Michael shook his head. “It’s not enough, Cass. I need you to keep at it, Mickey.”
Mickey blinked her eyes a few times and blew out a breath. “Whew. Yeah, sure, um… this is… this is harder to do than I thought it would be.”
She settled herself a bit, and then closed her eyes again. Everyone in the room stared at her, staying still, keeping quiet, waiting for something, anything.
“Oh, please,” she finally said. “He’s checking himself out in the mirror now. Doing little poses in his suit. What an egomaniac.”
“Stick with him,” Michael said.
“Let’s not push her too far, Michael,” Cass said. “It’s the first time she’s ever done this.”
“We have a location on him,” Dread said.
“We need more,” Michael said. “It’s not enough.”
“Hang on, hang on,” Mickey said, holding up a hand. “Someone else is coming into the apartment. He’s walking over to… it’s… it’s her. It’s her!”
“Kel?” Cass said.
“Yeah. Yeah, it’s Kel!”
“Are you sure?” Michael asked. “You need to be absolutely certain, Mickey.”
“I’m sure, I’m sure! She’s… she’s there, she’s saying something about… I don’t know, something is secure. And there’s…. they’re meeting someone, tomorrow. Fly doesn’t sound like he wants to do it. Too public, too dangerous, why are they doing it, that kind of stuff.”
“Kel has more conspirators?” Michael said.
“No idea,” Cass said. “She didn’t strike me as the team player type. More like the ‘bend to my will or die’ type.”
“They’re meeting to negotiate something about a… a code,” Mickey said. “It sounds like a big deal. And I think they’re taking more people with them… Fly doesn’t like them, either. But they’re going to stay at the safe house until the meeting tomorrow.”
Mickey’s eyes fluttered open and she slumped forward a little in her chair. She shook her head a few times to clear it, blinking her eyes over and over.
“Are you okay?” Cass said.
“I’m… I’m a little…” Mickey said, pinching the bridge of her nose with her fingers. “I need a second.”
“We can’t stop now,” Michael said. “Not if we know that Kel is there…”
“Michael, she’s done,” Cass said. “Look at her. It’s no good trying to push it. She’s exhausted.”
Michael frowned. “But you’re sure she’s there, Mickey? You’re certain?”
“Uh, yeah, pretty sure, Michael,” Mickey said. “I mean, I have seen her rather up close and personal before, you know?”
The little Mentalist froze and her eyes went wide. She looked like she’d just inadvertently let out a stream of profanity in church.
“Sorry. Sorry. You’re my boss, I shouldn’t have…” she said. “I’m really tired after doing all that. It really took a lot out of me.”
“You did fine,” Dread said, leaving his laptop to stand by Mickey’s side. “We got enough. Everything we need.”
“We have a positive location on Kel,” Cass said, speaking directly to Michael. “We know where she is, and where she’s going to be staying until tomorrow morning at the very least. Dread’s right. It’s everything we need.”
Michael thought about it for a second and then nodded. “Right. You’re right.”
Cass continued looking at him. “So we’re going after her?”
“Hell, yes, we’re going after her,” Michael said, taking his cell phone out of his pocket. “Not you, Mickey. You’re going home to get some rest. You did a good job.”
“Go team,” Mickey said, giving him a weak thumbs up.
Cass walked with her out to her car, along with Dread, who was as protective of Mickey, his de facto little sister, as always. Jolly tagged along for part of the trip, handing Mickey some tablets and capsules from the fanny pack he was in the habit of wearing.
“Vitamins, remember?” he said to Mickey. “Helps replenish the neurotransmitters. And don’t forget Saturday.”
“Saturday,” Mickey said. “Oh, right. Your new place. The housewarming.”
“There’s not much there right now, but Dread and Lys are going to help me move in some furniture. I’m kind of looking forward to watching them compete to see which one of them can lift the heaviest stuff.”
“No one is going to compete,” Dread said.
“Right, right,” Jolly said, then whispered to Mickey, “They’re so going to compete.”
