“I think those are the main events,” Gary chimed in. Since I had little doubt he was probably the one who’d filled Scott in on all the happenings, the ‘shut the fuck up’ look I gave him was especially potent.
Seeing this, he backed up, withering and looking to the floor.
“Well then,” Scott said, huffing and sounding more than a little fed up. “You grew up in the coven, Roy. You can probably count how many laws you’ve broken with all of this. Hell, not reporting the black hole the instant you found it is a violation in itself, not to mention covering up the real reason behind the Cypress boy’s death. The newspaper said it was a hit and run, and none of the covens we’ve been in contact with were told anything different.”
“What are you getting at?” I asked, looking him over, and feeling like he had his hands on my neck and was about to squeeze.
“I haven’t told the coven where I am yet. When Bandhal got in touch with me, I gave them some excuse about a mystical abnormality I needed to investigate. I didn’t want to tell them where you are, Roy. I still don’t, and I certainly don’t want to tell them what you’ve gotten yourself into. I won’t watch you die because you’re stubborn though. If you won’t let me help you, then I’m going to have to bring in the big guns.” He shook his head. “It’s me or the coven, baby brother. I’ll let you decide.”
He turned and walked back into the kitchen. The motherfucker had me, and he knew it.
“Damnit,” I muttered. There it was. He figuratively had his hands around my neck. I had no choice. I couldn’t let him bring in my mother’s coven. I couldn’t allow them back into my life. I would have to work with him. Of course, that didn’t mean I was going to have to like it.
“Goddammit!”
16
“There you are,” Renee’s voice sounded from behind me, shaking me out of an admittedly indulgent stretch of pondering. “I was looking for you everywhere.”
‘Everywhere’ couldn’t have included the roof as I had been standing out here for the last half hour or so, just staring out at the city, trying to think through about a million different things. All the people out here, running back and forth while trying to live normal lives, had no idea what the world was really like underneath their sheen of normalcy. How could they when even I felt like I never really knew the world either?
I had lived on a couple of different continents. I had been through enough scary shit to turn John Wayne’s hair white. Hell, I had just gotten pushed out of a black hole by the disembodied spirit of my mother.
Still-even after all that- seeing Scott spun me out more than I cared to admit. It wasn’t about what he had done to me, per se. People sucked. I might not have known it as fully back then as I did now, but it was the truth, and I could deal with it. No, the reason seeing this guy who called himself my brother was so hard for me, was because it didn’t go the way I expected. Not even a little.
“I thought he would be angry, but he wasn’t. I figured he’d be pissed that I hadn’t seen him in years, but that’s not what happened,” I said, still looking out at the city and not turning to meet my girlfriend. I heard the clap of her shoes grow louder against the roof and caught her scent as she settled beside me. It was warm and sweet, and it made me feel a little better despite myself.
“Your brother?” she asked, and her eyes were planted right on the skyline as well. It was a glorious thing. I had been in so many places, taken so many identities over the years, but there was something about this city and this identity that felt different. Maybe it was Renee, maybe it was that I had found someone who meant a lot to me, but I felt like maybe I could settle down here. I felt like maybe this could be home.
“He’s not my brother,” I corrected, fighting back the urge to explain all of it to her.
“I know,” she answered, and her voice was surprisingly comforting. “I heard your little spiel back there.”
“What I said back there isn’t even half of it,” I replied, anger rising inside me at the thought of him.
“It never is,” she said plainly. “Life gets complicated, gets sticky. Trust me. I know.”
“Look,” I said, swallowing hard and finally turning to look at her. She had pulled her hair pulled back into a tight ponytail. Her thick dark curls, spilled neatly out of it and hung down her back temptingly. “I wasn’t trying to hide anything from you. It’s not that I didn’t want you to know I had a family back there, Renee. It’s just—”
“Stop,” she said, though she didn’t bother turning to me as she spoke. “I figured you had a family, Roy. Even people who don’t do. Family is what we make it. I’m glad you had people who cared about you, even if things didn’t turn out just right in the end. The thought of you going through anything alone is hard for me to stomach.” Without glancing at it, she took my hand into hers and squeezed with just the right amount of pressure. “That’s beside the point though. We sort of jumped into this thing with the hounds at the door, you know? We’ve never really had time to do the things that people who are starting a relationship do.”
“Like learn about each other’s families?” I asked, a reluctant smile creeping across my face.
“Like go on a date,” she answered. “There are a million really good, very fancy romantic restaurants in this city. I haven’t had the chance to take you to any of them.”
The idea seemed odd to me, and I chuckled in response. She was the woman. Certainly she wanted me to be the chivalrous guy who rode up on his white horse and all that other Richard Gere bullshit romantic comedies teach us to expect. “I would take you, Renee. I’m old fashioned like that.”
“Please,” she shook her head, smiling to match mine, even though she still wasn’t looking at me. “I make twice what you do. Are you too old-fashioned for a sugar momma?”
