by SM Reine
Another twinge of guilt.
Facing Fritz was going to suck pretty bad.
I’d worn the last of my clean suits to the “memorial” and dropped the others off at the dry cleaner, so I didn’t have any choice but to put on jeans and a t-shirt. Black, of course, so that I wouldn’t clash with everyone else at the office.
Isobel hugged my pillow to her chest and watched me get dressed. “What are you going to tell Fritz about Ander?”
“I’ll have to tell him the truth. The Paradise Mile case needs to be reopened. I’ll report on what I saw at the house, what I think might have happened, and the risk it presents to the public. Normal business. Nothing to worry about.”
“Don’t tell him I was there,” she said. “Please don’t tell him anything about me at all.” I could tell that it was meant to be an order, not a request. Women were pretty good at making nonnegotiable demands like that.
“Why?” I asked.
She gave me a Look. The kind of Look that said, “The fact that you’re asking is making me seriously question your common sense.”
Either Isobel didn’t want Fritz to know about her past, or she didn’t want him to know that it had caught up with her.
Fine. As far as the OPA knew, Isobel didn’t exist anyway. She didn’t need to go on the record about anything related to Paradise Mile.
I jerked my jacket on, zipped it halfway up. “Help yourself to anything in the fridge. If it’s in a Tupperware, it’s probably a potion, so steer clear of that. Food’s in wrappers. Clean towels in the linen closet if you want to shower.”
She nodded, pulled the sheets tighter around her, hugged the pillow hard.
Isobel was scared. And who could blame her? As soon as the afterglow wore off, reality set in, and reality was one ugly motherfucker.
“Ander isn’t going to get your contract back, Isobel,” I said. “You’re going to be fine.”
Another nod.
I didn’t like having to leave her, but my phone was buzzing again.
One more kiss and I was out the door.
An hour later found me standing in Fritz’s office, feeling like a kid who’d been sent to the principal’s office.
“Let me get this straight.” He pushed back from his desk, extended his leg, and rubbed his thigh as though it were cramping. It probably was. The prosthesis made him stiff if he sat for very long, and I’d interrupted a string of phone conferences with my tardiness. “You returned to Paradise Mile to investigate a case we’d already closed.”
“Technically, I returned to attend a memorial.”
“Without notifying anyone.”
“The invitation was sent to me personally, and as you said, the investigation was closed. I didn’t have to notify anyone.”
He drummed his pen on the desk blotter. “Okay. So there was trouble at Paradise Mile.”
“The house came alive. The residents were animated dead, or…something. The canyon was closed off by some strange fog, but I managed to escape.”
Fritz would be able to tell I was leaving a lot out, but it was hard to get any deeper than that without mentioning Isobel.
I wasn’t telling him about the anointed butcher’s knife, either. The OPA would want to seize it as evidence. Once something disappeared into our storage rooms, it never came out again. And I wasn’t going to surrender my only weapon to fight Ander.
“I’m not really surprised things went south at Paradise Mile, to be honest,” Fritz said. “The orderly’s body disappeared from our morgue yesterday morning. I’d sent a team to investigate the retirement village and they couldn’t even locate the canyon.”
“The road is gone?”
“The entire canyon is gone. You know, if you’d reported your invitation to the memorial, I could have sent a team to investigate with you. As it is, there’s nothing left to investigate now. No body, no house, no canyon.”
“Damn.”
“We’ll reopen the case for further investigation. See if we can dig anything up. I’m not going to assign you to it for safety reasons. Obviously, they wanted to contact you specifically; you may be some kind of target. You’ll stay on deskwork for the near future.”
That was the exact opposite of what I’d been hoping to accomplish. I wanted to investigate Ander with the full resources of the OPA at my disposal. I wanted to be the guy riding along with the Union when we gunned him down.
But I couldn’t explain why without telling Fritz the truth about Isobel.
Hey, it wouldn’t be the first time I’d investigated something under the table. Having no authority was its own kind of gift, since that also meant no oversight.