“I’ll remember,” Mickey said. “And I’ll bring some snacks.”
“Oooo! Your mom’s dumplings? They are the bomb…”
“Jolly,” Cass said. “Let the woman go home in peace. She’s exhausted.”
“Yeah, of course,” Jolly said, waving as he turned around and went back the way they’d come. “I got to get back to… you know.”
“Got to get back to wherever Lysette is,” Dread muttered under his breath once Jolly had gone. “Man has a serious crush on her.”
“All right,” Cass said to Mickey as she got in her car. “Go home and get some sleep. We’ll let you know how it goes.”
“Be careful, Cass,” Mickey said.
“We will be,” Dread said. “Besides, we have the charms that Shifty made for us. That should at least give us an edge against Kel’s death magic.”
With that, Mickey drove off, leaving the two of them in the parking garage. It was the first time Cass and Dread had been alone with each other all day, and the big man slipped an arm around her waist.
“What do you think?” he asked.
Cass let him pull her in close. “I think I’m looking forward to finally putting an end to all of this. But Mickey’s right; Kel is serious business. We need to watch our step.”
“Right. Time to do what we do,” Dread said, leading her back to Michael and the others.
Michael was still talking on his cell phone when they returned to him. “No, no, sir. I think the best play is we go now. We can get the identity of whoever these people are she is supposed to meet, from either her or Fly once we have them in custody. She’s too dangerous to risk letting her slip away.”
He listened for a moment longer, said “Yes, sir,” and switched off his phone. Cass and Dread looked at him expectantly.
“So?” Cass asked.
“It’s on,” Michael said. “We go after her tonight. Full strike team.”
“Looks like the chance that you took on us has paid off.”
“Not a moment too soon, either,” Michael said.
“What does that mean?”
“Listen, I didn’t want to say anything in front of Mickey, and maybe ruin her confidence, but there was a lot riding on this. The Deputy Director has been threatening to pull the plug on you and your team.”
“All of it?” Dread asked.
“When I first brought this to him, he gave me a hundred days for your team to get us something solid. That was all I could get. A hundred days.”
Cass did some quick arithmetic in her mind. “So we were cutting it pretty close.”
“I don’t want you worrying about that now. This is a big win. Exactly what we needed. But… I don’t want any more nonsense like the Fudge Dance Incident, do you understand? It was hard enough to sell the Deputy Director on ex-felons…”
“I get it, I get it,” Cass said. “We’re on thin ice. No more Fudge Dance Incidents. I promise.”
Cass
The Fudge Dance Incident. Yeah, I guess I’m going to have to explain that one.
We’ve all been there. Any time you’re the new kid on the block, there’s a certain hazing process that the old guard insists on inflicting on the new addition to the group.
Joining up with the FBI was no different. It didn’t help that most of us, yours truly included, were convicted felons currently on parole. Not to mention the fact that half of the group also had exactly zero law enforcement experience.
Let’s just say it d
idn’t exactly earn us a warm welcome. Michael gave the requisite speech to everyone in the office about how we were to be welcomed into the Bureau with open arms, the past was the past, all that standard nonsense that would, of course, be immediately ignored by every agent in the place. What we actually got, were a bunch of disapproving stares and snide comments that they didn’t even bother to make under their breath most of the time.
Losers. Convicts. Amateurs. Second string. That was the basic gist of it. Every time we had to sit through a department-wide meeting, all six of us had to endure the smirks and the snippy little comments from the rest of the FBI agents, and that was on a good day.
The Fudge Dance Incident… that was kind of my fault, I guess. I’d been encouraging Mickey to assert herself more and more, to try to shake her out of her habit of being terrified of everything. She'd done okay at the prison, with the rest of us there to back her up, but the reality of the situation was, she was going to have to toughen up if she was going to survive in this business.
Fighting back isn’t only about skill sets. Just as important… maybe even more important… is mindset. It isn’t only a question of whether or not you’re willing to stand and fight… that’s kind of easy. Most people, if the question is posed to them, will say yes, of course, I’m willing to fight to protect myself.
