by Jes Battis
Aside from exposure to several homicides and a few brushes with death, their lives were proceeding more or less normally. If normal still applied to us.
Sometimes I forgot that Mia was, technically, a vampire, since she’d never exhibited any symptoms of the vampiric retrovirus. She’d been infected at thirteen as part of a vampiric political coup, which had failed, but still left her with the virus burning in her blood. The antiviral medication that she’d been taking for the last four years kept things in check.
She didn’t talk about it much anymore, not since last year when she found out that drugs prescribed by the Central Occult Regulation Enterprise might also be dampening her latent mystical abilities. There didn’t seem to be a practical way to prove this. Hey, try to burn the house down and see if it works wasn’t the most motherly advice that I could give her.
Selena insisted that the medication, which resembled synthetic insulin, was designed purely to be an antiviral. But I saw the way that Mia looked at her EpiPen whenever I suggested she take her meds. She trusted it about as much as she trusted me. I was part of the CORE, and that made me suspect. I could hardly blame her. Most of the time I barely trusted myself.
I heard muttering coming from the hallway. Patrick had emerged, wrapped in a duvet and sporting some impressive bedhead. Mia now teased him ruthlessly about his chest hair, which had started to grow in as a perfect triangle. She called it Puppy, as in, Hey, Puppy’s looking pretty fierce this morning.
It was mostly smoke and mirrors, though. Lately, I’d noticed a subtle difference in the way that she joked around with him. There was a prickly tension, along with furtive glances from both of them. The new dynamic made me nervous. When we’d first adopted Patrick, I was worried about anything romantic developing between them, but Mia had been barely fourteen then.
Now she was starting to notice things that she’d previously ignored. Like the fact that he was a cool glass of water with a killer smile. It was hard to tell where his vestigial human charm gave way to a captivating vampiric aura, and the last thing I wanted was for him to start hypnotizing her. Patrick was basically ethical, as much as a hormonal teen could be, so I trusted him up to a point. But I still wanted to install a dead bolt on Mia’s door, even if it seemed a bit alarmist.
“Wow,” I said. “She wasn’t kidding about waking you up.”
“She’s evil.”
“In all fairness, most vampires aren’t asleep at this time of night.”
“Most vampires didn’t inherit a resistance to sunlight. I can thank Caitlin for that, at least. She didn’t tell me much before she died and passed on her title to me, but at least she gave me the gift of walking by day.” He scratched his head. “Is there coffee? If I’m going to be conscious, there should at least be coffee.”
“I’m sure Derrick’s making some.”
“I’m not a domestic,” he called from the kitchen.
“But you’re making some, right?”
A pause. “Yeah.”
“So what’s the deal?” Patrick blinked. “Did everyone in the house get called to the crime scene, or is it just mass insomnia?”
“Everyone got paged. Chances are we’ll be gone until morning.”
He shrugged. “That’s fine. I have a geography test that I should probably be studying for. Do you have any idea what a caldera is?”
“You’re asking the wrong person.”
Patrick had decided to enroll at Capilano College, and I was secretly quite proud that he’d been admitted, although he rolled his eyes whenever I mentioned it. Like most first-year undergrads, he was majoring in Everything. At first, it made me ache a little to return to school, but I thought better of it once I saw the bill for his textbooks. I had a problem with shelling out two hundred bucks for a hardcover sociology text called Reflections. Luckily, Derrick was a whiz at finding used copies online and didn’t seem to mind visiting sketchy apartments in order to pick them up.
“I will never own a hot plate,” he told me during the first week of classes, “and if you ever bring one into this house, I’ll destroy it.”
I suspected that Mia was helping Patrick with some of his homework, but I felt like I had to let it slide. He was already vampire magnate of Vancouver, and it was impressive that he managed to make it to school at all. I couldn’t tell if he was opting for a normal life or just trying to distract himself from the grim politics that he encountered on a nightly basis.
Sometimes I felt like a voyeur watching my own life through a window (possibly a bullet-riddled window), and all I could do was stare in amazement. I was about to turn twenty-eight, and I lived in a house with two preternatural teens and a psychic. My boyfriend had already come back from the dead once, and my goblin therapist was almost certain that I had PTSD.
The door to Derrick’s bedroom opened, and Miles emerged, shirtless and wearing a pair of Canucks pajama bottoms.
“Nice jammies,” I said.
His eyes widened. Then he blushed and practically ran for the bathroom.
I walked into the kitchen. Lucian was now fully dressed and sitting at the table, next to Mia. Both of them were staring at the coffeemaker expectantly. Derrick was rummaging around in the fridge.
“It’s so clean. How much did you throw away?”
“About seventy percent of what was in there.” I sat down. “I was going along at a nice clip, too, until my pager went off.”
Lucian put his hand on my knee. “What’s the plan for tonight? I can take a cab if you think we should arrive separately.”
I shrugged. “We can just say we picked you up on the way. It shouldn’t raise any eyebrows, and if it does, I’m too tired to care.”
