by SM Reine
I kinda laughed. Not a happy laugh, not a funny laugh. Just exhaled a little louder than usual. “You sound like Gary Zettel with fewer ambitions. You know he was shooting to be president of the OPA?”
“Under my version of PRAY, there will be no president. There shouldn’t be one now. It’s a secret position—as secret as many parts of the agency—and I’m going to make everything transparent.”
“That explains your transparent assassin,” I said. “So transparent you didn’t tell your aspis about it, much less do anything the legal route.”
“Most of what I did in Washington is legal. Equipping Weston Connors so he could make a scene was…” Fritz aggressively cut his steak. “He did make Zettel a public joke as I’d hoped, but the end doesn’t justify the means.”
“You had to know that was a risk, and you did it anyway,” I said.
Fritz chewed just as aggressively. “Gary Zettel made preternaturals turn against us with his policies. I curried favor by promoting PRAY. Now that Zettel’s been removed, I’ve got preternaturals supporting my appointment as the new secretary—and they’re supporting PRAY, too. Instant peace in the country.”
It was true that there hadn’t been any deaths attributed to riots lately. In fact, ever since Weston Connors had stopped fucking around, America had been pretending to be a polite democracy.
If I hadn’t known why that had happened, I’d have been relieved. That was what I’d wanted all along. I’d wanted folks sitting down to talk.
Fritz had done that.
“Which of you killed Craig Kriste?” I asked.
“Connors did,” Fritz said. Reluctantly, he added, “Belle was there.”
“And you didn’t save him, Izzy?”
“Connors is stronger than me,” Isobel said. “I’ve been casting much of Fritz’s magic, but his skill is far beyond mine.”
“I’d say so. You’ve never been able to do magic like that.” I’d had to teach her potions, for fuck’s sake. If I had to teach someone magic, they were really bad at magic.
“The rules have changed,” she said. “Ever since the Treaty of Dis failed and Allyson Whatley gave us rune magic, it’s shocking how much power we can access.” Including magic that helped her funnel power into Weston Connors’s murder-tornado, and spy on Tate Peterson.
“All to replace PRAY,” I said. “Except The PRAY you submitted doesn’t look any different from the old one. The agency’s transparency stuff is new, but everything else is exactly the same.”
Isobel looked surprised. “How do you know that?”
“I read it.” All five hundred plus pages. Twice. If Tate could do it, then so could I.
“Aside from you, nobody reads bills,” Fritz said. “They only care who is supporting them. Polls show both preternaturals and mundanes approve of me, so they’re uniting behind a cosmetically different bill because I put it forward.”
“You’re a cynical asshole,” I said. Harsh, probably. I was feeling harsh.
“The polls don’t lie,” he said.
Isobel got up, grabbed a bottle of wine. “That’s not true and you know it. Polls can say anything you want.” She poured herself a glass. “We knew you’d react like this, Cèsar. That’s why we didn’t tell you about it.”
“Because you knew I’d be pissed?”
“You wouldn’t want us to do it,” Fritz said. “You’d rather do nothing and let circumstances plough over us than fight apocalypse. That’s fine for you. You can do as you want. I can’t—I am a kopis, and I am driven to save the world the way demons are driven to fill it with chaos.”
My fist clenched tighter on the fork.
He might as well have called me a chickenshit.
“I’d rather lay down to get run over than drive the car that kills people,” I said.
Isobel’s wine slopped over the edge. She’d lost focus while pouring, and now expensive grape juice was staining the tablecloth in the breakfast nook. She caught it quickly, sucked the wine off the back of her hand.
“This is really a problem for you, isn’t it? The dishonesty?” Isobel looked at me like she’d never seen me before.
I felt kind of the same.
“I didn’t keep secrets from you,” I said.
Her shoulders drooped. “I didn’t realize…” She took a long drink of wine. “This does mean something to you after all. You, me, and Fritz.”
“You, me, and Fritz.” I had no appetite. I pushed back from the table, folded my arms. “You didn’t know how I’d react. You made assumptions, and you lied.”
They’d lied to me, and people like Gary Zettel hadn’t.
The world really was changing.
