Once Darkness Falls (Preternatural Affairs #7)

by SM Reine

She wasn’t talking about Elise Kavanagh’s ghost, or Reno—she was talking about herself.

  “A month is such a long time, but it’s not much time at all,” Isobel said. “It’s not enough time to have more than one full moon, or more than one period, or…” She ran her fingers through her hair, teasing the feathers near her ears. “I came up against the end of my contract and I asked Fritz for help.”

  That was about the time that Fritz had gone missing. He’d vanished for half a year with no more than an “away from the office” auto-responder set up on his email.

  I hadn’t worried at the time. I’d figured it had to do with Isobel.

  After all, I’d learned that Isobel was dead shortly before Fritz vanished. The necrocog I’d been hitting on was a zombie animated by a contract with a demon.

  Part of that contract had involved wiping her memory of everything that had happened before she signed on the dotted line, but it hadn’t taken much digging to discover that Fritz and Isobel used to be married.

  Of course Fritz had vanished. He wanted to save his wife.

  “We found a solution, obviously,” Isobel said. “In the process, I learned that I’d made a lot of mistakes in my first life. I’d hurt Fritz. That was why I signed a contract to make myself forget—so that I could run away from it.”

  “You stopped running,” I said. As if the giant fucking rock on her ring finger wasn’t evidence enough of that.

  “But I’m still making mistakes,” Isobel said.

  Now we’d circled back to modern day. “Ann’s a shared mistake. We did that together.”

  “I knew she was vulnerable. I knew she had a weird relationship with vedae som matis. I shouldn’t have pushed her away from our community in Helltown, where she had support, friends…”

  “I’m not going to tell Lucrezia that you had anything to do with this. You’ll make it to your wedding.”

  “By putting yourself on the chopping block?”

  I wasn’t excited about the idea. But if that was what it took—sure. I was thinking about it.

  Zettel would take me down if I went after his aspis anyway. He’d skewer me. I couldn’t avoid that, not unless I wanted to let a monster like Allyson Whatley to run free with those ribbons.

  “Here’s the problem with being a zombie who’s living her second life,” Isobel said, slinking toward me. “I fell in love with Fritz as the person I used to be, but there was a period of time where I was nobody except Isobel Stonecrow. Isobel Stonecrow has different opinions.”

  That was starting to sound suspiciously like she wanted to talk about feelings. And the way she walked toward me reminded me of the way she’d looked right before we had sex. It might have been exciting, but the ring on her finger—that was a boner killer.

  I backed away. “Whatever you’re thinking about saying—do us both a favor and don’t.”

  “Shut up and listen to me, Cèsar.” Isobel had always been faster than me. She got to me, wrapped her hands around my lapels, held me fast.

  “I’ve gone mysteriously deaf,” I said. It was almost true. My jackhammering heart was so loud that I couldn’t hear much else. The panic was immense, and not misplaced—the Union had cameras wired everywhere. For all I knew, Fritz was watching at that moment.

  “Don’t surrender yourself to Lucrezia,” Isobel said. “If you’re punished for this, it will be even worse than if I am. I care about you too much.”

  “Like a friend,” I said.

  Her lips were magnetic. When she tilted her face toward mine, I couldn’t help but bend an inch in her direction. “Something like that.”

  Isobel got up onto her toes and kissed me.

  Let me say that again just to make it real clear how the series of events went. She was the one who walked over to me. She was the one who stretched up—I didn’t bend down to help her at all.

  And she kissed me.

  Considering I was the unattached one, and she was the zombie preparing to shamble down the aisle with our mutual friend, I felt like that absolved me of guilt.

  “The fuck, Izzy?” I asked, pushing her off.

  “Tell me the feeling is mutual,” she said. “There are things about you that I need in my life. Your honesty, your earnestness, your—”

  “Ability to absolve you of guilt with the Union?”

  She folded her arms under her breasts. It might not have been a conscious effort to distract me with her cleavage, but it was effective. “Please take this seriously.”

