Wicked Misery (Miss Misery)

by Martin, Tracey

  Lucen tossed me the clothes—a dry T-shirt and a sweatshirt. “Where else are you going to stay, little siren? You’re safest here until fighting breaks out. Might as well make yourself at home.”

  I shivered and pulled the sweatshirt on. Dragon shit on toast. I hadn’t thought about that. Where else could I go? My mother’s home was out—Bridget had already called her, and it would be the first place anyone would search. Same with my cousin’s or my aunt and uncle’s. I had no close friends except Steph, but I didn’t want to put her and Jim in the position of harboring a fugitive. I was already planning on asking her to break the law for me this evening. A hotel room would require a credit card or a trip to the ATM, either one of which could spell my arrest. Steph wouldn’t have enough cash to lend me, and there was no point in asking Lucen when he was willing to let me stay with him.

  The unfortunate truth was no one would look for me here. The Gryphons wouldn’t have a clue, and if they came searching, the satyrs wouldn’t simply hand me over, arrest warrant or no. They wouldn’t give a dragon’s fart about breaking the law. What they would care about was kowtowing to the Gryphons, something that every pred in Shadowtown would know about within twenty-four hours.

  Defeated, I slumped in a chair. Lucen’s sweatshirt smelled lovely, a combination of freshly washed fabric and mild cinnamon. Breathing it in made me feel like I was wrapped in his warmth. My mouth watered. My body perked up.

  Maybe repaying him wouldn’t be so bad. God knew I burned at the thought of it. He’d treat me well as an addict too. I was sure of it. Most preds treated humans like sentient cattle, yet Lucen had always been strangely nice to me for reasons I didn’t get and he never explained. Still, even if he didn’t treat me better than the average addict, it had to be worth it to trade this cotton for his actual skin on mine, or to run my hands and lips over his hard muscles. I wondered if he’d taste like cinnamon too.

  I drove my fingers into my bandage, making my healing bite squeal in pain. Apparently, no washing could get rid of years of satyr pheromones staining the sweatshirt. This arrangement was never going to work.

  Caught by the Gryphons or caught by a satyr’s pheromones. Either way I was screwed.

  I led Steph down the steps into The Lair thirty minutes later. Her face was pale and her lips thin, but she was dressed in her best ass-kicking style—all black with combat boots and Jim’s handgun concealed in her trench coat pocket. Skull earrings bounced against her cheeks, and a heavy cross on a thick silver chain hung around her neck. She looked intimidating, but only to someone who couldn’t feed off her emotions.

  To me, the taste of her fear was tart and buttery on my tongue like a hot, lemon poppy seed muffin. If Lucen and the others didn’t behave, I’d kill them.

  Well, try to anyway.

  “This is a satyr bar?” Steph asked. “Not too busy, is it?”

  “Be glad it’s not hopping. It’s closed because of the situation.”

  “I am glad. Very glad. Trust me, Jess. You need to fully explain this so-called situation because I’m one glad breath away from getting the hell out of this place.”

  Lucen, who’d been watching us from the stoop, got off the phone as we entered. He smiled broadly at Steph. “Nice to meet you.”

  Steph grasped his hand only for a second then set her laptop bag on a table. “Uh-huh. Jess, explain. Now.”

  “Right, in a second. First, I want it to be clear that Steph is here helping me, which is helping you, and that she’s perfectly safe here.”

  “Of course.” Lucen swung his leg around a chair and sat on it backward, looking smug and charming. “You see how she even dared shake hands with me and nothing bad happened? Steph, are you an addict now?”

  “What?”

  I squeezed her shoulder. “Ignore him. He’s taunting me.”

  Lucen held out a hand to me, and I turned my back on him. Yup, he’d obviously chosen tormenting me as his method of payment.

  I sat next to Steph. “Here’s what’s going on.”

  She listened, alternately horrified, disgusted and worried as I explained. Her emotions danced around my mouth, a smorgasbord of flavors. Normally, I hated prying into my friends’ heads like this, but Steph’s feelings could be no secret, and frankly, I needed the energy. It wasn’t late, but I’d been on my feet since five this morning and was starting to feel it.

