Bitter Thirst

by SM Reine

“So I’ll keep investigating Weston Connors and Lucrezia de Angelis,” I said. “There’s probably something to that connection. It’s a start.” Not that I wanted to be starting.

  “Good plan, Hawke.” Fritz was still staring at me thoughtfully, nodding slowly. “Now that we’ve closed the case on Lenox’s coven, we need to tidy the mess we made of her house. I’ll have the lawyers write something up that doesn’t qualify as an admission of guilt, but sounds vaguely like an apology. Should deliver that before we leave.” He limped toward the door.

  “Wait,” I said. “Before we leave? You mean work for the night?”

  “Los Angeles,” Fritz said. “Pack a bag, Hawke. The game is on and it’s time we join. We’re going back to Washington D.C.”

  The nice thing about having access to a private jet is that you don’t have to wait hours in security lines for a flight where you’ll be packed in like a sausage.

  The problem with having access to a private jet is that your crazy kopis can drag you across the country whenever the fuck he wants.

  He set the flight time for four in the morning, which would have been fine if I’d gotten off work at a reasonable time. Except that Agent Bryce spent her evening handling yet another protest from Los Angeles’s succubus population, which meant I had to babysit a city commissioner’s town hall meeting.

  I left for home, exhausted and smelling like my warding herbs, a squinch before ten o’clock.

  If I went to sleep the instant I got home, I’d be lucky to get even four whole hours of shut-eye. I’d never been one to settle right after work though. I needed time to defuse, unwind, eat pork rinds while watching the last season of Star Trek: Deep Space 9 for the fourth time.

  Less than four hours of sleep wasn’t gonna do me a whole lot of good. But hell, I was gonna try.

  That was my intent, anyway.

  My intent held out on the jittering ride in my janky car, of which I was at least the sixth unlucky owner to hold it together with duct tape and dreams. That intent survived all the way through Los Angeles traffic, stopped in two locations by demonstrators, and up until the moment that I sidled past a homeless guy unconscious in my stairwell.

  My intentions changed when I reached my apartment door and started sneezing.

  “Oh fuck,” I said, wiping my leaking face dry with my sleeve. A few more hard sneezes made for more mucus. More tears.

  Good thing I didn’t have a woman living with me anymore. Krista would have been disgusted at the sight.

  On the other hand, Krista would have been able to kill whichever witch was currently casting magic in my apartment. This spell was on par with whatever Weston Connors had cast at Lenox’s house, and it was strong enough that my throat closed up completely. A fist of magic that made sure I couldn’t breathe.

  I was loosening my gun from its holster when I realized that I’d felt that specific fist of magic before.

  And not from Connors.

  It brought to mind a small, bony fist with knuckles like fucking sledgehammers, and the sharp-tongued ball-buster who owned that fist. Someone I hadn’t seen in a long time.

  If I’d been smart, my survival instincts would have kicked in anyway. I’d have gotten myself a safe distance from the apartment and called in support from the OPA. They could dismantle the spells, send in a Union team, and extract whoever had invaded my house.

  But you’ve probably noticed by now that I’m a moron.

  I wasn’t even quiet as I unlocked my apartment door. Didn’t seem like there was much of a point in being quiet, seeing as how I couldn’t stop sneezing, and the homeless guy was yarking in the stairwell again. Quietude was not a selling point of my apartment.

  The invading witch knew I was coming.

  Still, I had my gun drawn as I slipped through the front door of my apartment. “Who’s there?” I asked, kicking the door shut behind me. Because it was a great idea to shut my most convenient escape route, right?

  My living room looked exactly the way I’d left it. My kitchen too. And my bedroom. I could see all of it from where I stood, since I now occupied a studio. Having “murders women in his bath tub” and “burns down the whole complex” on my renting history meant it was hard to get a nice place to live.

  Even Cat’s litter box hadn’t changed, which was weird. Cat was a disgusting, filthy animal. I changed his box every single goddamn morning because he wouldn’t shit in it if the litter wasn’t smooth.

  When I did maintain the litter to Cat’s standards, he liked to show his approval by kicking his crap everywhere. It stuck to the walls, the floor. I had somehow gotten litter in my bathtub.

