by Matt Wallace
“Well, what was your dad like? What did he teach you that made you like you are?”
“Nothing you want to learn. Trust me.”
“I do. I do trust you. That’s why I’m asking you.”
Ritter couldn’t say no to that.
Not quite knowing what else to do, he’s been teaching Darren how to fight. Boxing, Hapkido, knife attack defense; Darren’s a good athlete and he picks up the physical training quickly. That’s opened the door to talks about things like threat assessment.
“If you learn what to look for, what to actually be afraid of,” Ritter told him a couple of weeks ago, “maybe you’ll stop being afraid of everything.”
He also explained to Darren that fear isn’t a bad thing, or something to be extinguished. Fear is a tool, like anything else. The trick is learning to use it without it turning on you.
“Are we sparring today?” Darren asks, leaning gently against the heavy bag.
“No, you’re blown up enough. Go change and go home. Grab a shower. I need to do the same.”
“Tomorrow?” Darren asks with the enthusiasm and expectation of a child on Christmas Eve.
Ritter grins. He doesn’t do it often, and when he does Darren feels like he’s won some small victory.
“Sure,” Ritter says. “We’ll work on that wheel kick.”
Darren walks out of Stocking & Receiving and makes the long trudge up the old industrial stairs to Sin du Jour’s main level. Most of the staff has gone home for the day, as has the construction crew that’s been repairing the damage the building sustained when Satan sent a demonic version of Santa Claus to destroy them all.
Bronko told them the company’s parties can get a little out of control.
Anyone who’s actually seen a Manhattan kitchen crew party wouldn’t find that the least bit suspicious.
Sin du Jour’s chefs change in an area that looks more like a high school gym’s locker room than a facility in a high-end catering company’s headquarters.
As he enters, Darren spots James sitting on one of the long benches in front of the rows of lockers, typing something on an iPad with a “We Are Wakanda” sticker on the back of it.
“I told you you didn’t have to wait for me,” Darren says, peeling off his sweat-soaked shirt and tossing it in a bin of dirty chef’s whites.
James doesn’t look up. “It is okay. I wanted to write my mother an email anyway. I have a lot to tell her.”
“They have email in Senegal?”
James laughs. “We do in Dakar. Why does no one in America think no one in Africa uses technology? Is it the way they show us in movies?”
Darren tries to laugh, but he can’t help feeling like an asshole. “Yeah, actually. I think that’s exactly what it is. Sorry.”
James looks up at him and smiles. “Don’t worry about it. You are cute when you think you have said the wrong thing.”
Darren grins. A month ago he’d have already fled the room, feeling embarrassed and ashamed.
He reaches out and gently pulls the iPad from James’s hands, resting it on the bench beside him. One of Darren’s taped palms strokes the perfectly smooth dome of James’s scalp. The other palm cups the back of his neck. Darren leans down and kisses his lips fiercely, gripping him tightly by the head and neck. James lets himself be steered into the kiss, wilting gratefully under it.
“Just let me change and we’ll go home, okay?” Darren says when their lips part.
James nods, more than a little breathless.
As Darren begins stripping the tape from his fists, he notices James rubbing his forearm across his mouth.
“Is the beard still bugging you?”
“No. You keep it nice. Just don’t grow it any longer. You will look like a villain from one of those movies where Africans don’t use technology.”
This time Darren does laugh. He wads up the used athletic tape and tosses it into a nearby trash can.
“You want to Red Box one of those—”
In his locker, Darren’s phone begins playing a song he hasn’t heard in over four weeks.
The sound of it freezes his blood and drains the mirth from his face.
“What is wrong?” James asks, frowning at the change in his expression.
Darren reaches inside his locker and removes his phone, staring at the caller’s name on its screen.
“It’s Lena,” he says.
THANES OF OLDE
Ritter stands at the base of the stairs leading up from his front door to the first level of his Canarsie townhome. He didn’t need his key to open that front door, which he returned to find unlocked and ajar. He’s gobsmacked, because it should be impossible to break into his house and yet it’s happened twice in as many months.
