Sinners & Sorcerers: Four Urban Fantasy Thrillers (23 page)

He grinned. “No problem.”

Fritz and Isobel emerged from The Pit. “Ready to go?” he asked.

I stood. “Where?”

“I’m making a new task force specifically for internal investigations and special ops. You can select an agent you trust as your partner. I assumed you’d pick Agent Takeuchi. Unless there’s someone else you’d like to nominate?”

“You assumed rightly, sir,” I said. I glanced at my brother. “You good here?”

“I’m fine,” Domingo said, taking a deep drag of his cigarette. “Go play secret agent man.”

+ + +

I was waiting for Suzy when she emerged from the Union detention center. It was in an underground bunker in the middle of the Mojave, probably an hour of driving from the nearest highway on narrow dirt roads. The entrance was hidden inside a big pile of black rocks. Suzy emerged looking disheveled and annoyed. Her suit was rumpled, tie loose around her neck, hair in a messy ponytail.

She stopped a few feet away from me with a dubious look.

“Hey, Suze,” I said. “Bad day?”

“I’ve had better,” she grunted.

“You’ve been declared innocent and the bad guys are dead. What could be better than that?”

“Not being detained in the first place,” Suzy said.

“Good point.”

But she perked up a little. “So they’re dead, huh?” She didn’t give me a chance to explain. She didn’t seem to care. “What the fuck happened with my Glock?”

“It was a mix-up,” I said.

Anger flashed over her features. “Hell of a fucking mix-up.”

“I’m sorry.”

She shook her head. “It’s not your fault.” She tugged the rubber band out of her ponytail. Fine black hair fell around her cheeks. “Fuck, I need a shower.”

I jerked my chin toward the pile of rocks. “What’s it like down there? I’ve always been curious.”

“You don’t want to know.”

Probably true. “Ready to go?”

“
Oh
yeah.”

I escorted her toward the helicopter that had carried me out to the detention center. Apparently, Union regulations didn’t allow aircraft to park directly on top of the underground construction, so it was a good quarter mile to the north. Fritz and Isobel climbed out as we approached and met us halfway.

“Welcome back, Agent Takeuchi,” Fritz said. “You’ve been reassigned from the Magical Violations Department to a new task force. You’re now Agent Hawke’s partner and will handle special investigations.”

Suzy glowered at him. “A promotion? Right when I’m getting out of a Union detention center?”

“Yes, it’s a promotion. You’ll have much more responsibility.”

“And more pay?”

Fritz was stony-faced. “We’ll see.”

Which meant no.

Damn. I hadn’t thought to ask for more money, but now that Suzy mentioned it, I wouldn’t have minded a raise. I was going to need a new apartment—one where I hadn’t killed a half-succubus—and moving wasn’t cheap. I also really wanted to complete my
Star Trek: The Next Generation
collection on Blu-ray.

“I accept the promotion,” Suzy said.

Fritz smiled. “Of course you do.”

The helicopter’s rotors hadn’t slowed while we talked. It was ready to take off when we approached. Fritz moved to help Suzy into the helicopter, but she jerked out of reach, giving him the kind of look that could have started engine fires.

I stood back for a moment, letting them pick their seats, buckle in. Isobel waited with me.

A question had been nagging at me since we left The Pit, and I couldn’t help but ask now that we were momentarily alone. “So you and Fritz,” I said, leaning close, keeping my tone low. Nobody would be able to hear us under the helicopter.

Isobel’s cheeks flushed. “Yeah, Fritz and me.”

“Are you…?”

“We used to be.” She quickly added, “But it’s been over for a while. I reminded him. He knows.”

That probably shouldn’t have made me feel as good as it did. The feeling didn’t last long. Ex-girlfriend of my boss? The only woman I could date with even more guilt would be Domingo’s estranged wife.

She climbed into the helicopter. I let Fritz help her up and kept my hands to myself.

I took the seat across from Isobel. “You knew I was going to be assigned to investigate you. So you knew I was coming. And you still dusted me with blister powder in the cemetery.”

Isobel had the courtesy to look embarrassed again. She waited to respond until she had pulled on her headset. Her voice came in over the speakers, flat and crackling with interference. “I thought you might have been with the Needles at the time.” She ducked her head and focused awfully hard on figuring out her buckles. “No hard feelings?”

Suzy was staring fixedly out the window, Fritz absorbed in his Blackberry. Both of them looked disturbed, probably for completely different reasons, but I knew they could hear us over their headsets.