“Eventually you’re going to have to tell her,” Derrick said, closing the fridge. “I mean, she probably knows already.”
“Selena’s too busy to interpret subtext.”
“That’s fine.” Lucian gave me a playful look. “I don’t mind being your amor clandestino. It’s hot.”
“I hope you still think that when we’re eighty, because it’s never going to get any easier to come out to the CORE.”
He grinned. “Do you think we’ll still be together when we’re eighty?”
“For all I know, you could be eighty already.”
“Maybe I am.”
“How does that work?” Mia asked. “I mean, do you have, like, eighty-year-old organs? Because that would be gross.”
Lucian put his arm around me. “My father used to say that you’re only as old as the woman you feel.”
I made a face. “I’m not sure how to respond to that.”
“Feminist ire?” Derrick poured the first cup of coffee. “Okay. I have no idea how to decide who gets this. Maybe you could all just make a case for who’s the most deserving, and then we’ll draw up some kind of chart.”
Miles walked into the kitchen, now wearing jeans and a collared shirt. He adjusted his hearing aid, then smiled sweetly at Derrick.
“Is that coffee for me?”
Derrick looked uncertain for a moment. Then he handed Miles the cup, and everyone groaned.
“Unfair!” Mia pounded the table. “No special treatment for significant others.”
This is a romance, Miles signed, not a democracy.
Derrick turned back to the coffee machine. “I think I can stretch the rest of this into two more cups. Maybe three.”
“There’s no time,” I said. “Just fill up a travel mug, and we’ll pass it around until we get to the Timmy’s drive-through.”
“Ugh. Haven’t you heard of mononucleosis?”
“Have you heard of hysterical blindness caused by caffeine deprivation? Because that’s what I’m about to experience, and I doubt you want me driving the new SUV into the opposing lane of traffic.”
“Fine. But I’m not sharing saliva with everyone here.”
He was about to say something else when his pager started buzzing. I heard my pager buzzing in the next room as well.
“Se
lena’s getting cranky.” I turned to Mia. “Did Patrick remember to put gas in the car?”
“How should I know? It’s not like you ever let me drive it.”
“I lent you the car last week.”
“Yeah, so that I could go to an SAT workshop. You lend it to him every other day so that he can drive his vampire buddies around.”
“Fine.” I stood up. “We’ll make a schedule. Something official-looking with Excel. Derrick, make a note of it.”
“When did I become your PA?”
“You and Miles are the only ones who know how to use the computer for anything other than playing FarmVille. And Miles is a guest, so any scheduling duties naturally fall to you.”
“That doesn’t seem natural at all,” he muttered.
“Well, you know us. Always pushing the definition.”
“What are you talking about?” Mia smiled. “We’re practically a nuclear family. The only difference is that we have powers.”
“And some of us can read minds,” Derrick said.
“Quick. What am I thinking right now?” Mia leaned forward. “It’s not about you, and it’s not something dirty. I promise.”
His eyes narrowed for a moment. Then he shook his head.
“God. Why do I always fall for that?”
She laughed. “’Cause you’re a sucker.”
2
The first thing I noticed when I walked into the conference room was the snow globe sitting on the table. At least, it looked like a snow globe. Linus and Cindée were sitting next to each other, while Selena sat at the head of the table, surrounded by paperwork. She barely registered our presence.
“Sit. We don’t have a lot of time.”
I took a seat next to Cindée. “Is the world ending?”
“Neither of us know anything,” she replied. “We’re only here because we’re getting paid time and a half.”
Last year, Cindée had managed to live through the appearance of the manticore. She’d also been kidnapped, tied up, and subjected to the bad humor of a psychotic vampire (thankfully, Sabine Delacroix was now officially out of my life forever). I was kind of amazed at how quickly she’d returned to work. Maybe she needed the money.
I looked at Linus. “What’s with the snow globe?”
“It’s not a snow globe. It’s a sophisticated piece of equipment.”
“It looks like you bought it in Gastown.”
“I didn’t. It was designed in the lab.”
“What does it do?”
He looked at Selena. “Do you want me to explain it now?”
“No. I have to debrief them first.”
His expression was slightly disappointed. “Okay. I’ll wait.”
Derrick and Miles sat next to me. Lucian remained standing. Maybe he was feeling a bit of an outsider vibe, which made sense. Or maybe he wanted to keep his distance for the sake of appearances.
Selena finally looked up from the stack of papers. “We’re all here. Now we can get down to business.”
Derrick raised his hand. “I have one question.”
“Okay.”
“Can we order breakfast?”
“No.”
“I have another question, then.”
Selena closed her eyes. “Yes?”
“Is it true that the morning shift gets catered breakfast? Because that hardly seems fair, especially since they aren’t on call.”
“I’ll make a note of your grievance. How’s that?”
“I can live with it.”
“Fine. Any more questions?”
Lucian raised his hand.
“Yes?”
“I’d like to know what I’m doing here.”