The perpetrator of the first incident was a demon assassin sent from Hell, corporealized as the Easter Bunny. Ritter had to use half the magical items in his collection just to survive long enough to bash in the creature’s skull.
He has no intention of repeating that kind of epic battle with this intruder.
Opening the door to the small coat closet at the bottom of the staircase, Ritter reaches inside and comes out with a pump-action twelve-gauge shotgun. He’s emptied the shells loaded into the weapon of their buckshot pellets and replaced those pellets with shards of dragon bone. It’s a load that will bring down a bear, or a wizard, or a wizard who has shape-shifted into a bear.
Ritter ascends the stairs, shotgun muzzle leading the way. He takes the final three steps at a run and springs around the corner.
Ritter suddenly finds himself pointing a loaded firearm at the head of his younger brother.
Marcus Thane is lounging on Ritter’s treasured recliner, drinking one of his exotic rums from an ice-encumbered tumbler and watching porn on Ritter’s television.
Really, really fucked-up porn.
He holds the tumbler in one hand while the other cradles a framed photograph. The picture the frame is protecting is of four men in camouflage, posing in a jungle. Ritter and Marcus are two of them.
Marcus smiles at him, a brilliant, dangerous smile that Ritter has watched seduce women and men on three different continents. Ritter is the brother who can get lost in a crowd. Marcus has always been the standout. They both have the same dark hair and dark eyes, but Marcus’s features are just a little sharper, a little finer. More than that, however, is his mastery of all-day swagger where Ritter rarely lets an emotion bleed into his expression or body language.
Ritter lowers the shotgun, lips tightening just a little.
His younger brother holds up the picture frame. “I didn’t know you kept this.”
“Why wouldn’t I?
“You aren’t the sentimental type.”
“Sure I am,” Ritter says, the complete lack of sarcasm in his tone somehow highlighting the sarcasm in his words.
“Do you remember who took the picture?”
“Our guide’s boy. Angelio, I think his name was. He had a way with the pack mules.”
Marcus nods, staring up at the ceiling as if he can see the memories there. “Right. Do you think he was under some brujo’s spell when he stuck that blade in my lung, or was he just on the take? Paid off by the cartel?”
“I know which would be more comforting to believe.”
“Yeah. Considering you practically took his head clean off when you cut his fucking throat, I imagine one scenario would be more comforting than the other. Of course, whether he was bewitched or just a rat, his old man sure seemed not to know what was up. It’s a shame we had to—”
“Whatever point you’re making, Marc, you’re making it badly.”
“You saved my life that night.”
“You saved mine, too. The jungle’s like that.”
“You miss it at all?”
“How’d you circumvent the seal?” Ritter asks, ignoring his brother’s question.
Marcus shrugs. “It wasn’t that tough. You still confuse shoplifting a few enchanted goodies from WET locku
p with being some kind of warlock yourself. Took me five minutes.”
Ritter folds his arms over his chest and stares down his little brother.
Marcus grins. “All right, it took me a little longer than that. Whatever.”
“Are you on leave?”
Marcus tips his glass and drains its amber contents. “Permanently!” he announces.
Ritter frowns.
“How?”
His brother shrugs again.
Ritter’s frown darkens.
“Marcus . . .”
“You left,” he fires at Ritter, suddenly irate. “What? I can’t figure out how to leave too? Am I not as smart as you?”
“I don’t know. Are you? Because if you just bolted they’re going to hunt you down and peel your cap like it’s an old-timey photograph. And if I’m harboring you they’ll probably do the same to me.”
Marcus waves his glass around the apartment drunkenly. “You’ve got the . . . fuckin’ . . . magic kibosh shit. What are you worried about?”
“I’m not set up to shade you from that kind of tracking. You know that.”
“You’ll come up with something.”
