schuylkill River Trail and he was with me at Viper Pit. If he'd shared any of that information with Tessa, she and her partner could easily have planned the murders to coincide with my location. The idea left a bitter taste in my mouth.

  "Do you want the rest of this?" I asked, holding up my bowl to Mix.

  "No, thanks." He inclined his head. "Are you feeling okay? You don't look so good."

  "I think the Enclave drugs are wreaking havoc on my stomach," I said and proceeded to vomit all over his coffee table.

  The next party that drugged me or knocked me unconscious was going to have hell to pay.

  Chapter Twenty

  I was surprised when Detective Thompson came to see me at Farah's apartment. Probably checking to make sure I didn't have a stockpile of Nephilim organs in my closet. At least she wasn't sending annoying Italian guys to accompany me to the grocery store.

  "Can I get you anything?" I offered. "Glass of iced tea?" I wasn't the best hostess in the world, but I knew the basics.

  "No, thank you."

  We sat in the living room like two civilized adults. I hoped Farah didn't have any client appointments today because we were uncomfortably close to one very illegal armory downstairs and I was already skating on razor-thin ice with the good detective.

  "So are you here to arrest me?" I asked. Better to know now and get it over with.

  "Not today," she answered. Her calm expression gave nothing away.

  "Good, because I'd hate for my mugshot to capture this hair." It was doing its summer humidity thing again and I wasn't happy about it.

  "My sources tell me that you've been busy following your own leads."

  Was someone from PTF tailing me and I didn't notice? I needed to pay better attention.

  "And you're sure I'm not going on a wild goose chase just to mess with you?" />
  "No, I don't know that," she replied. Well, score one for honesty. "But I don't have enough evidence to move forward."

  That was a relief.

  "Do you mind if I ask you a personal question?"

  Detective Thompson raised an eyebrow. "You don't seem the type to care if I mind."

  She knew me so well already. "How did you get placed in PTF? You don't have the Third Eye." Or if she did, she hid it really well.

  She shook her head. "No Third Eye, but I learned about the other layers of this world at a young age."

  I could tell by the damaged look in her eyes that she learned the hard way. I smiled sympathetically. "I'd like to believe you saw a fluffy bunny shift into a human body, but somehow I'm guessing not."

  Her mouth formed a thin line. "How'd you know?"

  "Whatever exposed you to the existence of djinn, it brought you to the police force and to PTF. Fluffy bunnies don't do that."

  Detective Thompson plucked at a loose fabric on the arm of the chair. Her body seemed tense, even though her face remained placid. "My parents were killed when I was ten. I watched the attack from inside their closet."

  "You were in their closet?"

  "I was a scared kid, always looking for the monster under my bed, and my parents would insist there was nothing to be afraid of. My dad would walk me around the house and show me the alarm system and the locked windows to reassure me. Still, I would end up dragging my blankets into their bedroom at night to sleep on the floor."

  I closed my eyes, knowing what was coming.

  "One night I was on their floor as usual, and I heard scraping at the window pane. It was loud enough to send me scurrying into the closet nearby. The next thing I knew, glass was flying everywhere and these things..." She paused, trying to maintain her composure. "They burst into the room. They were hideous."

  "Ghuls?" I asked.

  She nodded and I swore under my breath.

  "The attack was brutal. They didn't see me. Thank God." She drew a steadying breath. "I went to live with my auntie after that, and I vowed to one day find the monsters responsible and make them pay."

  "So you planned to join the police force from a young age," I said.

  "Not just the police force. I worked hard so that when I asked to be moved to PTF, they listened instead of pretending it didn't exist."

  The Paranormal Task Force wasn't a publicly known branch of the police department. Even within the police department, most officers didn't know of its existence. You either had to have a Third Eye or be recruited. Apparently, Kenya Thompson made damn sure she was recruited.

  "I'm sorry about your parents," I said.

  "Much appreciated. I know it's a foreign concept for you."

  I knew she meant parents rather than loss. Djinn didn't have parents. We were born of essential fire in the Plasma Plane, another plane of existence beyond this one, and could move between worlds in places where the planes intersected. Some djinn never left the Plasma Plane. Others preferred the human world. I was brought here by my caste before I was old enough to form memories. Each caste was responsible for raising and educating its members, so we had youth guardians that served as parental figures and, of course, our royal rulers.

  "You must have learned a lot about the supernatural world," I said.

  "Not enough." I noticed a hardness in her expression that I hadn't seen before.

  "You want to ask me for advice," I said. This visit wasn't about the murders. Not really.

  She gave me a hard look. "I figure you tracked your share of Ghuls as an Elite agent."

  And killed my share, too. "Many times. I wouldn't want to come up against them now. Not as a human. They're as powerful as they are ugly."

  "I'd like to learn everything you know about them," she said.

  Thompson shifted in the chair and her nervousness finally made sense. She was worried her access to me was limited. That if I were arrested, I'd be spirited away and she'd miss her chance to glean valuable information. No one else in the city would have as much firsthand experience with Ghuls.

  "I'll help you," I said. True, I wanted to win her over, but I'd help anybody take down Ghuls. My hatred for them was as natural as breathing.

