Ashes and Arsenic

by SM Reine

  CONTENTS

  Ashes and Arsenic

  Copyright

  About

  Dedication

  Title Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  ASHES

  AND

  ARSENIC

  A Preternatural Affairs Novel

  SM REINE

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  This book is sold DRM-free so that it can be enjoyed in any way the reader sees fit. Please keep all links and attributions intact when sharing. All rights reserved.

  Copyright © SM Reine 2015

  Published by Red Iris Books

  1180 Selmi Drive, Suite 102

  Reno, NV 89512

  SERIES BY SM REINE

  The Descent Series

  The Ascension Series

  Seasons of the Moon

  The Cain Chronicles

  Preternatural Affairs

  Tarot Witches

  War of the Alphas

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  ABOUT ASHES AND ARSENIC

  Agent Cèsar Hawke is in his element when he’s investigating magical crime. And with his boss out of town, Cèsar gets to pick which cases he works on. He’s bent on doing nothing involving demons, zombies, or fallen angels this time. Instead, he’s going to find the witch who used magic to rob a bank.

  Easy stuff. Cèsar plans to catch the perp before his boss gets home.

  But when he digs into the robbery, he finds much more than missing money. He also finds a deadly turf battle between two covens and a trail of bloody violence.

  A trail that leads directly to his brother, Domingo Hawke.

  Domingo wants Cèsar’s help taking down his enemies. Forget that Cèsar works for the Office of Preternatural Affairs, forget allegiances, forget pesky “contracts” and “conduct.” Domingo is calling in a favor and the Hawke family is too tight to refuse.

  Blood is the most powerful ingredient in any witch’s spell, after all…

  For my dudes,

  less than three.

  CHAPTER ONE

  IT WAS A HOT day in Los Angeles. The kind of day where the asphalt melted the soles of my shoes and the streets had emptied so people wouldn’t roast like pigs on a spit.

  Everyone goes a little crazy in that kind of heat. It’ll cook your brain inside your skull.

  Ask anyone at the hospital and they’ll tell you the same. When the temperature hits triple digits, bodies start hitting the floor of the emergency room fast and hard. Warfare breaks out over the dry, sunbaked streets. The hospitals and cops end up dealing with the wreckage that follows.

  I doubted that my new case had anything to do with the heat, though.

  A bank robbery was too premeditated for that.

  I arrived at the First Bank of the Sierras with the forensics team in tow. We usually didn’t get forensic support unless it was an emergency or a murder, but I was in charge of allocating resources for the week. My boss was out of town. As his aspis—sort of a magical bodyguard—Director Fritz Friederling had passed his usual duties on to me.

  If I wanted the forensics team to help me investigate, I got the forensics team. And Fritz would have to justify the expenditure when he got back. It was the best of both worlds.

  Agent Suzume Takeuchi ambled out of the bank to greet me, loafers crunching on broken glass. She gave a thin smile at the forensics team unloading their van. “Look at you, Mr. Fancy. You’ve brought a motorcade.”

  “Are you crazy? Get your ass back inside. I’ll be in there in a minute.” I wouldn’t have been outside if I hadn’t needed to cross the twenty feet between the curb and the front door of the First Bank. Five seconds without climate control and I was already choking on heat.

  “The air conditioning’s been knocked out in the bank. It’s not much cooler in there.” Suzy chucked me in the shoulder. It was meant to be a friendly gesture, but she had a way of angling those knuckles to instantly numb my arm. “Way to pick a case, Hawke. A skyscraper without AC during a fucking heat wave.”

  “It was either this or a pair of dead witches washed up in Redondo Beach. You should thank me for sticking you on this one.”

  Suzy frowned. “Who’s on the dead witches?”

  “Aniruddha.”

  “Sure you don’t want to reassign me over there? Probably more urgent.” She was wilting on the sidewalk, hair stuck to her forehead by sweat. Couldn’t blame her for wanting to bail.

  “You don’t want to work with him. He’s a creep.” Which was why I had given Aniruddha the dead witches instead of bringing him with me. I’d have been lying if I said I wasn’t enjoying the opportunity to send my coworkers running when I snapped my fingers.

  We stood under the awning as the forensics team unloaded. I didn’t feel bad watching them lift heavy boxes in direct sunlight. Their department was a hive of assholes led by their beloved queen asshole, Janet. I wouldn’t have brought them if I hadn’t needed help reducing my investigative workload.

  Suzy pulled out a Steno pad and flipped it open. She got the notebook habit from me. Sometimes low-tech is the best way to organize a case. And sometimes Suzy just liked to steal my office supplies and rub it in my face. “Sealed vault. Several containers emptied. Security tapes show nothing. No sign of brimstone or blood.”

  “And the spell residue?” There had to be residue from magic in the vault or else the case would have been kicked over to the IRD, the Infernal Relations Department.

  “The residue is faint,” Suzy said. “You’re better at picking up on that than I am, though.”

  I’d be even better than usual that day. I was allergic to magic—it made me sneeze. And I seemed to have a magical head cold this week, which was making my reactions stronger than usual. I’d almost stopped breathing from eating one of my own strength poultices that morning, and I’ve been having poultices every day for years.

