Chapter Eighteen
Richmond, Virginia, USA
Jennie sat by the window of her bedroom and stared out across the city. She had bought a plush armchair for the occasion and was thankful she could take full advantage.
Sunset was her favorite time of day. The time when the world went to sleep and became her playground. The sky was a collage of oranges, pinks, and purples, and she reclined in her chair and soaked it all in.
Baxter was sitting in a chair across from her, squinting against the sun’s rays. “How can you stare at it for so long? Isn’t it supposed to make you blind?”
Jennie tapped her glasses.
“Oh,” Baxter muttered as he realized his mistake. “Smart.”
“I’m not just a pretty face.” She crossed her legs, then sipped her martini. The others would awaken soon, and they would once again get to work assembling their group. Jennie had already made a rudimentary list of the people she wanted in her squad, but obtaining them would be a whole other matter entirely.
Baxter turned away from the sunset and watched Jennie closely. She was still, looking more like a statue of a goddess than a living being.
“It’s rude to stare.” She grinned. “Not that I blame you, of course.”
Baxter rolled his eyes. “Narcissism is unbecoming on you.”
Jennie raised her eyebrows.
“Don’t be filthy,” Baxter reprimanded. “Ha, ha. ‘Coming.’ I get it. What I mean is that you’re not that person. Don’t pretend to be.”
“I know,” Jennie replied. She took a deep breath, her mind weighed with thought. “This is the calm before the storm, Bax. I’ve been resisting it all while we’ve been putting legs into this place, but I know it to be true. Nothing ever stays quiet for long, and sooner or later, the call will come that’ll kickstart us into the rest of our lives as part of King’s Court. Beginnings don’t last forever. Although you can sometimes stretch them like taffy, eventually it’ll reach a point where it snaps. Everything breaks in the end.”
Baxter nodded thoughtfully. “I hope this isn’t one of your motivational speeches. Because if it is, it stinks.”
Jennie laughed and turned to Baxter. “All I mean is that we should appreciate every last moment of this. This calm, it’s an illusion. Swans may look graceful on the surface of a pond, but below the water, their feet are frantically kicking. That’s our life now and forever.”
“Do you regret your choices?” Baxter asked, genuine curiosity in his voice.
Jennie didn’t hesitate in her reply. “Not one bit. Would I have made a few changes along the way? Sure. Hindsight is twenty-twenty, and if I did it all over again, I might have taken some different turns. But, without those turns, I wouldn’t be here. With you. Watching this.” She stared back out to the city. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”
Baxter tried once again to look but couldn’t hold his gaze. “It’s offensive. It’s attacking my eyes.”
Jennie laughed, a real full-belly laugh. “I’m glad you’re with me, Baxter. I really am.”
“I’m glad I’m with you, too.” Baxter put a hand on Jennie’s knee. There was no romance there, just the affection of two friends staring out at the world and thankful for each other’s company.
A gentle knock came on the door. Jennie finished her martini and placed the glass down on a nearby table. “Come in.”
Carolyn melted halfway through the door, then stopped and disappeared. She returned a moment later, opening the door with a sheet of paper in her free hand. She looked abashed when she saw Baxter’s hand on Jennie’s leg. “I’m sorry, am I interrupting something?”
Baxter and Jennie laughed.
“Not at all.” Jennie waved her over. “I’ve just realized, I’m going to have to get that door spectrally imbued. Soon enough, we’ll have people trying to break into our HQ and take us out while we sleep. That I can’t allow.”
A strange expression came over Carolyn. “It’s funny you should mention that.”
Baxter’s face straightened. “What is it?”
Carolyn handed over the paper. “It’s the SIA. They’ve had an incident.”
Jennie’s eyes danced over the page, her eyebrows lifting slowly as she went. “You’ve got to be kidding me.” She handed the paper to Baxter.
Baxter read it and looked up at Carolyn. “The Dragon is gone? Taken? Man, Daggro is going to be in trouble.”