I had a lot of hard feelings about this week and I didn’t think I was the only one. But it was a new day, and apparently, we were coworkers now. Better to move on.

“Naw,” I said. “No hard feelings.”

Fritz pushed his microphone closer to his mouth. “Good, because we have a lot of work to do. I just received a report of anomalous infernal activity in Reno, Nevada, and we’re the closest unit equipped for response.”

“Infernal?” Isobel asked. “You mean demons?”

That wasn’t the problem I had with Fritz’s statement. “How the hell are we equipped? We just got Suzy out of the detention center. We haven’t done any training for demons. We’re barely even a team yet.”

Fritz smirked. “I said internal investigation and special projects. This is special. Are you all ready?”

I was pretty sure that was a rhetorical question, but I exchanged a look with Suzy. For the first time since she’d stepped out of that bunker, there was a spark of mischief in her eye. “Born ready, sir.” Of course this was the kind of thing she’d love. She rolled with the punches better than anyone else I knew.

This was going to be fun.

“Great,” I said. “Let’s go to Reno.”

Hell of a week.

Dear Reader:

I hope you’ve enjoyed Cèsar’s story! If you’d like to know when the next Preternatural Affairs novel (
Silver Bullet
) comes out, visit
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new release email alerts
.

You might also be interested in
The Descent Series
, another series of urban fantasy mysteries that take place in the same world with different characters. (And did I mention that you can get the first three books for free on most major ebook sellers?)

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Witch Hunt
—it helps other readers find the series, and I appreciate the feedback!

Happy reading!

Sara (SM Reine)

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CALLED

SOUTHERN WATCH: BOOK ONE

ROBERT J. CRANE

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright ©
2014 Reikonos Press

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without written permission.

He came to town riding the wind; when he left, he reckoned he’d do it just about the same way. The thing was, Lafayette Jackson Hendricks had been in the wind a long damned time, and he’d had just about enough of that shit to last a lifetime. In his current occupation, though, that life expectancy was not terribly long compared to most. But that was nothing new. It never had been, not in either of the occupations he’d chosen in his life.

He reflected on all this as he stepped off the running board of the big Mack truck, the engine brake squealing as he jumped down, an old Marine duffel slung over his back, the strap running over his long black drover coat. It was summer, it was night, and it was raining. The drover coat was a duster that helped keep the rain off him. The black cowboy hat he wore helped even more, but it was still coming down bad enough that his jeans were soaked at the bottom almost as soon as his boots hit the ground. The boots were old and leather and faded from landing in puddles just like this all over the U.S.

Hendricks could hear the subtle click of his heels against the blacktop over the rain as it started to slacken up a little. The semi that had carried him pulled down the ramp back onto the interstate, rumbling out of sight. He pulled up the sleeve of his coat to take a peek at his watch. It was just after ten o’clock.

The smell of the rain was fresh, but the heat was pervasive, even at this time of night, making the rain seem like a warm shower. It was summer, after all, and damned humid, something even the downpour hadn’t been able to alleviate. The taste of dinner from the restaurant where he’d met the trucker who had given him the ride was still lingering on Hendricks’s tongue, and he’d forgotten to buy a pack of gum to replace the one he’d finished somewhere in Kentucky. The mint was sorely missed right now, and he rubbed his tongue uncomfortably against the top of his mouth.

His boots clicked against the pavement, carrying him ahead, and the headlights of a passing car caught a green sign in the distance just enough for him to see it even in the dark of the Tennessee night.

Entering Calhoun County
.

+ + +

Archibald “Arch” Stan turned his patrol car around just before the county line, his headlights illuminating a figure walking along the side of the road. It was a guy, a duffel on his back and a black cowboy hat and drover coat keeping the rain off him. The rain was letting up, at least to Arch’s eyes, after a deuce of a downpour only a few minutes earlier. A real frog-strangler, his mother would have said. Gully washer, he’d have called it. In either case, he felt bad for the cowboy who was in it now. He started to pull over to say something to the guy when his radio crackled to life.

“Fifteen, this is Dispatch, come back.”

He hesitated for only a second and he thumbed the mike. “Fifteen here, go ahead.”

“Fifteen, sheriff asks that you return to the station.”

Arch felt a faint swirl of amusement before he clicked the mike on again. “I know, I know, I’m getting perilously close to overtime.”

He could hear laughter in the voice of the dispatcher at the other end of the radio, Erin Harris. “You know the boss likes to pinch those pennies until he can hear Abe Lincoln scream as they're leaving his hand.”