I knew there had to be wildlife moving among the dead grasses, but the dark stalks were too dense for the small white bodies of rodents and birds to be visible from a distance.
I was about to switch back to normal vision when I saw it. Close to the edge of the fire station, hopping along unaware of my presence, was an imp. It was a little field mouse of an imp; I would have missed it if I hadn’t been looking so hard.
“There’s an imp over there.” I pointed.
“Oh, goodie. Maybe I can peek in a window. And maybe they’ll be having a naked wrestling contest.”
Rose sashayed across the gravel, heading straight for the imp.
“You can’t see it, right?”
“Nope. Take your time.”
I trailed after her. In its own dark and sinister way, the imp was remarkably cute. The ones in the restaurant had looked like chinchillas, and this one was a baby one. Adorable. I flashed back on the prominent memory of the creatures jumping at Kyle. Maybe I’d overreacted. He hadn’t seem the least bit frightened. Maybe they were just cute. All I would have to do was . . . whatever it was that Kyle had done. Squint or something. Instincts would kick in, and poof, no more imp.
Unfortunately, the only instincts babbling in my head were the ones telling me I needed to go the other way, not toward the harmless-looking fluff of evil. Don’t quit before you try, I scolded. You got this job because people knew you could do it. Get busy proving them right. I tiptoed closer.
Rose was oblivious in her hunt for more tangible prey. I was starting to believe my own hype, too. It’s so small. How bad can it be?
Then the imp turned, cocked its head, and started to bounce straight at me, ignoring Rose.
“Shit. Kyle was right. It recognizes me.” I froze.
Rose turned to look at me, incognizant to the fluffy bundle of evil bopping our way. “Of course it does, silly. You’re staring at it.”
It slowed and came to an alert stop near Rose’s feet, but its little glowing eyes never left me. I forced myself to kneel.
“What are you trying to do? Get all buddy-buddy with it?”
“It’s very small. I can’t do my thing standing.” My thing? If only I knew what that was.
I gave the imp my best squint. Nothing happened. I pictured laser beams of goodness shooting from my eyes, melting the imp to a puddle of goo. Still nothing. How had Kyle done this? I should have spent less time rolling on the coffee shop floor and more time watching.
I tried a wide-eyed glare, a blink, a wink. Nothing.
“Are you flirting with it?”
The imp shuffled forward. Up close, it was even cuter. I’d been right when I thought of a baby chinchilla. It was covered in soft down and had dainty ears and delicate feet that seemed too small to support its weight. I reached out for it very slowly.
“Hi, little fella.”
“Don’t go getting crazy ideas about taming the bugger. You’re not an Illuminea.”
“A what?”
I glanced at Rose. The imp opened its mouth in a perfect round circle the size of my wrist. Row after row of ebony shark teeth glinted, impossibly long. Oh, shit. Piercing little eyes blinked at me. We jumped at the same time. The imp aimed for my throat. I aimed for a few miles straight behind me. We both missed—me by a much larger margin.
“What’s happening?” Rose demanded. She backed up quickly. The imp pounced again, and this time I saw tiny razors at the tips of its paws.
“Get back! It’s attacking!” I’d landed on my butt in the dirt when I’d jumped. I didn’t have time to stand now. Scrambling on all fours, I scooted back, avoiding several pounces. With the third pounce, I kicked it. When my foot connected with the scrap of hell spawn, the imp slowed, like it was moving through water. Only the water was my foot. I screamed.
“That’s it. Get it!” Rose cheered.
I rolled frantically to my knees and leapt to my feet. The imp was a few feet behind me.
“Get in the car,” I yelled. I grabbed Rose’s arm and pushed her in the direction of the safe haven known as my Honda.
“What’s here? I don’t feel anything. What is it?”
The imp jumped at me. I lurched to the side, swinging my hips out of its high-flying reach.
“Are you dancing?” Rose gawked. She was half in the car. Good enough for me. I sprinted for the driver’s side. “Shoot. I hate being in the dark.” Rose slid into the car and we slammed our doors at the same time. I watched the imp hop toward the bumper in the rearview mirror. I fumbled blindly with my seat belt, starting the car with the other hand.