  But Cat’s box was clean right now at the end of the night.

  Very weird.

  The only other thing that looked awry was the wooden square in my kitchen.

  Mostly because it was hovering two feet off of the ground.

  I stepped toward it slowly, leaving my gun’s safety engaged. My eyes were watering too much for me to aim well anyway. If I shot, I’d probably take out my refrigerator before taking out the mysterious hovering wooden cube.

  That cube was the thing that was making me allergic. It was so strong that it blazed like a bonfire to my sixth sense, the one that told me when magic was near.

  Up until I got within ten feet of it.

  Then the allergic reaction stopped. The brightness stopped. Everything stopped, like someone had just shot an antihistamine into my arm.

  “Nice trick, huh?”

  I whirled at the sound of the voice. It was a woman’s voice. A hard-edged, vaguely amused, vaguely annoyed woman’s voice. Yet there was nothing other than a broad grin on the face of the five-foot-tall trouble standing in my living room with Cat nestled in her arms.

  Suzy Takeuchi had come home.

  Chapter 6

  “Fucking Suzy Takeuchi,” I said, because I had to make the words real, because I had to make the universe accept the fact that I was seeing my long-lost partner standing in front of me.

  My last sight of Suzy in the flesh had been all the way back in Reno, Nevada. She’d been wielding runic magic like a boss. It hadn’t saved her career, but it had saved her life, and she’d gone into hiding.

  If the OPA had caught her, then Suzy would have gotten sent to a Union detention center. Again. She’d sworn she’d rather die than go back to such a place. I didn’t want Suzy to die, so I’d never tried to get in touch with her. Just to help protect her.

  But here she was.

  I couldn’t let it be a dream. I couldn’t let her vanish again.

  When I grabbed Suzy up in a hug, Cat leaped to the floor with a disgruntled yowl. He darted off to piss on my bed or whatever revenge he concocted for the night. I didn’t care. I had an actual Suzy in my arms, real and solid, and the apartment could have burned down like the last one for all I cared.

  “Get off me,” Suzy said. “I don’t do hugs.”

  “Shut it, Takeuchi. Now you do.” I couldn’t have even told you what kind of shampoo Suzy used before, but her familiar smell told me that she hadn’t switched it. She’d been on the run for ages, but she still smelled exactly the same.

  She pried my hands off of her and stepped back.

  Outlaw Suzy was no longer wearing the formless black suits that all OPA agents rocked, but she also didn’t seem interested in trying to find new ways to dress. She was still wearing loafers, slacks, a polo shirt.

  “The fuck is this?” I asked. “Have you been hiding at an H&R Block?”

  “I don’t have a lot of resources, Hawke. Not like I can run on down to Macy’s whenever I want. These clothes are coming from others in the movement.”

  “Their taste sucks,” I said.

  “You suck,” Suzy said. She hugged me again, not as tight as before.

  “I thought you don’t do hugs.”

  “Shut it, Hawke,” she said. “Speaking of the movement, we can’t talk here.” She yanked me toward my closet. The hovering cube in the kitchen followed us. My sinuses b
urned as it got nearer.

  “The closet’s not safe either,” I said. “They’ve started bugging that too. Hey, what’s with the box?”

  “That’s my house,” Suzy said.

  The box was small enough that I could have lost it in the trash heap of my car’s backseat. “You’ve been hiding as a Polly Pocket?”

  It settled on my closet floor where Suzy pointed. “Okay, so it’s actually just a door to my house. I call it my anchor,” she said, toeing the box.

  A portal ripped open wide in my closet.

  It looked like the back wall vanished, replaced by a set of steep stairs leading into a cave. Elaborate woodwork arched over the steps. It reminded me of architecture I’d seen in Shogun. Japanese temples and shit.

  “Since when is there a fucking Shinto temple in my closet?” I asked.

  Suzy planted her hands on her hips. “Shinto temple? Seriously, Hawke?”

  “What? You’re Japanese. Eighty percent of Japan practices Shintoism.”