“Look, things at Sin du Jour are popping off right now—”
“The catering company? What’s ‘popping off’ at a catering company? Did you serve the lobster bisque cold?”
“You don’t know.”
“Then explain it to me.”
“Stop stalling!”
Marcus sets his glass down, loudly. “Fine. Fuck it. What do you want? I’ll go to a Motel 6 or some shit.”
“Just tell me what happened.”
“I cracked. All right? You said it would happen and it happened. I should’ve listened. I should’ve got out when you did.”
In that moment Marcus almost looks like a grown-up.
“Just tell me the truth,” Ritter bids him, his voice suddenly gentle. “Did you run?”
Marcus nods.
Ritter inhales deeply. “All right,” he says as he exhales, his mind obviously racing. “All right. You can bunk here. I’ll talk to Allensworth. We can square this. All you did was go AWOL?”
Marcus nods again.
“Nothing else happened?”
Marcus shakes his head definitively.
Ritter doesn’t fully believe him, but neither does he see any percentage in pursuing the question.
OUTSIDE HIRE
Anyone of only passing acquaintance with Jett Hollinshead might be surprised to see her outside of her Louboutin heels and Chanel suits, let alone donning stained overalls to spike drywall with a nail gun as large as her torso. Anyone who knows Jett well, however, is aware that her defining quality is getting all the shit done there is to get done and by any means necessary.
“How’s she coming, Jett?” Bronko asks, walking up as she stakes the last new piece of drywall to Sin du Jour’s refurbished lobby walls.
“A few more days and you’ll never know Santa Claus and his demonic elves rampaged through the building and tried to kill everyone in it!” she proclaims without the faintest hint of irony and the most genuine, resolved smile on her face.
It’s one of the things Bronko loves about her the most. Jett has the ability to normalize even the most fantastic of situations. It’s a stabilizing element to have in the world Sin du Jour services.
“Byron, I’m also thinking the entire wing could use a face-lift, at the very least new paint. In my head I’m seeing a burnt fuchsia, with a sunburst in the lobby, possibly.”
“Uh . . . yeah. Yeah, we could all do with a touch of the new, I reckon. You just . . . do what you feel, Jett. I trust you.”
She beams up at him, hoisting her nail gun aloft in a salute.
Bronko can’t help laughing and shaking his head.
“Excuse me, Chef Luck?”
They both turn their heads to see a statuesque woman in a sleek black and white business suit standing in the lobby. Dark, shining curls fall around a face whose features originated somewhere in the Mediterranean. She wears large-rimmed glasses with cherry-red frames and carries a vintage attaché case, alligator apparently dyed to match her glasses.
Bronko blinks rapidly and without stopping for several long seconds. Jett thinks she can actually feel the heat suddenly emanating from his every pore.
He stumbles over an attempt to respond. “I . . . uh . . . that is . . . can I help you, ma’am?”
“My name is Luciana Monrovio. I believe you’re expecting me.”
Bronko furrows a heavy brow beginning to perspire, then recognition lights up his eyes.
“Oh . . . ? Oh! Right! Yes! You . . . Allensworth sent you?”
Luciana nods, just once, almost a bow of her head.
“Um, pardon me,” Jett chimes in. “Allensworth sent you here to do what?”
Luciana doesn’t look at Jett. Her eyes are focused solely on Bronko.
“I’m your new liaison,” she explains. “I’ll be consulting on all your planned events, coordinating those events with sensitive personnel, and facilitating communication between your staff and Mr. Allensworth.”
“Sin du Jour already has a full-time staff member with consulting, coordinating, and communicating on their résumé,” Jett informs her. “And I am she.”
“Er, calm down, Jett,” Bronko says. “With everything that’s been going on lately Allensworth wants some boots on the ground from his camp, that’s all.”
Jett stares down at the six-inch heels of Luciana’s Stuart Weitzman pumps.
“He chose an interesting pair of boots,” she says.
Luciana strides forward as if the sound of Jett’s voice doesn’t register. She extends a slender, manicured hand to Bronko.