“Yes, sir,” I said.
Fritz looked mildly surprised. “No complaints?”
“No, sir.”
He laughed his nasally laugh. “You’re planning something.”
“What makes you think that?”
“You’re calling me sir.”
“You could fire me pretty easily for attendance problems, or…just about anything else,” I said. “A little respect doesn’t hurt when my benefits are on the line.”
He punched a button on his phone. “Agent Takeuchi, please join us in my office.” Then he sat back, picked up a paper. “Your attendance isn’t the only problem.” His expression might have been annoyance or amusement. Always hard to tell with the guy. “You might be interested to know that Herbert Donlan filed a complaint in regards to your conduct before he died.”
Surprise, surprise. I’d earned that. “How’s that going to fall out?”
Fritz fed the paper to his shredder. “It’s not. You’re a good agent. You’re my aspis. We’re looking out for each other. Right?”
Suzy stepped into the office. Unlike me, she’d probably been at her desk at dawn, and she looked both professional and exhausted. Her suit was rumpled. Half of her hair had fallen out of its bun.
A vicious smirk crossed her lips when she saw me, though.
“How can I help you, Director Friederling?” she asked with the proper tone of respect.
“We’ve lost a pocket dimension,” Fritz said. “Considering that your expertise as witch is manipulation of dimensional spaces, I want you to find where it’s gone.”
Suzy whipped out a notepad. One of mine, I noticed. Someone had been into my desk. “Tell me what I’m looking for.”
“Paradise Mile.”
Her thumb froze mid-click on her pen. “The whole canyon?”
“Yes, Agent Takeuchi. The whole canyon. It’s no longer outside Mojave.”
“All right.” She scribbled a few notes. “Deliberately moved, or some kind of anomaly?”
Fritz never stopped watching me, even when Suzy was speaking. Why? What did he expect to learn from watching my expression? It wasn’t like he could pull Isobel out of my mind…could he?
I still didn’t know that much about how the bond between kopis and aspis worked, to be honest.
So I kept my face as smooth as possible.
“Deliberately moved, I suspect,” Fritz said.
“In that case, we’re looking for the owner of the retirement home.” Suzy’s hand moved fast as she scribbled in the Steno pad. “We’ll also need to discern what benefit the residents might gain from living in such a pocket dimension.” Her pen paused. “You’re reopening the Paradise Mile case, aren’t you?”
He smiled behind his steepled hands. “Yes. I am.”
“Wait,” I said. “Can we rewind? Pocket dimensions?”
“Heaven, Hell, and Earth are all in different dimensions,” Suzy said. “The one we’re in right now is the biggest. The others are layered on top of it. Not like an onion, but kind of occupying the same space. Right?”
“Right.” I knew that much.
“Well, there are smaller dimensions, too. Sometimes they intrude on each other. Like hernias.”
“Hernia dimensions.”
Suzy jabbed me in the ribs with a finger. “Like hernias. The official term is ‘pocket dimensi
ons.’”
“Suzume Takeuchi is one of the few human witches who can manipulate dimensions to some minor degree, which is how we located her for employment with the OPA in the first place,” Fritz said. “It’s an incredibly rare talent.”
“All I can do is expand spaces into other spaces.” Suzy shrugged. “I wouldn’t say it’s much of a talent.”
It did mean that her townhouse was bigger on the inside as it was on the outside. As far as rare skills went, it was one of the better ones. She was saving so much on rent.
She wrote a couple more notes down on the Steno pad.
I wanted to ask if the herniated dimensions could be incredibly small. Like, hallways appearing in the two-inch space between my bedroom and living room. Meaning that I hadn’t actually been having nightmares, but that Ander and Paradise Mile had really been intruding on my personal space.
But I didn’t want to inspire them to investigate my apartment. Not while Isobel was there.
