Chapter 2
My newfound enthusiasm for danger and adventure doesn’t last long.
By the time I ride the rickety brass elevator up to Ms. Stryker’s small eleventh-floor suite in the Aston Building, I’m flashing through all the ways I could wind up shot or worse if this little heist goes pear-shaped.
It doesn’t help that my butt crack still stings from when the elf yanked me by the waistband of my pants against the wall.
God-tier wedgies—apparently just a taste of what life is like when you get mixed up with the fair folk.
But there’s no point in dwelling. If I don’t comply, the fae Obligation will make me horrifically sick. Supposedly, over time, it can even kill you. I have to steal that watch tonight whether I like it or not.
The messages are mostly spam and crank calls, but one is from a previous client whose family in the country had been threatened by a feral werewolf pack.
He wants a meeting sometime next week. He doesn’t say for what, but I still highlight the text in bold, copy-paste it to the top of the document, and print out the call log on her dot-matrix printer.
Doing that at least feels vaguely useful.
I just get started entering the few receipts she left me into an expense report when the woman herself bursts through the door, carrying a horned demon head in a clear plastic bag.
She casually tosses it on the desk in front of me, and I barely yank the printout away in time.
Ms. Stryker’s dark brown skin gleams with sweat.
“Coffee…” she growls. She doesn’t even look at me as she slips off her thick black jacket and throws it over the back of the plastic “client” chair on the side of the desk opposite me. There’s a vibrant splotch of yellow blood on the collar.
She always works nights, and she always wears full motorcycle leathers on her jobs.
I think it’s because it makes good armor, but I haven’t worked up the courage to ask.
Of course, it also makes her look badass.
(As if having runic tattoos around her throat and wrists, a shaved head, and the ability to shoot lightning from her fingertips left any doubt.)
I slip the call log onto a safe corner of the desk and quickly turn to get her the Nitro Brew when I realize I left it splattered all over the sidewalk on Larkin.
Oh, no.
I immediately leap to my feet. “Oh! God! I’m sorry, Ms. Stryker! I, uh, had it, but then, uh, stuff happened and I dropped it, and then I totally forgot! But I’ll go get you a new one right now!”
I round the table at speed when she stops me with an iron palm against my chest. Her amber eyes pin me in place like I’m a bug.
“It’s not like you to forget things, Alvin. What ‘stuff’ happened?”
She’s planted her grip over my racing heart, and she’s so intimidating, I instantly feel a compulsion to tell her.
It’s not like she couldn’t help me. According to leaked government reports, less than 0.
001% of the human population can use any magic.
Apparently that represents a huge uptick in just the last ten years, and that’s still mostly parlor-trick stuff.
Stryker’s a human who’s been practicing since the late 1800s, and she doesn’t look a day over forty.
(Powerful magic apparently keeps you young!) She easily commands primordial elemental forces violent enough to take out an entire platoon of SUVs.
And on top of that, she’s a member of some kind of elite wizard council that dates back to Merlin’s time and has only twelve members.
There’s no way I could stand up to that elf, but Ms. Stryker practically eats the fair folk for breakfast. Even the Winter Queen takes her calls. If anyone could get me out of a fae Obligation, it would be her. And it would be so good to not have to do this.
I open my mouth to beg for her help just as a fat drop splats next to my shoe.
Then another. The loosely-wrapped demon head has toppled to the side and rivulets of yellow goo are sliming their way over the metal lip of the faux-pine Ikea desk.
It’s the blood from the paranormal she just killed.
She kills a lot of paranormals for her cases, because most of us are predators, one way or another.
Right. If Stryker confronted him, Lord of the Rings would almost certainly tell her what I am.
Of course, I always planned to do that myself someday.
When I was sure I could convince her I was “one of the good ones.” When she wasn’t fresh from a fight with an evil monster.
When I didn’t just totally screw up and forget her coffee.
Today is not that day.
