Hotter Than Helltown: An Urban Fantasy Mystery (Preternatural Affairs Book 3)

by SM Reine

  “I get it. Everyone thinks I suck.”

  “Yeah, they do. And you let them think that.” She swept a few crumbs off her lap onto the grass. A pigeon hopped between her feet. “If someone tells me I’m not good at something, I try harder. I prove them wrong. You curl up into a little ball like a fucking pill bug and let yourself get poked with a stick.”

  “I’m not a pill bug,” I said.

  “You’re kind of a pill bug.” Suzy finished off her hot dog, leaving nothing but a smear of liquid cheese on the corner of her mouth. “Don’t let people push you around, Cèsar. You’re a better person than that and you’re a better witch, too. I shouldn’t need to tell you that, though, since you just kicked ass at that spell.”

  I had kind of kicked ass at it. Hadn’t I?

  Suzy pulled something out of her grocery bag and offered it to me. A donut wrapped in tissue paper.

  “Is that the kind with jelly filling?” I asked.

  She smirked. “I know what you like.”

  And it turned out to be the best goddamn jelly donut I’d ever eaten.

  Right after lunch, I got an alert on my phone that said Sister Catherine was about to be transported to a detention center. It was immediately followed by another alert that said the case was closed.

  Officially speaking, we’d gotten justice for the murder victims. Suzy and I could have spent the rest of the day at Canyon Creek and gotten away with it. It was Tuesday, after all, which meant bottomless Buffalo wings. I could watch Suzy get drunk and eat chicken until I barfed.

  Or better yet, I could skip all of that and sleep for about sixteen hours.

  Unfortunately, life goes on, and serial killers keep on serial killing. Sister Catherine’s confession might have convinced the OPA that the danger was passed, but I knew better.

  “I’ve got a theory,” I told Suzy once we reached our cubicle again. “Suspend all disbelief and follow along.”

  She sat on the desk, folded her hands in her lap. “Belief: suspended. Go ahead.”

  “Sister Catherine hasn’t been targeting victims and consorting with demons to kill them. She’s lying to protect a fallen angel. Locking her up isn’t going to change anything, and the killer is still out there.”

  She had gotten the same alerts on her phone that I had. She knew that the case was officially closed. So she only said, “Huh.”

  “Disbelieving yet?”

  “Maybe a little. Sister Catherine lying to protect someone would fit her personality, but fallen angels don’t exist.”

  “They definitely exist. They’re angels that pissed off God.”

  Suzy folded her arms. “And you know this…how?”

  I could have given her the whole Malcolm Gallagher story, but it felt wrong to share that. “I asked you to suspend disbelief,” I said.

  “Okay. Fine.”

  “I think the fallen angel is going after men who look like someone he knows—or somebody that he used to know. He’s not really after these guys.” I tapped my finger on Leubold Chambon’s headshot. “The murderer is confused. Desperate. He’s finding people who resemble his ideal victim and hoping that it will feel like killing the real thing.”

  “Ergo severed body parts,” Suzy said.

  “Exactly. His model didn’t have gauged ears, so he cut off the nurse’s body jewelry. Nurse Sullivan’s eyes must have been the wrong color, too—no problem, pluck ‘em out. Jay Brandon’s lips and nose were wrong, so those are gone. This other man lost strips of skin where he had tattoos.”

  “And at least one victim was circumcised, so the killer knew what was going on in his ideal victim’s dick region. They were probably sexually involved.”

  “It could be a familial relationship,” I said. “Like a parent or sibling.”

  “Dismemberment and murder. Fucked up family.”

  “Reminds me of Hawke family Christmases when I was a kid. I’m feeling nostalgic.”

  Suzy hopped off her desk. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

  “What, that my family needs therapy?”

  “No. Well, maybe they do. But we can make a mockup of the ideal victim by assembling a face out of the parts the killer didn’t remove. If we know what he looks like, maybe we can get ahead of the murderer.”

  That was exactly where I’d been headed. I offered Suzy one of the victim’s headshots and a pair of scissors.

  “Let’s put the puzzle together,” I said.

