Bitter Thirst

by SM Reine

  Worse than selling people into slavery? “I don’t disagree. But again, if this is a loyalty check: Fritz and I have made our allegiance real goddamn clear.”

  It had been a couple years since the case in Reno, when we’d discovered Allyson et al selling people into slavery. I’d almost lost my job and my life in the investigation, but Fritz and I had opted to stay in the OPA afterward. We’d been quiet, compliant, and well behaved. No small feat for guys like us.

  For the last couple years, we’d dotted and crossed letters where appropriate, in triplicate. We’d rested our thumbs on the scale a couple times, but hadn’t worked any “special” cases. Fritz and I had done nothing to draw unfavorable attention, and we had our lives as our reward.

  You could call it cowardice if you wanted. I called it smart.

  The condition of the OPA was real fucking tenuous. It was teetering on the head of a pin, and if we’d leaned, we’d have ended up scapegoats after Reno—on the run at best, and under the headsman’s axe at worst.

  Someone had to keep an eye on the agency. Someone had to wait for everything to fucking explode, ready to pick up the pieces. Someone had to protect humanity.

  That someone was Fritz Friederling.

  And like I said, Fritz and I were a package deal.

  “Your loyalty’s not with the OPA. It’s with each other. I know how kopides and aspides work.” He looked haunted. Even a guy like Zettel hurt losing half of his soul. “Lucrezia de Angelis is hiding. Find her and bring her to me. I’ll clear away the debris and have a fresh start for the OPA.”

  “Why don’t you find her yourself? You run the OPA now.” A terrifying idea. “You’ve got about a million witches who can do tracking spells at your beck and call.”

  “Lucrezia’s blocking the spells,” he said. “She knows I’m looking.”

  “So she’ll see me coming? Sounds like a suicide mission,” I said.

  “Maybe, if you’re not careful. But it will be worth it. Getting rid of Lucrezia will prevent H.R. 2076,” Zettel said.

  I had no idea what that was. “Uh, yeah. Wow. That sounds like a great deal. H.R. 2076.”

  His eyes narrowed to unamused slits. “Find where she’s hiding or else H.R. 2076 will pass. If you want that to happen, that’s your choice.”

  It sounded like that was an end to the conversation.

  A very confusing conversation that made no sense to me whatsoever.

  “Why couldn’t Fritz be here for this conversation?” I asked.

  There was a strange light in Zettel’s eyes. “I don’t trust him.”

  “But you trust me?”

  “Can I trust you?” he countered.

  If I’d liked Zettel, I’d have said yes. I was a trustworthy guy. Little bit weird, disarmingly hilarious, ruggedly handsome, and trustworthy.

  Problem was that I didn’t like Zettel. I didn’t like evil assholes as a rule.

  “You can trust me to look for Lucrezia.” That much was true. I’d been looking for verifiable dirt on Lucrezia for a long time. “Do you need anything else from me, sir?”

  “I have everything I need,” Zettel said. Which was when I realized he was carrying a binder under his arm, and that the binder was…oh holy crap, the binder was drenched in Senator Peterson’s blood. Or else someone else had been exsanguinated in D.C. that night. “You’re dismissed. Get sleep. Everything changes in the morning.”

  I was still feeling numb as I headed out of the senator’s office, like my feet weren’t even touching the floor.

  Even though it was past midnight—Eastern Time, later than the time zone I was used to—the entire building was bustling with staffers. At least three of them had hooded sweaters instead of proper jackets, and one was wearing pajamas. Nobody had planned to be working tonight. But few people anticipated having their boss assassinated on any given night.

  The Union soldiers downstairs showed no sign of midnight fatigue. They encircled the entire office cradling AK-47s like mothers cuddling sweet widdle babies. Aww, so sweet.

  I jumped into Fritz’s limo.

  “Zettel could have done that over the phone,” I muttered, slamming the door behind me.

  “He wanted to see my reaction to the scene,” Fritz said. Now that we weren’t in close quarters with Zettel, I could hear my kopis’s anger about to spill over. His fingers punched the laptop’s keys with punishing fury. “He wanted to rub it in.”