Instead, I punt. “Oh, uh… It was stupid. I slept through my alarm, and I was rushing, and then I tripped and spilled everything and banged my knee, and I— Well, I was already late, and so I just booked it here. I meant to go get another, but then, uh… I got caught up with work… So yeah, I did forget… I guess…”
My voice spools down into a mumble as her eyes narrow. She’s got six inches on me. You’d think after lying about what I am my whole life, I’d be good at it. You’d think wrong. And Ms. Stryker has a world-class bullshit detector.
“You tripped, spilling everything…” she says. “And then you forgot about the coffee—” Her eyes flick from the three receipts she left me, perched on a still-clean corner of the desk, to the handful of junk mail I threw in the trash. “—Because you were so busy…”
She’s using the same tone on me she uses with clients who try to get out of paying her day rate.
“Um, yeah,” I say, doubling down, weakly. “I’m sorry.”
When I look up from the waste bin, her attention is on the torn button on my polo, and I can only assume the sour expression on her face represents profound disappointment.
It’s not like the look Mom gives me. That’s just about what a complete failure I am.
This is tinged with suspicion, which makes it more dangerous.
I have the insane impulse to fold my arms to hide the button, but she has me trapped and there’s probably fricking red brick dust or something all over my shoulders, anyway.
The only thing I can do at this point is push through, so I unfurl my most helpless, innocent smile and try to pivot my body toward the door.
“But I’ll get you that coffee right now, boss! It won’t take ten minutes!”
There is a pause of a fraction of a second before she drops her hand, but it’s long enough for her face to shutter into cold stone. Whatever she thinks I’m hiding, it’s beneath her notice. At least for now.
“Don’t worry about it. I’m going to be off-world for a few days while I help an old friend with a favor.
” She brusquely turns from me and strides the five steps to the door of her private office.
“Put that head in cold storage. Get my jacket cleaned. And if anyone calls, we aren’t taking on any new cases for the foreseeable future. ”
I nod, not skipping a beat when she mentions going “off-world.” That’s just another day at work for her. (God, I’d do anything to be half as cool as she is!)
I quickly clutch the slick top of the plastic sack with the scarlet-skinned head and follow as she steps through the door into her office.
My little reception area might look low-rent, but she’s got an oak Humphrey Bogart desk hulking in front of a high-backed swivel chair of fine Corinthian leather.
Shelves with rare vellum-covered books line the walls.
There’s a crystal decanter with thirty-year old scotch on a silver tray.
Even a stuffed raven, eyes glowing with cold moonlight, on a high shelf, frozen-winged in flight.
If you come looking to hire a wizard PI (and you’re worthy enough to make it in here), she looks legit.
Sweeping forward, she whisks a spare motorcycle jacket off the freestanding coat rack by the entrance and slides it on.
She then lifts a sheathed obsidian sword from the side of her desk, buckles its belt around her waist (complete with actual utility pouches, like freaking Batman), and finishes her ten-second prep by hoisting a waiting tactical black Cordura Go Bag over her shoulder.
All this time, I’m just standing awkwardly in front of the doorway, freaking out because I’m dripping demon goo on her hardwood floor, but not wanting to move in case she has more orders for me. When she turns, I stiffen my back, determined to appear confident and reliable.
The suspicion in her gaze hasn’t completely gone, but there’s now something else. If I didn’t know better, I’d say it was concern. “Alvin… You would tell me if something happened that could use my attention, right?”
“Of-of course!” I say, still lying, badly. (And feeling even worse about it since it now seems like she might actually be worried about me.)
She nods, frowning. “All right. It’s Friday. Once you drop off my jacket at the cleaners, you should knock off work and close the office.”
My face falls. Usually, she wants me to be here for the full eight hours, just in case a client stops by unexpectedly.
That hasn’t happened yet, but it still made me feel useful.
Like, on some level, she trusted me to handle important things.
But what if I’ve just completely blown that trust?
What if this is a prelude to her firing me?
Naturally, she notices my reaction. She looks away, impatient—she’s not big on other people’s normal emotions, let alone my innate catastrophizing—but then she returns to me, pursing her lips, like she’s rallying her strength.
“You still want to learn how to cast spells, right?”
My eyebrows shoot up. “Uh— Yes! I do, boss!”