  It felt morbid to cut up the photographs in the same way that the killer had mutilated his victims. We used the ears and eyes off of Jay Brandon. We took the lips and nose from Nurse Sullivan. We took the neck, shoulders, forehead, and hair from Leubold Chambon. Then we taped them together and stuck it to the corkboard.

  Earlier, Suzy had attached a new cluster of sticky notes to that corkboard. Each one had a different obscene drawing on it. There was even a disembodied dick with a butt instead of testicles, and its glans was smiling.

  Murder victim on one side, dickbutt on the other. We were a classy team, Suzy and I.

  “The only other commonalities between victims are physical build and age,” Suzy said, flipping through the files. “There’s no connection between jobs, religions, or ethnic backgrounds, so I’m thinking this is a purely physical attraction. What you see is what you get.” She brandished her hands at the creepy as hell photograph we’d assembled. “Ta da!”

  Our ideal victim looked like any of the pretty boys who came to Los Angeles hoping to become actors. Square jaw, straight nose, killer cheekbones. Generic pretty boy.

  “Great,” Suzy said. “So all we have to do is put every single attractive blond guy in LA into protective custody and we’ll have stopped the killer in his tracks.”

  “You think this man is attractive?”

  “He’s a little bit perfect,” she said.

  I rolled my eyes. Women.

  She caught my expression. “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You’re thinking nasty things at me, Hawke. Let it out.”

  “I don’t get why women like pretty boys. That’s all.” I jerked my thumb at the assembled victim. “That’s my sister’s type, too.”

  Suzy pinched my cheek. I allowed her to do it with a stony-faced glare in return. “You have a problem with pretty boys? That’s fucking cute.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing, forget about it. Let’s focus on the case.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Good idea.”

  “I’ll send this picture to the LAPD,” Suzy said. “Ask them for cold cases with victims matching the profile.” Suzy dropped into her computer chair and opened her email program. “You know, it’s kinda funny, but our ideal victim looks an awful lot like Director Friederling.”

  I heard Lucrezia de Angelis’s high heels rapping against the floor from a hundred feet away. I peered over the top of our cubicle wall to see her coming right for me, entourage in tow.

  And she looked pissed.

  Lucrezia stopped in our doorway. She was practically haloed in storm clouds. “Where is he?”

  “Who?” I asked.

  “Director Friederling. He’s not in the office and he’s not answering his BlackBerry. Where is he?”

  I couldn’t help it. I looked at the picture that we’d assembled on the corkboard of the ideal victim yet again, but in a totally different way.

  Suzy was right—he really did look a lot like Fritz.

  “Oh shit,” I said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  LUCREZIA DE ANGELIS SENT a Union unit to Fritz’s house. They didn’t find a body. They didn’t find anything else, either. His servants didn’t know where he’d gone, all his cars were intact, and there was no sign of an intrusion. Not even a muddy cloven hoof print in the garden.

  Strangely, Fritz’s security footage from that morning was blank and all of his clocks had been stopped at exactly four-thirty in the morning.

  Unless Fritz had accidentally triggered an E
MP in his foyer, then there was only one other option.

  He had been taken.

  I managed to reach Sister Catherine before they relocated her to the detention facility. Harding, the Union aspis I’d met at the Brandon house, was dragging her out of her holding cell.

  “Hey, wait,” I said, grabbing Harding’s shoulder to stop him. He had the nun in handcuffs that glowed with some kind of restraining spell.

  Sister Catherine looked worried to see me. “What’s wrong?”

  “Where is he?”

  “Who?”

  “Bob fucking Saget. No, you know who I’m asking about. The fallen angel.”

  She would have collapsed if Harding hadn’t been holding onto her arm so tightly. Her face went ashen, her eyelids fluttered, her legs wobbled. “Please tell me that it hasn’t happened again.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “There’s no body. Yet. Where’s he hiding?”

  Sister Catherine’s eyes welled with tears. “If something happened to me, she was meant to get out of the city immediately. She had planned to go somewhere uninhabited, somewhere that she wouldn’t have to deal with…temptations.”