  My “cold” would get better. I’d had it before and probably would again.

  In the meantime, I was going to be miserable around magic.

  I also wasn’t going to tell Suzy about it. My pride could only handle so much teasing.

  Janet led her men into the bank, each of them loaded down with metal cases. Unlike most forensics teams, they’ve got supplies specifically intended to detect, dismantle, and analyze magic. The contents of those cases were unusual. We’re talking about bone meal and mugwort and rubies-the-size-of-your-fist kind of unusual. Everything we would need to pin down the witch responsible for robbing the bank.

  And there was no doubt in my mind that we were looking at magic.

  The robbery was well within the skill set of demons, and demons do like money. At least, they like to steal money, since it’s an effective way to fuck up normal life. Chaos is a demon’s game and making wads of cash vanish always starts a shitstorm.

  The bank robbery wasn’t the work of demons, though.

  “You sound awfully confident about that,” Suzy said.

  I hadn’t realized that I’d been musing out loud. “I’m confident, yeah. This is witchcraft.”

&
nbsp; “Want to bet?”

  I stepped out of the awning’s shade, tilting my head up to look at the bank. As the main office for the First Bank of the Sierras, the branch occupied the entire tower. The windows reflected the morning sun on the road and seared my retinas. The architect must have been a sadist. He’d designed the building perfectly to channel sunlight like a fucking death ray, which was even worse in a heat wave.

  “Oh yeah,” I said, ducking back under the awning. “It’s witches.”

  “How the hell did you get that from looking at the tower?”

  I lifted an eyebrow at Suzy. “Elementary, my dear Watson.”

  Her snort was completely unladylike, which was probably the single best word to describe Suzume Takeuchi. “I’m going to say it’s a demon. Twenty bucks, and I get to slap the smug look off your face when I win.”

  “Done. Let’s look inside.”

  The manager emerged from the back room looking miserable in a tailored suit. His white hair stuck up in the back from all the sweat. Agent Bryce, the first responder to the scene, didn’t look much better. She had gotten rid of her suit jacket and the dress shirt underneath was soaked through at the armpits and collar.

  There were no other bank employees in sight. Not a single teller or desk jockey. They must have been given the day off after the robbery.

  “This is Gareth Milbourne,” Agent Bryce said.

  I shook the manager’s hand. He had a weak grip. “Pleasure to meet you. I’m Agent Cèsar Hawke. I’ll be leading the investigation.”

  “Pleased to meet you, too.” He sounded anything but.

  Sounded like the manager had a case of the Mondays.

  “How’s it looking, Agent Bryce?” I asked, turning to the stocky woman at his side. She was square all over, from her face to her body and even the buttons on her shirt. That was some subliminal self-awareness right there.

  “We don’t have a lot of answers yet. We’re still collecting information.” Which was her way of saying she had no fucking clue what was going on.

  “Well, let’s go down and take a look.” Janet and the forensics team started dragging their supplies toward the elevator, but I stopped them. “Start up here. I’ll let you know if I need you down at the vault.”

  Janet gave me a sour lemon grimace, but nodded. She didn’t have a choice. I was acting director, so I was boss.

  It was good to be king.

  Gareth had to swipe a special key card to take the elevator to the vault level. I caught Suzy eyeing it, like she was trying to decide how easy it would be to steal off of him. It was clipped to his breast pocket, so pretty easy.

  The elevator arrived at a short hallway terminating in a door that was taller than me and twice as broad. There was a security desk positioned in front of it and keypads on both sides.

  Right now, that vault was open.

  The inside was brightly lit and white all over. White shelves, a white table at the center, white floor. The polished metal drawers were so clean that they reflected our figures back to us as we approached them.

  Suzy and I fell a few steps behind Gareth to talk. “Better watch the tone you use with Janet,” she said in a low voice. “You’re acting like you’re important.”

  “Hey, I am important.”

  “Director Friederling is important. You’re important-adjacent. Like six feet from important.”

  “Actually, I’m about two hundred miles from important, since Fritz is at the semi-centennial summit right now.”

  Suzy rolled her eyes. “Just pointing out, you’ll lose authority when he comes back and Janet can make your life miserable.”

  “She already makes my life miserable.”

  “Shut your mouth, Hawke.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” I grinned. “See how humble and obedient I am?”

  “Obedient, my ass,” Suzy muttered, following Gareth into the vault.

  Mention of her ass got me watching her walk ahead of me. Not going to lie, Suzy had an amazing ass. She tried to hide in bulky suits cut in masculine lines, but there was no concealing her tiny waist, long legs, and well-shaped butt. Especially not when she wore lighter, summer-weight material.

  Thank God for heat waves.

  Suzy glanced over her shoulder to see if I was following. My eyes snapped up to the vault door. Didn’t want her to know I was checking her out—she’d have my balls for it.

  “Sorry for the temperature,” Gareth said, stopping at the security desk. “It’s usually cool down here, but the air conditioner is broken so the vents are circulating street air. We should have HVAC out this afternoon.”

