Bitter Thirst

by SM Reine

  Then I punched the button on my headset. “Hawke to Union. We’ve got a shooter in the basement of—”

  “Hey!”

  Lawrence smashed into my back. We both fell to the ground. It wasn’t until he leaped off of me and made a break for his gun that I realized I was bleeding—bright, fresh, red blood from the back of my scalp. I’d hit something on my way down.

  His hands closed on the gun. I was about to get hit by a lot worse than a hubcap.

  The door to the sidewalk blasted open before he could shoot.

  Literally blasted—the holes that appeared around the handle looked a heck of a lot like they’d been made by shotgun pellets. Not that I was an expert. If I had no choice but to swing a gun around, my preference was more of the Desert Eagle persuasion.

  Without a lock, it took only a single swift blow from the heel of a cowboy boot to bounce that sucker open.

  A woman stood on the other side. She was shaped like the red marks on a black widow’s swollen gut and her fangs came in the form of steel with a wooden stock. Long, slender braids swayed behind her, tipped with beads that chimed when they hit each other.

  “Get down,” she said to me.

  And you believe me when I say I got the fuck down.

  About a half-second later, blood sprayed onto the wall behind me. It wasn’t my blood. Ofelia’s aim was way better than that.

  There was skull and brain stuck to the middle of that splatter.

  I looked up to see a dead body dropping to his knees, and then sliding onto his face.

  When my ears stopped ringing, I could hear an explosion of chatter in my earpiece. Talk, talk, talk. They’d heard the shot. Now people were worried we’d blown the perimeter around the hotel. Weren’t any of them worried about whether I’d gotten blown away?

  I pushed the button on my earpiece

  . “Chill out,” I said, ears muffled by the too-close gunfire. It sounded like I was talking through a toilet paper tube. “I’m alive.”

  The microphone rustled and when someone spoke again, it was a familiar male voice, which brought to mind narrow features topped with a brush of yellow hair. “We heard a shot. Verify your condition, Hawke.”

  Oh man, someone cared about me.

  Too bad it was fucking Fritz Friederling, who was obligated to care about me just because I was his aspis.

  “I’m all right,” I said.

  A hand thrust into my vision. It was a dainty feminine appendage with a piercing on the long pinky nail. Who the fuck pierces their fingernails?

  Ofelia. That was who.

  I grabbed her hand and she pulled me to my feet. Then she grabbed my earlobe, yanking me down so she could speak into my microphone: “Agent Hawke just got his ass saved by his baby sister.”

  Chapter 8

  It might have been ages since I’d seen Suzy, but it had been ages squared since I’d seen my baby sister. Yet Ofelia hadn’t changed. Ofelia almost looked like a kid sitting hunched on the tailgate of an ambulance, hands tucked under her arms for warmth.

  Her eyes widened at the sight of me. “Cèsar! Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” I said, accepting her tight hug with a laugh. The EMTs had taken me to a separate tent to get checked out, since I was a government employee. I’d gotten a little healing paste on my head wound and kicked out. Thanks to Ofelia’s shotgun, I’d survived.

  Speaking of shotguns, I felt hers as a hard ridge running down her spine, hidden underneath her jacket. Ofelia moved like she wasn’t hiding anything. If I hadn’t been touching her, I’d never have known she had a secret.

  “What about you? What’s with the braids?” I asked, yanking a fistful. She elbowed my arm away. “Have you been hiding in a Mexican tourist port?”

  “They look good on me.” She flipped them over her shoulder. “And you look good too.”

  “Yeah I do,” I said.

  In truth, Ofelia and I looked exactly the same. Take away her piercings, take away my monkey suit, we’re both tall, stocky people with eyes best described as “puppyish.” Ofelia managed to hide her puppy sweetness behind thick mascara and eyelashes so long I was surprised she could blink.

  Okay, so there was one feature about Ofelia we didn’t share. The scars on her neck. They were still there, peeking out from under her scarf, like a mountain range that ran from underneath her hair along one shoulder blade. That was from the time an incubus had tortured her with needles.