  “She?”

  “The angel,” Sister Catherine whispered.

  Harding looked between us, frowning deeply. “What’s going on here?”

  “Sister Catherine lied on her official confession,” I said. “I’m pretty sure that’s a sin.”

  “I have to take her to the detention center,” Harding said. “I’ve already got the orders. Transport leaves in five minutes.”

  I didn’t think there was any point in arguing that. The Union took their orders seriously. Dead seriously. “But you know where we can find the angel, Sister Catherine. Don’t you?” I demanded.

  Her mouth pressed into a hard line. She didn’t want to talk. Even now, she was trying to protect the angel.

  Harding checked his watch. “We have to go,” he said. “Sorry, Hawke. You’re going to have to get the case reopened.”

  There wasn’t time for that much paperwork. Fritz could have already been dead.

  I ignored Harding and focused on Sister Catherine. “She’s abducted a victim who matches the profile.”

  “Does he look right?” Sister Catherine asked. “How well does he fit?”

  “Pretty goddamn well.”

  “She might not kill him. She might try to keep him.” Her chin quivered. “She only killed the others because she was confused—she thought they were the right one—but once she realized the truth…”

  “Once she realized that she didn’t have the right guy, she got pissed and killed them.”

  “If this victim can convince her that he’s the man she’s looking for, he might be safe.” A tear streaked Sister Catherine’s wrinkled cheek. “I’m sorry.”

  But Fritz was a kopis, just like Bubba Tanner. A fallen angel’s brand of love might kill him as surely as having his heart ripped out.

  Harding started marching the nun down the hall again, keeping an eye on his watch. I hurried to keep up with them.

  “Where, Sister Catherine?” I asked. “Where?”

  She didn’t say anything until they reached the double gates at the end of the hallway. I couldn’t follow them through—nobody but one or two assigned guards was ever allowed access to the armored transport vehicles for safety reasons.

  Before Harding could push her through, Sister Catherine turned to me.

  “The bell tower,” she said. “Please don’t hurt her. It’s not her fault.”

  Harding dragged her though the gate, the wards flared, and she was out of my reach.

  “Sister Catherine’s case is closed and can’t be reopened,” Lucrezia said, seated comfortably behind Fritz’s desk.

  It looked like she planned to be there for a while. His lamp, miniature globe, and leather blotter were gone, and she was already starting to replace the decorations. The wire statue of a bird on the corner of the desk marked her territory as well as if she’d pissed on all his furniture.

  “The case was closed by mistake,” I said.

  “It’s no longer your concern. I’ve assigned another team to locating Director Friederling.”

  I leaned both hands on the desk. “But I know where to find him.”

  “Do you, now?” She didn’t look remotely interested.

  Lucrezia was struggling to log on to Fritz’s workstation. She typed with just two fingers, hunting and pecking for each letter.

  “He’s in Helltown. There’s a church there, and—”

  “We can’t send a team into Helltown. The factions that reside within its borders wouldn’t take kindly to such an intrusion. Do you want to start a war?”

  For Fritz? “Heck yeah.”

  “We’ll address that neighborhood soon enough, but not yet,” Lucrezia said. She pushed the keyboard away from her with a huff and finally gave me her full attention. “If he were in Helltown, it would explain why our tracking spells aren’t working.”

  “So you’ll send someone in to check.”

  “No. We’ll have to wait until he emerges.”

  I stared at her. She stared back at me with no expression. Lucrezia didn’t look at all bothered by the idea that if Fritz ever emerged, it might be in multiple mutilated pieces.

  “You don’t have a problem with me, do you?” I asked. “You’ve got a problem with Fritz.”

  “Don’t be concerned about your life or job,” Lucrezia said. “If we find Director Friederling dead, I’ll just have you matched to another kopis.”

  I didn’t want to be matched to another kopis. I didn’t even know any other kopides.

  “Thanks for all the help,” I said, backing away from the desk. Mentally, I added, You frosty bitch.