“I don’t know that I’ll be much more help than a normal witch trying to find your missing canyon, but I’ll see what I can do with classic detective work.” Suzy flipped the Steno pad’s cover shut. “Anything else? Is Agent Hawke working on this with me?”
“No. Please don’t involve him,” Fritz said. “And don’t get yourself involved either, Agent Hawke. I mean it. I don’t want to learn you’ve been assisting on the investigation, or that Agent Takeuchi has been leaking information to you. I’ll put both of you on deskwork for a year. At separate desks.”
Now I saw why I had to be present for the conversation. He knew how much trouble Suzy and I could get up to when we conspired, and we were getting preemptively lectured by Papa.
“Yes, sir,” Suzy said. I mumbled something that would probably pass for agreement.
“You’re dismissed,” he said. I moved to follow Suzy out of the office, but he added, “Not you, Cèsar.”
Damn.
The door swung shut behind Suzy.
“It’s for your safety,” Fritz said. “I hope you’re aware of that.”
“I’m not fighting you on this, sir. I already told you I’d stay out of it. No problem at all.”
“Yes, and that worries me. You’re normally more argumentative. Agent Takeuchi’s a terrible influence on you.”
“Actually, I like to think I’m the bad influence.”
“Either way. You’re going along with this too easily.”
I rubbed my hands over my eyes. I’d slept dreamlessly with Isobel, but I was still exhausted. When I shut my eyelids, I saw the bloody kitchen, the weeping angel statue that looked like Isobel, and the vines trapping us inside of the canyon.
“I’m not eager to deal with Paradise Mile more than I have to,” I said. “It was pretty bad.”
He set down his pen. Gave a sharp nod. “Very well.”
Again, I opened the door to leave.
“You missed our training session this morning,” Fritz said.
It didn’t sound like an accusation, but it hit me like one.
The instant he mentioned that morning, I was back in bed with Isobel, tangled up in the sheets, my pillow appropriated by a woman whose body was covered in smooth, shiny scars. The memory of her smell was so strong that I wondered if it could cross the bond between kopis and aspis.
If Fritz picked any of it up, his expression didn’t show it.
He’d proposed marriage to Isobel once, after all. I was pretty sure he’d have been slightly more pissed off if he’d been able to read my mind.
“I forgot to set my alarm. Probably would have slept through it even if I hadn’t, though. Like I told you, I had a rough weekend.” A rough weekend, punctuated by one awesome evening, for which I was now feeling incredibly guilty.
“That you did. I imagine you’ll be back to your normal schedule tomorrow, though,” Fritz said. “You’ll be back at your desk first thing in the morning to address all the administrative work I need you to do for me.”
It wasn’t a question.
“Yes, sir.” Doesn’t hurt to keep being a little extra respectful when screwing over one’s boss. Or screwing one’s boss’s ex-girlfriend.
He waved his pen at me. “And the attire?”
“I’ll pick up my suits from the dry cleaner during lunch.”
“Excellent.”
I stepped out and shut the door to his office.
Once I had the safety of a wall in between us, I took a second to regain my composure. I wasn’t in trouble for bad behavior. Yet. Suzy was working on the case—best person I could ask for, since if she caught me investigating it on my own, she wouldn’t tell anyone. And administrative work meant I could flake out without risking lives on another case that actually mattered.
Isobel and I were going to have as much room to find Ander on our own as we could have hoped for.
Then I heard a crash and a thud from the other side of the door. I froze with my hand on the doorknob, wondering if I should go inside to check on Fritz. But it didn’t sound like he’d tripped over his prosthetic and fallen or anything.
It sounded a hell of a lot like Fritz breaking something on his desk in a fit of anger.
Maybe he could read my mind after all.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
EVERY TIME I GO into Helltown, I tell myself that it’s going to be my last visit. Ever.
Somehow, I end up dragging my ass back there every few months anyway.
I headed to Helltown right after work. I pushed past the wards that kept smarter people out. I ducked under an archway decorated by jagged metal, human femurs, and bloody smears. And I walked down a street occupied by vendors selling the kind of snacks that Gertie would have enjoyed.