  “Are you a suspect in the senator’s murder?”

  “No. I was, however, one of the others shortlisted for OPA secretary.”

  “Thank fucking God you didn’t get that job,” I said.

  Fritz lifted both eyebrows at me. Ooh, double blasted. “Oh?”

  “You’d be a good secretary—better than Zettel—but I don’t want to follow you around while you do D.C. politics.” Especially since those politics were going to be a class seventeen shit storm for the next few years. Decades. Maybe centuries.

  He accepted that explanation by inclining his head. “What did Zettel want from you? I assume spellwork was involved since you took long enough for me to watch half of The Return of the King Special Edition.” Aragorn’s chiseled glower was currently paused on the limo’s TV.

  “Zettel wants Lucrezia de Angelis,” I said.

  Fritz’s eyes sparked with interest. He closed his laptop. “What did he offer in exchange?”

  “Stopping H.R. 2076, whatever that is.”

  He tapped his laptop’s lid. “I was just reading it. It’s a bill which regulates all preternatural behaviors, including making it illegal to have families.”

  “That would make preternaturals instantly illegal,” I said.

  “Yes. Yes it would. Additionally, it removes a preternatural’s right to a trial by his peers. Essentially it exempts preternaturals from the justice system entirely. It’s vaguely worded, so it could be interpreted to mean that we can shoot any preternatural on sight.”

  “Jesus,” I said, “I need a drink.”

  “You don’t drink alcohol,” Fritz said, like I could have forgotten.

  “I was thinking something with sleeping magic. Something that would knock me out for at least the next four years.” Skip an election cycle where people were slinging mud over demons and werewolves.

  “This is what we’ve been waiting for, Hawke,” he said. “We’ve known that someone would need to stop the OPA, and it’s the only reason we haven’t spent the last few years in the Caribbean. You knew this was coming. This is our moment.”

  “I’d hoped this moment wouldn’t be so fucking big.” I rubbed both hands over my face. Couldn’t tell if the limo was moving or if I was still dizzy from the murder scene. “Promise me we’re not doing this again.”

  “Senator Peterson can only be murdered once. We’ll burn him and scatter the ashes to ensure necromancers can’t use his body. So yes, I promise we will never do this again.”

  Ha ha, Fritz, so fucking funny. “I’m serious.”

  “So am I.” He probably was. Fritz was married to a zombie, so he knew how much mischief a guy could get up to with a corpse.

  That sounds worse than it is. Like Fritz is into necrophilia. He might be, I don’t know, but fucking Isobel Stonecrow isn’t like fucking a dead body. She’s indistinguishable from living, except that she’ll never age, or make babies, or get wrinkly. Basically she’s perfect.

  Really perfect.

  “What I mean is, we’re not coming back to D.C.,” I said. “Whatever we do to fix this, we’re going to stay close to home, worry about our corner of the country. We’re not going to try to save the whole fucking world. Also, no more dead bodies.”

  Fritz laughed. He laughed and laughed and laughed, his shoulders shaking. Fritz wasn’t a guy who laughed a lot, and for good reason. He had a dorky laugh.

  That probably should have been a solid sign of how my next few months were going to go.

  “It’s called PRAY,” Fritz said. “The Preternatural Registration Act.” He pushed a cou
ple of eight-by-ten glossies toward me. The edges shivered from the rumbling jet engines so that the light seemed to slick across the surface. I had no trouble making out the details, though. These photos had been taken covertly. “Put on your seatbelt before Lisa throws a fit.”

  “Lisa?” I fumbled with my belt one handed. I’d been wearing it most of the flight, but I’d moved chairs to talk with Fritz.

  “Flight attendant,” Fritz said. He shot a lazy smile toward the woman up front, who was a leggy blonde in a uniform. She giggled when she realized she had his attention.

  I snorted and engaged my seatbelt. “That’s Senator Peterson,” I said, picking up the topmost picture.

  “Yes, the Hawaiian shirts are distinctive. He preferred to dress stupidly and carry a big stick. Like PRAY.” Fritz tapped a binder that the senator was holding in one photo. I recognized it as the binder Zettel had been carrying around even though it wasn’t bloody in these shots.

