Tithes (Ava Delaney

by Claire Farrell

  Shay looked at his hands for a long time before answering. “Fine. Get on it.” He shot a glance my way. “One more thing. This hospital I mentioned? Jennifer Boyle’s boyfriend worked there.”

  “Austin Foley?” Carl said, brightening. “That’s good. Another connection. Once we find one of these people, we get them all. Great work, Shay.”

  Shay stared at him as though trying to figure out if Carl was being sarcastic or not.

  “He’s serious,” I said, trying to be helpful. “And we’ve both signed our statements. There has to be something you can do about Humans First. They’ve gotten into everything, and if they are being manipulated, they’re a danger to themselves, never mind anyone else.”

  “The Senate are putting pressure on me,” Shay admitted. “James and Mick, in particular. They’re hoping it all goes away because we can’t afford to go up against them. This whole political party scheme is going to go ahead. They’ve gotten some important backers already. We have to be careful how we react to them. If we give them enough rope, they might hang themselves for us.”

  “I don’t like them,” Moses said. “They’re the kind of people who go around brainwashing and all that.”

  “They’re not a cult,” Shay said.

  “Yet,” Carl said.

  I stood. “The Senate is going to have to agree on this. The protesters are a nuisance at best. They’ve gotten away with too much.”

  “We’re building something against them,” Shay said. “We’ll deal with them when the time is right.”

  I shrugged. “We’ll head on. Let us know if you need help, Moses. I’d rather not see a gang war on the streets.”

  We left them and headed back to the car. “What do you think?” I asked.

  “Shay’s getting secretive,” he said. “I don’t like it. The protesters shouldn’t be getting the benefit of the doubt all of the time. It’s making my skin crawl. The kids could have been hurt at the school, and I blame the protesters.”

  “But if the men escaped from a hospital—”

  “Or were busted out.”

  I nodded. “Or were busted out, then maybe the protest just drew them along. Who knows what happened to them? Or how they got that gun?”

  “Somebody set it up,” he said. “How else? But is some ancient using the protesters as a cover, or are the protesters using the vulnerable to pull the trigger?”

  “Like everything else lately, I don’t have a bloody clue.”

  Carl and I dropped into Finn’s bar on the way home to see how the mood was in the supernatural world. We already knew the human side was screwed.

  Finn waved us over when we walked in.

  “Come on,” I said. “He must have heard something.”

  Finn set drinks in front of us then pretended to clean the bar. “Ember’s been listening in. Heard a couple of things that made sense,” he said in a lowered voice.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Agitators,” he said, looking around surreptitiously. “Ages-old tactic.”

  “I’ve heard about that,” Carl said. “People stirring up shit, right?”

  Finn nodded.

  “But why?” I said.

  Finn shrugged. “Lots of reasons. Distractions, takeovers, sabotage. Agitators are useful if you want to get in people’s way.”

  “Or turn them on each other,” Carl said.

  “So where are they? Who are they?”

  “I don’t have names,” Finn scoffed. “That’s the point. Agitators are invisible. Nobody remembers who came up with the idea to storm a school and take hostages, yet they followed along anyway.”

  “Magic?” I mused.

  “Sometimes,” he said. “In this case, I’ve no idea. But I’ve heard whispers, too. Odd things that can be put down to bad feeling, or a big mouth, but with everything else going on…”

  “So we know people are causing trouble, but we’ll never find them because there’s nothing tangible to go on. Great. Story of my life.”

  “The question isn’t why,” Finn said. “But who. Who would have something to gain?”

  “It keeps pointing to a takeover,” I said. “I have no clue who it could be. The vampires have been acting weird, but not in an it’s-time-to-take-over-the-world sort of way.”

  “None of the big players have made a move,” Finn said. “Everyone’s watching, waiting. It’s like we’re holding our breaths, ready for the next thing to come along. Nobody trusts anybody else. You should know: the fae are preparing themselves.”

  “For what?” Carl asked.

