Beta

by Reine, SM

  The clerk handed the phone to her. Deirdre headed across the street to the skate park before activating it.

  She had taken care to memorize Rylie’s phone number instead of writing it down. Stark had found the page she’d stolen from him in her bedroom, so obviously he was doing searches whenever he felt like it. Deirdre couldn’t have anything physical that might betray her loyalties.

  She chewed on the inside of her cheek as the phone rang.

  Finally, it connected.

  “Deirdre?” Rylie sounded weirdly hopeful, considering their last contact had been when Deirdre told her that Gage was dead.

  “Yeah, it’s me. Just checking in.” Deirdre scanned the surrounding crowd. All unfamiliar faces, mostly teenagers, and few shifters.

  “What happened last night?”

  “Stark released someone from solitary confinement. A member of his pack.”

  “So it wasn’t meant to make a statement this time?” Rylie asked.

  Deirdre gave a dry laugh. “He’s always making a statement. But that wasn’t the sole reason, no. He was rescuing someone named Vidya. Do you know who she is?”

  “I can look her up.”

  It seemed unfair that Rylie didn’t recognize Vidya’s name. The woman was dangerous enough that she had been locked into a closet, dwelling in her own filth, yet not important enough to be a blip on the Alpha’s radar.

  “What’s up with the news channels?” Deirdre asked.

  “You mean the fact you’re not on them? That’s us,” Rylie said.

  Hearing it confirmed didn’t make Deirdre feel any better. She shut her eyes, leaning back on the park bench. “You shouldn’t have that power.”

  Rylie sounded distracted. “We can’t have Stark causing pandemonium by unleashing convicts and bragging about it on the news. We’ve got standing takedown notices with all the usual social media sites to keep his videos from getting out, and—”

  “A lot of those convicts were non-violent drug offenders. Did you know that? People who were arrested for possession of lethe. Or people who stole from the gas station down the street three times and ended up getting put away for life.”

  The silence from the other side of the line wasn’t exactly inspirational.

  Deirdre pushed on.

  “I don’t think it’s fair to destroy lives for petty crimes,” she said. She wished she could have seen Rylie’s expression. “Do you think that’s fair?”

  “It’s not my law,” Rylie said softly.

  “No, it’s the law of your best friends at the Office of Preternatural Affairs.”

  “Secretary Friederling has reasons for setting things up the way he did. The statistics surrounding violent offenses performed by preternatural drug users—”

  “But that’s not what got them put away,” Deirdre said. “A lot of it’s possession, not assault or whatever.”

  “I’m sorry. I know the glacial pace of legislation must be incredibly frustrating, but there’s nothing we can do at the moment that we aren’t already working on.” Rylie’s tone became gently cajoling. “That’s also not exactly an emergency.”

  Deirdre shut her eyes, took deep breaths, counted to ten.

  She was only supposed to call the werewolf Alpha when something urgent was happening, not because she was angry about the law. Deirdre was always angry about the law. Nothing urgent there.

  “Brianna,” Deirdre said. “Did you get me a time?”

  “Yes. You can meet her today, actually. She’s in town. Do you have a pen?”

  Her heart skipped a beat. “Sure.” She didn’t actually plan on writing the address down. She’d have to memorize it.

  Rylie read off an address, and then said, “I’ll tell her that you’re coming at twelve thirty. Should give you guys plenty of time to talk before Brianna heads out of town for the night.”

  Deirdre almost thanked her, but she sealed her lips against it.

  She had given up so much for Rylie. Deirdre was the one who should be on the receiving end of the gratitude.

  “Do you know what Stark’s doing with the convicts?” Rylie asked. “He took a lot more people than this Vidya.”

  “For now? Mostly he’s letting them stink up our hideout. I don’t know what happens next. I’d guess that they’re an army, but I’m just guessing. He’s not telling me anything.”

  “If he does attempt to use them as an army, I have new enchantments and new guards,” Rylie said. “I’ll be prepared for him next time.”