  As I talked, the satyr posse arrived. Luckily, Steph’s back was to the door, so she didn’t see how many were among the gathering crowd. If she had, I probably wouldn’t have been able to get my story out uninterrupted.

  By twos and threes they came. Devon showed up with the satyr with the effeminate face. Then Dezzi arrived with Lucrezia and another male. Finally, two harpies appeared. The female harpy I recognized because I’d done business with her before, but the male was a mystery. He had shockingly red hair and, despite his greater height, was every bit as twiggy as his companion. Dezzi and the male harpy shook hands solemnly.

  “Lucrezia filled me in on your discussion after I left,” Dezzi said when I finished speaking. “I agree that the Gryphon reports will be useful. I tried obtaining them myself before coming here, but the Gryphons are not sharing information with anyone it seems, and particularly not with us or anyone associated with us.”

  “Not a surprise,” the male harpy said. “They don’t understand the situation. Had you tried explaining—”

  “No. I did not like to explain too much as yet. The Gryphons will use it as an excuse to conduct raids, and if my people press too hard, it will focus the Gryphons’ attention on us particularly. Likewise, any talk of potential threats will bring the Gryphons and the magi into a closer alliance. This is a Shadowtown issue and will stay that way for now.” Dezzi crossed her legs and gestured toward me. “This is Jessica. She’s an old friend of Lucen’s. Jessica, this is Eyff and Lei.”

  The two harpies inclined their heads, and I returned the gesture, grateful they didn’t want to shake hands.

  After I introduced Steph, Dezzi cocked her head in Steph’s direction. “Jessica has explained the situation to you? What can you do?”

  Steph rubbed her hands along the laptop case as though it were a protective talisman. “Seeing as Jess just explained the problem to me, not much. You’re asking me to break in to the Gryphons’ database. That’s not going to happen. Maybe if I had weeks to do some research…”

  Chairs squeaked, legs uncrossed and recrossed. The preds’ displeasure was obvious, and Steph’s anxiety was building in my mouth.

  “I thought you might know of something since you used to work for that security company.” I wished my voice didn’t sound as desperate as I felt.

  “I was low level, very little to do with the Gryphons’ account. I went to their headquarters once or twice to do work, that’s it.”

  “So you can’t do anything?” Lucen asked.

  “Well, no, that’s not entirely true.” Steph looked like she was silently cursing me with each breath. “If I could have ten or fifteen minutes alone with their servers, sure, I could probably get you what you want, assuming you tell me exactly what that is. But hacking in from the outside? No way. It’s not as easy as they make it look in the movies.”

  “So we’d have to steal their server?” Eyff said.

  “Servers. I’m sure they have more than one, and we have no idea which one has the information you’re looking for.”

  I ran my fingers through my tangled curls, frizzy thanks to the rain. “Maybe we don’t need to get the servers out. Maybe we can get you in.”

  “That would be easier.” Steph pulled a pack of cigarettes from her pocket and caressed them. “Most security systems are meant to be wicked hard to crack from the outside, but if I can get up close and personal, I can carve myself a back door in. I’ll need about half an hour to pull together a few programs here, then ten minutes tops inside. Then I can get access to whatever files you want remotely. So you get me in, and I can get you access. And now I really need a smoke
.”

  The group was silent while Steph wandered outside to light up. I shifted in my seat, thinking it would be nice if I could read pred emotions the way I read human ones.

  “Breaking your Gryphon friend would be easier,” Lucrezia said.

  “Forget it.”

  Eyff cleared his throat. “Actually, I like this better. If Jessica’s friend hacks their server, she leaves behind a security gap we can continue to exploit.”

  A murmur of consent rippled through the group. Ah, crap. I’d have to take care of that somehow. My alignment with the satyrs was only temporary. Soon, I hoped, I’d be back protecting humanity, and that meant keeping the Gryphons around.

  “How is she going to get past security?” Devon asked. “The Gryphons use magical and non-magical methods, and she can’t break charms.”

  “Jessica can, though,” Dezzi said. “She has enough magic within her blood.”

  Assuming someone taught me and I was capable of learning, but I didn’t see a reason to point that out yet, all things considered. “If I go, they’ll arrest me on the spot.”

