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

by SM Reine

  He couldn’t feel his foot anymore because the nerves had gone dead.

  We were going to have to get him to the hospital to find out if his foot would ever heal. That would be a problem for later, once the sun was all the way up and Helltown was safe again.

  He sat next to me.

  I thought about telling him I was sorry for what had happened to him, but that was stupid. It hadn’t been anyone’s fault but Mary’s. Apologies wouldn’t fix his foot, either.

  “You know what sounds good?” I asked instead. “A greasy, nasty diner breakfast. Scrambled eggs cooked in bacon grease, toast slathered in butter, that cheap freezer sausage…”

  Fritz contemplated this. “I could go for that.”

  “Bet your personal chef would be horrified if you asked for it.”

  “Then I suppose we’ll have to go to Denny’s,” he said.

  I tried to imagine Fritz rolling up to Denny’s in his Bugatti Veyron. That got a good laugh out of me.

  Laughter felt amazing.

  A rustling at the front of the RV told me that the girls had woken up. I glanced back to see that they’d closed the curtains on the bed to give them privacy. They were probably changing out of their pajamas.

  We had two naked women just a few feet away with nothing between us but flimsy, floral-patterned cloth.

  Fritz caught my eye and grinned. I didn’t need to activate the bond to know he was thinking the same thing.

  “You’re a pervert, Director Friederling,” I said. “Completely sick in the head.”

  “You are too.”

  “Well, we can be sick as a team.” I turned away from the curtains and lowered my voice. “How did you know all that angel stuff, anyway?”

  “You mean about Shamdan?” He sighed. “It’s an old family story. We’ve known that Naamah was likely to come back for generations. It’s only surprising that it took this long.”

  “Naamah? You mean Mary?”

  Fritz nodded. “My forefathers passed along the story of Shamdan and Asmodeus knowing that one of us would have to take care of Naamah someday.”

  “And you did,” I said.

  “I did.” He tipped his face toward the rising sun, eyes closed, letting it warm his face through the window.

  “Do I want to know why your family thinks they’re responsible for Naamah?”

  “No,” Fritz said, “you don’t.”

  At another time, I would have asked more questions. I sure had enough of them. But I’d just enjoyed an overnight sleepover in Helltown, gotten bound to a kopis, lost a lot of blood, and watched a confused old woman get her heart cut out by someone who looked like her husband.

  If Fritz said that I didn’t want to know more about Naamah, I probably didn’t.

  “Cool,” I said.

  Isobel and Yelena appeared behind us. They were fully dressed without a single feather, bone, or bead in sight. The two of them actually resembled normal women.

  “I don’t think I formally introduced you last night,” Isobel said, focusing on the man sitting beside me. “Fritz Friederling, meet my intern, Yelena Katzenberg.” She planted a hand in Yelena’s back and shoved her at Fritz. “Yelena, this is Fritz. He’s a kopis. A demon hunter.”

  Fritz arched a skeptical eyebrow, but his words were smooth. “Among other things.” He took Yelena’s offered hand and kissed her knuckles. I tried not to gag. “A pleasure to meet you.”

  She giggled. My gag reflex remained under control. My rolling eyes didn’t.

  “He was injured killing a fallen angel tonight,” Isobel added helpfully.

  Yelena just about swooned. “That’s incredible. You must be so strong to have survived with only a foot injury.”

  “It’s very painful,” Fritz said in a dignified, self-sacrificing kind of way.

  I gave Isobel a hard look. Are you trying to set your ex-boyfriend up with your intern? She only gave me an innocent smile in return.

  “You two can get acquainted on the way to the hospital,” Isobel said.

  Yelena giggled and crawled onto the bench beside him. “I’ll be happy to take care of you, Fritz.”

  Guess there were some benefits to getting abducted by an angel after all.

  After one short stay in the hospital and several long visits with physical therapists, Fritz was missing a foot.

  Permanently.

  “It’s not that bad,” I said. “The prosthesis makes you look like Robocop.”