  “War, maybe? We just want to be ready this time. Phoenix hasn’t told us anything, but we all feel he’s being targeted. All we can do is observe and listen and watch history repeat itself.”

  “Another takeover would destroy us,” I said. “We’re not ready. We’re just getting back on track.”

  “Some grow on the chaos,” Finn said with a shrug. “Anyway, just thought you should know the vibes we’ve been getting. It’s not idle. Ember’s sure of it, and she… has a knack for finding trouble.”

  I glanced at Carl. “Don’t we all?”

  Finn moved on to deal with a customer.

  Carl sipped his drink. “This just confirms what we already know. Trouble’s been brewing. The attack on the school is going to fuel anti-human hate, and we’re going to get stuck in the middle.”

  “Us?”

  “Look around. Dirty looks abound.”

  I scanned the room. He was right. A lot of irritation was being directed toward us. But Carl had helped the children. Why was he a target? Maybe it was me. Even the protesters had pinpointed me on occasion. I had changed everything just by shining a light on the underworld.

  “Let’s get out of here.” I considered something. “And let’s walk by the newspaper building. It’s nearby, right?”

  “Applying for a job?”

  We headed out of the bar. “Maybe you should.”

  “I have a job,” he said, preening. “It’s called being a hero.”

  I was about to laugh, but a tall, bulky man I didn’t recognise got in our way and refused to budge. Great. More trouble.

  “Humans aren’t welcome here,” he said. I wasn’t sure what manner of species he belonged to, but there was a void behind his eyes that I didn’t like.

  “Neither are Neanderthals, and yet here you stand,” I said. “Back off. We’re not your enemy.”

  “My kind used to snack on the bones of humans,” he declared, puffing out his chest.

  Carl bristled, but he kept his tone lighthearted. “That’s adorable.”

  The man lashed out at Carl, who narrowly avoided the strike. I grabbed the man’s arm and twisted it behind his back. “Nope,” I said. “Not going to happen. Now get back inside and tell your beer how much you hate us.” I pushed him away from me.

  He rubbed his shoulder, eyeing us warily, but he didn’t come after us when we crossed the road.

  “Did you see that?” Carl asked, making ridiculous chopping actions with his hands. “I moved out of the way like a ninja.”

  “Yes, dear.”

  He sobered. “This isn’t good. All of the idiots in the world are getting brave.”

  “Agitated,” I murmured. We reached the newspaper building. The lights were still on. “Wait here for a minute. I want to see somebody.” I called the reporter’s phone, but she didn’t answer. Then I saw her form pass one of the windows, so I waited for her to leave.

  “Who are we stalking?”

  “Reporter who’s been agitating matters,” I said. “I just need to know if it’s on purpose or not.”

  About ten minutes later, Áine left the building, and we followed her. She held her bag tightly, and I felt bad for scaring her. I called her name. She hesitated then walked a little faster.

  “I just want to talk,” I said. “It’s about a story.”

  “Look, I don’t—” She turned, recognised me, then backed up, almost falling over. She dropped her bag, whic
h Carl politely picked up.

  “We’re not going to hurt you,” he said softly.

  She looked at him, and I thought she relaxed a little.

  I decided to be blunt. “Are you an agitator?”

  She blinked behind her glasses. She hadn’t been wearing them at the charity event. “Excuse me?”

  “An agitator, a person who stirs up trouble, provoking people to act out,” I said. “Because there’s been a lot of acting out lately.”

  “I know,” she said in a low voice. “I was at the school.”

  “And then you wrote about it,” I said. “And somehow managed to blame it all on the supernaturals.”

  She gave me a pleading look. “You don’t understand.”

  “You’re right,” Carl said. “We don’t. Why don’t we buy you a coffee and you can tell us all about it?”

  She followed him as though she didn’t have a choice. I made a mental note to bring Carl with me more often. He was better with people than I could ever hope to be.

