Now things made sense. This was her crusade. I should’ve seen it coming. We’d talked just before I quit the Order, and Andrea had argued against my quitting. She wanted me to stay and fight with her to change the Order for the better from within. I told her that even if I tried to change the Order, I couldn’t. I wasn’t a knight. My opinion carried no weight. But Andrea was a knight, a decorated veteran. She saw it as her chance to make her mark.
Andrea took a small sip of her coffee and coughed. “Damn, Kate, I know you’re pissed but did you have to put motor oil into my drink?”
“That was the lousiest joke I’ve ever heard you make. Stop stalling. What happened?”
She glanced up and I almost did a double take. Her eyes were hollow and bitter.
“I had one of the best Order advocates in the South. He thought there was a chance we could make a difference. There are others like me in the Order. The not-quite-pure human. I wanted to make their lives better. He advised me to separate myself from the shapeshifters, so I wrote you that letter. I was going to bring Grendel back too, but we had to leave in a hurry, so I just took him with me and went to Wolf Trap.”
Wolf Trap, Virginia. The Order’s national headquarters. Everyone knowing Andrea was a beastkin. It must’ve been pure hell.
Andrea rubbed the rim of her cup, as if trying to remove some dirt only she could see. If she rubbed it any harder, she’d make a hole in it.
“We spent a month preparing twenty-four-seven, gathering documents, pulling all of my records. My advocate spoke for three hours at the hearing and made a very passionate, logical argument in my favor. We had charts, we had statistics, we had my service decorations on display. We had everything.”
A cold feeling sprouted in the pit of my stomach, telling me exactly how this would end. “And?”
Andrea squared her shoulders and opened her mouth.
Nothing came out. She clamped it shut.
I waited.
Her face paled. She sat rigid, the mouth of her line tense. A faint reddish glow tinted her eyes—the hint of hyena sneaking through under pressure.
Andrea unclenched her teeth. Her voice came out completely flat, sifted through the sieve of her will until every last hint of emotion had been scrubbed from it.
“They awarded me Master-at-Arms and retired me due to being mentally unfit for duty. The official diagnosis is posttraumatic stress disorder. The decision is final and I can’t dispute it. I can’t even accuse them of discrimination, because my final orders don’t address the fact that I’m beastkin. They simply refused to acknowledge it, as if it weren’t an issue.”
Those fuckers. They didn’t just throw her out like a piece of garbage, they sent a message with her. If you’re not human, it doesn’t matter how good you are. We don’t want your ass.
“So.” Andrea took a deep breath and pushed the words out. “I failed.”
For Andrea the Order was more than simply a job. It was her life. She’d spent her childhood in a pack of shapeshifters who reviled her because her father was an animal and her mother was too weak to protect her. Every bone in Andrea’s body had been broken before she was ten years old. Andrea rejected all things shapeshifter. She locked that part of herself deep inside and dedicated her existence to becoming completely human, to stepping between the weak and the strong, and she was damn good at it. Now the Order had made her into a pariah. It was a monumental betrayal.
“Everything is gone.” Andrea forced a smile. Her face looked like it would shatter any second. “My job, my identity. If the cops had looked closer at my ID, they’d see it said RETIRED on it. People I thought were my friends won’t talk to me, like I’m a leper. When I came back to Atlanta, I called down to the chapter looking for Shane. He’d taken over the armory when I left. A couple of those weapons are my personal property. I want them back.”
Shane was a typical knight: no family to tie him down, top physical condition, competent, by the book. He and I didn’t get along, because he never could quite figure out where I fit into the Order’s hierarchy. But he and Andrea had hit it off. They were colleagues. Buddies even.
“How is he?” I asked.
Outrage sparked in Andrea’s eyes. “He wouldn’t talk to me. I know he was there, because Maxine took the call and you know how her voice gets all distant when she is talking in someone’s head at the same time? It was like that. She must’ve asked him if he wanted to talk to me and then she took a message. Shane hasn’t called me back either.”