  "You will?" She seemed mildly surprised.

  "When I'm off your shortlist of suspects." As much as I wanted to give her the necessary tools to avenge her parents' deaths, I had to keep my eye on the ball. My survival came first.

  My phone buzzed on the coffee table. A text from an unknown caller.

  "Good timing," I said, as I scanned the text. "Organ guy wants to meet with me."

  She straightened. "When?"

  I checked the text. "Twenty minutes. Willow Steam Plant."

  She frowned. "No way that's his normal base of operations."

  "It takes all kinds."

  "Okay then. I'm coming, too."

  "That's not a good idea. This guy's identity is top secret. It's almost as tightly wrapped as the Dragon."

  Thompson gave me a sharp look. "You ever find out who the Dragon is, you better damn well tell me. We've been trying to track him for years."

  "I'll let you know what this guy says."

  "The hell you will." She pushed herself out of the chair. "You want to convince me you're not involved? Here's your chance."

  "But..." If something happened to her on my watch, it would only make me appear guiltier than I already did. I didn't need the extra pressure.

  Her hands gripped her hips. "I'm coming with you if I have to handcuff us together."

  "That's thoughtful, but I already have a set."

  "Consider me backup." She flashed her gun at me.

  "The text says no weapons."

  "And how often do you walk into a situation unarmed?" She folded her arms across her bust, challenging me.

  "Before the cuffs, I was the weapon. Now, you're right. I'll keep my daggers on me, to be on the safe side. I don't trust anyone who stays anonymous." I gestured to her black uniform shirt. "You'll need to wear one of Farah's tops. You can't go in that."

  Thompson glanced down at her attire. "Fine. As long as it's nothing racy. I saw the shop downstairs."

  A smile tugged at my lips. "You'll wear whatever I decide or you don't come. I promise I won't embarrass you." Too much.

  She pulled out her phone and her thumbs began pounding the screen.

  "Who are you texting?" I asked.

  "Captain Reed. He told me to let him know if we had any new leads."

  "No, no," I insisted. "Your presence is bad enough. I can't go into a carefully arranged meeting with a PTF cop and a Protector. If they weren't going to kill me, they sure as hell will now just for being an idiot."

  Thompson shook her head. "Have you tried to tell Captain Reed he can't do something? It's not possible."

  "Maybe you need to tell him in a more violent way so he gets the message."

  She smiled. "I'll leave that to you, Miss Winters."

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The Willow Street Steam Generation Plant was an abandoned building on Ninth and Willow. Built in the nineteen-twenties, it was an integral part of the city's steam system at one time. Rail cars brought in coal via the now disused tracks and the plant burned the coal to create steam. When newer systems were designed, the Willow Street Plant fell out of use and was left to rot. One of the reasons was due to the overwhelming amount of asbestos. No one wanted to be responsible for remediating that sucker.

  "How sweet. He even left the door open for me." I gestured to the main garage door that was rolled up and ready for us to walk through.

  "Aren't we going to wait for Captain Reed?" she asked. She wore a white T-shirt with black trim that read 'Better Sexy & Racy than Sexist & Racist.' I tried to get her to wear one that read 'Junk in the Front' but she flat-out refused. Spoilsport.

  "I'm not the one who invited him," I said. "If I play my cards right, I'll be in and out before Captain America gets here with his integrity and common sense. Mobster
s tend to dislike those qualities, you know."

  "You'd be surprised," Detective Thompson said. "They've got plenty of common sense between them and some of them even have what I consider to be a warped sense of integrity."

  I could see that.

  Cautiously, I walked through the opening. Detective Thompson drew her weapon, but I waved it down. It was best to keep weapons out of sight. No reason for the organ guy to think we were unfriendly. It didn't take too many steps before we were steeped in inky darkness.

  "Couldn't he have a receptionist like everybody else?" I hissed.

  The clanging of pipes echoed throughout the industrial structure. The effect was creepy. I was starting to get a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach. Where was the organ guy? If I was getting too close to the truth, this would be the ideal place to wipe up the floor with me, except that I brought my new friend. He wouldn't expect a disgraced Elite agent to buddy up with someone from PTF. Would he even care? Maybe he'd view it as a two-birds-one-stone opportunity.

  The hiss of a pipe overhead drew my attention upward. Above our heads, smoke stacks loomed, easily more than a hundred and fifty feet high. In some old buildings, noises were to be expected, but this plant had been inactive for over thirty years. The only sound I expected to hear was the scurrying feet of small mammals.

  "Something doesn't feel right," Thompson whispered to me. At least I knew she had good instincts.

  Rusty boilers lined the walls. There was no way this served as a regular meeting place for a high-ranking member of a crime syndicate. The asbestos alone would be a deterrent, along with the inconvenient amount of metal. It would be a tough place to defend yourself with guns. Not enough places to hide.

  The hairs on the back of my arms prickled. They served as my antenna, telling me we were not alone. This time when Thompson drew her gun, I didn't object. In fact, I took the opportunity to reach down and unsheathe my own weapons.

  A gust of hot air blew the hair away from my face. When I glanced up this time, I saw more than smoke stacks. Two enormous creatures were flying down to us, their wings were ringed with fire.