Lock & Key

by Clara Coulson

  The waitress trailed her to the kitchen door and pushed it open, allowing Kat to slip through. The woman followed her in, letting the door swing shut, and helped Kat to her feet.

  Kat patted off her pajamas and said, “Thanks for that. I owe you one.”

  The waitress shrugged. “Nah. You don’t owe me anything. I like pulling one over on those types.”

  “Those types?”

  “They weren’t real agents, right? Some pretenders? Anti-sups or something?”

  “Well, not exactly…” Kat frowned. If A9 found out this woman had helped her, she’d be in as much danger as Liam. “Actually, you’d have been better off handing me over. You’ll make their shit list if they find out you lied.”

  The woman crossed her arms. “Then I’ll put them on my shit list first.”

  “I hope you have some firepower to blow that list up, because—”

  A door at the back of the kitchen burst open, and Kat wheeled around, magic flaring, expecting to find A9 mooks storming the café. But only one person came through the door that led to the alley beside the building. And that person was Liam Crown. And he did not look happy.

  He stopped next to a tall black man—the chef—who was busy flipping a series of pancakes. The chef gave Liam a bland look and shook his head. “Always so theatrical, Crown. Should have scrapped that when you scrapped your career.”

  Liam scowled at him, then locked his eyes on Kat. He was breathing heavily, like he’d run all the way here. Maybe he had.

  “Oh, Liam,” said the waitress. “I was actually thinking of calling you. We have a situation with this woman here, where—”

  Liam raised his hand to cut her off and walked around the oven, snatching a pancake out of midair. The chef snorted but didn’t complain; he poured more pancake batter from a tub onto the griddle to replace the one he’d lost, as if he was used to this behavior. Liam took a bite out of the pancake as he closed in on Kat and the waitress, coming to stand with one hand on his hip and a sour look on his face.

  “Do you know how long I’ve spent looking for you?” he asked Kat.

  Kat flushed.

  The waitress blinked in confusion. “Wait, you two have already met?”

  “Sure have.” Liam stuffed the rest of the pancake into his mouth. “And got in a fight with a nasty magician in the process. She’s being chased by this crazy shadow org. I had her holed away at my place, but she apparently decided to go for a walk.”

  Kat rubbed her temples. “Actually, that’s exactly what happened. I had a nightmare. I needed some air. I went out for a walk. And then…” The rest of the story spilled from her lips. The first encounter with Reagan and Kline. The wolf shifter. That creepy Caoimhe woman. By the end of the retelling, Kat felt like she’d run another ten miles.

  Liam looked more disturbed about the encounter with Caoimhe than her close calls with A9. “She gave you a card?”

  Kat opened her palm, revealing the card she’d nearly crumpled when the waitress pulled her over the counter. Without warning, Liam snatched it, ripped it up, and tossed it into a trashcan. “Do not ever contact Caoimhe O’Connor, understand? For any reason. Don’t speak to her. Don’t answer her questions. And for the love of god, don’t ever make a deal with her.”

  “That goes for all faeries,” the waitress added.

  A cold dread settled in Kat’s gut. “Oh, Christ. She is a faerie?”

  “The worst of the worst, that one,” the waitress confirmed. “She’s the judge of the local faerie court, and she daylights as a lawyer. She’s as nasty a manipulator as she is a vicious warrior, and she’s not afraid to throw around the might of the fae to get her way. She’s the most powerful faerie in Salem’s Gate. Hell, on the eastern seaboard.”

  “What does she want with me?” Kat asked. “She was waiting for me.”

  “Her spies must’ve seen you recover from Marta’s attack,” Liam answered. “She knows you’re something special, something unique. Faeries like collecting unique things. Especially powerful things.”

  Kat swallowed over the lump in her throat. “Yeah, I’ve had enough of being ‘collected.’” She shook away the burgeoning thoughts of her captivity with A9 and said to the waitress, “So you know all about the supernatural too? Are you a magician?”

  The waitress tilted her head to the side, then laughed. As she did, Kat swore she saw sparks dance around in the woman’s brown eyes. “Not quite,” replied the waitress. “I’m Xing Yun, the latest reincarnation of Lei Gong.”