A mixture of pride and a sort of titillation at the idea of being objectified as a kept man danced across my chest. She was kidding, of course. Not about the money. She could cover me in dollar bills, given the savings her family left her when they kicked off a few years prior. Still, she was trying to lighten the mood, to make me feel better. And it was working. One thought replaced nearly all the others in my head.
How the hell did an idiot like me get so lucky?
“Fine,” I answered. “Pick one. Pick the best, most romantic one. Then, when all of this is over, you can come and pick me up. Treat me like a real boy toy.”
“Detective Morgan,” she grinned, squeezing my hand again. “Don’t tempt me. If you think I won’t take you right here on this rooftop, you’ve got another thing coming.”
The titillation mixture from before blanched out into full blown giddy excitement as I answered. “Is that a promise?”
She looked at me, her gorgeous eyes filled with the kind of hunger that put all the come hither looks and orchestrated glances in the porn mags and jerk off videos I used to watch as a lonely kid to shame.
They were fake. This was real. It was real, and it was mine. I’d be damned (if I already wasn’t) if some coward ass Benefactor who couldn’t even muster up the balls to show his face was going to take that away from me.
“Do you have a blanket?” she asked me. Her lips tugged up into the best kind of troublesome smile.
“Are you serious?” I asked, all the pretense dropping from my tone as the possibility of getting lucky on this rooftop started to seem very real. “Like, seriously serious?”
She didn’t answer. The naughty glint in her stare said it all.
“Oh, hell yes!” I said, whipping off my jacket and spreading it across the rooftop, stretching it as wide as it would go. “Good enough?” I asked, looking back at her.
“Good enough,” she approved.
Rushing toward her faster than I would any evildoer, I scooped her up into my arms. She felt warm and spectacular as she collided with me, wrapping her legs around my waist and pressing her lips against mine.
A hunger, different from the demon hunger but every bit as fierce, ran through
me. Oh yeah. This was happening.
I moved my hands up her back under her shirt until I found the clasp of her bra. My heart skipped a beat, not because I was excited, but because I always found the damned things tricky. I might have been a half demon warlock who had just narrowly beat a demented fairy goddess, but bra clasps were a form of evil even I wasn’t prepared to go up against.
As my fingers fumbled uselessly with the contraption, it turned out I wouldn’t have to.
“Roy! Roy boy, come quick!” Gary’s voice tore into the moment, utterly ruining it.
My head snapped over to him, my hands still buried under Renee’s shirt.
“Dude!” I said, looking at the imp who turned around nervously once he saw what I was going. Renee dug her head into my shoulder, deciding not to look at Gary, while I stood there, mortified about the whole thing. “Even heard of knocking, bud?”
“On what? We’re outside,” he answered, which was a fair point. “Your brother found something. Or, I mean, the guy who’s not your brother found something, and he needs you to come really quickly.” His hands flew to his mouth, and he shook his head. “I didn’t mean that! Not like, that kind of come.”
“Gary!” I said.
“Not that you’d have any control over that, anyway. I’m sure your stamina is just fine. Great even.”
“Gary!”
“I’m sure you’re like a racehorse or something.”
“Gary, shut the fuck up!” I said, setting Renee down and suddenly feeling less randy than I ever had in my life.
“Anyway, Scott found something. Something big,” Gary said, turning around to head back down. “He said he needs you right away. He said this changes everything.”
17
I marched back into my apartment, shrugging my jacket back on and trying to steady myself. Renee was walking behind me with Gary toddling along after her, ready for action. It wasn’t the sort of action I had been hoping to get from her thirty seconds prior to Gary’s inopportune interruption, and that sucked. Still, business was business, and if something Scott found could help me get to the bottom of this Benefactor garbage and save her life, then it was definitely worth the blue balls.
I pushed through the door to find a sheen of green energy dissipating in the air. It tasted chalky as I opened my mouth to address Scott, and spoke of the sort of thick, immersive magic they tried to teach me back in my coven days. It shook me a little, the jarring reminder of a life I’d left behind- a life that was now staring me in the face.
“What?” I asked flatly, not at all trying to hide the frustration in my voice.
Scott looked up at me with glassy eyes. The flush from channeling magic reddened cheeks. It reminded me of countless nights practicing spells in the bedroom we shared coming up. I forced my eyes away from him and my mind away from that memory.
This guy was a dick. I wouldn’t do myself any favors if I started to forget that.
“You okay?” he asked, narrowing his eyes at me. Bandhal was behind him, almost subservient in his stature now. In fact, the South African had been downright demure and soft spoken since I’d woken up. I suppose nearly getting someone killed before basically summoning his arch enemy to deal with the fallout can do a lot to humble a guy.
“Don’t ask me if I’m okay. We both know you don’t care. What information do you have?” I asked sternly, settling in front of him and crossing my arms over my chest.