  “Safe in your ivory tower,” Deirdre said. “Unlike me. Unlike Gage.”

  “God, Deirdre,” Rylie said. Her heartbreak poured out in those two words, and Deirdre immediately felt guilty for saying it.

  “Sorry,” she muttered. The phone call needed to end. They weren’t going to be able to talk about anything constructive at that point, not once Gage’s name came up. “I’ll talk to you later.”

  Deirdre hung up.

  She pulled the SIM card out of the phone and broke it before tossing everything into the trash.

  When Deirdre returned to No Capes, it looked even more dismal than usual. Niamh had been spending more time at the asylum and less at her comic book store/apartment, and it showed. The front window was so dirty from passing cars spraying mud on it that no light could enter. The sign on the door was permanently turned to “closed.” The air smelled musty, like nothing lived there except a lot of old comic books.

  Niamh was fixated on her video editing program when Deirdre entered, bell over the door jingling.

  “Lock it behind you, Dee,” she said without looking up.

  Deirdre did. The deadbolt settled into place with a heavy click. “Isn’t your basement supposed to be accessible to Stark’s people and the sidhe at all times?”

  “Usually,” Niamh said, “but they can knock. Pull up a chair. I want you to watch what I’ve got so far.”

  Deirdre couldn’t “pull up a chair.” There was no room between Niamh’s shelves for chairs. She settled onto one end of the busted green couch by the cash register.

  Niamh turned her laptop around so Deirdre could see it and then hit play.

  The green screen behind Stark had been replaced with an American flag. Not the new one with the crescent moon, but the old one with fifty stars and thirteen stripes.

  Colette had done a good job on Stark’s makeup. She’d emphasized his features and gotten rid of the shine. She might have even managed to do it without getting her nose broken by Stark.

  “Your Alpha continues to deceive you,” he said. “Rylie Gresham pretends that she cares about all shifters.”

  The video cut to a scene from one of Rylie’s recent speeches. She was shown in harsh grayscale, and the effect made her look much more menacing than she usually would.

  “But she doesn’t. For the last ten years, the Office of Preternatural Affairs has been expanding its illegal prisons and detaining gaeans for minor offenses without due process.”

  “Due process,” Niamh mimicked in a deep voice.

  Deirdre shot a sideways look at her. There was no sign of injury on her face now. “You okay?”

  “Just keep watching.”

  She watched.

  The video kept going, flashing from Rylie one moment to footage of Vidya the next. They had taken pictures of the woman fresh out of the detention center. She looked just as skinny and filthy as she had when Deirdre removed her from solitary confinement.

  Then Niamh cut to short clips of some of the prisoners.

  “I stole money to feed my family,” said one man.

  Another cut.

  “I defended my home against an OPA search and was arrested,” said a woman.

  Another cut.

  “It wasn’t hurting anyone. I just wanted one more hit. That’s all.”

  And then another, and another.

  The anger that had been smoldering in Deirdre for weeks was starting to choke her. Her fists clenched in her lap.

  “Rylie Gresham is responsible
for all shifters, but she’s let the Office of Preternatural Affairs torture our kind,” Stark said. “She doesn’t deserve the honor of being Alpha. And there’s no telling what she’ll do next if we allow her dictatorship to continue.”

  That was where the video ended.

  Deirdre’s eyes were hot. She rubbed the back of her hand over them.

  “I need some kind of transition out,” Niamh said, leaning in close to her computer and clicking through menus. “Some kind of music or something. But what do you think so far?”

  She had to clear her throat before she could speak. “It’s good. Yeah, you’ve done a good job on it.”

  Niamh beamed. “You think?” She looked so happy—and so unaffected by the material she was editing. “The interviews were my idea. Andrew helped me shoot them.”

  “Nice touch. Humanizes the movement.” Maybe a little too well. Deirdre swallowed hard, fighting down her urge to laugh or cry—she wasn’t sure which. “Don’t you think the old American flag is a little heavy handed?”