  My sister had always been troubled, but that demon had taken her to a different level.

  She’d gone into hiding to protect herself from the incubus gang and also to find herself. From the happy, tanned look of her, she’d found herself all right. She’d found fur-lined boots and leather pants and a corset jacket. Who walked around on ice in studded six-inch heels?

  Ofelia Hawke was as stupid as me, and I loved the fuck out of her for it.

  “Thanks for saving my ass,” I said.

  “You’re just lucky I brought Bo Peep to the protest,” Ofelia said. “I wasn’t going to until Pops made me.”

  My jaw scraped pavement. “Pops? Pops is here?”

  Because Satan can hear when his name is whispered halfway around the world, Pops emerged from the crowd, elbowing his way past the barricade. “They’re my kids!” he snapped at an officer who tried to stop him.

  I lifted my badge. “It’s okay.” I was still using the fake FBI identification. It felt lucky now.

  The cops let him pass.

  Pops looked the same as my sister and me, except with white hair and a spine crooked from a bad surgery. He greeted us with slaps upside the head rather than hugs. “You two could have died. Should have let me handle the shooter.”

  Ofelia and I both shrank from his hands, making the same whine of protest. Old habits, you know. I was an OPA agent and I still reacted to the smack by fixing my eyes to my toes and holding very still.

  Pops shook his finger in my face. “I saw that stupid boy through the barricade and I knew what he was doing, I was going to take care of it. I only needed a few more minutes to zap him!” He was the master of quick-casting circles and using them to wreak havoc upon the deserving. “You should have waited. Say you’re sorry.”

  Ofelia shot a sideways glance at me. She was trying to hide a smile. “Sorry, Pops.”

  “Sorry, Pops,” I echoed, and I was smiling too. I’d stopped smiling by the time I lifted my head. “What are you guys doing on this side of the continent?”

  “We’re protesting,” Pops said. “The fuck’s it look like?”

  It looked like they were protesting, but in my eternal hope, I wanted to believe it was something else entirely. “What’s your stance?”

  “Obviously we’re against preternatural registration and regulation,” Ofelia said. She said that too loudly. Opposition was in the crowd, mixed up with the others, and I didn’t want to get into another fight.

  “Keep it down,” I whispered.

  Pops threw his hands into the air. “Save me from pussy bitches.” He stalked off. “Back to the hotel by six, Ofelia!” The protesters cleared an aisle for him, because nobody wanted to get in the way of an old guy who looked that angry.

  I stared after him. He hadn’t even said hello or goodbye or asked how I was doing.

  Even for Pops, that was cold.

  “How the hell did you end up running around with Pops?” I asked. “You haven’t even been running around with me, and I’m so much funner.”

  “We came here separately. You know that Pops can’t resist an argument, and this is the biggest argument in town. As for me…my boyfriend thought we should come, so we did. Pops and I ran into each other a couple days ago.”

  “Stop there, back this shit up. Boyfriend?” I was ready to start swinging fists and I hadn’t seen the guy yet.

  Ofelia had a bad history with men. One of her boyfriends had sold her to that incubus.

  “He’s not like the last one. He’s okay,” she said, lifting her hands to calm me. Bu
t the last one had started out okay too. That is to say, he’d been squeaky-clean, with a fat bankroll and a convincing fake smile. I’d met him and hadn’t dismembered him. I hadn’t known what he was going to do. We’d both trusted him, and Ofelia had paid the price for it.

  “I’ll judge that for myself,” I said.

  “I knew you’d say that. He’s right over there.” She nodded toward the police barricade.

  I stared at the crowd for a full minute without seeing anyone who looked like he could pass for Ofelia’s boyfriend.

  “There,” she said, pointing still more insistently.

  Nothing but a sea of faces.

  She rolled her eyes, lifted her hands over her head, waved to him. “Cooper!”

  “Cooper?” I echoed. “Is he a car?”

  Finally a man broke through the crowd, and I waved him through the barricade with the help of my badge.

  He didn’t look like someone Ofelia should have been with. My baby sister should have been with some Prince Charming type who’d take good care of her in an ivory tower. Someone like Fritz, I guess.

