Heroines and Hellions: a Limited Edition Urban Fantasy Collection

by Margo Bond Collins

  After a moment, he swiveled the chair toward me. His eyes burned under deeply furrowed brows, a cord standing out in his neck. I could practically feel the bridge of trust we’d built disappearing under the flood of his anger.

  “You lied to me,” he hissed. “You’ve been lying the WHOLE TIME!”

  “I’d already be dead if the police had thought the cuffs weren’t working,” I cried. “And they were working last night. That’s when the attack started and Morgan summoned me.”

  Nick shot to his feet. “More lies. You could have used magic to kill him, are still using it to fabricate evidence of another killer so I’ll keep my word and free you.”

  My hands fisted and I held my ground as he stalked closer. “I used my magic to try to save Morgan’s life, and yours too.”

  That made him pause.

  “Did you think it was just lucky that those police sirens started up when the gang was about to kill you? That was me, Nick, just like it was me in this office trying to stop a murder. You want to know what drove the killer to jump out a penthouse window? It was me,” I said, my voice hard, thrumming with tension. “Me, with full access to my magic because Morgan gave me permission to use it in his defense.”

  My chest heaved as I sucked in air. Nick stood frozen a few feet in front of me, still glaring. He had to believe me. I needed an ally if we were going to find the real killer. And now that we’d started this investigation, I didn’t want to cut and run if things got bad. Like Nick, I wanted justice now too.

  “So you admit the cuffs aren’t working properly,” he said, his voice cold.

  “I don’t know what’s going on with them,” I said. “When you tried to compel me to speak the truth this morning, it should have worked. You’re the sole heir to Morgan’s estate, which means technically you’re my master now. And then in Koreatown when the gang cornered us, the magic rose to the surface and I could use some of it. They were going to kill you, so I used it to trick and distract them.”

  “You are using illegal magic,” Nick breathed.

  I crossed my arms, deflated from my confession like a balloon loosing air. “It comes and goes. I can’t feel any of my power now.”

  Nick shook his head, staring at me like he didn’t recognize me. “I don’t know if I can believe anything you say.”

  I took a deep breath. This was exactly what I’d feared. How could I convince him to keep working with me now?

  “Let me ask you something,” I said. “If everything I’ve told you is a lie and I really am the killer, then why is there a giant hole in the window? I didn’t throw Morgan out to fall to his death, because the police found his body right here.”

  “I don’t know,” Nick bit off. “I don’t know why anyone would want to kill him, except you, after the way he choked you last night.”

  Before I could reply, the elevator pinged, echoing down the hall. Adrenaline thrummed through my limbs. Nick’s glare vanished, and we both looked wide-eyed at the office door.

  Someone else had entered the penthouse.

  14

  My eyes snapped to Nick’s as my heart leapt into my throat. Who would be coming to Morgan Music Studios—and what did that mean for us?

  I saw the struggle in Nick’s eyes before he gestured me to the broken closet. I picked my way across the floor, trying to match the crunching of the debris with the brisk footsteps coming down the hall. The closet door squeaked a bit as I edged inside. Nick followed me in, turning the cramped space claustrophobic. He slid the mangled door on his side closed as much as it would go, leaving several inches open. We both squeezed back into our respective sides, holding our breath as the newcomer crunched their way into Morgan’s office.

  I watched through the gap in the hinges as a man in a linen suit sauntered into the room. He turned, sneering at the state of the room, and my jaw dropped. What was Sebastian Maguire doing here?

  Sebastian looked at the floor and started kicking things out of his way as he stomped around the office. He muttered to himself, like he was looking for something. He must have decided going through everything on the floor was a useless endeavor, because after a minute he started rifling through the items on the desk. When that didn’t produce what he wanted, he pulled open the drawers and dumped them out.

  “Where is it?” he hissed, looking through the contents of the last drawer. He stood and kicked the pile of papers, sending them flying and fluttering in the air.