Jennie took the paper from Baxter and re-read the words. “Remember what I was saying before about the calm before the storm, Bax? Well, here it is. The pin that’ll make the balloon pop.”
Carolyn waved her hands. “Too many analogies. What do you want us to do?”
Jennie’s face grew resolute. “We established the King’s Court to serve and protect the people. I think it’s about time we introduce our little organization to the world and give them a sample of what we’re capable of.”
“But we haven’t hired our full team, yet,” Baxter complained. “We’ve got more agents to recruit. How are a dozen members of King’s Court going to work with the SIA without them swallowing up our operation entirely? They’re too big already.”
Carolyn pointed to the document. “If they were that big, why would they ask for help? They may have the numbers, but we’ve got the secret weapon. Genevieve Penelope King.”
Jennie cocked her head. “That’s not my middle name.”
Carolyn bashed her fist into her open palm. “Dammit. I don’t know why I thought it would be.”
“Why do you want to know her middle name?” Baxter asked.
Carolyn shrugged. “She’s an enigma, wrapped in a mystery, shaped like a question mark. I want to unravel the secret and find out as much as possible.” She tapped her chin thoughtfully. “Who knows, maybe there’ll be a book in it someday.”
“The point is,” Jennie laughed, bringing them back to the topic, “Carolyn is right. They need us, and we’re going to help them. Justice is objective, and our objective is justice. Besides, a return visit to the SIA could be just what we need to recruit the other members of our team.”
Carolyn laughed incredulously. “Snatching them from right under their noses? I like it.”
Jennie grinned. “Maybe not as brazen as that, but we can certainly do some work while we’re there. They’ll already be on edge with Rhone on our team, so this could get tricky.”
Baxter took a final glance out the window, glad to see the sun had now all but disappeared beyond the horizon. “Carpe noctem?”
Jennie smirked. “Carpe noctem.”
* * *
“But why can’t we come?” Tanya complained as Jennie delivered the news of their departure.
“Why?” Jennie folded her arms. “Because I’ve just invested a crap-ton of money into this manor, and we’re going to need more than a trio of poltergeists to act as security.”
She knew this was going to be a tricky situation. The reality was that she didn’t need all of her team to drive down to the SIA. A select few would be able to handle it.
“And besides,” Jennie continued, “I need people here monitoring the phone lines and checking that nothing else crops up while we’re gone. If we need backup, we’ll call for you. You’ll be in safe hands, too. Ula, Roman, Triton, you’re acting as security for King Manor, okay?”
Although they didn’t look pleased, they nodded obediently. It was one of the things Jennie loved about them. Their military training was so ingrained in their natures that they played ball and were reliable operatives.
Tanya wasn’t convinced. “Who’s going to call us? The only people that are able to contact you right now are the SIA. We haven’t exactly advertised the King’s Court’s services in the Yelp directories, have we?”
Jennie took Tanya’s shoulders in her hands and looked straight into her eyes. “I have a job for you, okay? Something that requires you stay locally. In my research notes of this town, there’s information about a group that concerns themselves with paranormal phenomena. The
y meet once a month in a bar near City Hall. I want you to ingratiate yourself with them and see if there’s anyone in the group with powers to give their suspicions validity. They could be useful allies to bring to our side.”
Tanya’s features softened. “Fine.”
They waved goodbye to the others, with even Hendrick making the time to exit the lab where he’d been holed up for over twenty-four hours, and soon they were in Jennie’s Mustang and back on the straight asphalt of Route 295.
“You don’t think they took it too hard, do you?” Jennie asked Baxter, turning down Ariana Grande so he could hear her talk.
“Forget about it,” Carolyn answered, cutting in before Baxter could answer. “They get it. When you and Baxter disappeared to Washington to go and find the SIA, we understood. This whole game is bigger than all of us. We can’t stick together the entire time. They get that, even if they are a little disappointed.”
“We’ll need all hands on deck,” Jennie assured herself. “Everyone plays a part. When this thing explodes, it’s likely we’re hardly going to see each other for days, maybe even weeks at a time.”