  “There’s no Y in Preternatural Registration Act,” I said.

  “Senator Peterson wore Hawaiian shirts to work. Do you think tacking an extra letter onto an acronym bothered him?”

  Good point. “That sounds pretty fucking terrible. Registering preternaturals?”

  “OPA and Union employees are exempt from PRAY’s database,” Fritz said.

  “That’s because the OPA and Union already have an internal database of employees.” I knew they weren’t trying to protect our privacy. For fuck’s sake, the OPA kept my apartment bugged so they’d have surveillance of every time I took a dump.

  “It’s different than the internal database.” Fritz extended his artificial leg, propped the heel up on the table, and sighed. “Preternaturals registered in the PRAY database will be subject to the family and travel restrictions. And it’s illegal to opt out.”

  “Good thing that unconstitutional bullshit can never pass. It can’t be illegal to exist.”

  “POTUS is signing an executive order in the morning to skip all the constitutional bother,” Fritz said.

  I sat up. “What?”

  He raised the volume of his voice. “POTUS is signing an executive order in the—”

  “I heard that.” Jesus, Fritz was calling the president POTUS too. He was a tool from the same chest as Zettel. “What you’re saying is that Zettel was offering me a big wet shit in a bag because H.R. 2076 isn’t the issue.”

  “The executive order is a short-term measure with immediate impact, whereas the bill is going to impact years to come. We need to fight both. The consequences of everything I’m reading in this are…severe.”

  I could only imagine. “Are witches preternaturals under PRAY?”

  “Yes,” Fritz said. “Tens of thousands of Americans will wake in the morning to the news they’ve lost rights. And it gets better.”

  “Why is it that whenever you say something gets better, you mean things actually get a hell of a lot worse?”

  “That would be called sarcasm, Hawke.” His deadpan was flawless. “Lucrezia wrote PRAY. Zettel co-authored.”

  “Zettel? The guy who just offered to kill PRAY if I take down Lucrezia?”

  “PRAY is his baby. He’s been drafting it for months. I accessed internal correspondence from Zettel, and his enthusiasm for the bill looks legitimate. I’m doubtful he’d turn on it like this.”

  “Unless he’s into infanticide,” I said. “Sick.”

  Fritz folded his arms, glowering down at the photos. “The question is, what does Zettel really want? We need to investigate. Quietly. You’ll need help; I’ll ensure that Agent Bryce is apprised.” Ever since my last partner had gone on the run, I’d been working with Agent Bryce, who was as trustworthy, reliable, and interesting as a block of wood.

  “What do we do about Lucrezia?” We’d been building a file on her for over a year, and it was a thin fucking file. Lucrezia kept things laced tighter than a corset on Dr. Frank-N-Furter. Trying to find the actual woman might be easier than trying to pin a crime on her, or it might be a good way for her to send assassins after us.

  “For Lucrezia, we’ll dig deeper,” Fritz said. “We dig like the lives of thousands of Americans depend on it.” He let his artificial leg slide off the table and stood, fixing himself a drink at his plane’s bar. Because what’s the point of having a private jet if it doesn’t have a well-stocked bar?

  “Or we could keep our heads down,” I said. “Sleeping potions for the next four years.” I was half joking.

  “Sleeping potions won’t stop the registry,” he said, taking a deep drink of bourbon.

  “Why do you care? You’re richer than God. If you ditch the US for a cozy magma-front property in Hell, you don’t have to deal with any stupid registry.”

  “Do you think that my truly breathtaking net worth means I don’t care about the plight of the common people?”

  “Yes,” I said automatically.

  The corner of Fritz’s mouth tugged into a smile. “It’s reassuring to know that I remain a mystery to you, just as much as you remain a mystery to me.”

  No idea how he could find me mysterious. I was a cheap suit wrapped around thirty years of useless nerd trivia, steered entirely by the rudder of my dick. Not hard to figure out.