  Fritz scowled from the passenger’s seat of his Bugatti. I wasn’t sure if he was annoyed because the titanium-boned foot was uncomfortable or because, as his driver, I had refused to play jock jams on the way into the office.

  Just because he was missing a limb didn’t mean I had to put up with his shitty music.

  Especially since I’d become his temporary chauffeur. He had a real chauffeur on staff, of course. Probably a few of them. But I’d offered to take him back and forth to work for a while, and he’d agreed without asking why I was volunteering.

  The fact is that I’m a lot better company than a hired driver. I’m definitely more fun. Handsomer, too.

  Plus, he’d kind of lost his foot because I hadn’t saved him fast enough. Made me feel a little responsible.

  “It’s only temporary,” Fritz said, hiking up the leg of his slacks so he could get a better look at his new fake ankle. It was some kind of black plastic with the metal joint partially exposed. Maybe not quite Robocop, but it really did look cooler than a real foot. “If you think this one is impressive, wait until you see what I’ve commissioned.”

  I got out to open his car door, but Fritz got to it before I could. He emerged with a cane—titanium and black, to match his new foot—and stood straight-backed in the parking garage as though nothing on his body had changed.

  “I’m going to ask you to stay with me this morning,” Fritz said, setting a brisk pace for the elevators. He was limping a little, but I was pretty sure he’d be faster than me once he got used to his bionic addition. “Just for an hour or so.”

  I got into the elevator with him. “What, big baby doesn’t want to be all on his widdle wonesome? Need me to escort the baby-boo to his desky-wesky and—”

  He interrupted me. “Shut your ugly face, Agent Hawke.” He was trying not to smile as he said it. “Lucrezia de Angelis is still in my office. She expects me to resign now that I’m disabled. I just thought you would enjoy her face when she sees that nothing has changed.”

  I couldn’t help but grin. “I might not mind seeing that, yeah.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  The elevator opened on a bright, sunny day. I escorted Fritz to the Magical Violations Department, but he didn’t even let me open the door for him. He got there first and stood back to let me in.

  “Damn. You’re a feisty cripple, aren’t you?” I asked.

  “I could fire you.”

  “Yeah, but you’re still stuck with me for the rest of your life.”

  “Or your life,” Fritz muttered.

  He loved me. It wasn’t a serious threat.

  Probably.

  I breezed into the office. Now I wasn’t bothering to make sure that he could keep up because I knew he could. His cane rapped against the floor in a rapid cadence, one hit for every two of my steps. He was barely even leaning on it.

  Cubeville looked more like a field of prairie dogs this morning. It was the director’s first day back at work—everyone had popped up over their half-walls to stare.

  Nobody but me had seen the way he’d fought Mary, and I wasn’t sharing details, but I’d told a couple of the guys the bare basics: The fact that Fritz had been taken into Helltown at night, my role in releasing him, and that we’d taken care of the murderer together.

  My coworkers didn’t know anything, but rumors had spread the way they always do. The last time I’d heard the story repeated back to me, I’d been using Force lightning and Fritz had beheaded the angel with a flaming sword.

  Yeah, they all l
ooked suitably impressed.

  I spotted Suzy’s charcoal hair near the windows. She was the first to start cheering. And once she got it going, everyone else followed suit.

  The applause and whoops were thunderous.

  Fritz jerked his sunglasses off and gave a thin smile. “Thank you,” he said. It was so loud that I could barely hear him even though I was right by his side. “Thank you all very much.”

  That greeting was nice and everything, but what was waiting in his office was even better.

  As soon as I opened the door, Lucrezia de Angelis got to her feet and removed her reading glasses. Her eyes were wide. Her cheeks were pale under her layers of makeup. Janet from forensics hovered behind her with a clipboard—looked like she’d gotten a promotion to vice president’s assistant.

  “Fritz,” Janet said, and then corrected it to, “Director Friederling.”

  “Could we have privacy, Janet?” he asked pleasantly.

  She glanced at Lucrezia then nodded, shuffling out of the room. The fact that Janet gave me a wide berth didn’t escape my attention.