All because Isobel had looked at me with those big eyes and asked me to help her remember her past.
It was crazy what I’d do for the right woman. My brother would have called it outright stupid. He probably would have been right.
Crazy, stupid, or both, I was smart enough to move fast when I got inside the wards. I’d gone into Helltown using the entrance nearest my destination—a dangerous place to head in, since it was close to the incubus mafia’s territory, but it gave me a fast route straight to the Temple of the Hand of Death.
The temple sounded grand, but it was inside an old gas station that hadn’t been changed since the fifties. The pavement outside looked like it had been chewed through by a giant fanged Pacman. The pumps were cracked, dusty, sun-bleached. The windows were boarded up.
I was surprised to see magic sparkling on the boarded windows this time. If it had been there last time I visited, I hadn’t noticed. My abilities at witchcraft were getting better in more ways than one.
Despite the fortifications, the door was unlocked. Lucky me. They hadn’t closed up for the night yet. I’d have to get out of there before they did—not because I was afraid that they’d try to trap me, but because I’d done the Helltown at Night Tour before and knew it to be suicide.
I still had at least an hour. Plenty of time to go digging into Isobel’s past.
No better place to start than one of the first places we’d met.
The interior of the temple looked just as unlike a holy place as the outside did. It was a mostly empty concrete room with baskets in the corners, a few tables, some cheap paintings. Incense smoldered near the back wall.
I was greeted at the door by a woman swathed in black velvet who wore a bandeau bra with coins and so much dark eye makeup that she could have masqueraded as a raccoon. Her skin was the color of liquid chocolate. Her braided hair was wrapped around her head in a tall bun. She looked like a gothic belly dancer.
Lifting my hands to show her they were empty, I said, “Don’t worry. I’m—”
“You’re Agent Cèsar Hawke,” she said. “You work for the Office of Preternatural Affairs. You took Belle from us.”
“Nice memory.” Especially considering I was pretty sure I hadn’t seen her before.
“Is Belle alive?”
&nbs
p; Good question.
“She’s kicking around,” I said. “What makes you ask? Do you expect someone to have tried to kill her?”
“I thought you might have.” It didn’t sound like the idea bothered this woman all that much. “She hasn’t come in to serve ever since you showed up.”
I hadn’t known that. Isobel disappeared frequently to take jobs talking to the dead, so I’d expected her to keep doing all her other usual hobbies, too. Including hanging out in a deadly demon neighborhood to worship one of its nastier denizens. I mean, why not? What would be stopping her?
It was probably arrogance to consider that she might have stopped such risky behaviors for me.
“You know me,” I said, pulling out a Steno pad. “Want to introduce yourself?”
“Call me Dayna. High priestess now that Ann’s gone.”
“Right. Dayna.” I made note of that. “I have a few questions to ask about an ongoing case. It doesn’t seem directly related to the Temple of the Hand of Death, but—”
“It’s about Belle, isn’t it? Shocking. You don’t have much time before it gets dark, so ask away. Forgive me if I do some maintenance while we speak.”
I was used to my usual contacts dragging me through bullshit when I questioned them. Dayna was much more direct. I liked it.
Dayna started cleaning up ash from incense that she had burned earlier, sweeping everything into a corner.
I followed her at a distance. “Were you working here when Isobel Stonecrow first showed up?”
“Yes, I’ve been here for years,” Dayna said. “I was one of the founding priestesses. As a matter of fact, I’m the one who offered Isobel a place among our ranks.”
“Did she come to you, or did you reach out to her?”
“She came to us. When I realized the depth of her necrocognition, I invited her to stay. I don’t run a charity, you understand. I have no interest in helping people for the sake of helping.” She tipped a basket over and swept the ashes into it. “Belle’s story was compelling, but not so compelling that I’d do anything about it without motive.”
Dayna talked fast. I lifted a hand to slow her down. “Wait. What was her story?”
