11
Daniel shook himself. He’d half expected to see his prime suspect here, but it wasn’t supposed to go down like this.
She wasn’t supposed to move in slow motion as if they were starring in their own personal chick flick, the part where the hero sees his dream girl across the room.
Eileen strode down the middle of the room toward him, cutting right through the fracas on the dance floor. But not even one of those raging dipsomaniacs so much as touched her. Instead, the crowd parted like she was Moses and it was the fucking Red Sea.
His breath caught as the light sparked off the red highlights in her dark hair. Her ridiculous curves shifted fluidly in their black leather casings. Unbidden, the image of a black panther stalking its prey flashed through his mind.
He forced himself to take his hand off his piece as she smirked, leaning with her elbows back on the bar.
“I think you’re in the wrong place, Detective Romero.”
Her throaty voice was low, but for some reason Daniel had no problem understanding her over the loud music. It was as if her voice could cut through the din—like it was wired directly to the nerve endings in his ear.
Daniel sipped his beer, adjusting his grip so his now-sweaty palms wouldn’t drop the glass. “If you’re here, Ms. Knight, then I’m in the right place. Especially since it’s just steps away from where I got into a firefight earlier today,” he said pointedly.
Her eyes widened. “A firefight, you say? What an exciting life you lead, Detective. But surely you don’t think anyone here had something to do with that?”
She waved at the clientele as if they were all sitting down to a formal tea instead of moshing in a pit like maniacs.
He raised his drink in a silent toast. “Well, until I saw you here, I was thinking this place was a dead end. Now I know better.”
It was no less than the truth. His skin was starting to itch, his cop sixth sense going crazy. The music didn’t help. It was blending with the club’s noises, confusing him. Was someone banging on a drum? That wasn’t part of this song, was it?
No, it wasn’t part of the recording. He couldn’t make out who was doing it in the general gloom, but combined with the smokiness in the room, it was starting to give him a headache.
He spun around to surreptitiously rub his eyes. Oddly, looking at the hot bartender only made it worse.
Eileen leaned in closer. “I really think you should leave now, Detective, before the proprietor has you thrown out.”
Daniel scowled. “It’s agent, not detective. And this is a bar—a public space. I have every right to be here.”
Her head drew back, her eyes flicking to the back of the room where a group of men was starting to push and shove each other. The beat changed, and the crowd swelled like a shifting sea.
“Actually, you don’t,” she corrected in her best English schoolmarm voice. “It’s a private club. It is not open to the public. Under normal circumstances, you would have been stopped at the door, but the bouncer must have been taking a break.”
Now he was irritated. “I’m conducting an investigation,” he said. “And this isn’t some country club or posh society cabaret. I mean check out the people on the dance floor. They’re just this side of—”
She poked him hard in the side. “I know the music is loud, but don’t let that fool you. Some of these folks have excellent hearing. They don’t like strangers, and they really don’t like cops. Come back tomorrow with a warrant. Because that the only way anyone here will talk to you.”
The woman had the gall to begin nudging him toward the door.
Daniel’s head was spinning now, his eyes tearing, but he would be damned if he let his prime suspect give him the bum’s rush.
“As much as I’m enjoying your hands on me, I’m not going anywhere so you can just stop that now.”
“You’re enjoying this?” She gave him another hard nudge, enough to make his shoes slide across the floor several feet. “You may not realize this now, but I’m trying to help you, Agent Romero.”
Daniel sidestepped her grasp, wondering how the hell she’d propelled him so far. She hadn’t even put her weight behind the move. Eileen Knight was half a head shorter than him, and weighed a buck twenty-five soaking wet. How was she this strong?
A group of four enormous, foul-smelling men broke away from the dance floor. He had a confused impression of horns and teeth. One of the men roared a bestial racket that made Daniel’s ears vibrate. A wave of foul air rushed over him, stinking worse than that corpse flower he went to see at the botanical gardens last year.
“I smell human.”
“The hell you can,” he snapped, holding his sleeve to his face to block out some of the stench. “What you smell is the very real and pressing need to shower.”
Eileen laughed, seemingly unfazed by the fetid stink. “Now, boys, you don’t really want to disturb my guest, do you?” she asked, standing in front of him as if she were going to somehow stop them.
The man in front of her grunted something that vaguely sounded like words, releasing another wave of that rotting stench.
Daniel couldn’t help himself. Bending over, he gagged.
He held on to the legs of a barstool to keep from toppling over. “Ugh. This is worse than that time I pulled a three-month corpse out of a barrel. Seriously, what have you been eating?”
An unintelligible growl was the only response. It must have been Slavic—it was all guttural rumbles and clicks. Despite Daniel’s supposed expertise in over half-a-dozen languages, he couldn’t make a damn thing out.
Unbelievably, Eileen responded to him in kind. Daniel watched, fascinated, holding the cuff of his shirt over his nose as she slapped them down with an attitude a person had to be born with to get away with.
The entire bar crowd was watching them now. Most of them seemed strangely affected by Eileen’s words. Some even backed away or hugged the wall, but the trio in front of them was unfazed.
