A pause. “Cal? Why do you have Cooper’s phone?”
“My new one’s still updating.” I click my tongue. “You know, I was going to be a nice, obedient child and stay in tonight, but since you have so little faith in me, I might as well fulfill your expectations.”
“Wait, what?” An air of panic filters into her voice. “What do you mean, Cal?”
I rattle off an address. Not to Halliburton’s second house. But to a diner. “Get the team together, and meet me and Cooper there in half an hour. We’ve got some revelations to discuss.”
“Cal—!”
I hang up.
Cooper stares at me, open-mouthed. He would never talk to Ella that way, and he’s stunned that anyone else would. I have to admit, if I wasn’t tired and aching (oh, and terrified), I probably wouldn’t have. Because she’s going to ream my ass later, and her punishments will not be swift. They will be long and tedious and mind-numbing. Imposing stacks of paperwork. Endless hours glued to the useless DSI tip line phones. And probably a few dirty toilets, paired with an inadequate scrub brush.
Eh, I’ve had worse.
“Um,” Cooper says, “you’re supposed to stay at home for the next week.”
“You going to stop me from leaving, Coop?” I offer him his phone. “Going to take a few good swings at me, knock me out cold and drag me back to bed? Or maybe you have a taser in that backpack somewhere?”
Cooper snatches his phone and glares at me, the way a puppy would if you took his favorite toy away. Then he drops the tension in his shoulders and sighs. “Give me a few minutes to get dressed.”
I smack his arm playfully. “That’s the spirit, buddy.”
“Careful, Cal,” the archivist replies as he retreats into the living room, toward his backpack. “You keep acting like that, you really will become the asshole everybody thinks you are.”
“Ouch!” I laugh, half offended, half amused. “Where’d that sass come from?”
Cooper, on his way to the bathroom, now with clothes tucked under his arm, peers over his shoulder and gives me a withering look. “From the holes in my politeness filter you just poked. Keep prodding me, Calvin Kinsey, and you’ll soon learn exactly how much sass I have stored inside my petite blond ass.” He smacks the sticky note against the wall, where it stays, and slams the bathroom door behind him.
“Wow,” I murmur in his wake. “Now there’s a temptation.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Since my last visit to the Mom and Pop diner, the abandoned bowling alley next door has been torn down and replaced with a toy store under construction. So the cab driver drops us off in the parking lot of the Laundromat, grumbles about the low visibility in tonight’s snowstorm, and peels away down the street, flinging slushy ice behind him. With Cooper close by me, we trudge through the deep white drifts and enter the diner, bells jingling on the door.
The same older waitress who served Erica and me before recognizes my face as I tug down my scarf. After a brief moment of shock at the extent of my bruising, followed by a Bless his heart look, she smiles and tells us to sit anywhere.
I scan the options and choose the largest booth in the back corner, which seats roughly eight. The waitress raises an eyebrow when Cooper and I sit by ourselves at the huge table, but she doesn’t say a word.
“You hungry?” I ask Cooper, tugging out my wallet to make sure I brought cash. “I’ll pay.”
“As an apology for dragging me out here in the middle of the night?” He side-eyes the front counter and gives me a shy grin. “Or because you want the waitress to think we’re on a date so she won’t flirt with you?”
“God, Cooper. That’s awful.” I slap myself in the face with the wrinkled menu. “No. She knows me. Sort of. I came here two months ago with Erica.”
“Oh.” He draws out the sound. “So she already thinks we’re on a date.”
I cover my mouth with my hand and speak through my fingers. “I get it. You’re pissed that I made you fail your babysitting duty. I’m acting like a petty child and putting myself in unnecessary danger and pain.” On cue, my ribs ache. “Now please choose an expensive breakfast platter of your liking so I can empty my wallet to make it up to you.”
“If Ella beats you up”—he peruses his own menu—“it’s not my fault.”
“Acknowledged.”
