[M__M 03] Misery Loves Company

by Tracey Martin

  “Because?”

  “It’s not possible, so tell me what you did.” He raised the gun, which had formerly been pointed at my chest, to head level. Not being human himself, perhaps he failed to realize that a shot to either location could kill me.

  Someone was shouting down the street. Tires squealed, followed by gunfire and an explosion. Was the fighting getting closer? Were more satyrs on the way? Where had Devon gone? And how about some Gryphons?

  Fuck, I’d take Tom about now if he could supply a solution.

  I had to get a grip.

  “What incentive, exactly, do I have to tell you anything if you’re going to shoot me when I’m done?” It was a dumb question, and I could predict Assym’s answer, but I had to buy time. Just in case someone at street level could help. Just in case Lucen could break free of the fighting in the bar.

  Assym cocked his head from side to side. “It depends on your answer. You are so very interesting to me, satyr’s pet. I need to know what you did. I want to know if I can prevent you from doing it again. Because if I can, well, we still have a future together.”

  “You don’t believe what I did is possible, yet you think you can neutralize my ability? I can’t decide if you’re merely an idiot or simply incredibly arrogant. Then again, you’re a sylph. They go together.”

  Assym’s gaze darted toward the bar window for a second at the sound of more banging, but he was too fast for me to make a move. He smiled, daring me to attempt it. “I will shoot you if I have to. I’ll take you one shot at a time to motivate you to talk.”

  That had been the answer I was anticipating. “I’ve never found that sort of drill-sergeant-like pain-as-motivator crap effective. Yell at me, hurt me—it only pisses me off and makes me more stubborn.”

  “Should we see about that?”

  I cast about for a retort that would lengthen this conversation, but none came to mind. Trust all my ideas to run out too soon.

  Fuck you, my body seemed to say to my brain. Now is definitely the time to panic. The surge of fear shot through me so hard, so cold, that I had no choice but to move. The energy hit it provided me demanded it.

  I dove for Assym, my ears buzzing with more gunfire. It sounded like he’d fired before I moved, but I felt nothing. Not until we hit the ground together, that was.

  Broken glass and concrete slammed into my palms and dug into my skin. I fell on top of Assym, who was screaming in rage. My knees landed on top of his legs, and I rolled off him, hissing to control the shrieking pain in my hands.

  Misery had slipped from my grip when the ground and I collided, and I lunged for the knife. My fingers screeched in protest and trembled with adrenaline. Then I was pushing myself to my feet. Remembering Assym’s gun. Adjusting my hold on Misery.

  I had to finish the sylph before he finished me.

  But there was blood everywhere. Assym was already coated in it, all streaming from the single bullet hole near his shoulder.

  I scrambled up, found the gun and kicked it away from him. Assym wasn’t knocked out, but he thrashed and moaned, seemingly senseless. The sylph I’d cut earlier flew up the steps, clutching his arm without a backward glance for his Dom. So much for loyalty.

  “Lucen?” I reached for the gun, realizing as I said his name that it couldn’t have been Lucen who shot Assym. The angle was wrong.

  “Want to take a second guess, girlie?”

  I tripped over an overturned chair as I looked up. Mace-head was staring down at me, a half-crazed grin on his face.

  The fury was scary enough without that expression. Dressed in his usual black leather and with his gun hanging lazily from his hand, he reminded me of a comic book villain—the batshit-insane kind who thrived on violence.

  “You?” I struggled for something coherent to say. Mace-head continued to grin, most pleased with himself. It certainly didn’t seem like he intended to attack me next. It made no sense. “Why?”

  Sirens wailed on the street above, drowning out whatever the fury had started to say. Four Gryphons on bikes, plus a cop car and an ambulance whizzed by.

  Mace-head scratched his neck with his free hand, watching them go. He seemed completely unconcerned about the war breaking out in his neighborhood.