Feng Mian remained tight-lipped and lost in thought. Rhone nodded solemnly in the back. He looked strange, dressed in a black shirt and dark blue jeans. He had handed in his SIA uniform when he had received his expulsion, and though his clothes made him appear more handsome than before, he certainly looked strange.
“They’re not going to let me in,” Rhone muttered.
Jennie craned her head to look in the rearview. “They will. You’re with me. They have no jurisdiction over my team and who I choose to affiliate with.”
Rhone didn’t look convinced.
The highway blurred by them as they raced on to Washington. Night had fully fallen, and the stars were out. There were hardly any cars to slow their progress, and they soon pulled into the SIA parking lot.
“Bastards!” Jennie exclaimed.
Her space had been taken. Well, not just taken, removed. The sign that had reserved her space was gone, and in its place was yet another pristine black SUV with a parking permit on the dashboard.
“Still think they’re going to let us in?” Rhone asked.
Jennie didn’t answer. Instead, she scanned the parking lot until she found a narrow space between two operative vehicles.
Jennie examined the tiny gap between her car and the cars on either side. “If they so much as ding my car, I’m going to be pissed.”
They met only a little resistance as they entered the facility. Jennie’s passcodes, fingerprints, and keycards still worked, and the few agents they did encounter didn’t bat an eyelid as Rhone walked in with her.
“Guess news travels slowly to those out of the loop,” Rhone mused.
Daggro wasn’t difficult to find. Jennie knocked on her office door, and Daggro buzzed them in. A number of fierce-looking agents and one analyst were sitting in a circle around her desk.
Daggro’s face fell when her eyes locked with Rhone’s. “What is he doing here? I thought you’d been disgraced and thrown out into the streets.”
“You should know me better than that.” Rhone grinned. “I’m like herpes. Every time you think I’m gone, I come right on back.”
Daggro stood, resting her knuckles on her desk. “Thompson, Gregor, remove him.”
Two meat-head agents rose and made to move toward Rhone, but Jennie stood in their way. “He’s with me, Daggro. Stand your men down if you want assistance with this case. You may not be as high and mighty as you thought you were if you’ve just allowed the damn Dragon to walk out of here unimpeded.” Her eyes bored into Daggro’s. “What the hell kind of operation are you running here if one of the highest-ranking threats to the spectral world on the east coast is able to just walk out of your facility? Does Rogers know about this yet?”
Daggro bit her tongue. Her hands trembled. She clearly had something to say but decided not to say it. She took a breath and replied, “No. No, he does not. And he doesn’t need to be bothered with this information when he’s already busy with a thousand other things.”
Sure. And because you’re trying to protect your ass from getting reprimanded by the man.
The other agents in the room shuffled awkwardly. Jennie stared down the meat-heads until they returned to their chairs. “Good boys,” she praised.
One of Daggro’s agents filled them in on the situation. It seemed a ghost—a term they used for an undetected mortal, not a specter—had made his way into the facility and released the Dragon from his cage.
“Undetected?” Jennie questioned. “How?”
Daggro’s face grew red. “If we knew that, we would have been able to stop him, wouldn’t we?”
Jennie asked the room a multitude of questions, trying to decipher how all of this was possible. At one point, the analyst, a man with unkempt hair and a thick pair of glasses filled them in on the science behind their security, explaining that even he couldn’t understand it. He retrieved a device from his bag and showed it to the group.
“This is an advanced piece of equipment,” he informed the group. “The coding and hardware installations in this are exquisite. To be able to fit so much technology into something of this size is almost unheard of, let alone the capacity of what it was able to do.”
The device collected traces of every interaction with a biological scanner and filtered through an advanced database of information that had been sourced through methods they couldn’t fathom.
“It works like a hyper-advanced jigsaw puzzle fixer,” he explained, admiration in his eyes. “Astounding…”
“We were hoping that there might be something that you can do with your powers,” Daggro reluctantly seethed at last. “Whoever this was left no other clues, and while we have a team analyzing the origin of this piece of hardware, I really need to get some legs moving on this case.”