“I’m about to explain that.” She exhaled. “All right. Thirty minutes ago, we received a piece of intel from a reliable source. A body was recovered on Jericho Beach in the Kitsilano neighborhood. The VPD found the body, and after the coroner’s examination it was transferred to the city morgue.”
“If the VPD found the body,” I asked, “what does it have to do with us? This sounds like a normate investigation.”
“That’s where things get complicated. The police department thinks that they’ve recovered a human body, but we have reason to believe that they’re actually holding the body of a demon.”
“What killed it?”
“We don’t know. In fact, we don’t even know for sure that it’s dead.” She looked at Lucian. “That’s part of the reason that we’ve enlisted you. We’re hoping that your expertise in necroid materia will be useful in determining whether the body is deceased or not. With some bodies, it’s difficult to tell.”
“I’ll try,” Lucian said. “Right now, though, I’d be more worried about someone else coming to recover the body.”
“That’s our concern at the moment,” Selena replied. “We need to get the body somewhere secure, before it’s intercepted. That’s why I’ve assembled the four of you together tonight. We need you to break into the morgue.”
“Wait a minute.” I steepled my fingers. “You want us to infiltrate a government building and steal a body? What are we supposed to leave behind? A bag of sand?”
“No. It’s safer and easier for us to delete all trace of the body. We’ve already isolated all of the officers and technicians involved in the body’s recovery. It’s a small group, and it shouldn’t be too difficult to manage them.”
“And by ‘manage,’ you mean erase their memories?”
Selena gave me a long look. “You’ve been spending too much time with vampires. The CORE isn’t in the habit of inflicting brain damage on innocent people. We’re simply going to modify their paperwork to make it appear as if the body was never there. The police officers have enough on their minds, and they won’t be overly concerned with one more DB recovered on the beach. The coroner’s office relies on computer records, and those can be altered. Instead of thinking that the body’s vanished, everyone will just assume that it’s been transferred to a government facility for advanced toxicology testing.”
“I think we might be underestimating the competency of the VPD,” Derrick said. “And it’s not as if the coroner’s office is being run by mindless drones. Sure, they’re normates, but they aren’t blind. If one file gets left behind by accident, we could have a paranormal incident on our hands.”
“We can worry about that later. Right now, our priority is moving the body to a secure location. Once we have the decedent here, we’ll be able to deal with the coroner’s office remotely. It’s the safest way. The less contact, the better.”
“Do we know anything about the demon’s ancestry?”
“No.”
“Of course. Any idea where it’s from?”
“Not yet.”
Miles raised his hand.
“You can just speak up, Officer Sedgwick.”
“Sorry. I wasn’t sure if you were finished.” Miles drummed his fingers on the table. Selena still made him nervous. “I was just thinking that if the deceased was a world-walker, that is, capable of interplanar travel, then there’ll be an impression of sorts on its body. Your instruments couldn’t detect it, but I might be able to.”
“And that’s exactly why you’re here. That, and as an early-warning system.”
His eyes widened. “You mean in case something comes after the body?”
“Right. You’ll be the first to notice any spatial anomalies.”
He managed to look uncomfortable. “That may be. But by the time I notice it, another demon could be ripping my throat out. I’m not sure I like this assignment.”
“You’ll have plenty of backup. We’ll be monitoring you from every angle, and Agrado can also provide you with some defensive firepower.”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” Lucian said. “I might be able to distract a predator like that for a few minutes, tops. But necromancy can only do so much.”
“You will have some technological assistance.” Selena gestured to the globe. “Linus, do you want to expl
ain further?”
“Do I ever.” He smiled. “Okay, this is pretty cool. It’s a temporal switch, but we call it a time bomb.”
I could see what looked like strands of white light floating within the murkiness of the glass. The thing definitely had an aura, but there was a subtlety in its composition that my senses couldn’t quite penetrate.
“Are we supposed to break it open?”
“Yes. But only at the right moment.” Linus put his hand protectively over the globe. “There’s a controlled singularity inside the glass, protected by a mesh of enlaced materia. If you break it, the singularity will expand to roughly a three-foot radius, which is just big enough to capture a single entity.”
“Just throw it at whatever’s coming toward you,” Selena said. “It’ll create a kind of temporal dead zone for about ten, maybe fifteen seconds. Anything caught within the blast radius will be slowed to a fraction of its normal speed. With a human, that would mean a dead stop. With a pureblood”—she shrugged—“you might slow it down to a crawl if you’re lucky. It’ll still be moving, but you should have enough time to grab the body and get away.”
I exhaled. “This all sounds very sketchy.”
Cindée opened up a small evidence bag, which I hadn’t noticed before, and withdrew a metallic object. It looked like one of the miniature hand clappers with cymbals that belly dancers used. She handed me the clapper. It had bizarre symbols etched into its surface, and the rod connecting the two cymbals was slightly warm to the touch. I slid my thumb over it, and I could feel an invisible power source.
“We found this a few months ago on a Vailoid demon,” she said, “and he probably stole it from someone. We call it a howler. Basically, if you click the two cymbals together, it emits a sonic pulse that only higher-tier demons—and some animals—can detect.”