  But of course, he wasn’t concerned. The furies had tried to cause fighting here before, and he’d been an integral part of it. But how? Why? I had a million questions all of a sudden. So many I couldn’t even process them. They dangled before me like threads, and I needed to weave them together to get my answer. A very complex and exciting answer—I could feel it.

  I tried, but with everything going on around me, I couldn’t concentrate.

  At the sound of metal scraping the concrete, I spun around. Assym was climbing to his feet. His eyes were glazed with pain, but his face declared murder as he gawked at the fury. “You son of a—”

  “Nuh-uh, Mister Assym.” Mace-head waved his gun at the sylph. “Let’s keep this polite, right? Beat it before I shoot you again. Next time I aim for your pretty face. Got it?”

  Assym’s jaw worked, but nothing came out. “This… You’ll pay for this.” He limped up the steps and disappeared from view.

  “Funny, isn’t he?” Mace-head said. “Like there’ll be anything left of him once the Gryphons clean up here.”

  “You’re not worried about that yourself?”

  “Nah. Gryphons aren’t really my concern. You, on the other hand, you are my concern. So take this.”

  I flinched as he reached into his pocket and tossed something at me.

  It was a charm container. “What is this?”

  “A little thing to speed your healing along, is all. You look a might beat-up, and the night is young. This could get uglier before the dawn. Take care, girlie.”

  “Wait!” My world spun—literally and metaphorically—as I lunged for the steps. “What the hell are you doing? What kind of game is this?”

  Mace-head holstered his gun, leaning back on his heels. “I’m saving you, or I did. And it’s a good game, girlie. It’s a very good game, indeed. ’Til we meet again, try not to get dead. And oh, you might want to hang by your satyr boyfriend there. Sounds like the fun’s breaking up inside, and he might be useful.”

  Then he turned around and left. Mouth open, I let him go. He’d given me as much of a crazy nonanswer as I should have expected, so I couldn’t complain. As much as I wanted to shake him until it rattled loose the truth, or at least something sensible, I knew it would be pointless. Besides, I had Lucen in the bar and had to make sure he was okay.

  I clopped down the steps toward him, but my brain couldn’t let go of Mace-head’s words. Nor his actions. When I considered it a second time, his response, insane as it sounded, wasn’t actually crazy. I didn’t believe that for a second. Something big was going on, and him shooting Assym for me was part of it.

  He wanted me alive. The furies had always wanted me alive.

  But why? After what I’d done to them with regards to Victor, I should have been at the top of their hit list. Instead, when three of them had harassed and threatened me a couple weeks ago, Mace-head had chased them off. I hadn’t thought much of it at the time. It had been weird, but I’d had plenty of other issues to keep me from dwelling on it.

  I couldn’t not dwell on it any longer. None of these incidents were random.

  “Jess!”

  The Lair’s door crashed open, and Lucen emerged, bloodied and in a ripped shirt, but alive. I threw my arms around him and silently cried in pain when he did the same to me. My adrenaline was wearing off, and with it came awareness of how damaged I was.

  With some trepidation, I stuck the pain-relief charm around my neck, trusting that if Mace-head had wanted to hurt me, he could have done it some better way. Hell, he could have shot me. For some reason, he wasn’t a threat.

  “What happened with
Assym?” Lucen had retrieved his own gun, and he stuck it awkwardly in his waistband. “I could sense you out here, little siren, but I couldn’t get to you.”

  I wiped the trickle of blood off his lip. “I’m fine. Weird story. I’ll tell you about it later. What’s going on?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I followed him inside, mourning the damage to The Lair, which was extensive. The place looked more like it had hosted a train wreck than a bar fight, but a large part of that was probably due to the broken window.

  Among the overturned tables and chairs, and general disaster of broken glasses and bottles, the important thing here was clear—Lucen and Gi had subdued the sylphs. Two of them slumped unconscious against a booth, while the third glowered at us. Gi or Lucen had stuffed a dishrag in his mouth while Gi finishing tying the three of them together.