The waitress shuffles over and takes our orders. Cooper asks for a large pancake platter, while I pick another hearty meal of bacon and eggs, plus a big waffle on the side. I have a feeling I’ll be spending more than usual on food for the next few weeks, to make up for my systematic starvation while under McKinney’s “care.”
If Cooper notices I’m eating a lot more than normal, he doesn’t point it out.
About six minutes after the waitress disappears into the kitchen with our orders, a DSI SUV pulls into one of the street-side spaces in front of the restaurant. My team empties out of the vehicle, all four of them immediately spying Cooper and me through the wide windows.
Riker is the first one inside, knocking snow off his boots before he heaves the door open. Ella and Amy enter next, with Desmond bringing up the rear. All four of them survey the tiny diner, wondering why on earth I chose here of all places for a critical meeting.
I chose here because it was the first thing that popped into my head.
I’m crafty like that.
My captain ominously clack-clack-clacks his way over to the booth, his fancy new cane striking hard against the tile flooring. When the overhead lights cast his threatening shadow across my face, he says, “You better have a damn good explanation for being out of your apartment after I explicitly told you several times to stay there.”
I fetch the folded sticky note out of my coat pocket and hold it up.
He rips it from my fingers and reads the message. Ella, Desmond, and Amy peer around his shoulders to do the same. Riker’s brows draw together in confusion, scowl softening into a disturbed frown, and Ella’s lips part, a hushed gasp passing through her teeth. Amy and Desmond both look baffled, as if they think I wrote the message. (They weren’t here for the Etruscan Incident, so I don’t blame them for missing the reference.)
Riker sets the note on the table and wriggles his fingers like he touched something poisonous. “This looks suspiciously like the note you received during the Etruscan case.”
Patting the seat cushion as a signal for them to sit, I flash my boss a stiff smile. “Yeah, I picked up on that, Captain. And in case you’re wondering, it was left in the same place, around the same time, by who I assume was the same sneaky person.”
“You didn’t see who left it?” Ella asks, sliding into the booth next to Cooper.
“Nope. Woke up. Found the note on the door. Nobody in sight.”
Ella looks to Cooper, who nods. “I didn’t see or hear anything either,” he says. “I was asleep.”
Amy shoves herself into the open seat beside me. “So, what? Someone’s passing you valuable intel, Kinsey?”
“Do tell, Calvin,” Desmond adds, plopping down next to Amy.
“Well, about that…” I gesture for Riker to sit down as well before I continue.
Grumbling, he takes his place to Ella’s left.
“Okay,” I pick up. “First of all, we’re waiting for someone else to arrive. The person who has been passing me intel, from the ICM’s side of the playing field. I sent her a text about twenty minutes ago.”
Riker stammers out, “Cal, hold on—”
“And here she is now.”
Erica the witch strides into the building, wiping snow off her coat and hat. She stops short when she notices the bizarre sight of a whole team of DSI detectives, plus an archivist, crammed into one booth in a small diner in the wee hours of the morning. I may have neglected to tell her this would be a group meeting.
She shoots me a venomous glare and then trudges over to our table.
Ella, Amy, and Desmond, who are all aware Erica and I occasionally hop into bed together, look
from her to me to her to me, so many times it starts to make me dizzy. Before anyone can start ranting about the spying outfit I just admitted to being a part of, I blurt out the whole story. Starting with Riker’s years of working with Erica in secret. And finishing with the passing of the torch, to me, after Erica and I booted up our sorta-kinda relationship. At the very end of my tale of intelligence operations, I tack on the side story about the sticky notes, so Amy and Desmond won’t feel left out.
After the last word rolls off my tongue, Ella Dean slowly—very slowly—turns her head toward her captain and says, in an ominously dainty tone, “You did what now?”
Riker’s lips flap for a second before he manages to find words. “Can we discuss this later, Ella? According to Cal’s note, we’re running on the clock here.”