  Cooper had some things in common with Fritz. He moved like he was ready to kill, for instance. But otherwise, he looked like a Chippendales beefcake who was gearing up for his motorcycle-themed routine. A pretty boy with bulging muscles and waxed everything, not that I could see everything. Thank God.

  He bent to give Ofelia the kind of kiss that a brother never wanted to see. When she came up for air, she said, “Cooper, this is the younger of my big brothers. This is Cèsar.”

  Biker Boyfriend reached out a hand to shake. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Cèsar. I’ve heard so much about you.”

  “I have heard absolutely nothing about you,” I said, squeezing his hand hard. Probably harder than I needed to. And then harder than that, without letting go, to make sure that Cooper knew who he’d be dealing with if he hurt Ofelia.

  My strength’s magically augmented, so I’m strong for a guy who sees inside a gym twice a month. Until that moment, I used that strength exclusively for two things: impressing random grocery-store babes by carrying their stuff to their car, and for saving my life against bad guys.

  Cooper was neither babe nor bad guy—as far as I knew—but I’d never gripped anyone’s hand tighter.

  I should have been crushing bones, but he didn’t squeeze back. Cooper’s expression never changed. “I hope we have time to get acquainted.” His teeth looked too shiny for a guy wearing a motorcycle vest and chaps.

  When we finally released each other, my hand was the one aching.

  “Cooper, can you make sure Pops gets to the hotel okay?” Ofelia asked. “I’ll be back long before his curfew.”

  “If that’s what you want.” Cooper kissed her again, nodded at me, and melted into the crowd.

  I’d been around enough to know what a guy who killed other guys looked like.

  Whatever Ofelia said, Cooper was dangerous.

  “Do you have a few minutes to talk with me?” Ofelia asked.

  “Yeah, but not here.” Our position within the barricade put us right by the front door to the hotel, and I’d seen a bar downstairs when visiting the lobby. I flashed my badge a few more times to get us inside.

  “I’m glad I ran into you here,” she said, striding alongside me. “I wish it had been under better circumstances, but…I’d been planning on visiting soon. Here is as good as anywhere.”

  “As good for what?” I asked.

  “I need your help,” Ofelia said. She gave the most disdainful snort I’d ever heard when I walked her into the hotel bar. She looked at the ivy crawling up the pillars and the fountains and all the chandeliers with her lip curled, baring a cracked tooth that had been capped with gold. “How’d you find this place?”

  The easy answer was that it was on the ground level of the building where Fritz was currently having his gavel examined by a judge. “I know some people who are staying here.”

  “Are they involved in your investigation?” Ofelia asked. “It’s a long way to come, even for the FBI.”

  She didn’t realize my badge was fake. To be fair, she’d moved out of town at the exact time that I’d become a secret employee of the OPA. But Pops knew the truth. Why hadn’t he told her?

  “I work for the Office of Preternatural Affairs now,” I said.

  Betrayal shadowed her eyes, so much like mine. “Really?”

  I wished I could have told her I was joking. “Magical Violations Department. I arrest witches, mostly. I know that’s gotta sound bad, but listen to me—a lot of witches do need to be stopped.”

  “How long?” she asked.

  “A while,” I said. “It’s existed for ages in secret.” That was something that the news hadn’t verified yet, although rumors were going around that the new agency wasn’t new.

  “You never told me.”

  “When would I have? It’s not like you left a forwarding address.” I’d tried tracking down the P.O. box number Ofelia gave me when she left, but its mail got rerouted so many times that I never found its destination.

  She winced. “Right. Is a bartender ever going to serve us?”

  “Bet he couldn’t get in with the protesters,” I said. Plus, it was nine o’clock in the morning, when non-alcoholics didn’t want anything worse than a mimosa.

  She flipped over the bar and started grabbing bottles. “What do you want?”

  “You don’t know how to mix anything,” I said.

  “No?” She did a few bottle-flipping tricks, juggling the flavored vodkas, tossing them behind her back. And then she set them in a neat row on the bar in front of her. “I definitely don’t know how to mix anything.”