“Hey, look. There’s a fireman,” Rose said.
The bright glow of a man came into view in my mirror. I thrust the car into gear and squealed onto the road. Gravel sprayed up under the car. I remembered to look for traffic at the last possible second as we bounced onto pavement. Then I glued my eyes on the rearview mirror and watched until I could no longer see the wee evil creature.
“You totally dusted him! And he was cute!”
Shaking, I blinked. The world rushed at me like a sci-fi time warp, all color and lights and nausea. It took me a moment to realize the effect was not derived solely from vertigo, and I eased the car from seventy back down to fifty.
“What happened back there?” Rose demanded.
“It tried to bite me! It was so cute and soft and then there were all these teeth—oh my God, I’ve never seen so many teeth—and it jumped me. It went through my friggin’ foot! Through it!”
“Whoa, calm down there, chica. Are you telling me we dusted one of the finest firemen I’ve seen because you were afraid of an imp? A tiny little fuzz ball of darkness that can hardly think for itself?”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said stiffly. I had to focus to relax my death grip on the steering wheel and quell the last of the nausea. “It was pretty intense.”
“Was there a vervet or something?”
“A what?”
“Please tell me there was at least a horde of imps.”
Heat crept up my neck, washing away the adrenaline. “There was only one—but it had a horde of teeth.”
“Was it larger than your new cell phone?”
“Are you making fun of me?”
“Hell yes! So that show—all that rolling around with your panties in the air—wasn’t for the firemen?”
Arrggh. Not again!
“No.”
“Why didn’t you dissipate it?”
“I tried, but I couldn’t figure out how to give it the right look.”
“The right what?”
“You know, how to squint my eyes right.”
“How to squint . . . Wait. You mean you’ve never . . . ?” She waggled her fingers like a magician making a rabbit disappear.
“It’s my first day!”
Rose groaned and dropped her head into her hands. “We are so dead.”
4
Cleverly Disguised as a Responsible Adult Since 2007
“I don’t understand,” Brad Pitt said for the third time. “You’re twenty-five. You found the ad. You must know something. What did Kyle tell you?”
I sat in the same chair I’d accepted the job in—gosh, was that only two hours earlier? I glanced down at myself. Yep, still wearing my very expensive, dry-clean-only interview suit that was now hopelessly ruined. I’d done landscaping projects at my parents’ house without getting this filthy.
Focus, I reminded myself. Mr. Pitt had come around to the front of his desk and was standing over me, as only a short, fat, bulging-eyed, ruddy-faced man could. This is it. One day on the job and I’m already fired. That’s a new record for me.
“He didn’t tell me anything,” I answered honestly. It sounded insolent to my ears, so I rushed to add, “We talked a bit, and he had me look around in Primordium.” I hated how Star Trek–fake Primordium sounded when I said it.
“Nothing else?”
“Um. He called some imps to him. I guess they couldn’t resist.” I thought about the imp, about its circular maw of teeth, about the way it felt as it had slid through my foot.
Sitting in the well-lit office and rationally weighing the possibility of relinquishing my advance and the nice salary—even if I’d had it for only two hours—against facing off against the tiny imp, the money definitely came out on top. And, of course, there was the guiding beacon of hope that I could figure out how to get rid of soul-sight and never see another imp again. “Kyle did something to them, but I wasn’t in the right position to see.”
“What position were you in?”
“I-I was on the floor.”
Rose, who was sitting beside me in a matching chair, raised her eyebrow at me.
“I had, uh, tripped.”
“Sort of like you ‘tripped’ at the fire station?” she asked, making quotes with her fingers.
“Yeah.”
Rose rolled her eyes.
“Crap on a corn dog!” Mr. Pitt shouted. “Of all the enforcers to walk through my door, I get the village idiot.”
I cringed in my seat to avoid the flying spit. I eyed Rose, wondering if she could feel my emotions. I still wasn’t sure if I believed her, but if she really was an empath, I didn’t want her to feel my growing humiliation. It was bad enough that she could see it.