Scott’s eyes narrowed even more. “Alright. It’s just, you look a little flustered. Like you’ve been running, or fighting, or-” A smile broke out across his face. “Oh, you were copulating.”
“Scott!” I said, shaking my head. I hated the way warlocks called sex ‘copulating’. Banging, screwing, fucking, hell-even shagging would have been more acceptable. But no, warlocks had to talk about sex like they were 18th century Quakers with the backs of their hands pressed firmly against their foreheads in shock. “Information. Now.”
The smile didn’t lessen even a little as he continued, though thankfully, he did move on to the subject at hand. “Something I heard you say while I was in the kitchen really stuck out to me.”
“Was it about you being a sonofabitch?” I asked, setting my jaw.
“No. That was pretty standard,” he replied. “It was about genies, about how you said they were very rare in this country, like leprechauns.”
“I’m listening,” I said, hesitant to soften my stance even a little. He’s a dickhead, Roy. Don’t forget that.
“I was in touch with the coven.” He raised his hand to stop my protest before it started. “Don’t worry. I didn’t tell them anything about meeting you. As far as they’re concerned, you’re still on the wind.”
“I’m sure they’re very broken up about it,” I said sarcastically, scoffing.
“That aside,” Scott went on. “I figured it was a good idea to ask them about any strange activities, people trying to smuggle unauthorized supernatural beings across mystical lines.”
“And?” I asked, my tone making it clear I wanted him to get to the meat of this story because speaking to him was paining me.
“And that was a bust. Their sensors haven’t found anything, but they did mention something else that I found to be particularly interesting.” He contorted his fingers and a glowing representation of a foreign newspaper article appeared in the air, an impressive feat of magic without any buildup. “Sorry. That’s in Arabic,” he said. Twisting his fingers again, the words morphed into English.
Show off.
The article spoke of a break in at a museum in the Middle East. Several things were stolen, including an ancient vase, an old painting, and bandages that were used to wrap an ancient pharaoh.
“Is someone trying to get the ingredients necessary for a weird, kickass spell?” I asked, reading through the article and trying to figure out just what kind of spell could be whipped up using this stuff.
“That’s what I thought at first too, but then I took a closer look,” Scott said. He twisted his fingers, and the article zoomed in on the photo of the vase. It was old as hell and had a strange swooping symbol on it. “You know what that is?”
“An ancient precursor to the Nike swoop?” Gary asked. He had settled at my feet, still presumably hesitant to climb up on my shoulder.
“Close, little man,” Scott said. “It’s a message.”
“He calls me little man. It’s kind of our thing,” Gary said to me, practically beaming. Then, looking up at me and the disapproving glare I shot back at him, he shook his head, noticeably deflating. “It’s not a big deal. It’s stupid actually. It’s not a thing. We don’t have a thing.”
“What’s the message say?” I asked, looking from Gary to Scott.
“You don’t know?” Scott mused, frowning a little. “I guess you were already gone by the time we learned this stuff. It’s a genie’s marker. It’s supposed to warn thieves away, to let them know that trouble lurks inside this vase. Or, I suppose, if that’s what you’re looking for, it could also work as the big ass ‘X’ on a treasure map.”
I bristled a little. Of course, Scott knew things I didn’t, and of course he had to make sure everyone knew he did. It was just like him.
“So, someone stole a genie along with a bunch of other artifacts,” I summed up. That… that didn’t bode well.
“Right, and those artifacts are what interest me. The painting turned up at a high end black market auction last night. The bandages are scheduled to be on the list this evening.”
“So, whoever got the genie who offed herself in the middle of my living room either owns or frequents this black market auction.” I shook my head. “What kind of auction is it, Scott?”
“The supernatural kind, of course.” He grinned. “And the kind where you need a tux. So, if you don’t have one, you’d better get one because we’re going uptown, baby brother.”
18
My blood was practically boiling as I walked along the blackened street with my brother. It
was just the two of us, which probably wasn’t the best idea in the world. Ideally, we needed a human buffer or two to diffuse the tension and whatnot.
I couldn’t really afford that now though, not when my girlfriend was the target of one of the most intense and downright strange offensives I had ever seen. She needed to stay put, shielded by my newly updated apartment wards and guarded by the only person in the world I trusted, a three-foot-tall green imp.
In retrospect, I suppose I could have brought Bandhal along, but I had my own issues with him. Even if I wasn’t still really pissed about how close he had come to killing me with his ill-timed outburst, I couldn’t risk an encore in the middle of an auction room full of supernatural creatures.
So, that left me here, intentionally walking three feet behind the person I hated the most in the world, and trying to dodge all his attempts at conversation.
Which wasn’t easy.
“I know what you’re doing,” Scott said, slowing down in an attempt to get us going the same speed.
“Well, I’m being pretty obvious about it,” I muttered, shaking my head and slowing down even more.
Two could play that game.
Flesh and Blood: An Urban Fantasy Novel (The Half-Demon Warlock Book 2) Page 10