  I wasn’t going to survive in the basement long enough for that to matter. It wasn’t hotter near the vault than it was on the street, but it was stuffier, which was almost worse. And the air only kept heating up as I approached the door.

  Gareth tugged on his collar, trying in vain to ventilate his suit. Through the gap, I glimpsed a gold chain and heard a faint tinkling. He was wearing charms. At least one of them was a pentacle. Like Suzy and me, Gareth was a witch.

  I bent to look at the security monitors on the desk. They were all blank. “Why did you call the OPA instead of the cops?” I asked as I clicked the mouse, seeing if I could bring the computer to life. It didn’t respond.

  “I didn’t,” Gareth said. “The bank’s owner did.”

  Semantics. “Okay, then what made the owner think that this robbery is preternatural in origin?”

  “You mean, aside from the impossible fact that our thief didn’t trigger a single alarm in the system?” It took a significant amount of strength for him to open the vault door wider. He crouched beside the hinges and pointed at the floor underneath. “There’s your smoking gun, Agent Hawke.”

  I pulled a Steno pad out of my pocket and kneeled beside Gareth. A fine white powder was piled just inside the door.

  Salt.

  Salt was the most basic ingredient involved in casting a circle of power. There was only a tiny bit on the floor—not even enough to cover my thumbnail—but Gareth was right. It was a smoking gun, especially once we factored in the lack of security footage.

  Taking notes, I stepped into the vault and checked around the edges of the walls, down low. I didn’t see any other salt. I also didn’t see any sign of herbs or oils. Whoever had cast a spell in the vault had been clean about it. Not an easy feat during a robbery that must have been performed within a few short minutes.

  “Told you,” Suzy said, quietly enough that only I’d be able to hear her. “Someone must have phased in and out to work so fast. This is demon stuff.” Phasing was a power some demons possessed. They could pop between rooms with no effort and no open doors.

  “But demons don’t cast circles of power, Suze.”

  She shrugged. “A witch with a demon escort, then.”

  “You just don’t want to pay me twenty bucks.” I stood, brushing off my slacks. “Could you close the vault for me, Mr. Milbourne? I want to watch the process.”

  “Certainly.” It was simple to close the door. Gareth had to put his shoulder into it, but it locked on its own once the door swung into place. A heavy thud told me that the prongs had settled into the wall.

  “What if someone gets trapped inside?” I asked.

  “There are cameras and motion sensors. The security guard should be able to let them out as soon as he detects their presence.”

  Suzy was standing behind Gareth where he couldn’t see her. She mouthed demon, demon, demon at me. She stopped when the manager turned around to return to the security desk.

  “I assume you want this door open again,” Gareth said.

  “Yeah, go ahead,” I said with as much seriousness as I could manage. It was hard not to laugh at Suzy.

  The process took a couple of minutes. First, there was a button on the desk that had to be pressed. Then Gareth had to give a second keycard to Suzy to coordinate opening it. “It requires cooperation from a manager and a security guard to open the vault,” Gareth expla
ined as he swiped.

  Once it beeped, he punched in a code and the door unlocked.

  “Seems secure to me,” I said.

  “Extremely.” Gareth yanked the door open with a grunt.

  I checked the holes where the door’s bolts sank into the walls. There was a weird grayish dust inside of them. “Do you guys clean much in here?” I stuck my forefinger into one of the hollows and rotated it. When I sniffed the dust, the back of my throat clenched, and I sneezed.

  That wasn’t dust. It was ash.

  I was pretty certain that it was rowan. I had it at home as a spell ingredient. Rowan trees weren’t native to Los Angeles, though.

  “We don’t clean daily, if that’s what you’re asking,” Gareth said. “As you can feel, we’re unfortunately well-ventilated. The circulating air is filtered to prevent particulates from getting in, so the custodians only sweep every other week.”

  “Your custodians. How’s the hiring process for those guys?” I rubbed my forefinger with the pad of my thumb, feeling the texture of the ash. It stained my skin gray.

  “They all get background checks and they’re always supervised.”

  I stepped into the vault again, scanning the shelves. “How much money was stolen?”

  “The bank’s owner sent everyone home as soon as she realized there was a problem, so we haven’t had a complete inventory yet. But…” His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed hard. “It looks like it’s a little over five million dollars.”

  Suzy gave a low whistle.

  Someone had somehow gotten in and out of the bank, taking five million dollars with them. And they’d done it without being seen or recorded.

  I opened myself to the energies in the vault. Considering what kind of feats the witch-thief had pulled off, I shouldn’t have been able to breathe in the vault, especially with my magical head cold.

  My eyes didn’t water, though. I didn’t even feel the urge to sneeze.

  “Damn,” I muttered. “Guess we need Janet down here after all.”

  Gareth fanned himself with papers off of the security desk. While I’d been trying to feel for magic, he’d been logging on to the workstation. “I’ll retrieve your staff and get a breath of air. Help yourself to the footage. It’s an intuitive program—even OPA agents should be able to figure it out.”