Chapter 2 #2
“Zuriel, how many strikes does Daisy Rose have?”
There was a beat of silence before Zuriel let out a frustrated sigh. “You know I hate banishing people, even more so now—”
“Zuriel?” Regan and I said in unison.
“Look . . . she’s never hurt anyone, and she cleans up her work—”
“Which is what?” Regan leaned back over my shoulder.
I tapped on the paper. “Looks like she’s a thief.”
“Daisy is a mage with sticky fingers—”
“Very sticky fingers, it seems,” I mumbled as I continued to flip the pages of her file.
“Hold on.” Regan flipped back a few pages, then stopped on one. “Does this say she robbed someone and then gave the money back?”
“I’m not so cruel that I’d punish a teenager who stole jewelry and then gave it back to the victim, all without the victim even knowing. I just kept an eye on it.”
I nodded. “Was she stealing from humans or other supernaturals?”
“That’s the problem. It was other supernaturals.”
“Oh, shit,” I mumbled and tapped on the page. “She robbed Peggy Bow’s store on Megelle Island?”
Regan gasped. “No way. That’s ballsy.”
“Peggy assured me everything Daisy stole was returned within a day or two, or she’d find cash sitting where the item had been. Peggy was letting her get away with it.”
“So what happened?” I flipped more pages to see more and more thefts. “What changed that we’ve finally been given her as an assignment?”
“She’s started stealing from humans and using magic in the open to do so.”
Regan groaned. “Natural progression. Let me guess, she started stealing from unsavory individuals?”
My gaze swept over a name I recognized from human newspapers. “Ooof. If she stole from the likes of him, then it was inevitable she’d cross a line and it’d turn violent.”
“I’ve never wished a person wasn’t human before.” Regan whistled under her breath. “What I’d do to personally deliver karma to that guy.”
“So you’re finally throwin’ in the towel and sending her packing out to Second Realm?”
“She can’t harm humans from there.”
I smirked. “And there she’s Queen Savina’s problem.”
He gave us a slow, wry, crooked grin. “She’s a sight to behold.”
“Right. We’ll go easy on her.” I closed the folder, then re-opened to the first page. “Usually you have an update out front on the current location.”
“She crossed into Megelle Island a few minutes ago. Constantine Vauntero has his eyes on her until you arrive.” He pushed off the doorframe. “Go in and grab her—”
“Right, and then go for this guy?” Regan held up the other folder. “Did I see Chris Thompson’s picture on this first page?”
Zuriel’s soft smile turned lethal. “That third strike is one hell of a doozy too. That one might be the most struggle you two have seen in a long time.”
“We can handle it,” we said in perfect unison.
Zuriel rolled his eyes, then spun away and marched toward the door. He paused and looked over his shoulder at us. “Grab Daisy first, for her own protection. Deliver her to my office and I’ll handle the rest so you can hunt down Christopher. Word on the street is he flew out of the country.”
“Fantastic.” I nodded.
“You’ve got this, right?” He winked, then disappeared from sight.
Regan cleared her throat. “Well, there goes dinner.”
“ROAD TRIP!” I grinned and wagged my eyebrows. “There’s food on the Island, dudette. Good food.”
Her stomach growled. She frowned as she stood and stretched. “A trip to Peggy’s sons’ restaurant does sound nice. What’s it called again?"
“Bowlicious.” I cocked my head to the side and looked at my cousin’s outfit. “Maybe we should change?”
We’d had an event today. Well, Chanegan had an event today.
Regan and I had lived a long, long, long time already and the development of social media and the internet started to make our jobs as hunters significantly more tedious.
When there were eight Virtues, it was easier, and had our girls still been around, we might not have made the decision we had.
But it was just us for a couple centuries now, so we had to evolve and adapt to modern society as best we could.
A few years back we were singing karaoke in a pub in Brooklyn, and somehow we wound up with a record deal as a small girl group.
We’d decided to roll with it. In hindsight, we probably should have used stage names, but we hadn’t realized what that path was leading us into until it was too late to change our names.
So instead, we used our magic to glamour our appearances into the personas of Chanegan, the dynamic sister duo pop stars—even though we were cousins, but it was fine.
We were more like sisters anyways. Hell, we were the only two Virtues who shared a cubby.
Chanegan’s rise to fame came with pros and cons.
The downside was our lack of privacy when we forgot to remove our glamours.