“We’ve been hiding within the OPA for months, Cèsar. Ever since we returned from our last trip to Reno,” Fritz said. “Every time there was an opportunity to fight the agency and improve conditions, you said no. I respected it. But you kept saying no, and then all this happened. Isobel and I did what we had to do while continuing to protect you. Millions will die if I don’t control the OPA. Billions.”
I looked between the two of them. Fritz and Isobel. Like it or not, the people who I was stuck with for the rest of my life. People who’d lied to me. People who’d tried to change America and ended up killing.
And they’d won.
The motivations were good even if the execution was bad, but I’d never really doubted that. Didn’t change the fact that I was pissed.
I couldn’t trust my kopis anymore.
Probably never should have.
“I want to move in,” I said.
They looked surprised. “Here?” Isobel asked, like it was too good to be true.
“You guys are going to be back east for confirmation hearings, and then you’ll be making nice with the president, and God only knows how often you’ll be on this coast. Someone should hold down the fort in the mansion. And my apartment sucks.”
Fritz rubbed a hand along the stubble on his jaw. He’d been waiting for me to move in ever since…Jesus, probably when he’d lost his foot and started having me drive him everywhere. Or maybe when he’d asked me to join his secret team after the killing-a-succubus incident. Or even when he’d met me on that beach after I nearly beat an incubus to death with my fists.
I was finally asking, even though I’d just been tearing him a new one. Fritz knew something wasn’t right.
That was probably why he answered the way he did. He was curious about what the fuck I was doing—what would happen when Cèsar Hawke tried to be Machiavellian like his kopis. “I’ll have the guest house set up for you.” It was a full-size house out back, far enough that it felt more like being neighbors than a liege lord and vassal.
“Thanks,” I said.
Isobel held out a hand. “I’ll show the guest house to you.”
I knew where it was. I’d probably spent more time around Fritz’s mansion than she had. But I stood up and took her hand.
Before she could walk away with me, Fritz caught my wrist. There was suspicion pulsing from his end of the bond. Maybe amusement. And a little bit of guilt, which made me feel guilty in turn. “You didn’t stay down. You didn’t stay safe.”
“Suzy’s given me enough shit for that,” I said. “You’re welcome.”
Fritz nodded slowly. “I’m looking forward to the coming weeks, Hawke.”
I wished I could have said the same, but deception’s not my thing.
The guest house looked like it had been prepared in the five minutes it took for Izzy and I to get out there. That meant it had been prepared for a while. Probably for months, while Fritz waited for me to relent.
“Here’s the living room,” Isobel said. “The kitchen is over that way, and then the bedroom there. You’ve got your own hot tub now. And a bidet. Aren’t you excited?” She ventured a smile at me.
The platinum and hard wood fixtures didn’t do much for me. Isobel’s smile, on the other hand…
“You’re not mad at me for calling you a hooker anymore,”
I said.
“I think I misunderstood you,” she said. “In fact, I’m starting to wonder how well I know you.”
“You know me as well as I know Fritz.” That was meant to be an insult. I softened it, lightened my tone. “I’m an enigma. A man made of layers of mystery and flan.”
Isobel’s eyebrows climbed. “Flan?”
“Oreos?” I suggested. “I know what you like. I’m just in a flan mood.”
Her fingers curled through mine. It felt nice, doing this. Holding hands with a woman who’d spent a lot of her un-life lying to me.
Maybe that was why I wasn’t as pissed off at Isobel as I was at Fritz. Izzy was just doing what Izzy had always done.
It was easy to forgive someone with such nice boobs.
She dragged her bottom lip through her teeth, and her eyes flicked up at me. “Are you staying here, in this mansion…for me?”
Would have been nice if that was true. “There’s a lot of reasons.”
Isobel’s breasts pressed against my chest. Her thighs molded on mine. Usually having Isobel breathe nearby was enough to get me aroused, but now, having her all up in my business didn’t do anything.
Well, not much of anything.
She smelled really good. And I’m only human.
“Next, I think I should show your new bed to you,” she murmured into my ear.
Jesus. I wish.
“No thanks,” I said in a tiny unmanly voice.