  “I’ll put something else back there,” Niamh said. “It’s a placeholder. What do you think? Forest or city or what?”

  The front door shook as someone tried to open it. When that failed, a fist pounded against the frame.

  Sudden adrenaline burned through Deirdre. She drew her gun.

  But Niamh laughed. “Relax, Dee. People do come by the store sometimes.”

  “Really?” Deirdre asked. “Like, customers? People buying stuff from you?”

  Her cheeks turned pink. “Not exactly.”

  Niamh unlocked the front door and opened it. Deirdre only had a moment to holster her Ruger again before a man entered.

  He was skinny, redheaded, and heavily freckled. His stooped shoulders made it look like he’d spent the last ten years living in a computer chair, while the pasty skin suggested that computer chair was somewhere lightless. The side of his left hand was shiny and smooth where it had rubbed against too much paper.

  Deirdre didn’t need an introduction to know that she was about to meet Niamh’s comic book artist boyfriend.

  “Hey, there,” he said before kissing Niamh deeply, bending her backwards with the force of it. She giggled and melted against him, wrapping her leg around his.

  He looked nothing like Gage, and yet a hint of bitter envy writhed within Deirdre’s heart at the sight of them together.

  Niamh didn’t seem to be in a hurry to come up for air. Her arms twined around the artist’s neck. She was tall for a woman, but her boyfriend was even taller, and the two of them looked like a pair of wire hangers getting all tangled up together.

  Deirdre cleared her throat. “Hi.”

  The artist dropped Niamh quickly. “Oh, hi. Sorry. I’ve never seen anyone else in here before.” He hesitated, then held a hand out as if to shake, before pulling it back again just as quickly. “I’m Kristian.”

  “Deirdre,” she said, giving him a little wave.

  “This is my boyfriend, Dee.” Niamh was still coiled around him, like a vine trying to climb a tree. “He’s the penciler on all the Godslayer comics. Can you believe it?”

  Oh yeah, Deirdre could believe it. “That’s really neat. I’m honored to meet you.”

  “Deirdre, you said?” He chuckled nervously. “Niamh has told me about you. She didn’t say that you’re so…”

  “Grungy?” Deirdre suggested. It had been so long since she’d felt safe showering at the asylum that she’d been forced to tie her hair back under a bandana, and she didn’t even want to guess what some of the stains on her jeans might have been.

  “I was going to say pretty, but I’m afraid of Niamh’s reaction,” Kristian said.

  It was probably supposed to be flattering that Kristian had called her pretty, but some disgruntled little troll inside of Deirdre recoiled. Between Gage, Stark, and Bowen’s wandering fingers, she would have been perfectly happy for no man to speak to her ever again, much less compliment her.

  “It’s okay. My girl is very pretty. Just as long as you remember who the Godslayer fan is here.” Niamh stroked a fingernail along his neck.

  “I’d never forget.” Kristian pulled his messenger bag around in front of him, extracting a large envelope. “In fact, I got back the colored pages today, and I thought you’d—”

  “Yes!”

  Niamh snatched it away from him with a squeal, leaping over the couch and darting to the cash register. She kept all her Godslayer comics in a lockbox back there. The area resembled a holy altar.

  Deirdre couldn’t help but laugh. She sauntered over to Kristian’s side. “Sorry about Niamh. She’s always been like this.”

  “No apologies necessary. I know what I’ve gotten into with her and she’s worth every ounce of it.” Kristian cocked his head. “You look familiar. Do I know you?”

  “No,” Deirdre said curtly.

  It must have come out sharper than she intended, because he actually took a step back. “Oh, huh. One of those faces, I guess.”

  The problem was that he might have recognized her. Deirdre had been on the news alongside Everton Stark after they took hostages at a benefits office in Pennsylvania, and that video had been played on repeat for days after the incident. It had practically elevated them to celebrity status.

  If Kristian didn’t recognize her yet, it was only because she wasn’t pointing a gun at him.

  “This is amazing, boo,” Niamh said, carefully extracting the pages of the Godslayer comic. “You did an amazing job. Again. Of course, you always do an amazing job.”