  I glanced at Nick, who cocked his eyebrows at me, clearly thinking the same thing as me. Sebastian was definitely looking for something. But what would be in Morgan’s office that he’d want so desperately to sneak in and steal it?

  Sebastian glared around the room, his eyes lighting on the album posters on the wall that had somehow survived the events of last night. He dashed to the first one and lifted the framed poster off the wall. With a grunt, he tossed the frame to the floor behind him with a crash, then went to the next poster. That one joined the first with another resounding crash. He pulled the third from the wall, and found what he was looking for.

  A safe.

  He dropped the third frame and studied the safe. Then he pulled off his yellow-tinted sunglasses that he insisted on wearing indoors. But instead of setting them down on the desk, or cleaning them with a handkerchief—normal things to do with glasses—he held them just in front of his face, studying the lenses intently, his fingers twitching on the frame.

  My brows furrowed as I watched him stare at his glasses. What was he doing?

  After a minute he put them back on and strode to the safe, twisting the combination dial confidently. A few spins, a few clicks, and the door to the safe swung open.

  I stifled a gasp. How had he figured out the combination so quickly when he hadn’t known which poster hid the safe?

  Sebastian made a noise of triumph and reached inside. A thump on my arm made me whip around to face Nick. He gestured at Sebastian and mouthed something at me, but I couldn’t decipher it. I frowned at him, and he tried again, exaggerating the shapes of the words.

  Did you know about the safe?

  I shook my head, and the look on his face echoed my own confusion. We peered out of the closet again, watching Sebastian flip through the stack of papers he’d taken from the safe. He pulled one out and grinned, apparently finding what he’d come here for. He rolled it up and slid it inside his suit jacket, looking around the office as he did. His eyes lit on the laptop and his frown dropped. He grabbed the stack of papers and shoved them back in the safe, hurriedly knocking the door closed, but it didn’t click. He grabbed the framed poster and fought to hang it back on the wall, covering the safe. Then he stomped on the other two posters, crunching the glass, making the wood frames screech as they tore. He kicked the pieces about, as if they were part of the damage from the struggle that had ended Morgan’s life. Finally, he reached over the desk and grabbed the laptop before crunching over the debris out of the office.

  Nick and I stayed put in the narrow confines of the closet, listening to Sebastian’s footsteps as he strode down the hall. He began to whistle out in the lobby, probably waiting for the elevator.

  I leaned closer to Nick to whisper in his ear. “Do you still think I might be the killer?”

  “I don’t know what to think,” he whispered back, his breath fluttering my hijab. “But that was definitely suspicious. How did he even know about the safe, much less the combination?”

  The elevator dinged as it arrived. We listened as Sebastian’s whistling changed tone and then disappeared, the hydraulics sending the elevator down.

  Nick pushed out of the closet, not worrying about the mangled door this time, and it moaned as he yanked it out of the way. I followed him out as he removed the framed album poster again, staring at the safe.

  “I don’t think it closed all the way,” I said. “Try opening it.”

  He tugged on the combination dial, and the door opened. “Thank you, Mr. Maguire.”

  Nick pulled out the pap
ers, and my heart raced. This could be the information we were looking for, the information Morgan had wiped from his computer to protect.

  Nick flipped through a few, then his shoulders slumped and he handed the whole stack to me. Confused, I took it and looked through them myself.

  Contracts. They were all contracts between Morgan Music Studios and various singers, stipulating how many songs Morgan would produce, how much magic would be applied to their music, Morgan’s fees and royalties. And the only one I could see missing was Sebastian’s.

  “Why would Maguire steal his contract?” Nick said. “They all looked pretty much the same to me.”

  My mind raced. I had been so focused on delivering the flash drive to Morgan’s mysterious contact that I had ignored what had happened earlier in the day.

  “Morgan threatened Sebastian yesterday.”

  “After what he did to you, I would have threatened him too.”

  “No, before that,” I said, although I warmed at Nick’s protective comment. “Sebastian was late for his recording session yesterday, and Morgan was angry, told him not to bother coming back if he wasn’t going to be on time. Sebastian was upset, but he dealt with it because his music would be nothing without my magic, and he knows it.”