“Shane is an asshole. I was riding back from a job once—it was raining so hard I could barely see—and he was jogging with his rucksack on. I asked him why. He told me that it was his day off and he was trying to take twenty seconds off his time so he could score an even three hundred on the PE scale. He has no brain of his own—he opens his mouth and the Order’s Code comes out.”
In a real fight the extra twenty seconds wouldn’t help him. I could kill him in one. Shane lacked the predatory instinct that turned a well-trained man into a killer. He treated each fight as a tournament match, where someone was totaling his points. And despite his obvious zeal, the Order recognized it, too. All knights started out as knight-defenders. The Order gave you ten years to distinguish yourself, and if you failed, at the end of your dime you became a master-defender, a rank-and-file knight. Shane clearly aimed higher than that, but he was nine years into his tenure with the Order, and Ted showed no signs of promoting him.
Andrea crossed her arms. “Shane is not the point. I don’t give a damn about Shane. He’s just the straw that broke the camel’s back. Anyway. After the hearing me and Grendel holed up in my place for a couple of weeks licking my wounds, but I can’t hide in my hole forever. And talking to the fur-face only gets you so far. Also, he eats things that are bad for him, like rugs and bathroom fixtures. He chewed a hole in my kitchen floor. In a completely flat surface.”
“It doesn’t surprise me.”
Just her and the freakishly large smelly poodle hiding in her apartment together. No friends, no visitors, nothing, just sitting there in her own misery, too proud to unload it on anybody else. It was something I would’ve done. Except now when I went home, someone was there waiting for me and he would turn the city inside out if I was more than a couple of hours late. But Andrea had nobody. Not even Raphael—she very carefully didn’t mention his name.
“I’ve got a dog-training book,” Andrea said. “It says Grendel needs mental stimulation, so I tried to train him, but I think he might be retarded. I figured you would want to see your dog eventually, so here we are. He’s probably eaten my dashboard by now.”
If she was lucky. If not, he would’ve also puked on the floor and then peed on it for a good measure. I leaned back. “So what now?”
Andrea shrugged her shoulders in a jerky, forced movement. Her voice was still a matter-of-fact monotone. “I don’t know. The Order offered me a pension. I told them to shove it up their asses. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve earned it, but I don’t want it.”
I wouldn’t have taken it either.
“I’ve got some money put away, so I don’t have to look for work right this second. Maybe I’ll take up fishing. I suppose eventually I’ll have to find something, probably in law enforcement. Just not now. They’ll do background checks and I don’t want to deal with it.”
“Would you like to work here with me?”
Andrea stared at me.
“We have no clients and the pay is shit.”
She kept staring. I couldn’t even tell if she heard me.
“Even if business were booming, I still couldn’t afford to pay you what you’re worth.” No reaction. “But if you don’t mind sitting in the office drinking motor oil coffee and bullshitting with me . . .”
Andrea put her hands over her face.
Ah crap. What do I do now? Do I say something, do I not say anything?
I kept talking, keeping my voice as light as I could manage. “I have an extra desk. If the PAD comes to shut us do
wn, I might need sniper support, and I can’t shoot a cow from ten feet. We can turn our desks over and lob grenades at them when they storm the door . . .”
Andrea’s shoulders shook slightly.
She was crying. Fuck me. I sat there, not sure what to do with myself.
Andrea kept trembling, eerily quiet.
I got off my ass and came back with a handkerchief. Andrea took the hanky and pressed it to her face.
Pity would only make it worse. She wanted to keep her pride—it was all she had left and I had to help her preserve it. I pretended to drink my coffee and stare at my mug. Andrea pretended not to be crying, while trying to mop up her tears.
For a few minutes we sat like this, awkward and grimly determined to act like nothing was happening. If I glared at this mug a moment longer, it would burst into flames from the sheer tension.
Andrea blew her nose. Her voice came out slightly hoarse. “Do you even have anything to shoot the PAD with?”
“I have an armory upstairs. The Pack gave me some guns and ammo. It’s in boxes to the left.”