  We stopped in at a half-empty cafe two streets away. I got the coffees, leaving Carl to butter up the reporter. She looked calmer, but when I sat, she grew nervous again.

  “I don’t go around hurting people,” I said. “You don’t have anything to fear from me.”

  “I could be seen with you,” she whispered. “That might be… dangerous.”

  “You used to write great articles,” I said. “What happened to you?”

  She bit her lip. A rush of pink ran to her cheeks. “Maybe I grew up. People don’t want to read the truth. They want sensationalist garbage with misleading titles that they can share on social media.”

  “That’s not new,” Carl said. “So what really changed you?”

  “I did something stupid.” She lowered her voice. “And then the blackmail started. I said no—of course I said no—but money started flooding my bank account. I mean, ridiculous amounts. If anyone saw, it would look… awful. So I tried to minimise the damage, but I got caught in a web of… I’m in too deep to stop now.”

  “What exactly were you bribed to do?” I asked.

  “My job,” she said bitterly. “Report on whatever I was told to report on. Take the side of whoever I was told to take the side of. But… it’s different now. Tonight, I was told to switch sides from now on, to write glowing reports on people like you, the Senate, the school, anything publicly supernatural. And the biggest payment yet came today.”

  “I have a funny feeling that Áine’s bank balance is going to go public very soon,” Carl said. “Don’t write it,” he added. “Don’t do anything more for this person.”

  “I don’t have a choice!”

  “We can help,” I said. “Shay Whelan would love to help you. If you put it on record that you’re being blackmailed, then whatever comes out can’t touch you.”

  “Except the truth,” she said in a small voice. “I’m going to lose my job. I haven’t touched that money. I have nothing else.”

  “Be brave.” Carl took her phone to type in his phone number. “I’ll go with you to see Shay. We’ll fix this for you.”

  “Please, just go,” she said with teary eyes. “Before anyone sees us together.”

  “Then promise to call me,” he said.

  “When I’m ready,” she said after a moment. “It’s… difficult.”

  “It’ll get worse if you don’t,” he said, rising to his feet.

  I hesitated as he headed for the door. “What did you do?” I asked quietly. “The blackmail. What did you do to deserve that?”

  She winced. “Fell in love with the wrong person.”

  * * *

  I poured tea while Carl opened a tin of biscuits. Shay, Phoenix, Val, and Peter were sitting in my living room, trying to piece together everything we knew.

  “Agitators,” Phoenix said as he took a sip of his drink. “That makes so much sense.”

  “Most of what’s going on can be blamed on agitators,” Peter said. “It’s all so disconnected that this is the only answer that fits. The school, the loan sharks, protection rackets, blackmail, et cetera. None of it is a perfect picture, but with the agitators, we can discount a chunk of it.”

  The bumps on Val’s forehead sharpened a little. She shifted uncomfortably in her seat. I knew she hadn’t been able to relax since the incident at the school. “What if we discount the wrong thing?”

  “We’re looking into the reporter now,” Shay said.

  “She’s terrified of losing her job,” I said. “I pity her. You know, she’s great at the spin. Somebody should snap her up to do some good PR for a change. Any news on the guns?”

  “Nothing new,” Shay said. “We’ve heard of a sighting of Jennifer Boyle in Spain. Relations with Spain haven’t been good since we accused them of being the source of that vampire formula. Boyle is out of our reach. We still haven’t tracked down the person who assassinated the gang leader, and according to Moses, the streets are uneasy because of it. Blame’s flying in all directions.”

  “Which works out perfectly for somebody who wants to make trouble.” I sat on the arm of Phoenix’s chair. “What about traitors in the government?”

  “A civil service worker in my building was being bribed into making emergency calls disappear,” Shay said. “And while it’s mildly possible she could have had a part in the gun disappearing from evidence, she couldn’t have had any influence into the number of guards at the children’s home. Or the lack of support at the school.” He nodded at Carl. “He’s not the only one who lost his job there.”

  “So they were purposely understaffed,” Val said. “In preparation for the attack?”