  It looked like my stupidity was causing her physical pain, even though that fact about Shintoism is totally true, you can look it up on Wikipedia. “I’m American. And Episcopalian.”

  I laughed. She didn’t.

  “Episcopalian?” I asked. “Really?”

  “I’m not much of anything except a witch these days,” Suzy said. “My dad’s an Episcopalian though, and I was raised around it. Anyway. Just because I went for a Japanese aesthetic doesn’t mean it’s any more a Shinto temple than your apartment is the fucking Enterprise because you’ve got seven posters of Captain Kirk.”

  She shoved me down the stairs. Let me tell you, it was really unnerving to go instantly from lukewarm Los Angeles winter to the crisp chill of wherever the fuck she was hiding her pocket dimension.

  Once Suzy got in behind me, she pulled the door shut and led me into the dimness. The stairs headed straight down. My feet were so big I had to walk sideways to keep from slipping off.

  “Tell me about what you’ve been doing,” I said. “I wanna hear all the stories. Bet you’ve done some crazy shit.”

  “Not as much as you’d think. I started out working a lot with the movement in northern California, but when I headed down south, I lost touch. I’ve been refining my magic and shooting skills since then.”

  She’d done a great job refining her magic. Suzy was still the only person I knew who could do weird pocket-dimension stuff like this, even with all the advancements that the Union had been making lately.

  She had a whole fucking cave.

  And the cave looked old. The stalactites and stalagmites were enormous, and gems glittered darkly in the walls as we approached lamplight at the bottom.

  “I stand corrected,” I said. “This is clearly not a Shinto temple, but the Batcave, as conceived of by an alternate-universe Samurai Batman.”

  “I’m fine with being Samurai Batman,” Suzy said.

  She’d picked a nice part of the cave for her home. It was on an island at the rear of a misty grotto, framed by a river on one side and a waterfall on the other. The Shinto-looking arches decorated either end of the cave, which made for quite the impressive room, all in all.

  Except that she’d furnished it with the finest of room sets from R.C. Willey. Some lamps, fake leather sofas, an entertainment center made from particleboard.

  I poked her TV. It turned on, showing a bouncing Blu-ray logo. “How are you powering this stuff?”

  “I made a pocket dimension and a traveling door to Earth,” Suzy said. “Why would powering the TV be harder than that?”

  “Do you get HBO?”

  “Bitch, of course I get HBO.” She opened a mini-fridge and took out two beers.

  “So what you’re telling me is that you made Heaven,” I said.

  My gaze wandered over her other stuff. There were no walls, so I could see the spot of rock she was using as a bedroom—replete with a California king, Target bedspread, and a laundry basket—plus the kitchen with rudimentary cooking supplies. She also had a shooting range that butted up against a pile of gravel.

  I didn’t see a bathroom. Figured it was better not to ask where she did her business.

  “My little hole’s nice because I’ve had enough bored time to work on it, but it’s not Heaven.” She emptied one beer bottle, and then the other one.

  “If you lost touch with the movement when you headed south, why’d you come at all?” I asked.

  “I wanted to make sure someone was caring for Cat,” Suzy said. A smile crept over her mouth. It was a grateful smile, a real special look. I never saw Suzy smiling when she wasn’t being a smart-ass.

  “You’re really bad at litter training cats,” I said.

  “I got him as an adult. Adopt, don’t shop, asshole. And you don’t train cats to do anything.”

  “You don’t.”

  If I ever got a cat that was actually mine, I was going to teach that dickbag to use the toilet. “So you only came back for Cat?”

  Suzy yawned and stretched. “Yep.” When she extended her arms over her head, her shirt rucked up to expose an inch of bare stomach.

  I’d been so happy to see her that I’d forgotten to stare at Suzy’s body. That says a lot. It’s worth staring at. She’d always had this narrow waist and the best ass you can imagine, though it would be my balls if she caught me looking.

  Right now it almost seemed like Suzy wanted me to look. Like she was distracting me.

  “Well Cat’s fine,” I said.

  “You haven’t been feeding him,” Suzy said. “He’s lost girth.” She slid onto the couch next to me, her knee pushing into my thigh.