“Serin, get him out of here,” a man behind them hissed. “These are mountain trolls. They don’t have enough brain cells between them to know not to mess with you.”
Daniel pivoted to see that a young bearded man had joined the blonde behind the bar. Like her, he was model perfect and dressed like he was about to shoot the cover of Hipster’s Weekly.
His head was really starting to pound now. It was also starting to play tricks on him.
“Do you hear hoofbeats?” he asked Eileen, spinning back around. It almost sounded like he was standing next to a mounted patrol in the park. But that made no sense at all. He was indoor for fuck’s sake.
Behind him, the long rows of bottles behind the bar rattled. Daniel frowned. The female bartender was the only one anywhere near the bottles, but even if she’d bumped the bar, it shouldn’t have rattled like that.
The blonde was staring at his scowling face like she’d forgotten to breathe. His lips parted to reassure her that everything was going to be fine, but the male bartender gave her a little shove. The girl dived behind him, effectively hiding from his view.
But not my ears…
Every time she moved, Daniel heard hoofbeats. “What kind of heels is that woman wearing?” he muttered under his breath.
The male bartender made a choking sound. “Serin,” the man pleaded.
Rapid movement made Daniel jerk back to the audience. A wave of unwashed flesh rushed forward, threatening to crash down on him and Eileen.
Daniel tensed, a split second from running in front of her, but a blinding pain forced him to his knees. Stunned, he stared down at the glass and liquid raining from his shoulders. It smelled like fermented honey. Had he been hit with a bottle of mead?
Darkness warred with his will to stay conscious. The scene receded as he slumped against the bar. The distant sounds of a fight roused him. He blinked, his hazy mind registering the full-blown battle raging around him.
Eileen was in the thick of things, landing a roundhouse kick that took down a
man three times her size.
Daniel’s last feeling before passing out was vindication. I knew it was her in the alley.
“Get off me, you rancid Yak turd,” Kerrick swore, shoving away the last mountain troll still standing.
The troll stumbled closer, giving Serin the opportunity to deliver one last punch to the head, finally knocking it out.
“Hell,” she huffed, breathing hard. “It’s been forever since I fought any of these. I forgot how much it took to put one down—and how much they smell! I’m going to have to have this outfit dry-cleaned before I wear it again.”
She raised an arm to smell where one of the trolls had caught hold of her sleeve. “Or maybe I’ll just throw it out.”
The bar was nearly empty now. Funny how a pitched battle between an Elemental and a trio of mountain trolls could do that.
Serin stepped back, nearly tripping on the prone figure of Agent Romero. “Son of a—what happened to him?”
She had been too busy with the trolls to check on him, but when he hadn’t leapt into the fray, she’d assumed he’d been smart enough to stay out of it. Kneeling, she checked his pulse.
“Good,” she said, relaxing. He was still breathing.
“What do you think happened to him?” Kerrick cried, retreating behind the bar. “I broke a bottle of my best mead over his head when Cincy’s glamour started to break down.”
“You did what?”
Serin grabbed the unconscious man’s head, turning him to the light to check his injuries.
There was a bump on the back of his head. It was the size of an egg and growing. Shit. Agent Romero’s blue and red aura was flaring white at the edges like a strobe light. She tensed, but her touch soothed him, slowing the flashing.
The blow to the head had been a shock to his system and he was going to have a hell of a headache when he woke, but, fortunately for him, Romero had a very hard head. He would recover.
She glared at Kerrick. “You could have killed him.”
Dropping his glamour, the goblin ran a hand through his bright pink hair. “Better that I had. He’s seen too much. Worse yet, he could understand some of it. He even heard Cincy’s hooves against the wooden floor. That’s too damn perceptive for a human. He’s dangerous to let live—unless you’ve changed your mind about having him taken up for the Hunt.”
Kerrick reached for Romero’s shirt collar, hauling him up to a seated position. The agent’s head lolled, smacking against the bar.
“For the Mother’s sake, watch his head,” Serin nudged the bartender out of the way. “I told you, I won’t hand him over to the Seelie Court.”
“But he can see through glamours!”
“Almost. He can almost see through them,” she hedged. “And of all people, you know what being conscripted to the Great Hunt means—what it does to a man, human or not. You’re just freaking out cause it’s your bar. If he’d walked into another tonight, you wouldn’t be so trigger happy.”
“Well, he didn’t walk into another, did he? He walked into my place, and now look at it.” He waved at the flotsam. “It’s wrecked.”
“So bill the mountain trolls—or better yet, bill me. I can afford the repairs, but Romero is out of bounds.”
She reached down, grabbing the unconscious man’s arms. After hauling him over her shoulder, she started heading out the front door.
Reasserting his glamour, Kerrick followed her, leaving Cincy to start on the mess inside.
“I’m obviously not going to bill you,” he muttered, trailing her sullenly.
Inhaling deeply to find a smidgen of patience, she rearranged Romero so she could reach into her pocket. After fishing out a few gold galleons, she tossed them at the goblin. “I picked those up off the coast of Ecuador. Take them to a dealer for the historical value. You’ll get more from that than if you make a deal for the metal alone. It’s more than enough to cover the damages.”