  Thanks to the broken bottles, the smell of alcohol hovered in the air, so strong a lightweight might get drunk off it. Stepping around a pool of Absolut vodka, I turned on the tap at the sink and began rinsing the blood off my hands and removing the glass and pebbles from my skin. Even with the charm on, the water stung.

  Lucen had gotten on the phone, but I wasn’t sure who he was talking to. Shutting off the tap, I closed my eyes. I needed time to think everything through. The threads knotted and unknotted, but I couldn’t see the final pattern they would produce.

  I just knew there was one.

  It was almost dawn before the threads formed a picture for me, but even then, it was incomplete. I needed other threads. Fortunately, I knew where to find them, but I would have to wait a few more hours.

  Overnight, the fighting in Shadowtown had spread. The sylphs had collectively lost their minds. That was my opinion.

  Officially, the story emerged that they were acting on Assym’s orders and a good bit of their own paranoia. As soon as we had descended on the dry cleaner’s, Silas had alerted his Dom. We already knew he wasn’t the only sylph who would be in trouble before the night was over, but the number of sylphs he’d sold his illegal containers to was higher than anyone could have guessed. This racket was big—the number of addict victims was over a dozen and growing. So was the number of guilty sylphs, many of whom were on Assym’s council. They’d decided they weren’t going down without a fight.

  That Assym thought to take his revenge on me in the middle of it was just the fucked-up cherry on top of this evil Sunday night.

  It was also Assym’s biggest mistake. Once he set his sights on me and targeted Lucen to get to me, he’d picked a fight with the satyrs. Thank dragons Dezzi wasn’t so shortsighted as to forgo assisting the Gryphons. In my adrenaline-fueled, sleep-deprived stupor, I started calling the battle the Boston Pred Party.

  Too bad none of the sylphs got dumped in the ocean, but I’d settle for arrested or dead.

  Dezzi had gathered her council a couple hours ago, which was when I’d finally parted from Lucen. He’d wanted me to stay close and hole up in his apartment, but I had my own problems to deal with. There was still the matter of finding Eric’s soul, as well as those of the other addicts. My threads continued to wait.

  In the end, we collected almost all the containers, and the Gryphons arrested almost all the sylphs—and the one goblin—responsible. Amazingly, in spite of the destruction and fighting, Silas’s ledger books had remained intact.

  What to do about the containers was the next question, but not one for us. The Gryphon healers took over from there.

  Around five in the morning, Bridget sent me home. She’d survived with only a few scratches, in better shape than most. “We’re done. Nothing left for us to do tonight.”

  Dazed, I rubbed my eyes. I was exhausted, but all the negative emotions around me kept me unpleasantly alert. I felt like a rubber band stretched to its breaking point. I’d snap soon if I couldn’t relax.

  I didn’t have to feign concern when I offered to stick around, but when my offer was refused, I also didn’t need to be told to go home yet again. I left, gladly.

  Getting home, however, was not so easy. Shadowtown was in shambles. The damage wasn’t nearly as horrific as it had been when the furies had instigated fighting last month, but it was a hell of a mess. Cars lay on their sides, a couple buildings had burned, and the windows of many satyr- and sylph-owned businesses had been smashed. Given how preds hated messes, I suspected the cleanup would begin shortly.

  That worked for me. I didn’t like living in a neighborhood that looked like it had seen the apocalypse.

  The apocalypse.

  That was when the few threads I’d been weaving began to form a coherent picture.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Tom woke me up with a phone call way too early the next day, considering I hadn’t gotten home until the sun was rising. With my mind racing and my body coming down from an emotional feast, it had been even longer before I could sleep.

  I swore at the phone and checked the time. My clock said it was noon. I hated my clock.

  My hand whined in pain from a million cuts and abrasions as I answered. “Do you know what time it is? Do you know how late I was up?”

  “Five after twelve, and my apologies. I’m aware everyone had a busy night. But in light of that, I think it’s more important than ever that we have our talk. When are you coming in?”