But it isn’t that simple. Most people aren’t dangerous because of their skills. They’re dangerous because violence comes naturally to them… they are in the habit of responding to violence, with violence. Not only that, but responding with violence without hesitation.
Most people have to work themselves up to fighting back, and in that time of working themselves up, the truly violent have already done so much damage to them that the fight is already over. That was Mickey. She needed time to recover from the shock of being attacked in order to get around to defending herself… time she wouldn’t have when it came to dealing with serious adversaries like Kel.
So, I took it upon myself to start training her. Not only in the techniques she’d need, but even more so, in changing her mindset… shifting her habitual response from balling up into a terrified blob, to at least responding somehow.
Dread and Lysette helped, as well… really, we all kind of adopted Mickey as a little sister in a lot of ways. Lysette, in particular, seemed to really enjoy watching Mickey assert herself more and more.
That surprised me. Lysette was an aloof perfectionist with a complete disdain for the incompetent or weak, so seeing her show so much interest in scared little Mickey was not what I expected. However, we’d all seen what Mickey was capable of back at the prison once she’d found her fangs, and after that… I guess that piqued Lysette’s interest.
Dread ended up becoming Mickey’s personal punching bag, because… well, because he could take it. The man’s six foot six and a mountain of muscle; it practically took an atomic blast to hurt him. Not to mention, as big as he is, he’s naturally intimidating as all hell. If Mickey was going to practice not getting panicked when she was attacked, then the perfect choice of a training partner was a giant ex-Marine several times her size.
Anyway, the day of the Fudge Dance Incident, we were all sitting in yet another department-wide meeting, reviewing the discovery of a series of desiccated bodies in locations scattered around the city. We knew it had to be Kel; Michael was standing at the podium, going over the pattern of where the bodies were found, hoping that we could generate some sort of a search pattern from it.
There must’ve been thirty-plus agents in the room. And, as usual, my little group of six misfits was drawing a lot of unpleasant stares and snide remarks from the peanut gallery.
One guy in particular… Baron… considered himself quite the tough guy and comedian, and really liked mocking Mickey whenever he could. He never called her by her name; she was always “Hello Kitty” in his endless taunts.
“Maybe we can get Hello Kitty to read a couple of minds,” Baron said, loudly enough for everyone in the room to hear. “If she doesn’t spill her milk.”
There were some scattered smirks, and Michael told Baron to cut it out, but laugher only encourages bullies, so Baron couldn’t help but continue. I could see that Mickey was starting to shrink a little in her chair, subtly trying to hide behind Dread’s massive bulk, which was a bad habit of hers when she got intimidated.
“I’m just saying, sir,” Baron said, more loudly now that he knew that he had an audience, “maybe she’d like to know the deep internal monologue of a couple of crack whores out on the street. Maybe that’ll help. She’s been so useful already… oh, wait. I was thinking of someone else. Hello Kitty’s accomplished exactly fuck-all while she’s been here.”
More laughter this time, and Michael seemed to sense that he wasn’t going to be able to keep much of a lid on it. I started getting a little bent out of shape. Okay. That’s an understatement. I was getting pissed.
These assholes were the ones who had accomplished fuck-all before we came along. Not a single one of them had gotten so much of a glimpse of Kel during their entire investigation of her, an investigation which I’d found out had stretched back for years. Years of work, and they had generated a huge pile of nothing. The six of us were the only ones who’d actually faced that walking nightmare of a death mage and lived to talk about it.
Not to mention, the last thing I needed was douchebag Baron ruining Mickey’s confidence and destroying the progress I’d been making with her. It never changes. In a prison, on a playground, or in an office, sometimes, you have to make an example out of somebody. I unilaterally elected Baron for the position.
“Are you going to take that, Mickey?” I whispered softly to her.