“Tell me again what happened,” Mr. Pitt demanded.
“Do you want me to reenact it?” Rose asked.
“We were driving the region,” I said loudly, giving her a glare, “and Rose wanted to pull over to ogle—”
“To let Madison impress me with her skills.” Rose tossed me her own dirty look and I gave her a sweet smile.
“Then the imp saw me and attacked. It was ferocious. It had more teeth than could fit in a body its size. It wasn’t logical.”
“They’re not logical. They’re coalesced bits of evil. So what did you do when it attacked?”
Rose and I shared a glance. “Well, I wanted to get Rose to safety. Then I tried to kick the imp, but it passed right through my foot.”
“And your lux lucis?”
“You mentioned that earlier and I meant to ask—”
“You don’t know how to use lux lucis? The energy that destroys atrum?”
“Uh, atrum? Maybe you can show me how to, you know, use lux lucis?” Though I was trying my best to behave like a proactive employee, judging by the deepening purple shade of Mr. Pitt’s face, I was saying the exact wrong thing.
“This is—I felt you—We can’t run a region with a—” He waved his hand toward me, sputtering and spitting his way to the back corner of his office. I thought he was going to punch the wall, but instead dropped his hands to his side and stilled. With his back to us, he took several long, loud breaths, fists clenching and unclenching. Then he strode to his desk, jammed a stubby middle finger down on the speakerphone, and punched zero. “Sharon, get me Doris!”
We all sat in silence for a minute. I wasn’t sure where to look. I couldn’t stare at Mr. Pitt, and every time his gaze settled on me, my whole body wanted to curl up. Rose gathered her large purse and stood.
“My work here is done,” she announced. “I’m hungry.”
Mr. Pitt shooed her out of the office as Sharon’s voice droned from the phone: “Doris. Line one.”
Another button crunched under a stubby-fingered jab. I watched Rose leave with envy.
“Doris, it’s Brad Pitt.”
“I figured. No one else I know has a gargoyle secretary.” Her voice was gravely and deep through the speakers.
“I’ve got a little problem here.” Mr. Pitt flopped back in his chair, propped his elbows on the armrest, and steepled his hands together. “Kyle got recruited and I’ve got a new IE here who doesn’t know bumpkis.”
“I’m retired, Brad.”
“I’m up shit creek. You’ll be up shit creek soon, too, if we leave this region in our new IE’s hands.”
“You’ve got Niko. Let her learn from the best.”
Yes, please, I thought, casting my vote with Doris.
“Niko’s in Redding, and he doesn’t have time to babysit a rookie.”
“And I do?”
Mr. Pitt didn’t say anything.
“What about spunk?” Doris finally asked. “I’m not interested in the ones without spunk.”
Mr. Pitt made a noncommittal sound. “Rose said she can move pretty fast. In the wrong direction, but fast.”
“How does she compare to Kyle?”
“I think it’s safe to say she shares no qualities with Kyle.”
“I’ve got plenty of spunk,” I interjected, feeling the need to stand up for myself.
“That remains to be seen,” Mr. Pitt said.
“Humph. Sounds weak to me. What you need is another enforcer.”
I was in something—I still wasn’t sure what—way over my head, and I was scared. This wasn’t just looking at people’s souls. This was creatures with razor teeth and the ability to move through solid matter—mainly, me. If Kyle was to be believed, these horrid little creatures were going to be seeking me out soon. I’d announced myself today, unwittingly, and apparently there was no going back. I didn’t want to think about what would happen if Mr. Pitt changed his mind, and it wasn’t my financial problems that had me worried now.
But it wasn’t fear that made my hands tremble. My pride was stinging. I’d humiliated myself in front of dozens of people at Starbucks and again in front of an untold number of cute unseen firemen. My clothes were filthy. My hair desperately needed to be washed. And my world had been turned on its head just hours earlier with the realization that not only was I not the singular person on the planet with soul-sight, but there were legions of others and I was supposed to be battling against evil like some comic book hero. My normal life—the one I’d possessed just that morning—was slipping through my fingers, and Mr. Pitt had the audacity to be upset with me?