Jennie beamed and placed her hand on her chest. “Me? You’d like help, from…me? Oh, Daggro, I don’t know. I mean, I’m not half as good as you or your agents, am I?”
Daggro’s nostrils flared. Her jaw clenched. “Don’t piss me off, King.”
Jennie leaned forward, her eyes narrowing. “Say please.”
Daggro stared at Jennie for a long moment. All agents in the room were silent, wondering when the tug-of-war was going to end.
Finally, Daggro spoke, her lips hardly moving. “Please.”
Chapter Nineteen
Washington DC, USA
The cell seemed a whole lot larger without the whale of a specter taking up half the space.
The holding cells were quiet. White powder chalked the door handles and every surface where fingerprints might have been left during the escape effort. However, no forensics team would be able to trace the spectral clues that alerted themselves to Jennie as she walked into the cell.
“I hope this isn’t a trap,” Baxter declared. “Lure Jennie into a cell and shut the door. It wouldn’t be a smart way to go.”
Jennie raised an eyebrow. “You really think I’d be dumb enough to fall for that?”
Although, with the seed of the idea placed in her head, she turned to the door and checked it was still open. Carolyn, Feng Mian, and Rhone waited in the hallway, keeping the SIA agents engaged while Jennie worked.
A tingle chilled the nape of Jennie’s neck. She filtered through the spectral energy and removed the traces of Baxter that, by now, had become like a second skin to her. There was a frequency in the room, a ghost of something that had been here before, and she wanted to know what it was.
“You picking up anything?” Baxter asked. Outside they heard Rhone and the SIA agents laughing about something they couldn’t hear.
That’s something, at least. Nice to know that Rhone has still kept his personality upbeat throughout the entire upheaval.
“There’s definitely something here.” Jennie scratched her head and slowly moved around the room. She felt like a divining rod as she maneuvered around and dialed in on what she was
feeling.
When she reached the spot where the Dragon had been sitting, she mimicked his position, taking a seat on the cold steel bench and folding her legs. She rested her hands on her knees, closed her eyes, and took a meditative breath. Instantly she was overwhelmed with the memory of the time she had spent in India, learning the techniques of pure meditation from the gurus of the fatherland of modern Buddhist practices.
She saw herself on the outcrop of a steep mountain, the forest laid out before her. A golden sun warmed her body as she let go of the anger and anguish of her past life, knowing that if she could only control her emotions, her life would be simpler.
And it had worked. Life had been simpler.
Simpler, but never easy.
She soaked herself in the remnants of the spectral energy that lingered in the cell. It was rare she had come across this phenomenon. Often, only the powerful among the specters left traces of their abilities, but she could hear them now, drawn into her head as she gathered the pieces together and solved her own puzzle.
One voice. Two voices. A dozen voices. It was as though Jennie were sitting in a park and listening to the surrounding civilians as they went about their daily life. She could almost see them as they spoke to her, their voices growing aggressively louder by the second.
The crowd grew in mass, the noise grew in volume, and soon Jennie’s head was filled with the raucous shouting of the group. Although she kept her exterior calm and serene, inside they were waging war, and suddenly the group exploded into a thousand screams. The noise was an assault on her senses. Jennie grimaced and screwed her eyes shut. Somewhere beyond the screams, she could faintly hear Baxter calling for her, asking if she was okay.
Jennie’s head lifted to the ceiling, and her eyes snapped open as a diorama of what had occurred before came to her. She could see him clearly, the Dragon, forcing his power onto the unknown intruder who bowed low on his knees.
And then the silence came. Everything cut off as though someone had unplugged it from the mains. Baxter appeared before her as the final whisperings of the Dragon’s mind came into her head.
Agents, Agreements and Aggravations: In Her Paranormal Majesty’s Secret Service™ Book Three Page 15