Ella produces the angriest smile that has ever graced the surface of the Earth. “Oh, yes, Nick. We will discuss this later. And what a discussion it will be.” She quickly throws a not-so-nice look Erica’s way, but she doesn’t openly antagonize the witch. Ella might not like being kept in the dark about her captain’s untoward behavior behind the scenes, but even she can’t deny that having Erica freely hand over ICM intel is a huge boon. Ella runs her tongue across her teeth, clamping down her anger, and nods at me. “Okay, then. Let’s talk about this note.”
“Note?” Erica spots the sticky note and leans over to read it. “What the…? Is this the address to Halliburton’s secret house?”
All four of my teammates blurt out together, “What secret house?”
“Um, hello,” says a voice behind Erica. It’s the waitress, bearing two hot plates of food. She stares at the people in the booth, and the witch loitering in front of the table, most of whom were definitely not here a few minutes ago, when she took our orders. For a second, she seems totally mystified, blinking over and over and over. Then she shakes herself out of her stupor, places the two plates in front of Cooper and me, and claps her hands cheerfully before she takes out her order pad again. “So, what can I get for the rest of you?”
At first, no one says anything.
Then Desmond shrugs and snatches one of the menus out of the holder in the middle of the table. “Let’s see…I think I’ll take a Number Ten, with the sausage patties.”
Everyone else quickly follows suit, picking a meal almost at random.
When the waitress finishes jotting everything down, she smiles brightly and scuttles off back to the kitchen.
“Why did we come here again?” Amy mutters to me when the waitress is gone.
Erica, now seated next to Desmond, snorts. “Probably because I brought him here once.”
“Ah,” Ella says. “Now I see.”
Riker smacks his palm against the table, startling everyone to silence. “All right. Let’s put the personal problems aside for the time being.” He glowers at us until we all murmur in agreement. Then he continues, “Now, according to Cal’s sticky note—and the last one was reliable—the remaining co-conspirators behind the summoning plot will be meeting in two days at the stated address in order to attempt the summoning of...?”
I elbow Cooper, and he perks up. “U-Um, sir, I believe it may be Ammit, the guardian of Duat, the Egyptian Underworld. A lot of the original texts surrounding her lore refer explicitly to her devouring ‘sinful souls’ after those souls fail to pass a test of integrity conducted by Anubis in Duat’s Hall of Two Truths.”
Riker interlaces his fingers. “And this Ammit is a powerful creature?”
“Extremely.” I shovel some egg into my mouth. “If we don’t prevent that summoning, we’ll have another Charun on our hands.”
“Except this one could be even worse,” Erica says as she unbuttons her coat. “Charun was acting under his own free will, in the best interests of the underworld he protects. If these rogue practitioners gain control over Ammit’s actions, as part of the summoning process, they could use her for surgical strikes against their unnamed enemy. Assassinations. Worse.”
“Then we better get on the ball and stop that summoning.” Amy steals one of my bacon strips. “Any chance we can find this backup supply of soul clocks?”
Desmond hums thoughtfully. “Unless the soul clocks are in the aforementioned ‘secret house,’ I doubt we’ll be able to find them within our time limit. We’d be better off, I think, ambushing the rogues at the house before they have a chance to complete the summoning. That way, they won’t be alerted prematurely to the fact we’re onto them. If we tip our hand too soon, they may pack up and skip town, resurfacing later to conduct the summoning elsewhere.”
“That’s true, Desmond.” I nudge my plate farther away from Amy. “But, even so, I don’t think we should wait until the day of the summoning to attack. If we wait until the last minute, after they have all their equipment and…ingredients…prepared, we run the risk of the summoning being conducted, successfully, during our raid. In which case, a significant number of DSI agents could get hurt or killed by Ammit.”
Riker leans back against the seat cushion. “So the best course of action would be to stake out the property and launch an ambush sometime in the next twenty-four hours, after we confirm that the ICM rogues are inside. They’re bound to meet up at the house before the night of the summoning. They must still have things to prep—else they would have completed the summoning already.”
“We need to keep in mind, however,” Ella adds, “that if we raid the house before the night of the summoning, it’s possible we might miss arresting a conspirator. We have no guarantee that the remaining rogues, however many there are, will all be present in the house at the same time, at any point leading up to the summoning.”