  Once she left, the room was awkwardly silent.

  Even more of Fritz’s belongings were missing from the office. His diplomas and certifications had been taken down from the walls, probably shoved into a drawer somewhere. Lucrezia’s stupid bird statue was still perched on the corner of the desk, and she’d swapped out the curtains for her own.

  Fritz took in the sight of it all with cool dispassion.

  “Interesting,” he said.

  “I’ve only borrowed it.” The all-powerful Lucrezia de Angelis actually sounded defensive.

  He lifted an eyebrow. “As I understood it, the vice president should have a permanent office in the administration building. I must have been mistaken.”

  “I have been watching the department closely in your absence.” She gathered her composure around herself like a cloak. “For instance, you might be interested to know that Catherine Reilly has received a partial pardon. Instead of sending her to a permanent detention facility, she’s going to rehabilitation.”

  Fritz didn’t look like he cared, but I was definitely interested. “So she’ll be out soon?” I asked.

  “Five years. Three with good behavior,” Lucrezia said. “She did aid a murderer.”

  But she was going to get out. That was good.

  The world needed more good people like Sister Catherine.

  “Thanks,” I said, and I meant it. I’d been the one to request a review of her case earlier in the week. Lucrezia could have ignored it, or shelved it for someone else, but she’d gotten Sister Catherine out of the Union detention center as fast as I could have hoped for.

  The vice president gave me a small nod. “As I said, I’ve been watching the department closely.”

  “Mmm,” Fritz said. It was the most withering non-committal noise I’d ever heard. “Well, I’m back to take care of everything now.”

  Her eyes flicked down to his feet. She didn’t seem to know which one to look at. His shoes matched, his slacks were long enough to hide his ankles, and there was really no way to tell which one had been amputated.

  “I expected you to be on disability for some time,” Lucrezia said with a tight smile. Her expression said, I was hoping you’d never come back at all.

  He smiled back. “When there’s so much work to be done? I couldn’t keep myself away.” Fritz toyed with the head of her wire bird statue, twisting its neck around so that it was staring at its own feathery ass. “I’ll have your personal effects sent to the administration building. Unless you’d like me to ship them back to Italy for you…?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I think I’ll be going home. Everything seems to be in order here.” She looked at me when she said that.

  I was grinning. Shouldn’t have been doing it, but I couldn’t help it.

  “We’ll miss you,” I said.

  Her fake smile vanished completely.

  Lucrezia followed Janet out of the room. She was as stiff-backed as though someone had shoved that bird statue up her butt.

  Once the door was shut, I jerked my thumb at it. “You know, if I was a paranoid guy, I’d be thinking she only came to Los Angeles to make you miserable.”

  “That would be paranoid, wouldn’t it?” Fritz grabbed a box from under his desk and tipped the statue into it. He jerked the curtains down, tossed a few fancy pens in on top of them.

  He finally sank into his high-backed chair and I’d never seen him look so happy. He hummed cheerfully to himself as he started typing an email.

  It took a lot to bother Fritz. Losing a limb? Whatever. Losing his office to the VP? Now that would have been a fate worse than death.

  “So what’s Lucrezia’s problem with you?” I asked.

  Fritz drummed his fingers on the desk, contemplating the question. Last week, he probably wouldn’t have answered me at all—we were friends, but not that close. Now he said, “Some women aren’t willing to accept rejection.”

  “You mean she wants a piece of The Fritz?”

  “She used to,” he said. “Now I think she’d prefer if I vanished. It’s complicated.”

  I thought of Naamah and her husband, Shamdan. How she had desperately searched for him over the years and killed any man who didn’t meet his standards. That confused mixture of love, grief, and regret that had driven her as a fallen angel.

  Whatever had happened with Fritz and Lucrezia, it really couldn’t be that bad.

  “Aren’t women always complicated?” I asked.

  “Unfortunately,” Fritz said.

  That took the mood from light to depressed in about three seconds flat. I could tell when it was time for me to leave. “I should probably get to work. Need anything else, boss?”