Isobel seemed to think I was joking. She chuckled against my pulse and her fingers wandered to my belt.
“No really.” I carefully stepped back. “I’m just not ready, Izzy.”
She gripped her chest, right over where her heartbeat should have been. “Do you think you’ll ever be ready again?”
“I sure as hell hope so.” There had to be somewhere in the multiverse where Suzy and Isobel could get along. Somewhere that I could have my flan and eat it too.
“Okay.” She tucked an eagle feather behind her ear, stepped back, shot me a more hesitant smile. “Let me know when you’re ready.”
I stared as she slipped out the door. She was dressed for bed, which meant a shirt that didn’t hide too much below the waist. It was indecent. It was heaven.
As long as I was lying to Isobel, I couldn’t have any of that.
The OPA hadn’t bugged the guest house. I checked first thing, as soon as she was gone. Failing to find anything made me feel weird. I’d gotten so many bugs over the years that I could have made a Burning Man art installation, and now…nothing.
That didn’t make me feel safe.
People like Fritz had to be monitored in sneakier ways. Anything I did in the guest house, I had to believe people would be watching.
Good thing I wasn’t planning on spending much time in the guest house.
My closet was the perfect size for the anchor I set down. It was a new model, really tiny, impossible to detect from afar. Lots of advancements there. It didn’t even make me sneeze when I opened the gateway and stepped inside to Suzy’s new improved Batcave.
She’d gotten rid of the stairs and the crappy furniture. She’d also added a few rooms. Now Suzy wasn’t living in a musty studio apartment at the bottom of a hole, but something that looked like civilization. She had computers, multiple desks, some big maps. The waterfall made it all look kind of like an evil lair.
“Hey dumbass,” she said, wrapping one arm around my waist. The other arm was occupied by holding Cat, whose legs dangled limply at her side.
Suzy kissed me. I still wasn’t used to having to bend down so far for that. I didn’t hate it.
“Hey fatty,” I said against her mouth.
She pinched me really fucking hard. I was surprised she didn’t pull out intestines through my stomach.
A man cleared his throat, and I looked up to see Gary Zettel. He had a black eye.
“Agent Hawke,” he said gruffly, shaking my hand.
“You’re staying here too? Nice. VH1 is going to have a field day with their ‘Where Are They Now? Failed OPA Secretaries Edition’ episode,” I said.
Zettel didn’t smile. He hadn’t gotten a sense of humor since he’d lost his job.
“I said he could stay,” Suzy said.
“That’s nice. Isn’t this the asshole who withdrew all Apple support from you?”
“He apologized. Kinda.” She grinned, baring more teeth than a werewolf. That was when I noticed that she had a black eye too. She’d gotten into fisticuffs with Gary Zettel and survived. Probably hexed his ass. It was the closest thing to an apology Zettel was capable of giving, but Suzy probably liked it better that way. “My parents will be moving in soon. I can put up with Zettel if I can put up with my parents…and other members of the Apple.”
“Good to hear it.” I rubbed my hands together, looking around at the cave. There was lots of room for expansion. They’d be able to house hundreds of members of the Apple here if they wanted. “It’s good for you guys to get along, since I’m ready for my tattoo.”
Suzy’s eyes widened. “You mean…?”
“Yeah.” I took a deep breath. “I’m ready to join the Apple.”
Preternatural Affairs Book 9
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Did you love Bitter Thirst? Then you should read The Road to Helltown by SM Reine!
My name's Cèsar Hawke, and the people in my life are filled with good intentions.
We all know where that ends up.
A fissure to Hell has ripped from Las Vegas to Los Angeles and now half the City of Dis is in my hometown. Helltown's hotter than ever. Demon dynasties are on the rise. The Silver Needles have claimed Calabasas as their murder palace and they're coming for me next...unless I get to them first.
Staying alive means forgiving people I've kicked out of my life, it means getting vicious with magic, and yeah, it means I'm dealing with dead bodies. Lots of them.
I'm Cèsar Hawke. I used to be an agent with the Office of Preternatural Affairs. And this is how the world ends.
Read more at SM Reine’s site.
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