Andrea paused. “In cardboard boxes?”
“Yeah.”
Andrea groaned.
“Hey, guns aren’t my thing. If they had brought me swords, that would be different. That’s where you come—”
Andrea got up and hugged me. It was a split-second hug, and then she was off, going upstairs, handkerchief in hand.
This best friend thing was seriously kicking my ass.
Upstairs something clanged.
Okay. I had to get on with the program. I took her keys from the table and went to get Grendel out of her truck before he demolished it.
CHAPTER 4
HALF AN HOUR LATER I SAT AT MY DESK, THINKING up a proper amount of money to bill Ghastek for the capture of the vampire. The vamp was now deceased, but it didn’t change the fact that I had caught it. The huge shaggy monstrosity that was Grendel sprawled at my feet. When I first found him, his fur had solidified into foul-smelling dreadlocks and the groomer ended up shaving the whole mess off. Now his fur had partially grown out and it looked like a karakul coat I once saw on one of the Guild’s upper-class clients: short, curly, and glossy black. He even smelled halfway decent.
Grendel raised his head and licked my hand. I opened the top drawer, took out an oatmeal cookie, and offered it to him. He took it very carefully out of my hand and sucked it in without chewing, as if he hadn’t been fed in a thousand years.
Over at the second desk, Andrea rummaged through a giant cardboard box she had dragged down from upstairs.
“There is a loup cage in one of the rooms,” she said.
It was the biggest loup cage I’d ever seen too, eight feet wide, eight feet long, seven feet tall. They had to bring it into the office in pieces and assemble it in the room. The steel-andsilver-alloy bars were as thick as my wrist. All Pack offices came equipped with a loup cage. The shapeshifters knew better than anyone how quickly they could snap. But since I was technically a human, Jim kept trying to find some diplomatic name for it. He thought calling it a loup cage would scare off my clients.
“It’s not a loup cage, you know,” I told her. “It’s a holding cell. Or safe room. Or secure room. I don’t think Jim ever settled on a term he could live with.”
“Aha. It’s a loup cage.” Andrea cleared her throat. “I touched it with my finger and it hurt. Is that in case of marital problems?”
“Did the Order return your sense of humor as part of the severance package?”
“Oh, burn. Burn!” Andrea hesitated. “Kate . . . Are you happy? With Curran, I mean.”
“When I can get out of my own way.”
She glanced at me. “And the rest of the time?”
“The rest of the time I’m in a state of silent panic. I’m afraid it will end. I’ll lose him. Lose Julie. Lose everyone.”
“I’ve done that,” Andrea said. “Lost everyone. It’s a bitch.”
No kidding.
Andrea lifted a black firearm, holding it as if it were covered with slime. “This is a Witness 45. It has a molding flaw on the grip right here, see? If you fire it, it will blister your hand.”
She picked up another gun. “This is a Raven 25. They haven’t made them since the early nineties. I didn’t even know they were still around. It’s a cheap junk gun. They used to call them Saturday Night Specials. You can’t put twenty rounds through it without it jamming, and the way this one looks, I wouldn’t even risk loading it. It might blow up in my hand. And this? This is a Hi-Point, otherwise known as a Beemiller.”
“Is that supposed to tell me something?”
She stared at me. “It’s like the crappiest gun out there. Normal guns cost upward of half a grand. This costs like a hundred bucks. The slide is made out of zinc with aluminum.”
I looked at her.
“Look, I can bend it with my hand.”
I’d also seen her bend a steel rod with her hand, but now didn’t seem the best time to mention it.
Andrea put the Hi-Point on the desk. “Where did you get these again?”
“They’re surplus guns from the Pack. Confiscated, from what I understand.”
“Confiscated during violent altercations?”
“Yes.”
Andrea sagged into her chair. Her blue-tipped hair drooped in defeat. “Kate, if someone used a gun against the shapeshifters and now the shapeshifters have said gun, it wasn’t a very good gun, was it?”