He fingered the coins, jiggling them before grimacing and slipping them into his pocket. “Bollocks. You make it hard to argue with you Serin.”
She set her charge down in the alley by the dumpster, taking care not to jostle his head any more than she had too.
“If he remembers—” Kerrick began.
“He won’t.” She rifled through her bag, retrieving a small knotted string from her bag. Squinting at it, she glanced at Romero, weighing it in her hands.
“What is that?”
“A memory charm.”
“C’mon, Serin. Every dime-store practitioner has a drawer full of those. They never work.”
“This one was made by an expert in the craft.”
“Who?”
“My mother.” She fingered the string, then undid two of the knots. There was no need to erase more than a day’s worth of the man’s memories. Going back to just before the firefight would do.
Kneeling, Serin tied the string to the man’s wrist. It tightened automatically, melting and fusing to the body with an iridescent glow before it disappeared completely, leaving no trace on the surface of his skin.
Kerrick whistled, craning his neck as the magic was effortlessly absorbed.
“That should do it,” she said, rubbing his skin to make sure nothing remained. “He won’t remember finding this place, but you’re going to have to pick up shop and set Dionysia somewhere else for a while. I suggest Poland.”
The goblin sniffed. “You don’t have to tell me twice. It’ll be a cold day in hell before I park the club anywhere near Detroit.”
He turned to the door, but hesitated. “Hey…I don’t suppose you have any more of those strings in that little bag? I’d pay a premium, of course. It’d be handy for the troublemaking trolls, you know, to make them forget they ever came by.”
“Nice try. Knowing you, you’d use it to make your wealthier patrons forget they’d paid their bar tab. Or a comely nymph would conveniently forget she had a boyfriend around you.”
Kerrick did a good imitation of being affronted. “I’d never do that,” he said, crossing his arms.
Serin raised an eyebrow.
“Well, I wouldn’t do it to you, anyway,” he said.
“You forget my mother made these. It won’t work on me, or any one of my line.” Her Elemental sisters were safe from the charm’s influence as well.
The goblin shrugged. “Can’t blame a guy for trying. Although, come to think of it, one of those would be useful if any more human hunters get wind of this place,” he added, nudging Romero with the toe of his boot.
“I don’t think you have to worry about that,” she said, standing to take her leave. “Something tells me a hunter as skilled as Agent Romero is a rare breed. You won’t have to worry about him after this. My mother’s charms have never failed—not once. He won’t remember anything when he wakes up.”
12
Daniel got on his hands and knees, feeling the wall for edges that could disguise a doorway. “I’m telling you it was right here.”
Ray was watching him with a placidly patient expression, but the skin around his eyes was tight. “Sure it is, buddy.”
Daniel scrambled to his feet. “There was a hidden doorway here. They must have had a light embedded in the wall because when I passed through, this crazy design glowed like neon. It actually blinded me for a second. When my eyes stopped burning, there was a big nightclub full of people inside.” He threw up his hands. “And the music was loud. Half the block should have been able to hear it.”
His partner winced. “I’m not saying there wasn’t a door and a club. What you describe has too much detail to be a dream, but you took a bad blow to the head. You’re confused and with good reason. I’m surprised you’re on your feet at all.”
Daniel shook his head, but then regretted it immediately. He shut his eyes, breathing through his nose until the pounding pain receded.
“Granted I’m a still a little muddled,” he admitted, putting his hand behind his back to hide a tremor. “But this isn’t some intense hallucinat
ion or anything like that. I remember everything that happened up until I got knocked out.”
He was starting to sound plaintive, as if he were begging or badgering Ray into believing him.
“I’m not saying it didn’t happen. You convinced me in the car on the way down, but the actual club has to be somewhere else. There’s no glowing door here, and the rooms on the other side of the wall are just overflow storage for the local book press.”
Ray kicked the wall. “There’s never been a club in this alley or anywhere on this street. It’s all hipster-owned wannabe mom-and-pop shops. This whole area is gentrified up the ass. It’s worse than Portland.”
Daniel straightened, putting his hands to his aching head. “I know it was here,” he said, but even he was starting to doubt himself.
He studied his surroundings, knowing he was right. The alley was exactly like the one from his memory—length and shape. Even the graffiti and the trash were the same. When he glanced down to the street, his adrenaline surged.
“Wait. I can prove it.” He pointed down the mouth of the alley. “I took fire from an unknown shooter right around the corner. The locals made a full report. Check the address with them if you don’t believe me.”
Ray shrugged, still confused. “I already did, which is why I brought you back out here instead of taking you to the hospital like I should have.”
“I told you, I’m fine,” Daniel lied, slowing down to avoid jostling his head any more than he had to.
“Yeah, you look it,” Ray drawled. “After this, I’m taking you in to get your head scanned.”
Fuck. Was Ray right? Daniel rubbed his wrist. Like his head, it had been bugging him all day, ever since he woke up in the alley. It wasn’t painful exactly—just sensitive. And every time he touched it, he could see Eileen in his mind.
“The bartender called her something else,” he murmured, little fragments drifting back. Daniel turned to Ray. “He called her Serin.”
“Who called who what?”
The Elementals Collection Page 66