  He clicked his mouse to send the email. “No, I don’t think I’ll need anything for the rest of the day. See you at Canyon Creek?”

  I shrugged. “If that’s what you want. I’m your ride home.”

  “I just invited the entire department to a party in honor of the case,” Fritz said. “They’ll be disappointed if you don’t go.”

  According to the sudden commotion on the other side of the wall, the email had been received.

  Guess I was going to the bar.

  “Canyon Creek sounds great.” I grabbed the doorknob, but Fritz spoke again before I could leave.

  “Thank you, Cèsar,” he said.

  He didn’t have to tell me what he was thanking me for, and I wasn’t going to blow the moment by getting all weird about it.

  So I just nodded and stepped out of the room.

  “Woo! Fallen angel! An office first!” Suzy seized me right outside the door, slapping my back in a way that was probably meant to feel congratulatory, but was going to leave a bruise the size of her tiny jackhammer of a fist.

  I laughed uneasily, stepping out of her reach. “It’s a first?”

  “What do you think? How many fallen angels have MVD agents run across while stalking nasty covens?”

  Point taken. “Are we going to celebrate right now?”

  “Director Friederling gave us all the afternoon off, so hells-to-the-yes, we’re celebrating. Last one to Canyon Creek is buying a round of drinks for the entire department!” Suzy winked and punched me again, this time in the bicep. I wasn’t convinced she didn’t have a bionic fist. It fucking hurt. “And that includes you, even if you are the guest of honor.”

  I didn’t want to be the guest of honor for killing Mary, or Naamah, or whatever we were calling her. We’d put a confused old angel out of her misery. It wasn’t worth drinks and endless wings.

  It felt like everyone should have been in mourning.

  But it was hard not to get caught up in the energy of the other agents. It was Friday. A big case had been closed, and a killer had been caught. Without any other active life-or-death cases to keep us in the office, we were off work before lunch. What wasn’t worth celebrating?

  The tide of fleeing agents pushed me
toward the door, but I detoured to my desk to clean up my Steno pads, the files from the LAPD, the chimera face of the victims that had been assembled into a portrait so much like Fritz’s. I never wanted to see any of that again.

  An open folder on Suzy’s desk caught my eye. It was marked with the same ten-digit case code. I peered at the papers she had clipped to the inside.

  It was all her research on the crank caller. She’d followed a money trail from the gas station where the burner phones had been purchased—a Shell about a block from our office—to an ATM at a Wells Fargo that was a quarter-mile north of that.

  Whoever had made those crank calls had been doing it from right outside the OPA offices.

  Suzy appeared and snapped the manila folder shut. “Ready to go?” she asked brightly.

  “What is that?” I asked.

  “Oh, this?” She fanned herself with the folder. “Nothing. The case is closed. Dead end. It belongs in the shredder.”

  I tried to grab it from her. “That didn’t look like nothing.”

  Suzy dropped it in the trash on top of a big bouquet of roses. My eyebrows climbed my forehead. Suzy, getting roses? She didn’t have a boyfriend.

  She followed my gaze to the flowers. Her cheeks heated.

  “It’s complicated,” she said.

  Aniruddha stopped outside our cubicle. “Can I walk over with you guys?”

  Suzy’s smile went forced. “Sorry. Have to wrap some stuff up with Cèsar first. Go ahead and get drinks; we’ll be over in a few minutes.”

  While she was distracted, I reached into the trash and snagged the card out of her flowers. I flipped it open. For Suzume, the brightest star. —Aniruddha

  I looked up at the guy in shock, but he was already gone.

  Suzy whirled on me. She snatched the card out of my hand.

  “That guy? The boring workaholic with the stupid coffee mugs?” I asked. “Really?”

  “Yes, that guy.” I’d never seen her blush so much. Until that moment, I wouldn’t have thought she was capable. “Let me show you something. You can’t tell anyone. Okay?”

  She clicked a file on her desktop. A picture expanded.

  It was a security photo from a Wells Fargo ATM. It clearly showed Aniruddha withdrawing cash from the machine to go buy a disposable phone.