  “And you want me to go away so you can read it?” Kristian asked.

  She grinned. “I love you.”

  He leaned over the counter to kiss her, and Deirdre glared fixedly at the floor, trying not to hear all the lip-smacky noises. They slurped wetly. It was disgusting.

  “See you this weekend?” he asked in a husky, we’re-totally-going-to-have-sex kind of voice.

  Niamh only responded with a distracted grunt. The instant they stopped kissing, she had started reading, and comic books outranked men any day. Even the geekiest of men.

  Kristian waved at Deirdre on his way out the door.

  “Nice to meet you,” he said.

  She glared at him.

  The door swung shut with another jingling of the bell. Deirdre got up to lock it behind Kristian, but she stopped when her eye caught the clock on the wall.

  It was almost noon. Rylie had said that Brianna would be expecting her at twelve thirty.

  “I’m hungry. I think I’m going to get lunch,” Deirdre said, grabbing her jacket off the hook by the front door.

  “Want company?” Niamh asked without looking up from her comic book. Now that she had the next issue of Godslayer from her artist boyfriend, she wasn’t going anywhere until she’d pored over every single panel at least a dozen times.

  “Nah, I know you’re busy. Don’t forget to upload Stark’s video while you’re enjoying your new comic.”

  Niamh clicked a couple of buttons on her laptop and then went back to reading. “Get me a panini while you’re out?”

  Deirdre doubted there were any paninis where she was going. “I’ll get one if I walk past a place selling them.”

  “There’s money in the coffee can under the window,” Niamh said. “They sell awesome paninis at Brucey’s two blocks down.”

  Grabbing a handful of cash, Deirdre headed outside.

  Clouds were moving in again, cooling the hot summer air. Looked like it was probably going to rain soon. At the moment, though, the air was still and heavy, pressing down on the city like a warm fist.

  The storm drains echoed with the roar of water as Deirdre hurried past them. It was already raining somewhere else.

  She could deal with rain for the sake of meeting Brianna.

  Her heart was pounding like she was under attack—a familiar sense of adrenaline at this point. The fear was almost choking. But her fear wasn’t for her life this time. It was for what she might learn w
ith Brianna. The witch who could identify the species of any shapeshifter she met, as long as she had met one before.

  Deirdre was going to find out who she was.

  Finally.

  —V—

  The asylum felt distant as Deirdre hurried toward the address that Rylie had given her. Everything she had done was about to pay off. Joining Stark, meeting Gage, losing Gage, losing herself—it was all going to be worth it, just as soon as she spoke to that witch.

  Even with her dizzying fear and excitement, Deirdre watched the sidewalk behind her reflected in the storefronts she passed. Watching for tails had become habit.

  Stark didn’t seem to trust his Beta. There was always someone following her these days. Even when she left on one of the errands he assigned her, like picking up a delivery of drugs from one of his various contacts, he made sure that she was followed.

  He might have made Deirdre his right hand, but he still didn’t trust her.

  It was easy to spot the guy Stark had sent after her this time. It was Andrew, the lion shifter who weighed about as much as the animal he could turn into, and with just as much body hair. He was a surprisingly nice guy, considering that he’d volunteered to join them mostly out of cowardice.

  He was also no good at following Deirdre unseen. The big hat and sunglasses did nothing to conceal his clumsy gait.

  She hoped that he didn’t have that stupid video camera on hand again.

  He moved among a larger crowd, populated largely by mundane humans. Even in the faintest reflections, Deirdre could distinguish mundanes from shifters. It was advertised in the way they moved. People might as well have tattooed their gaean status on their foreheads because they were so obvious about it.

  There was only one other shifter behind her, who wore a hooded jacket and big square sunglasses—some guy trying to make himself look like a badass. He probably would have strutted around the city in his animal form if it had been legal. He clearly liked flashing his power around to watch people cower in front of him.

  There were tons of losers like that in New York. More and more every day, it seemed.