  “We can disguise and equip you.”

  “It’ll never work. They have magic-detecting charms at every entrance, right next to the metal detectors. I’ll never be able to smuggle them in. If one of you went…”

  But Lucen shook his head. “Once you get past the magic detectors, you’d be fine. We wouldn’t be. They’d sense us. If it were only a couple Gryphons in the building, it might be worth the risk, but there’ll be too many. We’d pass too close.”

  I swore. Lucen was right. Once I’d been able to detect a pred’s cold magical aura from across a crowded train station. No more. I’d spent enough time in Shadowtown that I’d grown numb to it. A Gryphon, however, would have trained that sense until it was as sharp as their vision.

  I checked my watch. It was just after seven. Gryphons worked around the clock, but their headquarters was only open to the public until eleven, mostly to accommodate the magi or the occasional pred on business for the magical council. Once they locked down, getting in would be even more difficult, and already it was sounding impossible.

  Yawning, I rubbed my eyes. Looked like there would be no rest for the weary.

  Chapter Twelve

  At ten o’clock, the streets around Gryphon headquarters were deserted. The sky was an ugly gray, dulled by the heavy cloud cover and whitewashed with light pollution. Thick air weighed on my shoulders. I felt coated with rain, though it had stopped falling an hour ago.

  “I cannot believe I’m doing this,” Steph said through tight lips.

  “I know. You’ve mentioned it a thousand times already. Look, we can still call if off. I don’t want you to get arrested or anything.”

  “It’s not the arrested I’m worried about.” She grimaced. “You’re my best friend, Jess, and I owe you. But to be frank, I’m doing this because I don’t need a bunch of preds getting pissed off at me.”

  “This isn’t their first choice of plans.”

  “Now you tell me.”

  In the Gryphons’ massive building, lights burned in the windows, cold and garish. If I focused, I could sense the buzz of hundreds of people’s emotions swirling about inside. The entire building felt tense. I wondered if Bridget was in there, working overtime and using what she knew about me to try and figure out where I might be hiding.

  With that in mind, I breathed deeply of the anxiety, anger and fear in the vicinity. It helped, but my exhaustion lingered. I couldn’t possibly suck in enough negativity to keep me awake, which was why I had a charm from Dezzi. Hell, I—and Steph—had charms from the satyrs and harpies for everything, or so it seemed. I carried a small magical armory. It remained to be determined, however, whether I could smuggle them inside.

  “Ready then, baldy?” My duffel bag let out a high-pitched shriek and bumped my leg. I whacked it, and it settled down as I turned to Steph.

  “Call me that again and I swear I will choke you with my wig.” She gave me what I called her Medusa look, the one that should have been capable of turning mortals to stone. Alas for Steph, guys with androgynous faces, male pattern baldness and what could be mistaken for a bad case of man-boobs just didn’t look threatening. For once, Steph was incapable of parting a crowd, never mind sending tender souls cowering. She wasn’t likely to forget it any time soon, either. I hadn’t seen Steph go out in public as a man in years. Assuming we lived through the week, I was never going to hear the end of this.

  Especially since I was wearing her wig. I scratched behind my ears where the netting irritated my skin. I just hoped that between the wig and the distraction charm I dabbed on my neck like perfume I’d be so completely unmemorable that no one would take a second glance.

  Steph muttered a string of bizarre curses as I started forward. “If it makes you feel better, the hair looks a lot better on you.”

  “Of course it does. Those red highlights are not your color.”

  I snorted and climbed the steps. The gryphons’ stone faces around the portico leered at us in the hazy light. Imps fluttered about their heads, casting shadows and making the granite manes seem to undulate in the breeze. But the imps got no closer to the building in spite of the magic contained within. The Gryphons undoubtedly had strong anti-imp charms around the perimeter, which would make what I planned to do all the more chaotic.

  Steph had been trailing me up the stairs, so I paused. “Take the lead.”

  “Right.” Her jaw set with grim resignation, Steph pushed open the door.