  “That would have violated his contract,” Nick said.

  I nodded. “And if he found out that Morgan wasn’t putting in the required amount of magic—”

  “What?” Nick’s eyebrows shot up.

  “We recorded after they argued, and Morgan set the dial that controls the harvesting of my magic to 30 instead of the usual 50.”

  “Sounds like motive to me.” Nick looked at the pile of contracts.

  “It still doesn’t explain why he stole Morgan’s copy of his contract,” I said. “He should have had his own.”

  “Either way, we need to follow him and see if we can figure out what he’s up to.” Nick hurried around me and left the office.

  “Wait,” I called, catching up to him in the lobby. “If we wait for the elevator to come back up, he’ll be long gone.”

  “You have a better idea?” Nick said, his voice hard, as if he was reluctant to trust me again.

  I nodded. “Follow me.”

  I led Nick through Morgan’s apartment behind the studio and out onto the terrace, where we climbed up the roof. From there, we took the roof access stairs to the main stairwell and booked it all the way down the ground floor. By the time we made it to the lobby, lungs and legs burning, Sebastian was already outside. Through the glass doors, we saw him duck into the back seat of a fancy black sedan, one of his bodyguards shutting the door behind him and climbing in the front passenger seat. Nick took the lead as we dashed outside, stopping in the middle of the sidewalk, still breathing hard as the car zoomed off into downtown traffic.

  Nick bent over with a groan, his hands on his knees. “Great,” he panted. “Now what?”

  “I think he lives in Santa Monica,” I offered.

  “Rich bastard.”

  I wheezed out a laugh as passing pedestrians gave us the side-eye. “Look at that, something we agree on.”

  A hint of a grin softened Nick’s features for a moment. Then it was gone as he straightened, pulling his phone from his pocket. He gestured for me to follow as he started walking back to the truck, holding up his phone to his ear.

  “Javi,” he said exuberantly. “Listen, I need a favor.”

  I smirked as Nick convinced his cop friend Javier to look up Sebastian’s address to make up for not being able to get the stay of execution for me. His cop friend came in handy, after all.

  We hurried back to the truck and Nick roared out of the parking garage, turning west toward Santa Monica. I laid my head back as we got on the freeway, my legs still screaming from our mad dash down the stairs.

  “Now that we have some time, you owe me the truth.”

  I glanced at Nick, his face stony as he watched the road. “All right.”

  I started after he’d left Morgan’s office, telling him as much as I could without triggering the compulsion. I mentioned my visit with Yasmina, although I didn’t give him the details, and how I’d run into the gang at the train station, my cuffs repeatedly burning with Morgan’s summons before escalating into the magic that had transported me to his office. I gave him all the details I could remember of the fight and how I had tried to stop the bleeding before Morgan died. It took a while to give him all the details—and with the exception of the few minutes I’d spent with my sister, I unloaded them all. Even the best liar couldn’t have that many details, and I hoped it would restore some of the trust we’d lost.

  Nick listened without interrupting, and remained silent for a minute or two after I’d finished. I turned my gaze out the window, my hopes fading with each passing palm tree.

  “How often do you get to see your sister?” he finally said.

  “Once or twice a year, if I’m lucky. Morgan didn’t let me out much. I’ve seen more of Los Angeles in the last twelve hours than I have since the day he brought me here from the farm.”

  Another mile passed before he spoke again.

  “Thank you for telling me everything,” he said. “I hope it’s the truth.”

  “It is,” I said fervently.

  “If I discover any more lies, Adira, I won’t ask for the truth. I’ll just drag you to the council myself.”

  Anger flashed through me. I clenched my teeth and stared outside as Nick turned off the freeway and navigated through the upscale beachfront city. I was tired of being threatened, tired of humans dominating me. But I forced myself to breathe and calm down. Trust had been broken, and it would take time to rebuild.