“I’m not arguing with you. I didn’t have a choice. That’s what was here when I moved in.”
Andrea extracted a fierce-looking silver handgun from the box. Her eyes widened. She looked at it for a moment and tapped it on the corner of her desk. The gun responded with a dry pop.
She looked at me with an expression of abject despair. “It’s plastic.”
I spread my arms at her.
Andrea tossed the plastic gun to Grendel. “Here, chew on this.”
The poodle sniffed it.
A careful knock echoed through the door.
Grendel surged to his feet and snarled, bouncing up and down.
It was probably the PAD come to shut me down. Knock, knock, let us in, we brought a court order and a howitzer . . . “Come in!”
The door swung open and a redheaded woman carrying a manila envelope stepped into my office. Tall, lean, and longlimbed, she moved like a fencer, light but sure-footed. You had a feeling that if lightning struck her, she’d lean out of the way and stab it through before it hit the ground. She wore khaki pants, a turtleneck, and a light leather vest. A leather glove hid her left hand. The long rapier on her sword belt and tall boots completed the outfit. I’d seen her before. Her name was Rene and the last time we’d met, she was running security for the Midnight Games, an illegal gladiatorial arena featuring things that went bump in the night.
Behind her two men brought up the rear. Both wore tactical vests and carried enough weapons to take on a small army and win. The man on the right was young, blond, and walked with a light spring in his step that telegraphed a seasoned martial artist. The man on the left was leaner, older, and darker, with a distinct military air and a small scar on his neck. The scar had ragged edges. Something had clawed his neck at some point, but he had lived to fight another day.
Rene’s dark gray eyes regarded me.
“I’m sorry, milady,” I said. “Athos, Porthos, and Aramis just left.”
“They said something about riding to England with d’Artagnan to retrieve some diamonds,” Andrea added.
“You two think you’re really funny,” Rene said.
“We have our moments,” I said. “Down, Grendel.”
The dog showed Rene his teeth, just in case she decided to try something funny, and lay down to gnaw on his gun.
Rene looked at Grendel. “What in the world is that?”
“That’s our mutant attack poodle,” I told her.
“Is he chewing on a gun?”
“It’s not a real gu
n,” Andrea said.
Rene sighed. “Of course not. That would be irresponsible of you, wouldn’t it?”
The older man on Rene’s left leaned to her. “This might be a bad idea.”
She waved him off.
The blond man on Rene’s right squinted at Andrea’s desk. “Is that a Hi-Point?”
Andrea turned beet red.
I leaned forward. “What can we do for the Midnight Games?”
“The Red Guard no longer works with the Midnight Games.” Rene carefully folded her long frame into my client chair. The two guys behind her remained standing. “In the aftermath of recent events, we had to answer a lot of questions and we chose to disengage from the venue.”
Translation: you ruined our fun and screwed me out of a job. “I thought you were an independent hire.”
She shook her head. “No, I’m Red Guard. Have been for the last twelve years.”
Twelve years in the Red Guard was nothing to sneeze at. “In that case, what can we do for the Guard?”
“We would like to hire you.”
Come again? “In what capacity?”
Rene folded her hands on her knee. “We’ve misplaced an item and we need it retrieved.”
“Do you know where the item is?”
She grimaced at me. “If we knew who had it, we wouldn’t need to hire you, would we?”
“So the item wasn’t misplaced, it was stolen.”
“Yes.”
Right. “Anything you say in this office is confidential, but not privileged, meaning it stays between us unless we’re hit with a subpoena. It would save all of us a lot of time if you just lay it out, so we can decide if we’ll take the job or not.”
Rene opened the envelope and shook the contents into her hand. A photograph slid into her palm. She placed it on the desk.
A man who looked to be in his early fifties stared back at me. Curly brown hair, going gray; a pleasant enough face, neither handsome nor ugly. Deep lines around the mouth. Sad eyes. He looked like he’d been gutted by life and managed to pull himself together, but some part of him hadn’t quite made it.
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