  “The vet said he was a fatty and needed to lose weight for his health. You owe me for all his vet bills, by the way. Cleaning a cat’s teeth should not be that expensive.”

  “I don’t have money,” Suzy said. “Why don’t we find another way to pay you back?”

  My jaw dropped. “Uh…”

  “I have information you might find valuable,” she went on. “I heard about Senator Peterson through my resources. I can help with that.”

  Oh. Information.

  “By resources, you mean people in this movement? Same people who are dressing you like a private-school student?” It was criminal for Suzy’s body to be covered, totally criminal.

  “My resources are through the movement, yes,” Suzy said. “What little I can scrape together.”

  “If you know about Senator Peterson, you’ve gotta know about how everyone in the country’s going crazy, right? All the demons, the werewolves…crazy.” I really wanted Suzy to admit that the violence was coming from preternaturals. That maybe PRAY was right to crack down.

  “I’m up on everything,” she said. “That’s why I’ve looked you up—not because of Cat, but because of the news. I can’t sit around waiting to act any longer.”

  “What’s the movement been doing?”

  “Sitting around,” Suzy said. “Nobody’s been inviting me to help anymore. I think they’re trying to protect me because they think I’ll be upset about Aniruddha, but I’m not upset. I don’t care that he got sold into slavery.”

  “Whoa,” I said. “Brutal.”

  She rolled her eyes. “That’s not what I mean. Of course I don’t want anyone sold into slavery, but I’m not more upset over Aniruddha than anyone else just because I let him stick his dick in me a couple times.”

  “Gross, Suze,” I said.

  “It’s just sex. Get over it.” She cracked open a new bottle. “Anyway, knowing you and Director Friederling, you’re going to get killed over PRAY. I’m bored. I came to save you from yourself.”

  “Just because Gary Zettel and Fritz both want me to take down Lucrezia de Angelis doesn’t mean I’m about to get killed,” I said.

  Suzy just Looked at me.

  “Yeah, yeah,” I said. “I’m definitely about to get killed.”

  “How is taking down Lucrezia de Angelis a solution for PRAY?” she asked.

  I gav
e her the quick, confusing rundown about Zettel. Suzy rolled her eyes and laughed in the right places. The best part was when I finished and she said, “I can absolutely help you take down Lucrezia de Angelis.”

  “Thank God. I could really use you on this.”

  Suzy’s lips spread into an evil grin. “At long last, you admit it. You big puddle of stupid. You need me, and you know it.”

  “Uh, yeah, I do. Wasn’t disputing that at all. Christ, Suzy, I have been scared shitless—I’m just so fucking happy to see you.”

  I’d never been stupid enough to risk casually hugging Suzy before. That seemed like a great way to earn a knee directly to the huevos. But this wasn’t a casual situation, and I’d take a thousand knees to the huevos before one more day without Suzy Takeuchi in my life.

  Okay, maybe one or two knees to the nuts. A thousand was a lot.

  The point is that I braced myself for pain before hugging Suzy, and squished her tighter than I’d ever let myself squish her before. I’m a big guy, she’s not. I don’t use my size with smaller people unless they’re asking me to move sofas for them.

  For once, I let myself get all the Suzy-hugging out of my system.

  It took me a minute to realize she wasn’t kneeing me in the balls though.

  In fact, Suzy was hugging me back.

  “Why were you scared?” she asked. “I sent you a note.”

  Yes, one note. A note which I’d kept in my wallet until the ink had started to rub off, and then I’d laminated it and stuck it back in my wallet to carry around for a while longer.

  That note had only two words on it.

  “I’m okay.”

  That was it.

  Suzy had vanished from a case in Reno while battling another witch and a horde of demons, and the only thing she’d left for me were those two fucking words.

  “It’s been years, Suze,” I said.

  “I know. I’ve got calendars, and I’m not as stupid as you are.”

  Now I was getting just a little bit angry. Not at being called stupid—that was reassuring. I’d missed having someone around who happily called me out on my shit. Nobody had even threatened to emasculate me since Suzy had left. “How’d you expect me to deal with that?”