  “Trust me, I’m taking it seriously. My life is on the fucking line. But I’m bound as aspis to Fritz. Remember Fritz? Guy you were married to pre-mortem? Guy you’re planning to marry again?” She just glared at me, cheeks pink with embarrassment. “Jesus, Izzy, I can’t believe we’re even having this conversation.”

  Just like I couldn’t believe that I was thinking about kissing the hell out of her right at that moment.

  This wasn’t me. This kind of life, this kind of drama.

  I had lots of really clear lines where women were concerned. Women attached to men were on the “oh hell no” side of the line.

  Even women like Isobel Stonecrow.

  “What are you two doing down here?”

  The sound of a man yelling at us made my mind immediately leap to Oh shit Fritz is about to kill me. But when I turned, it wasn’t my kopis waiting down at the end of the hallway.

  It was Gary Zettel. The one guy I wanted to see even less than Fritz.

  “I’m not authorized to discuss an ongoing investigation,” I said so quickly that I might as well have been an investigative robot.

  Zettel didn’t look convinced. He waddled down the hall. “You don’t have the authority to be here, Agent Hawke.” His eyes dropped to the floor, and his steps faltered. “What’s that?”

  I looked down.

  Malcolm’s thumb drive had fallen out of my pocket at some point. The white lettering on the side was face up. There was no mistaking it as anything but Union security credentials.

  I hoped he would think I was breathing hard because I’d just been kissing on Isobel, not because of adrenaline. “Uh…”

  “That’s mine.” Krista emerged from the morgue and scooped the thumb drive off the ground. “I was afraid I’d lost that. Damn.”

  Zettel’s brow lowered over his eyes. “Do you realize what a security breach it is to lose track of one of those?”

  “I do, sir,” she said. Beautiful woman. Most beautiful woman I’d seen in my life. I could have kissed her with gratitude, but that would have been awkward with Isobel standing two feet away. “I understand you’ll have to report me, sir.”

  Her show of respect was more convincing to Zettel than mine had been. The kopis eased back, shaking his head. “I won’t report it. This time. But I need you to escort these two out of the lower levels. We’ll be bringing more cadavers down soon and we need the area secure.”

  “Yes, sir,” Krista said.

  He left.

  I wanted to ask Krista if she thought he’d bought our lies, but I couldn’t breathe. And I didn’t trust that Zettel wouldn’t somehow be listening. I just shot a look of gratitude at Krista, to which she responded by handing me Malcolm’s thumb drive and leaving. She wasn’t going to stick around to see if Isobel and I would leave on our own. And who could blame her?

  Once Isobel and I were alone again, I felt even more conspicuously alone than we had before.

  I could still taste her lipstick.

  “I’m going too,” I said.

  I took a step back. A big step back.

  Isobel looked like I’d kicked her puppy dog. “Just promise that you won’t give yourself up to Lucrezia over this.”

  My answer came out all on its own.

  “Promise, Izzy,” I said.

  I’ve never been a real smart man.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  I’D NEVER BROKEN A promise to a lady before. Not if I had any alternatives.

  For the first time, I’d made a promise kn
owing that it was bullshit.

  I left the morgue. I wandered through the garage, where Bellamy was directing other aspides to suit up for patrol, protect their kopides. I wandered past them, unable to feel my fingertips or toes. Bellamy didn’t even look at me.

  Ann was dead.

  The territory’s kopis had confirmed the worst. I’d dropped her off in Reno, and she’d unlocked those ethereal gates that had led to thousands of deaths. Zettel wouldn’t have to dig deep to find what I’d done.

  Three weeks until Lucrezia de Angelis arrived.

  Isobel had been right about one thing. When your life was on the line, a month wasn’t enough time. Not even close.

  The hallway back to my room felt infinitely long.

  Fritz was waiting for me outside my door. The sight of him, all blond and composed, was a miserable reminder of what I’d just done with Isobel.

  “I’m not in the mood,” I said. “Whatever you want, it needs to wait.”

  I tried to push past him, but he just followed me into my room. “Is your room warded?”

  “Why the hell I would I bother to ward my room? Nothing happens in here.” Definitely not making out with Isobel. That only happened in public spaces, like the hallway outside of the morgue.