  “Lei Gong?” Kat said.

  Liam cleared his throat. “Lei Gong is the Chinese god of thunder. Yun is a deity.”

  8

  Liam

  Few people ever met a deity, and fewer knew when they did. Liam had stumbled upon Yun’s nature by accident five years ago, when he was chasing a cold-blooded killer through the city streets. The guy cut a hard left into the alley between the Thunderbolt Café and the salon next door, and Yun had coincidentally been throwing out some garbage at the time. The perp brought up his gun, tried to mow Yun down the same way he’d killed a police officer just half an hour before. But this time, he didn’t even get a bullet off. He got half a million volts of electricity to the face, and by the time Liam came to a halt behind him, the guy was crispier than an overcooked breadstick.

  Yun said, “Sorry, he startled me.”

  And Liam replied, “Well, he deserved the electric chair, so all’s fair.”

  The police department publicly played the guy’s death off as an accident caused by faulty wiring in the wall of the salon, because the brass wasn’t keen on stoking the ire of a deity. Liam, however, being magically inclined, was more fascinated by Yun than perturbed. So he started eating breakfast at the Thunderbolt once a week, and eventually struck up a friendship with the reincarnated Asian god masquerading as the human owner of a hole-in-the-wall café.

  A good decision, in hindsight. Yun had saved his ass more than once.

  And she’d come through yet again for him today.

  Liam, Kat, and Yun sat around a small circular table in a break room off the kitchen, chowing down on some of Devon the chef’s best breakfast platters. As Liam shoved forkfuls of egg into his mouth, he explained the short version of Kat’s predicament, leaving out some of the nastier things she’d implied about Advent 9 last night because he knew such details would make the fidgety Kat uncomfortable. Yun seemed to catch the reason for his discretion, and ripped a strip of bacon in half with her teeth a little too violently.

  Liam had never pressed Yun to explain the details of her family situation, but he got the impression her parents hadn’t been particularly kind to her after discovering their daughter was imbued with powerful ancient magic. Yun absolutely hated when supernaturals, particularly women, were mistreated, and what had happened to Kat no doubt drove the thunder god’s anger into a churning storm. Which was why Liam didn’t bother to ask if Yun would help Kat; the answer would be yes. So he just went on with the conversation as if she’d already said so.

  “We need a plan to deal with those mooks in the white vans,” he said as he poured syrup over his pancakes. “And that magician. She’s a loose cannon. If we don’t get her out of Salem’s Gate, she might hurt the wrong people by accident, and then we’ll be in for it. The last thing we need is another shifter or vampire riot—or worse, military action from the fae. The sheer number of humans that would get caught in the crossfire…”

  “What about the Circle?” Yun asked, fork pointed at Liam. “I know you’re on their naughty list, but this Marta lady is violating all their basic tenets. Surely they’d intervene if informed about this ‘A9’ group. They hate black magic. Mars their PR.”

  Kat crumbled one of the buttermilk biscuits in her hand, tense. “I don’t know much about the Circle of Magic, but with the way A9 mobilizes their magicians so publicly, I have to think somebody is ‘encouraging’ the Circle leaders to look the other way.”

  Yun frowned. “What, like bribery?”


  “Or threats,” Liam said. “Kat suspects there are government higher-ups involved. A9 has too many resources, too much clout, to be a wholly private venture. What with the way the government audits and spies on companies these days, looking for contributions to rogue supernatural groups and anti-sup orgs alike, somebody has to be keeping the heat off these people. I mean, I told you about the McDonald’s fight. These guys somehow kept that off the internet. Which means they must have access to the national firewall protocols. Or can at least tap the shoulder of somebody who does.”

  “Well, that’s disturbing.” Yun swirled her orange juice around in her glass. “If they have that much power, how are we supposed to outmaneuver them?”

  “I was thinking we trick them.”

  Kat perked up. “Trick them how?”

  “You were planning to go to Philly, right? To get fake documents?”

  Kat nodded.