  “I don’t want PRAY to exist,” Fritz said. “Let’s leave it at that.” He handed his empty glass to Lisa, the flight attendant, who looked as great from the back as she did from the front. “Thank you, Lisa.”

  “Can I get you anything?” she asked me, batting her long eyelashes.

  I had a few answers to that question that weren’t appropriate. “I’m good. Thanks.” I turned back to Fritz. “There’s a saying about picking your battles, and how you should only pick the battles you can win. Lucrezia and Zettel are doing tug-of-war over PRAY. There’s an executive order lined up, so they’ve got President Abbey in their pockets. And what have we got? Months of research on Lucrezia that goes nowhere, a kopis with a bum leg, an aspis who sucks at magic…”

  “Over a billion dollars,” Fritz added.

  “Money’s meaningless when people don’t wanna get bought,” I said.

  “Everyone wants to be bought.” He sat across from me, taking another long drink. “I’ll make sure that the executive order is challenged by a federal judge. We’ll have a few days to get organized before the real work begins.”

  “That sounds like a fun telecommuting project,” I said.

  Fritz laughed again.

  I was starting to find that laugh a lot more annoying.

  Our plane banked. The lights dotting the black landscape outside the jet’s window were formed into the constellation of California. Los Angeles is prettiest when you can’t see it, and even though I hadn’t been gone an entire day, I was real happy for a glimpse.

  I hadn’t felt like I was off work until I got that look at home sweet home. I loosened my tie at long last. “You know where to find me when you want help.”

  “Yes, I do.” Amusement etched lines on either side of Fritz’s mouth.

  “So I’m gonna go home now.”

  “Home? To your apartment?”

  “Yes, home, my apartment, where I pay all the bills to keep the lights on, and where all my clothes are,” I said.

  “Most of them,” he agreed.

  I did have a drawer at Fritz and Isobel’s house.

  Okay, more like a walk-in closet.

  That wasn’t the point. I was an independent human being, damn it, and I was not going to be turned into some billionaire’s lapdog…even if I was stuck with that billionaire for the rest of my life.

  The plane touched down and we got off without having to wait. Another of many perks to having a private jet.

  “I hope you have a good night,” Fritz said as we descended the stairs to the tarmac. “I’ll see you in the morning. Four o’clock sharp. The news will break first on the East Coast, so we need to start early.”

  He slipped into his limousine. I caught a glimpse of a shapely leg inside its shadowy depths befo
re he slammed the door shut.

  It probably wasn’t his wife, Isobel, in there. For one thing, Izzy usually overnighted in graveyards, doing her job/hobby of talking to her fellow dead people.

  For another thing, Izzy would have come out to say howdy to me. She’d have probably given me a long kiss and a bite on the lip and a grin that said she knew Fritz’s staff was watching again. That Fritz was watching again.

  But Isobel wasn’t there, because no woman assaulted me before the limousine pulled away, leaving me stranded on a night-drenched airstrip.

  Fritz was running off with a woman other than his wife. Not unusual behavior for Fritz. He loved Isobel like I hadn’t known a guy could love a woman, but he didn’t feel as intense about exclusivity. And even though we’d have to be in the office six hours from now, he was scampering off to fuck a high-fashion model

  .

  It was like the guy didn’t need to sleep. Maybe he was a zombie too.

  “I said no more dead bodies,” I told his retreating taillights.

  The airstrip gate rattled as it opened. The limousine passed through. And the gate shut again.

  Chapter 3

  Everything goes to shit after a trip out of town. Doesn’t matter if it’s work or vacation. Seems like every time I leave my apartment for longer than a couple hours, something goes wrong.

  I traveled a lot for work so I had a lot of stories. My identity getting stolen at a Mojave gas station, friends being kidnapped by demons, giant spiders trying to eat my coworkers. You know how it goes.

  The most recent incident had happened during a three-month appointment to Sacramento. I’d been hunting a witch named Cassandra Amiens and arrested her without incident. The problem was that I’d left my stove on and burned down my apartment complex.

  Whoops.

  My new apartment hadn’t burned down while I was in D.C., and as far as I knew, no giant spiders had descended on my friends. But that didn’t mean nothing had gone to shit.