Amy shrugs. “Even so, I think attacking in the next day or so is our best bet. Especially if the soul clocks are already there. We destroy the clocks and free the souls, there goes the summoning. There’s no way that a rogue or two, slipping through the cracks, will be able to piece the summoning back together anytime soon. It must’ve taken a ton of manpower to collect all those ‘sinful’ shades in the first place.”
“All right.” Riker rubs his bloodshot eyes, then tugs out his phone. “First things first. I’ll send a scout team over to the property to check it out. A plainclothes team in a nondescript vehicle, driving around the neighborhood once or twice, parking in a nearby driveway.” He checks with Erica. “Think that’ll tip anyone off?”
She replies, “Nah. Practitioners rely on their wards to protect buildings. Unless your guys are being super obvious about it, no one at the house will even bat an eye.”
Nodding, Riker slips out of the booth, grabs his cane, and heads over to the empty side of the diner to make his call. While he’s gone, the waitress returns, somehow balancing five plates on two arms. She distributes them correctly to each person sitting at the table on her first try. She then asks if we need anything else, we decline, and she heads back over to her post at the front counter, just as Riker is returning with a pensive look on his face.
The captain glides back into his seat and speaks at a low volume. “Called dispatch and had them direct the closest plainclothes team to the Primrose address. They’re only four minutes out. I gave the order for a rotational stakeout; the current team will stay on the house for two hours, then swap jobs with a second team, who’ll do the same thing. And so on and so forth until someone reports enough suspicious activity, comings and goings, for us to get a good idea of how to set up the strike operation.”
“Hm,” Desmond says, chewing on a sausage patty, “you going to call in Ramirez’s team for the assist, or somebody else?”
Amy tears a biscuit in half. “Yeah, I was wondering the same thing. Didn’t we send Ramirez’s crew out to hunt for that Donahue guy after the auxiliary teams lost his trail?”
Ella, poking at her eggs, sighs. “Right. His people have been up all night. We’ll have to call in someone else, or risk their exhaustion. Nakamura’s not back yet, is he?”
“No.” Riker sips on a glass of orange j
uice. “He’s in Minnesota through next Wednesday. And our five other elite teams are in state but hours outside Aurora, working rural murders and missing persons cases. And, of course, Delarosa’s out of the question.”
“What about Sing?” Amy asks.
Desmond answers, “Still studying for the captain’s exam. She won’t get her own team until she passes next month.”
“Still could use her though.” Amy chomps down on the biscuit. “Be nice if she could roll some heads for us.”
Erica shoots Amy a concerned look.
I fill her in: “Naomi Sing, Master of Blades.”
The witch makes an Ah, got you face.
Desmond taps his fork against his plate. “Could just call in a bunch of lower-level teams. We don’t have any other lowers who’ve worked alongside us as frequently as Delarosa and Ramirez, but maybe it’s time to train a few more in the ways of the dangerous elite cases. That way, if we have another Liam”—everyone winces—“we won’t be left shorthanded for backup when it comes down to the wire.”
“I agree with you on that, Desmond,” Riker says, sliding his half-eaten plate of food to the middle of the table, “but I’m not sure this is the case to start that practice. We screw this up, we could be looking at a magic-based war in a residential neighborhood. And while I certainly trust you all, with your skillsets, to prevail in the end, I worry very much about the safety of bystanders…and of lower-level agents who don’t have this kind of field experience. One spell is all it takes. One blast of fire. One bolt of lightning. One vehicle thrown by telekinesis. Wizards and witches might not be as physically durable as Charun the Psychopomp, but strong practitioners can do just as much damage when cornered and desperate.”
“Well,” Ella says, “you’re right, but that puts us back at square one. We can’t do this alone, Nick. We don’t have the manpower to hold a perimeter and subdue the bad guys at the same time.”
My captain scratches his stubbly chin while he cycles through ideas. “How about we try…?”
His phone rings in his pocket.
City of Crows Books 1-3 Box Set Page 47