  “Cast the wards.”

  “I don’t feel like it,” I said.

  “The wards, Cèsar.”

  I tossed my Steno pad onto the counter and cast the fucking wards.

  “Ann Friedman is dead,” I said once I was done. “She’s dead, and it’s her fault that everything happened in Reno.”

  Fritz inspected his fingernails. “Hmm.”

  “That’s all you’ve got for me? I solved your mystery. Case closed. Reno fell to demons because of someone in the OPA, like you thought, and it turns out that someone was me.”

  “Is that what you plan to report to Lucrezia de Angelis?”

  It wasn’t what I planned to report directly. No. I planned to log into the Union database, work my magic, and show Lucrezia de Angelis that her friend, Allyson Whatley, had assaulted Malcolm. I’d show her that Allyson had released a demon suspect related to the MOAD incident, too. She would see that Zettel’s aspis was the one who needed to be reorganized.

  The problem was that the only possible result of that report was that Zettel would turn me in, too.

  “Yeah,” I said after a long moment. “Something like that.”

  “Cèsar, I have always admired your honesty,” Fritz said. It sounded like he meant it, but also like he thought I was a moron for being honest.

  I couldn’t let him talk to me like that after what had happened with Isobel. “Okay. Look, Fritz. I have to tell you something, because I’m not going to be able to sleep until I do.” I was probably about to get my ass kicked. Had to take a few deep breaths before I could speak. “Isobel and I kissed. Again. As in today. Twenty minutes ago.”

  Fritz’s expression remained neutral. “And?”

  “And nothing. We kissed, I told her to go away, that was it.”

  “I don’t see why you’re in a mood about this,” Fritz said.

  “Because I have feelings for Izzy,” I said, and then I tried to amend that to “Isobel” before it occurred to him that I’d used such a familiar name for her. I braced myself for impact, fists clenched at my side.

  The impact never came.

  “I know,” Fritz said.

  “You…you know?”

  “Belle has a life outside of our relationship. I know that you two also developed a relationship before she remembered our marriage, and I don’t care.”

  The insides of my skull had gone glassy-smooth. All my thoughts were kinda banging around uselessly in there, not going anywhere or accomplishing anything. They just glanced off of the curves and shattered somewhere at the bottom.

  He knew I’d boned his fiancée and didn’t care.

  “Belle and I are polyamorous,” Fritz said. “She’s my primary and I’m hers. That means that we have an agreement where we can be involved with other people, physically or romantically, and it’s—”

  “I know what polyamory is.” That was the kinda weirdo shit that hippies in the seventies used to do in free love enclaves. Except that Fritz wasn’t a weirdo hippie from the seventies. He was a director with the government, about as uptight as a guy could get without a rod shoved up his ass.

  I looked at him sideways, trying to decide what it meant that he didn’t care.

  Weren’t people into polyamory also kinda…gay? Like, at least bisexual.

  “Look, you’re a nice guy, Fritz, but you’re my kopis,” I started to say.

  “I’m heterosexual,” Fritz said in the kind of tone that said he’d lost interest in our conversation. To be fair, I was planning to surrender myself to the vice president of the OPA, which was fractionally more interesting than anyone’s love life—even the love lives of the magical and polyamorous. “I want you to be my best man, Hawke. I don’t want you there on the wedding night.”

  I lifted my hands in surrender. “Just making sure.”

  “It’s fine. Setting clear boundaries and verbal communication is important in polyamory.”

  “I’m straight too,” I said helpfully.

  The corner of Fritz’s mouth tugged into a smile. “Every single female molested by your wandering eyes can attest to that.”

  “Just saying.”

  “The fact that I want you to be my best man also means you can’t tell Lucrezia that you’re responsible for the MOAD incident,” Fritz said. “It’s arguably the fault of Belle’s necromancer friend, but you’re barely even associated.”

  “Think Lucrezia’s going to see the difference?”