  “What if we made them think you left Salem’s Gate, got your docs, then snuck out of the country?”

  “Where would I actually go?” Kat reached for another biscuit. It was her seventh.

  “Nowhere. Stay here in Salem’s Gate. Change your appearance. Get a new identity. Get an unassuming job. Live it up off the radar while A9 wastes their time and money hunting for your phantom an ocean away.”

  Yun nodded. “That sounds like a good idea to me.” She nudged Kat. “What do you say?”

  Kat was on the fence, Liam could tell. She’d been running from A9 since her escape in Georgia, jumping cities and crossing state lines day by day, week by week, to stay one step ahead of her pursuers. Remaining in one place for a long period of time made her nervous. “I mean, it sounds like a good idea in theory,” she eventually conceded, “but how do we pull it off? Reagan and Kline might not be geniuses, but they’re low-level goons. The upper echelons of A9 aren’t stupid enough to fall for a flimsy paper trail.”

  “Then we’ll make it solid, not flimsy.”

  Yun whistled. “Oh, boy. You’re going to call in that favor, aren’t you?”

  Liam shrugged. “Might as well do it now. I was never going to use it for myself.”

  “Favor?” Kat asked. “What favor?”

  “A favor from Auguste Vanderhall,” he said.

  Kat leaned back in her chair. “That sounds like an old-money oil baron who lives in a nineteenth-century New York mansion wallpapered entirely in gold leaf.”

  Yun burst out laughing. “You’re not actually that far off the mark.”

  “Auguste Vanderhall,” Liam said, “is the lord of the New England sect of House Dalca.”

  Kat pursed her lips. “House Dalca? Isn’t that, like, a vampire thing?”

  “Yup.” Yun smeared butter across her own pancakes. “House Dalca is one of the old vampire houses, and Auguste is the latest in a long, long line of house lords who’ve presided over the New England branch of Dalca, stretching all the way back to the original American colonies. He’s also the youngest lord who has ever ruled a house sect. He’s only twenty-one.”

  “I thought you didn’t inherit a title like that until…” Kat covered her mouth with a napkin. “Oh, no. What happened?”

  Liam sighed, remembering the mass panic ten years before. He’d still been in college then, a senior studying criminal justice, when the slaughter first hit the news and the vampires on campus nearly burned down a dozen buildings. The city cops went out in force, storming dorms, searching for violent creatures of the night. A SWAT guy kicked in Liam’s door and waved his gun around in a panic, worried he was about to lose his jugular. Liam simply stood there in shock until the guy finally backed out and ran away to scare somebody else. He’d never forget that moment—when he resolved to be a better cop than that.

  “His father and older brother,” Liam finally answered, “were killed in the Great Chicago Massacre, along with almost fifty other high-ranking vampires. Because Auguste was next in the line of succession, no other siblings, no aunts or uncles, he gained the lord title when he was only eleven. As a result of him being the last New England Dalca heir, he’s lived a pretty sheltered life, at the worst time to live one—adolescence. Naturally, this has caused him to become a bit rebellious. Back when I was still a cop, I caught him stealing a car. I let him off with a warning instead of hauling him to jail, on the condition he owed me a favor.”

  “And you’re going to cash that in”—Kat clenched her napkin—“for me?”

  “You make it sound like you think you’re not worth it.”

  “You don’t know me.” She tossed her fork onto the table with a clang. “I’m not your loved one. I’m not even your friend. I’m a stranger who accidentally crashed into you next to a restaurant dumpster, and I’m not comfortable with the fact that you’re taking so many risks for me, using up valuable resources. You’ve wasted money on me. Food. Clothing. And now…a one-of-a-kind favor from a powerful vampire? Liam, I don’t have anything to give you in return. And just cleaning your store isn’t going to cut it.”

  Liam shook his head. “What makes you think you have to give me anything? I want to help you because you’ve been wronged and I think you deserve a better life. It’s that simple.”

  She flushed. “I just…I don’t feel it’s fair…”

  “It’s not about fair,” Yun cut in. “It’s about right. And it’s about the bigger picture.”

  “What do you mean?” Kat asked.