  “The protesters can’t be working for a supernatural,” Peter said. “It doesn’t fit.”

  “Maybe they don’t know who they’re working for,” Phoenix said.

  “Or more likely, most of them don’t know that they’re being played.” I reached for a biscuit. “They’re so full of their agenda that they’ll accept anything that feeds into it.”

  “I’m almost certain that they’re responsible for trashing a church because it opened its doors to supernaturals,” Shay said. “The succubi brothels were also targeted, but the human customers ran them off. We’re stretched too tight to follow up on every incident.”

  “The school has closed down for the foreseeable future,” Phoenix said. “It’s safer for the children that way.”

  Peter cleared his throat. “The werewolf cub, Nick… he did a good job during the incident. Maybe…” He rubbed the back of his neck, avoiding Phoenix’s gaze. “Maybe we should give it another go with the kids.”

  Everyone in the room looked at Peter in surprise. My phone rang before Phoenix could reply, but I gave Peter an impressed smile as I answered.

  “Breslin, I have you on speaker,” I said. “Do you have it?”

  “We tracked the bank account that paid the shooter’s bail to a fake company. There are a number of them, all acting as fronts for a holding company that’s involved in quite a few properties.”

  “Such as?” Shay asked.

  “Youth clubs, charities, even health clinics,” Breslin said. “Everything is on the up-and-up on the surface, but dig a little deeper, and there are surprises.”

  “Wait. Clinics?” I looked at Phoenix. “Wasn’t the fundraiser for a clinic funded by a businessman?”

  “Declan Egan,” Phoenix muttered, looking sick. “You met him that night. He’s the one connected to the clinic.”

  “That’s not all,” Breslin said. “I kept looking, and I found a connection to that abandoned building you searched. The baby’s birth place has been bought and sold a number of times by fake companies, all of them under the control of this holding company. Whoever owns the building doesn’t want anyone to know they own it. The most recent purchase was a week ago.”

  “How sure are you on this?” Shay asked.

  “The paperwork led me on a long and winding path with plenty of dead ends and red herrings, but the e
vidence is there all the same—if you know where to look.” Breslin paused. “Whoever is in charge of this holding company has a lot to answer for—fraud and tax evasion at the very least. If they are not responsible for the crimes you’re looking into, then they are helping the person who is. I’m certain there is more dirt to be found.”

  “Thanks for that,” I said to Breslin. “Find out whatever you can on Declan Egan. Confirm that he owns the company or is linked to it. Might be nothing.” Might be everything.

  “Be careful, Ava,” Breslin said. “There’s a lot of money involved in this, and a lot of covering of tracks. But nobody can keep their fingers completely clean if they play in the dirt.” He hung up.

  I looked around the room. “What do you all think?”

  “That can’t be right,” Shay said. “Declan Egan has a hand in the funding of a lot of the Senate’s enterprises.”

  “So the Senate will be slow to act against him,” Phoenix said.

  “But he’s human,” Carl said. “Say he personally bailed out Boyle. So what? Maybe he knows her.”

  “Boyle’s boyfriend was likely responsible for setting inmates loose from a facility partially funded by Egan,” Shay said in a strained voice. “Somehow, they’re linked to a number of recent events. I find it hard to believe that the protection racket and the loan sharks are not connected.”

  “The loan sharks used magic,” I said. “Not well, so I don’t know what that means, but Egan’s human. Then again, so are most of the people involved.”

  “Whoever took the baby used magic,” Phoenix murmured. “And this same company is involved with the building the witches sent us to. I don’t trust in coincidences.”

  “It would take a lot of money and effort to find so much information on us, to come up with a blacklist, and to actually blackmail so many people,” Val said. “Egan’s rich enough to fund that.”

  “But why?” Carl said. “What does he gain from it all?”

  “Maybe he’s working as the face of something ancient,” Peter said.

  “Could be blackmail again,” Val said.

  “I’ll dig into him,” Shay said. “Find out whatever I can.”