  “I don’t care if she sees a difference or not, because you’re not going to tell her anything. You don’t get to make selfish decisions anymore, Cèsar. You have a kopis. Your life is my life. And Belle—Hope, Isobel, Izzy—she needs you too.” Fritz advanced on me, and I reflexively stepped back. The fist that clenched in the collar of my shirt was shaking. “If you turn yourself in, you might as well slit all of our wrists.”

  A weak laugh escaped me. “You’re putting a little more weight on my significance than you should.”

  “What do I have to do to drill this into your skull? You matter. People rely upon you. I am ordering you not to turn yourself in for this crime.”

  I dislodged his hand from my collar. “You assigned a job to me. Let me do it.”

  “Not if you’re going to be an idiot about it.”

  Now he was sounding like Suzy. “Back off,” I said, shoving him. Gently.

  He pushed back, not so gently.

  Fuck it. I was having a bad day. I tensed to swing.

  Fritz was faster. His knuckles connected with my jaw.

  I fell, bounced off the edge of the cot. Hit the floor.

  If you’d asked me before, I would have said that Fritz had never gone easy in me in training. We had worked out together for months and I’d walked away with more bruises than Edward Norton after a couple rounds with Brad Pitt.

  That was friendship for you.

  But now that I was on the floor, struggling to remember how to breathe, I realized just how gentle Fritz had been.

  He wasn’t just a stuffy paper pusher, a coddled billionaire, or my friend. He was a guy who had sawed the heart out of a fallen angel without breaking a sweat.

  And I’d pissed him off.

  I saw his foot—his enchanted prosthesis—swinging at me an instant before it was due to connect.

  Rolling away didn’t get me out of the line of fire. It just meant that he landed the blow on my shoulder instead of my face.

  Hooking my arm around his leg, I jerked him off his feet. He slammed to the floor. That positioned him perfectly to kick the other heel into my nose.

  I moved an inch. My cheekbone cracked.

  “Fuck, Friederling!”

  Fritz rolled on top of me, and his fists pummeled me in all the places he’d already wounded
: shoulder, cheek, jaw. Making sure that everything hurt. Pounding his message into me.

  And then he smashed one last blow right into my teeth.

  If I’d been in a cartoon, I would have been seeing spinning anvils.

  “This is about kissing your zombie girlfriend, isn’t it?” I asked. Blood sprayed from my lip. Must have bitten it.

  “I don’t care what you do with Isobel,” Fritz said. “I care if you make a stupid choice that will shatter her heart.”

  “I don’t have a choice about what I report to Lucrezia, Fritz. Zettel’s put me in a bad place. Suzy’s put me in a bad place. And Ann… Fuck. This is the only thing I can do, Fritz. It’s my life or everyone else’s.”

  “So this is about Agent Takeuchi,” Fritz said.

  “She’s a factor.” A huge factor. A factor the size of Godzilla.

  “Amazing. No matter how I try to protect you, you’ll always find a way around it. Your willful self-immolation is as impressive as your honesty.”

  Was that meant to be a compliment or an insult? “I’m not following you. Why’s it a problem if I’m trying to protect Suzy?”

  “I’m telling you that Agent Takeuchi’s warding ring isn’t as good as she thinks it is,” Fritz said. “And I can tell you that Gary Zettel has summoned Lucrezia de Angelis. She’s moved her visit to the base up. Instead of being here in three weeks, she’s going to be here tonight. And the date is not a coincidence.”

  Today was Friday. The day that Suzy had said she and Aniruddha were planning to infiltrate the Union study on the UNR campus.

  Zettel knew. And he was going to tell Lucrezia.

  Fritz just got up off of me. He blew out a long, slow breath. He adjusted his suit. Tidied his hair. Shook out the leg of his slack to loosen it from the ankle of his prosthetic leg. “I think we have an understanding.”

  He left me bleeding on the floor of my bedroom.

  Blood clots quickly. Dignity takes a lot longer to fix.

  My pride was still in shreds when I left the room. Tension knotted the muscles of my back so hard that it felt like I’d been in a car accident.

  I’d thought I would have a month to do my investigation—a month to find a way around Gary Zettel and Allyson Whatley, a month to disassociate myself from Ann Friedman, a month to get my shit in order before facing Lucrezia de Angelis.