  I hadn’t been inside Gryphon headquarters in ten years, and I’d forgotten how grand the lobby was—the marble floors and columns, the bronze gryphon statue and the art that included a reproduction of Michelangelo’s Triumph. The enormous painting hung on the far wall, depicting three guardian priests—how gifted humans used to be known—defending a group of traumatized men and women from several “demons”, mostly satyrs and furies. Golden light emanated from the priests’ heads and hands, and it evidently blinded the preds, who shrank away. Entirely fanciful. Even the horns and legs on the satyrs, and the furies’ red ridges and spines, had been exaggerated to make them appear more evil. In all, it was a lovely piece of sixteenth-century church propaganda.

  Which brought me back to what I hadn’t forgotten in the past ten years—the two rounds of security checks. The first wasn’t the problem, a standard metal detector and an x-ray machine.

  Once a visitor passed through that check, they faced the problem that was setting my stomach aflutter—the magical screening. That station appeared far more benign than the metal detector, but all those magic-detecting charms needed to be disabled or avoided. Preferably both.

  My bag twitched against my leg, and I squeezed the handle tighter.

  Neither of the two security guards ahead were Gryphons because magically gifted adults were just too rare to be wasted on mundane jobs. Both men sat up straighter as Steph approached. Unlike me, she wore no charms. In order to protect her from prosecution if we were caught early in the operation, I was taking all the risk. After all, my ass was already toast.

  “What are you here for?” one of the guards asked as Steph emptied her laptop case to go through the metal detector.

  “We’re from Bay Tech. We got a call to come check on some equipment that might have been damaged by the salamander this afternoon.” She flashed him a hastily doctored ID badge.

  “Yeah.” The guard chuckled. “What a mess that was.”

  I waited for a sign that the guards were going to verify our status with someone, but neither one made a move to do so. Word of the salamander fire probably hadn’t spread far so it, plus the doctored IDs, gave our credentials the whiff of veracity.

  If the guard had attempted to check on us, I was prepared to bludgeon him over the head with my magic. Then pray the Gryphons couldn’t detect it because I’d never tried magically seducing someone when a Gryphon was nearby. For all I knew, that sort of trick would make me give off the same co
ld power that preds did naturally.

  And there were so many reasons I didn’t want to discover if that was the case.

  Steph passed through the detector. I set down my bag on the machine belt and slipped through behind her. Maybe fifteen feet ahead of me was the second gate, this one not controlled by electronics but by several strong charms designed to change color from green to red in the presence of magic. Too many more steps in their direction and they could pick up on my stash.

  My bag didn’t arouse any suspicion from the monitoring guard, which wasn’t surprising. In all likelihood, they were only trained to use the electronic machine to search for guns, knives or anything weapon-like. I carried none of those, and the guards showed no intention of doing a more thorough hand search. That meant I’d have to do the next part manually. As I grabbed the bag and swung it over my shoulder, I slid the zipper open.

  For a second nothing happened. I held my breath.

  One of the guards indicated I should step toward the magic detector. Steph bit her lip, her surge of fear so strong that the taste of sour orange made my lips pucker. There was a backup plan for this too. If I gave the signal, she directed me to get something out of our imaginary van. Her lips moved silently, reciting the words.

  I jostled the bag with my elbow.

  Still nothing happened, then the bag burst to life with movement. Out flew instant chaos in the form of an imp swarm. Okay, not a full swarm, which would require at least twenty of the stinging bastards, but eight of them. They shot upward in a blaze of lights. Furious about their temporary imprisonment, they took off like bullets, zigging and zagging across the lobby.

  The guards swore. Steph swore. I shrieked, pretending as though I hadn’t purposely released the things. For ten or so seconds, long enough for one of the guards to whip out his walkie-talkie, the imps zoomed around our heads, the metal detector, the massive columns and the statues in an erratic flying disaster. We ducked, dodged and cursed.

  I dropped to my knees as two swooped down on my head. A breeze from their wings sent strands of hair flying in my face. I clutched the wig, praying I wouldn’t knock it off. Damn it, my anti-imp charms should have repelled them. If I ended up with multiple stings because of this, I’d have to kick myself. This whole plan depended on me being able to work magic. We didn’t have time to wait out my recovery if more than one zapped away my power.