  “All right, Cirque du Soleil, you’ve been to bartending school.” I couldn’t stop grinning. That was such a cool goddamn trick, and I couldn’t even reliably hit the wastebasket with paper balls. “I don’t drink anymore.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Loser.” She poured herself a shot of whiskey and tossed it back.

  “You said you needed my help?” I prompted. “If it’s got to do with money, I’m thinking that a talented bartender with a boob job earns more than me.”

  “It’s about Pops. Actually, it’s about Cooper.” She sighed heavily. “Mostly it’s me.”

  I stared at her blankly. “Okay.”

  “Cooper and I got married last year. We didn’t tell either of our families because we had a private wedding with mutual friends. The thing is, when Pops finds out that I married without his permission, he’ll be pissed. I want his blessing. I need it.”

  As soon as the word “married” came out of her mouth, my head filled with fog.

  Married?

  Obviously we both knew that she hadn’t just failed to invite Pops. She’d failed to invite me, too.

  My ex-girlfriend had invited me but my baby sister hadn’t.

  “Why?” I asked.

  She shrugged awkwardly. Took another shot. “It’s hard to explain. I’d have invited you and Pops and Domingo and everyone, if I’d had the chance, but…it’s just complicated.”

  “So you need Pops’s blessing.” That much didn’t require questioning. I still felt weird going out of town without asking Pops’s permission first, and I was a grown-ass man. Like it or not, the man would own us until the day we died.

  “Can you help me?” she asked. “He always liked you best.”

  “Pops likes me best? Since when?”

  “Since it’s most convenient for me to let you believe that,” Ofelia said. “Look, Cèsar, hasn’t there ever been anyone you loved so much that you couldn’t breathe without them?”

  Much like the word “married,” that question made my thoughts go blank. I thought about a necromancer with feathers in her hair on a yacht in the Caribbean. I thought about my lips on sun-heated skin belonging to someone else’s wife. I thought about…a chilly pocket dimension cave that was stocked with more beer than food.

  My mouth said, “I guess.”

&n
bsp; “I can never be totally happy with Cooper if I don’t get Pops’s blessing,” Ofelia said.

  And my mouth, still operating independently of my brain, said, “I’ll help you.”

  Chapter 9

  I was still kicking myself for being a dumbass twenty minutes after Ofelia left. Without Suzy, I’d gotten better at metaphorically kicking myself lately. I’d been practicing. But the ass-kicking voice in my head had always sounded like Suzy, and now I didn’t need to deal with the substitute when I could have the real McCoy.

  Hopefully.

  Time hadn’t stopped while I was being held at gunpoint. The once-empty lobby was now filled with personnel trying to figure out how the hell an employee had gotten a gun into a secure hotel. There was actually someone at the desk to bother about my luggage.

  Turned out that my duffel bag had been in one of the SUVs downstairs. The ones riddled with bullet holes.

  “Yeah, but what about my bag?” I asked the woman at the desk, who looked overwhelmed and on the brink of tears.

  “All of the luggage has been taken away to be searched,” said Agent Bryce, emerging from the elevators. “I’m in charge of the investigation. I want to rule out that the shooter was trying to get at the OPA equipment from the airport.”

  My heart stopped. “Who’s searching the bags?”

  “Don’t worry. I made sure to have your bag and Director Friederling’s routed directly upstairs.” Agent Bryce patted me on the shoulder. “You’ve had a hard enough time.”

  That was a relief. And it was also such a nice gesture from Agent Bryce, who didn’t even know I had a magical doorway to my previous partner hidden in my duffel. “I could kiss you, Agent Bryce.”

  “Please don’t,” she said. “I don’t want to file a sexual harassment report with HR when I just took on all that paperwork to have your sister kept out of custody.”

  “You did that?” I’d been wondering why Ofelia hadn’t gotten black bagged, or worse.

  “Do you want your sister recruited by the OPA at a time like this?” Agent Bryce asked.

  I really could have kissed her. “So what did the shooter want?”