  “Just so you know,” she said, “the fact that I’ve decided not to fire you doesn’t mean that your coworkers are not vulnerable. I will terminate the employment of anyone I perceive to be endangering our already-tenuous relationship with Helltown.”

  Translation: Get Suzy’s help saving Fritz, and you’ll regret it.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” I almost made it sound convincing.

  “I’ll keep you updated on Director Friederling’s status,” Lucrezia said. She returned her attention to the keyboard with a scowl. “In the meantime, feel free to take the afternoon off and celebrate your test results.”

  “Yeah. Sure.”

  Fat fucking chance of that.

  Night was falling when I reached the Wal-Mart a block from Helltown. The shadows were long and the sun was brassy on the horizon. I liked a good sunset as much as anyone else, but it looked like a warning light today. Like the flashing yellow signal that says a train’s about to run you over.

  A teal RV with beaded curtains was parked at the back of the lot. I knocked on its door.

  The young woman who answered had to be Isobel’s new intern, Yelena. She had similar coloring to Isobel, but none of the curves, so she looked like a kid wearing a My Little Shaman Princess Barbie costume.

  For fuck’s sake, her bracelet of raccoon bones had pink beads on it.

  “Why, hello,” Yelena said, looking me over. There is nothing creepier than getting eyeballed by a girl who may or may not be a teenager. Well, maybe fallen angels are creepier, but only slightly.

  Isobel appeared behind her. She was dressed for work with everything that entailed: the big head gear, the jewelry, the animal skin loincloth, the necklaces that didn’t quite cover her breasts. I was getting used to the outfit. I managed to keep looking at her eyes.

  “Seriously?” I asked Isobel over Yelena’s shoulder.

  She gave me a look of irritation, ripping the lid off of a Tupperware container. The smell of blood filled the air. “We have appointments tonight. You’ve interrupted us, so you’ll just have to take us the way we come. And this better be good—I’ve already rescheduled the first client twice for the OPA.”

  “Fritz is missing and might be dead. Is that good enough?”


  Isobel’s irritation vanished instantly. “What?”

  Yelena looked between the two of us like we were the most interesting tennis match ever. “Who’s Fritz?”

  “Give us space,” Isobel said. Her tone left no room for argument.

  The intern bowed. She actually fucking bowed. Then she slipped into the back of the RV. It didn’t exactly give us privacy, but the illusion was almost as good as the real thing.

  The suspension creaked as I stepped into the RV. Magic tingled through my skull, faint and weak. Isobel never cast spells in her RV—she wasn’t that kind of witch; she didn’t even know how—so I would have bet that I was sensing Yelena’s work.

  I peered into the Tupperware that Isobel had set down. Yeah, definitely blood. Probably pig, knowing her.

  “What’s happened to Fritz?” she asked me, arms folded over her chest. It made the little animal bones dig into her breasts. Looked painful.

  “I think the serial killer took him,” I said. “But I know where she’s hiding, and the OPA won’t send anyone to get him back, so I need your help.”

  Isobel’s eyes were so wide that it looked like her eyeballs might pop out of her gorgeous face. “How do you know he hasn’t already been killed?”

  “I don’t.”

  Her hand flew to cover her mouth. “Oh my God.”

  “I’m not trying to freak you out, Izzy, but we’ve got to move fast. He’s been gone all day.”

  A shudder ran through Isobel’s body. “I’ll have Yelena cancel all our appointments. What do we have to do to find him? Where is he?”

  “That’s why I need you,” I said. “How do we get into Helltown at night without dying?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  “I AM SO, SO honored that you’re letting me help with this! Don’t worry about the wards. I can definitely hold them while we’re on the move, no problem. We’ll save Fritz in no time! I won’t let you down!”

  I opened my mouth to tell Yelena to shut up.

  Isobel’s glare stopped me.

  The teal RV trundled toward the gates of Helltown. Judging by how much it creaked and trembled on its way out of the Wal-Mart parking lot, it seemed about as likely to collapse in a pile of wheezing machinery at the next stop light as it was to make it over Helltown’s border. But Isobel swore that the RV could survive anything. I had no choice but to believe her.