  I fell back against my pillow. “You have no idea how right you are about the talk, but it’s not happening today. When I finally drag my sorry ass into work, I need to fill out paperwork and generally deal with the fallout from the Boston Pred Party.”

  “The what?”

  “Never mind.” I yawned, wondering how long I could delay him. “How’s tomorrow evening?”

  “Tomorrow?” He sighed. “No, I’ll be here late today. Your obligations to closing out the case can’t take the whole time.”

  A thin band of sunlight sneaked through my drapes and landed on my futon. I pulled my blanket higher. “No, but I have other obligations tonight.”

  “What can be more important than this?” He sounded annoyed.

  “A lot of things. And who said it didn’t relate to this? I’ll send you more information about when and where later.”

  I hung up to the sound of him grumbling in protest. Then, since there was no going back to bed, I forced myself into the shower. I’d have to make a strong pot of coffee because I had work to do. Tom might not believe me, but I hadn’t been lying about my plans.

  My life was at a turning point, and I could sense it right down to my bones. To my soul maybe, if there was something to this whole soul business other than emotional energy.

  After my meeting tomorrow, nothing was going to be the same. I had to know who I could count on, and who would be better off keeping their distance. The sylphs had used Lucen to get to me, and if anything I suspected was true, yesterday was unlikely to be the last time someone made that mistake. It was only fair to warn those who might become bait and make sure they were willing to be risked.

  Steph and Jim shared an apartment in a plain brick building just outside Boston proper. Jim frequently worked double shifts on Mondays, and I counted on him not being home. Although I liked Steph’s boyfriend, he had no place in the conversation I’d planned.

  A couple guys pulled into the parking lot around the same time as I did, and they let me into the building. I took the stairs slowly, playing through my planned speech as I traipsed to the fourth floor. It was sweltering inside, but I couldn’t pretend I wasn’t also sweaty with nerves. I didn’t know how Steph was going to react to me showing up at her door.

  In retrospect, maybe I should have called ahead. At the time, though, that hadn’t seemed like a good idea. I had words to get out, and it was far easier for her to hang up on me and claim she wasn’t ready to talk than it would be for her to ignore me while I kept knocking on her door.

  Funny how I’d been les
s nervous about barging into Silas’s dry-cleaning shop last night.

  And look how well that went down, a particularly loathsome voice whispered to me.

  I told it to fuck off, then knocked.

  A TV was on in Steph’s apartment, and through the door I could hear her swear.

  “Logan, I told you I’m not—” She threw open the door and gaped at me. “You’re not my neighbor.”

  “Not the last I checked.”

  Steph remained still for a moment, but I could taste her conflict. She was battling something out in her head, and I could guess what it was. Finally, one side lost and she did a very un-Steph-like thing. She pulled me into a hug.

  Shocked, I patted her on the back. “I missed you too?”

  She released me and brushed her hair away behind her shoulders. “Get in here.”

  I stepped inside and followed her into the kitchen. “Did you hear about Eric?”

  “Yes, I heard about Eric.” She handed me a beer. “Why do you think I hugged you? Some Agent Silverman, I think it was, called me earlier. She’s the person monitoring Eric’s progress, and she said he was recovering fine.” Steph collapsed onto the sofa and turned off the TV. “Thank you.”

  I sat next to her but not too close. “You’re welcome, but it’s hardly all my doing.”

  Steph shrugged and pushed her empty dinner plate aside with her foot. “Well, no, but I heard it was your tip that led to the bust last night.”

  “Ah, yeah. And what a bust that was, in every sense. How did you hear that?”

  “Your friend Bridget called to tell me they’d found Eric’s soul. That was before the healer called about his recovery.”

  “Oh.” I sipped my beer, temporarily washing away the taste of Steph’s anxiety. “I’m glad they recovered it. With everything that happened, I was afraid the information we’d been after would be destroyed.”

  Steph just nodded, fixated on her bottle. “Are you okay? Your hands look bad.”