“What I need is training!” I shouted, anger overriding caution—and professionalism. “I haven’t even been here a full day. How can you expect me to know everything?”
“You said she was new, Brad. She sounds old. And needy,” Doris said.
“You sound ancient and unhelpful,” I shot back.
Mr. Pitt glared at me. “It’s a special circumstance. She doesn’t know how to use lux lucis.”
There was a pause. “Are you sure she’s an IE?”
“She’s not yet. Can you do it?”
“I’m leaving for LA tomorrow. It’ll have to be tonight, late. Around ten,” Doris said.
“Good.” Mr. Pitt snatched up my resume and rattled off my address. “She’ll be ready for you.”
“You better make this worth my while.”
Mr. Pitt sighed. “Of course, Doris.” He disconnected the call with a jab of his middle finger.
I sat back in the leather chair, spine stiff, not sure what had happened.
“That’s that.”
“What’s what?” I asked.
Mr. Pitt gave me a withering look. “Go home. You wanted training, you’re getting training.”
“But, tonight?”
“You heard her. She’s leaving tomorrow. We can’t wait. I knew I should have tested you, but I assumed . . . I mean, you’re in your twenties!” He sighed. “You’re a walking target of weakness. It’s like advertising that we want evil to move into our region.”
“Thanks,” I grumbled, feeling all warm and fuzzy. He gave me a sharp look, and I belatedly remembered he was my boss. “For the training. Who’s Doris?”
“She used to be an illuminant enforcer. One of the best.”
I stopped by Miabella Gelato on the way home. If ever there was a day that I deserved a tub of tiramisu gelato for dinner, it was today. When I got home, I took two steps into my apartment, locked the door behind me, tossed my purse and leather resume folder on the lone gray recliner, and flopped t
o the floor. Mr. Bond, my obese Siamese cat, greeted me with a loud meow and took full advantage of my prone position to drape across my torso, repositioning himself with painful jabs of his feet until he lay completely on top of me, his face inches from mine. He purred happily and head-butted my chin. I struggled to breathe beneath his twenty-two pounds. I considered pushing him off me—this was my nice interview outfit, after all—but after the abuse this skirt, shirt, and jacket had seen today, a few cat hairs and puncture marks from his claws weren’t going to be noticeable.
“I had quite a day.”
Mr. Bond meowed encouragingly.
“Do you know there are little evil creatures called imps?”
He meowed again. I scratched his chin.
“Then why didn’t you tell me?”
Mr. Bond launched from my chest, and I gasped air into my compressed lungs. He trotted to his empty food bowl. Groaning, I got to my feet and obediently scooped some dry kibble into his bowl.
My phone rang as I was peeling off my jacket. I considered not answering until I checked caller ID.
“How’d the interview go?” my best friend Bridget asked, without bothering with a proper greeting.
“Oh my God. You’re not going to believe me,” I said. Or maybe she would. Bridget was the only person I’d ever told about soul-sight. Perversely, she thought what I could do was a good thing and she didn’t understand why I didn’t use it more often. My definition of a good thing was a pint of triple-chocolate ice cream or no-strings-attached buckets of cash, not soul-sight.
“That bad?” Bridget asked.
“Worse. But I got the job.”
“You’re not making any sense.”
“It’s a long story.”
“Well, I’m getting out of here in about an hour. Meet me at The Golden Goose. I want all the details.”
I walked down the hall with the cordless phone and glanced at my reflection in the bathroom mirror. “That ought to give me enough time to get cleaned up.”
“Okay, now I’m really curious. See you then. Oh—and congratulations, right?”
“I think so. Bye.”
I did my best not to think for the next hour. A hot shower helped. So did blasting Lorde while I dressed. By the time I left, I was feeling almost normal again.
A Fistful of Evil: An Urban Fantasy Novel (Madison Fox, Illuminant Enforcer Book 1) Page 4