“It’s a pleasure to finally meet you, Chef.”
Bronko rubs his hands against the front of his chef’s smock before reaching out to gently take hers.
“You’ll pardon me, ma’am. I suddenly feel as if every grease splatter I’ve taken in the past thirty years is clinging to me.”
“On the contrary, Chef Luck, you look positively camera-ready. And may I say I always enjoyed you on television. I remember your Good Morning, America appearance, in particular.”
“I . . . you must not have been old enough to—”
“What? Know better?”
Bronko grins and giggles like a schoolboy.
Jett clears her throat, loudly and without the slightest pretense of subtlety.
“Byron?” she interjects. “What’s happening here? Why didn’t you tell me she was coming?”
“Does Chef Luck ordinarily share interoffice policy with maintenance workers?” Luciana asks, still looking at Bronko even though she’s addressing Jett.
“I am an executive event planner, but I’m quite sure you already knew that, Miss Basic Corporate Undermining Tactics!”
“Jett, will ya calm down now? Don’t get us off on the wrong foot with our new go-between here. This is important stuff. You know that.”
“I should apologize,” Luciana says good-naturedly. “It must be your rustic ensemble that confused me.”
Jett opens her mouth to retaliate, but she’s stopped cold, literally, as Luciana finally looks directly at her. Where she could feel the heat Luciana’s presence created in Bronko, the woman’s wholly ordinary gaze suddenly fills Jett with a chill that extends through her entire body, causing her conscious mind to want to retreat from the sensation and its source.
Her grip tightens around the handle of the nail gun she’s holding. She feels the sudden, insane urge to—
“Jett, why don’t you finish up here?” Bronko says, the sound of his voice snapping her out of it. “I’ll show Miss Monrovio—”
“Luciana, please, Chef.”
“ . . . I’ll find her some work space in the building.”
Jett blinks, her brain still locked and her body shivering slightly.
“I . . . um . . . I usually take charge of orientation, Byron.”
“That’s all right
. You’ve been workin’ overtime lately. I’ve got this.”
Without another word Bronko ushers Luciana down the corridor that branches off from the lobby, moving past Jett so quickly she has to jump to one side to avoid him.
She watches them go, clutching the giant commercial tool against her chest.
“What the hell just happened here?” she whispers to herself.
Jett was an event planner for celebrities and CEOs long before she came to work for Sin du Jour. She had no problem adjusting to a climate of monsters, magic, mayhem, and occasional demonic assassination attempts. Jett firmly believes every business landscape is essentially the same, regardless of how the topography changes. Monsters are just another feature of the valley of commerce at the end of the day. They don’t scare her.
What does scare her, however, is the knowledge that outside hires, not monsters, are the most dangerous creatures in the corporate world.
PROBLEM CHILD
White Horse sits outside a local police precinct in Flushing. He’s been waiting for over an hour, and he had no intention of spending any of it staring at badges and holstered Glocks. He doesn’t like entering government buildings, let alone loitering inside them, and police stations are probably his least favorite government buildings.
The staples in the old man’s side are still tender, as is the pierced organ beneath. He’s still having nightmares about being skewered by the debris after Santa Claus hurled an exploding box wrapped like a Christmas present at Sin du Jour’s lobby desk. That part isn’t so bad, really. It’s the part of the dream where he actually remembers what Little Dove did to save him from the hellish assassin that causes him to wake up covered in sweat.
He doesn’t remember in his waking hours, and he prefers it that way.
White Horse pulls out his phone and taps the icon of the off-track betting app Little Dove keeps erasing while he sleeps. He’s already placed three bets, and he’s considering a fourth when Little Dove walks out of the police station.
She’s carrying a yellow manila envelope and a few stapled pages of paperwork, and is looking haggard in the way people who spend the night in a jail cell do. She squints against the harshness of the sunlight and fishes inside the envelope for a pair of sunglasses, fitting them over her eyes with an irritated groan.