We locked eyes. I gave her a little nod. Almost immediately, I noticed a change come over her. Her face hardened. She sat up straight, no longer trying to use Dread as her personal mobile human shield.
In retrospect, maybe I created a monster. At the time, though, during those next few glorious moments… I have to admit, I fucking loved it.
Baron was really getting into it at this point, feeding off the energy of the crowd. “Oh, I know! I know what she could do! She coo…. she coouuu…”
He blinked a few times and stopped. He kind of looked like he was trying to figure out what strange object was suddenly in his mouth.
“Sheeee… I. I like. I like fudge!” he said.
His eyes got wide. Baron looked around the room as the laughter died out and everyone stared at him.
“I! I like… fudge!” he shouted at us, looking terrified the entire time.
“Baron? You okay?” asked the guy sitting next to him.
Baron answered by awkwardly jumping to his feet, standing like a military man at attention as he announced again, “Fudge! Fudge! I like fudge!”
Now, it was my turn to laugh. Not only my turn; Dread, Shifty, Jolly, even Lysette started to smirk at douchebag Baron’s expense.
“Dang, man,” Shifty said. “I mean, I like fudge too, but we don’t need to sing and dance about it.”
“Fudge!” Baron shouted again. “Fudge Dance! This! Is! My Fudge Dance!”
Looking horrified the entire time, Baron started to wave his arms and legs around in a ratchet-like, flailing manner, hopping from foot to foot. It was quite a sight to behold; a hard-ass federal agent in a suit and tie, expressing his love for fudge with a clumsy interpretive dance. Even his friends started to chuckle and smirk at him, and frankly, by now, I was laughing so hard I thought I might piss myself.
“Okay, Baron, we get it, you like fudge,” one of the other agents said.
“Mickey,” Michael said, in that knock-the-hell-off tone he had.
“He’s right, Mickey,” I whispered. “You’ve made your point.”
Baron’s face suddenly relaxed, his fudge dance stopped, and he slumped back into his chair, looking exhausted. After a second or two of waving off his buddies, he stole a look over at Mickey, who was grinning from ear to ear.
She gav
e him a little wave. “Are you okay, Baron? Are you going to have to point out on the doll where the bad man touched you?”
More laughter from around the room. I started to feel like a big sister watching her sibling standing up on stage winning an award… so very, very proud.
“Okay, enough,” Michael said.
That seemed to put a stop to the fun, but not before Lysette gave Mickey a fist bump on the down low. Like I said, she loved it when Mickey showed her fangs, almost as much as I did.
Anyway, as much as it chapped Michael’s hide, the Fudge Dance Incident brought the hazing of our little group to a screeching halt. In fact, Baron never seemed to be able to look Mickey straight in the eye after that, and always seemed to find an excuse to be somewhere else when she was around.
I’d like to say that I was mature enough to leave it at that, but that’s not quite accurate. Any time that I felt like Baron was starting to get out of line, I would buy a little package of fudge, wrap it up all nice with a bow, and leave it on his desk early in the morning before he came in.
Oh, don’t feel bad for him. Back at the prison, I had to kick a bitch in the liver to make the same point. Douchebag Baron got off easy.
Needless to say, Baron looked a little relieved when Mickey left the office early on the day that she’d tuned in to Fly’s eyes and ears. He was a part of the strike team that was going to hit Kel’s safe house later that night; a strike team, I was extremely pissed off to discover, that would not include me or my people.
“Are you kidding me?” I asked Michael. “Michael, we are your best bet in taking her out! We’re the only ones with any experience in dealing with…”
“It’s not happening, Cass,” Michael said. “Even if it was my call… I can’t arm a bunch of ex-convicts.”
“Shifty and Mickey aren’t…” I began to protest, but he cut me off.
“True, but the rest of you are. Now, at some point, that situation might change, but as of right now… we have a perfectly capable strike team. Local SWAT isn’t the only department with Wreck Squads. The FBI doesn’t call them that, but we have them too.”
Mage Hunters Box Set Page 48