  The directions to Sebastian’s house took us from busy downtown streets lined with palm trees to quiet, stately residential neighborhoods, where gates and tall hedges abounded and each house was bigger than the last. Finally, we came to the right number, and slowed to get a look at the house. It was a Spanish-style mansion with a red tile roof and arched windows. The front yard was beautiful, a manicured lawn with a fountain in the center, rimmed by a tall wrought-iron fence. The fancy black car we’d seen him drive away in was parked in the driveway in front of the narrow third garage.

  “Wow,” Nick murmured.

  I studied the house and wondered how many magic-infused albums Sebastian had sold to afford such sprawling opulence. How many of my kindred at the farm were harvested just to power the lights, the car, the equipment that kept the landscape so pristine. In a neighborhood of beautiful mansions, I only saw suffering and oppression.

  Nick pulled his gaze from the mansion and kept driving, circling back to park on a cross street where we had a good view. He turned off the ignition and pulled out the key.

  “Now what?” I said.

  “Now we wait to see what our suspect does next.”

  “We better not have wasted the whole day just sitting here waiting for Sebastian to do something incriminating,” Nick grumbled.

  “He already did,” I said, rubbing the tiredness out of my eyes as I stared at the mansion. “That’s why we’re here.”

  Nick pulled out his phone from his pocket. “I’ll see if I can dig anything up on him, or that council candidate. If Maguire doesn’t make a move soon, we’ll have to. We need to talk to Bentley, see if knows anything about the secret meeting Morgan sent you to. Maybe we can get a last-minute ticket into that gala the campaign manager mentioned.”

  Several hours had gone by, the sun cooking the truck as it crossed the sky. We had both been up most of the night and running around all morning, so we took turns sleeping and keeping watch on Sebastian’s house, occasionally starting the truck to turn on the air conditioning. We knew the house wasn’t empty; lights flicked on and shadows passed the windows every once in a while. But by late afternoon, we were both tired in a different way, not to mention hot and cranky.

  I kept myself focused by rehearsing the facts of our investigation so far. But as I did, doubts about our cur
rent suspect rose to the surface. Breaking into Morgan’s office and stealing a contract and laptop was certainly suspicious, but it didn’t necessarily link Sebastian to the murder. Plus, Morgan’s killer had given me an opportunity to leave, as if they’d been reluctant to fight me. After my last interaction with Sebastian, when he’d groped me and I’d broken his nose for it, I’d have expected him to want to attack me as well as Morgan. He probably wouldn’t killed me, though. I shuddered at the thought of what other violence he might have inflicted on me if he’d had a chance.

  “Gala tickets are sold out,” Nick mumbled. “We really need to be there, though. If we leave now, we might be able to talk to this guy before he goes in to the party.”

  “We’re not the only ones leaving,” I said. “Look.”

  The front door of the mansion opened, and Sebastian sauntered out in a crisp linen suit and his signature sunglasses. His bodyguards came out next, and the group moved to the car and got in.

  Nick started the truck as the black sedan backed out of the driveway. “Finally. Let’s see what our boy’s up to now.”

  15

  Nick slowed three cars behind the sedan as it veered toward the valet parking of a large, elegant banquet hall in Hollywood. The evening sun cast a golden glow over the white building that was emphasized with hundreds of string lights hanging from the roof, the windows, and the entrance. A red carpet joined the sidewalk to the main entrance as floods of expensively dressed humans followed its path. Sebastian and his bodyguards joined the throng and disappeared inside the building.

  “Good news,” I said. “Sebastian led us to exact place we needed to be to pursue another angle of our investigation. Bad news—”

  “They’re both inside in the biggest political fundraiser of the year,” Nick grumbled.

  Traffic soon passed the banquet hall. A few blocks away, Nick squeezed into an empty parking spot on the side of the road, and we circled back to the gala on foot. Across the road and down the block from the bright lights and red carpet, we ducked into the recessed doorway of a shop closed for renovations and peeked out at the party.