But the upside was the fame allowed us to do our job so much easier.
People always said fame opened doors, but they definitely had no idea it opened the doors to the other realms so we could exile the naughties.
“Why do we need to change?” She looked down at herself with a grimace. “Did I get food on me again? Or blood? I think I sat on something at the park—”
“No, your all-white ensemble is still all-white. Somehow. And that’s the miracle.
But no, I meant we’re in Chanegan-mode still.
” I gestured to her outfit, then to mine.
“Since we’re going to Megelle Island, where we don’t have to pretend to be human, maybe it would be nice to just be us for a minute? ”
She gasped, her blue eyes sparkling with excitement. “Comfy swag?”
“Nope.” I grinned and jumped to my feet. “I’m talking straight swamp troll.”
“Gremlin time. Noice.”
We high-fived and then skipped into the closet we used to share with the other six Virtues.
Well, technically their stuff was still in there, and sometimes we borrowed things, but mostly we just took over the bulk of the space.
We were just finishing the sixth song on Taylor Swift’s newest album, Lover, when we were ready to leave.
We’d taken quick rinse-off showers to remove every ounce of makeup, perfume, and random body glitter we still weren’t sure which fan was covered in it.
We paused in front of the wall-sized mirrors for a fit-check and because Miss Americana and the Heartbreak Prince was a jam and we were definitely stalling.
It was early October and this year it was already getting chilly, but we knew it would be colder on the Island as a product of all the supernaturals being in one place.
Regan and I had gone full gremlin-swamp-troll style in oversized sweatshirts we’d stolen from boyfriends-past, faux-cashmere sweatpants we’d half-tucked into our Ugg boots, and definitely no form of bra whatsoever.
Sweater weather allowed for such bliss. My hair was still braided but it was back to its natural golden-blonde color that I was starting to miss each time I wore my pop star persona despite my obsession with pink hair.
It was also nice to see my freckles again.
Somehow my green eyes were much brighter and bigger without all the makeup.
Regan reached up and tied her natural sandy-blonde hair into a high ponytail. “We should be this more often.”
“Agreed.” I grabbed my AirPods from the coffee table and handed her the right earphone. “AirPod?”
“AirPod.” She slipped it into her right ear, then picked up her phone from where she’d thrown it and tapped on the screen. “Tay?”
“Tay.”
She hit a button and Taylor Swift switched from playing through our Bluetooth speaker to our AirPods.
We never wore both ears. We needed one for listening to the world around us, so it was just easier to share and listen to the same thing.
We gave ourselves an approving nod, then rushed out the door.
We’d left both the assignment folders on the coffee table.
Daisy Rose would be easy enough to find.
Constantine Vauntero was a fraction of our age, but the man was lethal in a way that we truly cherished.
If he said he was watching her, then he was watching her.
All we had to do was make the exchange. For Christopher on the other hand, we would make a battle strategy for when we returned.
We were out of the Emerald and on the subway heading down to Penn Station in moments.
We needed to take the Neverland Express train to Megelle Island.
It would run from Penn station and remain magically hidden under water as it made its way from New York out to Megelle Island just off the coast. As we walked through the station toward our destination we got lost in our seriously-not-so-serious debate about which bridge was better: Cruel Summer, Cornelia Street, or Death by a Thousand Cuts.
I rolled my eyes. “Whatever, it’s still All Too Well in the end,” I said in the angelic tongue.
“Whoa, we were discussing her new bridges on this one new album,” Regan sassed back in the same angelic tongue. “You think she’ll ever let us hear that ten-minute version?”
“A girl can only dream—”
A woman screamed behind us. We both spun around just as a teenage girl in her Catholic school girl uniform shoved a creepy dude off her. “Don’t touch me!”
The guy reached out, and his fingers slipped under the hem of her skirt. I was thankful I had only one ear open to the world so I couldn’t hear every word of the filth he was saying to her. Assaulting someone on a crowded subway train on a Saturday night . . . The audacity.
I sighed. “I miss murder.”
Half the subway car turned to look at me with wide eyes.
“You said that in English.” Regan pursed her lips and nodded.
I glanced around at all of them. “I said what I said. You gonna help her?”
“STOP!” the teen screamed again. “PLEASE!”
This time, everyone else on the train jumped to their feet and started in the girl’s direction. Which was nice to see, even though we would be much more effective.
“See? Murder is a good thing sometimes.”