“Well… Your first lesson is that magic needs triggers to activate. You have to feel things. Not stress, not fear… You need to feel strong, because you need to believe.”
I have no idea why she’s saying this to me now, but it’s the first actual magical advice she’s given since I met her two months ago, so I just nod quickly, hoping she’ll continue.
“What I’m saying is you need to live a little. I get the impression you don’t do that much.”
She’s not wrong. “Well, um, I guess you could say I’m not really a, uh—”
Her hand flicks up, stopping me. “I want you to step outside your comfort zone this weekend. Get drunk. Get laid. You said you had a hard time feeling your own magic. Well, let’s see if making out with a stranger doesn’t open something up.”
The fact that she remembers anything I told her about myself is front-page news, but that hot lede is buried under what she’s actually telling me to do. It takes me a solid moment to get my mouth working again.
“Are—are you saying you want me to, uh…?”
“I don’t have time to spell this out for you. You’re a healthy twenty-two-year-old boy in the most libertine city in the country. What I’m asking you to do shouldn’t feel like a chore, but this is your homework. Can you do it or not?”
I can’t. She might as well be asking me to soft-shoe my way up the cables of the Golden Gate Bridge. I’ve never dared to let myself anywhere near alcohol. And if I do anything sexual, there’s a very good chance I’ll kill someone.
But any protest will just invite more questions, and her expression makes it clear that she’s in no humor for excuses. At least for this, though, there’s a way I don’t have to outright lie.
“I… promise I’ll step out of my comfort zone tonight, Ms. Stryker.”
“Good.” She’s pleased with me, which is a rare event.
She gives a quick nod like she, herself, has leapt a hurdle.
“I think this could be your way in. I want you to feel for your power while you’re having fun—really pay attention, keep your focus around your solar plexus, the third chakra, that’s where mana pools—and I expect a full report when I get back. ”
Mana. That’s the part of myself I’ve been desperate to access.
Incubi have a number of specific, intrinsic magical abilities—but they’re vicious by nature and you have to feed to be able to use them, and I’m not down for either of those.
There’s another form of magic, though: mana.
It’s wildcard power that can be used for practically anything, if you know the right spell.
Stryker is one of the rare humans who possesses any—it’s what makes her a wizard—but supposedly every living paranormal has a reservoir of mana inside them, to some degree or another.
I’ve just never been able to find mine, no matter how hard I’ve looked.
It’s the satisfied smile on her face that finally clues me in to what might be going on here.
My boss is gruff, and hard, and hella scary.
But all this time, when I assumed she’d forgotten I even asked her, it looks like maybe she’s been trying to think of some way to teach me how to access my magic—or at least get me started.
Sure, what she came up with is not actually going to help me, but it’s still the closest we’ve come to her taking me under her wing, letting me in—exactly what I’ve been working so hard for.
And of course, now that it’s finally happening, I deserve her trust less than ever.
“I won’t let you down, boss,” I say, knowing that’s exactly what I’m going to do. Here she is, thinking of me as this innocent human kid in desperate need of life experience, when I’ve literally just conspired with another paranormal to break into someone’s home for $30,000.
She gives me another pleased nod and strokes an index finger over a line of tattooed runes on her wrist. It causes a green-glowing portal to spring open in the air beside her.
She gives me one final glance before stepping through—I swear to God, it looks almost proud—and when the portal closes and she’s gone, all light in the room fades away.
Which feels downright poetic. Until I met Stryker, I hated what I was.
Being paranormal meant only one thing—being a predator.
But then I saw how magic could be used to help people, to save lives.
I watched her use the same power that’s inside me, that makes up what I am, to fight a monster that was going to kill a dozen men.
I begged her to teach me how to do that.
I promised her she wouldn’t regret it. And she took a huge chance on me because she thought I could be worth it.
Because she believed that someday, maybe, I could be a little like her.
But from day one, I’ve been keeping secrets, and now I’m piling on even more lies.
And tonight I’m going to use what little magical ability I have to help someone I know for a fact is a predator become even more powerful and dangerous.
All of which are choices I’m consciously making for selfish reasons.
I swear, it’s almost like Mom’s right and I was born to be evil.