  Liam looked to Yun also. “Bigger picture?”

  “Look, I want to help you too, Kat, for the same reason as Liam,” Yun replied. “You’ve been dealt a shitty hand, and you deserve a little relief. And you shouldn’t feel bad about accepting help where it’s freely offered. Especially in this city, where it seldom is, what with the fae prowling around, trying to lure people into their web. Like Caoimhe.” She practically spat the name. “But, more than that, it’s not wholly about you. It’s about this Advent 9 group. It’s about dealing them a blow. Think about it. You weren’t the only one they hurt, and given your description of their assets, I seriously doubt they’ve stopped hurting people since you left. They might have dozens of facilities, hundreds of test subjects.”

  Kat cringed. “Yeah, I thought about that…”

  “Well, think about this,” Yun continued. “If we can keep you out of their hands, then they’ll lose out on the one thing they’ve been seeking: an artificially created supernatural. Not only do you represent a massive financial loss to them, but you have power, great power, you can use against them in perpetuity. No matter what you do for the rest of your life, they’ll always be afraid that Kat King will come back to take revenge. And that kind of threat hanging over a group like A9, a group with so much power and influence, has an incalculable value.

  “Eventually, someone will have to take down Advent 9. Even if you’re not a part of that effort in a physical sense, your mere existence can be used against them. Your testimony in court would send them all to jail. Your public reveal would utterly destroy their ability to operate in secret. You, Kat, are valuable not just to A9, but also to society as a whole. And that’s why, even if I didn’t like you—which I do, because you’re adorable—I would still seek to help you. Because A9 doesn’t just threaten you. It threatens all of us. Our entire country. The world. We need to save you. And you need to accept that you’re worth saving, no matter the cost.”

  Liam mentally congratulated Yun on that monologue. He’d never been a great orator himself. He was good one on one with anxious perps in interview rooms, but grander overtures were lost on him. It was why he always flunked debate class, and why he steered cleared of any job that involved public speaking. Liam found it amusing that such eloquence took the form of a mundane-looking woman like Yun the café owner. Of course, Yun was secretly an ancient god, so that probably had something to do with it. Gods were known for dramatic speeches, right?

  For Kat’s part, she looked rather stunned—and somewhat guilty. Liam figured she had considered the greater threat that A9 was
to society and had chosen to keep running anyway instead of forming a resistance. Not that she was wrong to do so. She deserved safety and privacy and peace. She’d been horribly abused by those bastards for years, and captives in such situations often suffered profound psychological damage. That Kat had even allowed Liam to take her home was a miracle, and the fact she appeared to be slowly warming up to something akin to friendly was incredible. Liam didn’t know who Kat had been before her abduction, but she was obviously resilient. And strong. So strong.

  She proved that when she responded to Yun. “Yeah, you’re right. I’m a key piece in this whole clusterfuck. If I just spirit myself away and hide forever, no one will have enough leverage to stop A9 from continuing their…experiments.” She closed her eyes and let out a deep breath. “Okay. Let’s do this thing. With the vampire lord or whatever. How do we call in this favor?”

  Liam smiled, hoping Kat noticed he was proud of her. “We go to a bar.”

  “A bar?” She scrunched her nose.

  “Remember when I said Auguste was rebellious?”

  “Yeah.”

  “He hasn’t gotten much better since the whole car theft fiasco. He hangs out at Patterson’s Bar & Grill four days a week, getting sloshed. And that’s exactly when we’re going to approach him. When he’s too drunk to realize what he’s signing up for until it’s too late to back out.”

  “Careful, Liam.” Yun snickered. “Those cop ethics of yours are slipping.”

  “Oh, if only you knew.”

  9

  Kat

  Patterson’s was a rundown restaurant in the grungiest neighborhood Kat had seen since teleporting into Salem’s Gate. Tenement buildings dotted the streets, half the stores were shuttered, and there were groups of shady-looking people loitering on the street corners who Kat was sure belonged to gangs. Some innate sense told her most of those people were supernaturals, though she wasn’t entirely sure what kind, or if the separate groups represented different factions.