Chapter 27
Chapter
Twenty-Seven
I ris Milner’s gym was on the far side of town, surrounded by a 7-Eleven and an expansive empty lot that used to be a gas station. It’d been razed to the ground, the only thing left a few chunks of concrete and rebar that someone had left a pair of underwear flapping from like a flag.
“Why this place?” Cassander asked thoughtfully.
“A gym is an easy way to launder money.” I tilted my head toward him, examining the nearly empty parking lot. In the window, a row of treadmills sat empty. The only movement I could make out was a weight machine in use. “People join, but they don’t show up. They pay money every month to not come to the place.”
“And if you have more money that month that you need to launder, you simply create more members.” Cassander nodded. “We usually don’t bother with such theatrics.”
“You don’t? How do the fae explain their wealth?”
“Believe it or not, the few humans that interact with us fae don’t ask questions about where our extreme wealth comes from.” Cassander smirked at me. “Those who know we’re more than the one percent are too afraid that we’re going to turn them into gold-encrusted skeletons.”
I laughed, but Cassander didn’t, eyeing me speculatively. “Do I have to be afraid about my rib cage getting bedazzled?”
“No.” Cassander turned back to the facility. “Not your ribs .”
“Well, let’s just say that anything below the belt is off-limits, but I did rock a cubic zirconia earring from Claire’s in high school.” I tilted my head, smiling winningly. “See? I’m quite the catch.”
“Quite the something.” But Cassander was smiling, even as his eyes tracked the three motorcycles that pulled up outside of the gym.
We’d been watching for an hour and hadn’t seen any sign of Iris, but there were enough people going in and out that I suspected she was inside.
If she wasn’t, we could still show up, request parlay, and wait.
“Did you mean for everyone to survive the building collapsing?” I hadn’t meant to ask, but now that we were outside another building owned by Iris Milner, I wanted to make sure.
“It was great magic. Great magic is often uncontrollable.” Cassander frowned. “But my intention was a distraction. Not…”
“Not a tryout for the Desert Flower demolition club?”
“No.” Cassander didn’t look away from the motorcyclists.
“Do we need to be worried that some artifact is now sitting in that rubble?” I asked him, watching as the bikers turned off their motors.
Two got off their bikes, the third standing watch, turning in his seat to look up and down the nearly empty road. Luckily, my mother’s car was designed to be unmemorable.
A worn Buick, it had dents on practically every panel, and some of the paint was chipping off on the trunk, leaving the impression of rust. The motorcyclist’s eyes passed right over it.
“Damian, do you really have time to be worried about anything else right now?” Cassander asked archly.
The motorcyclist’s friends came out, one stowing a small bag in his seat before they peeled out, motors rumbling so loud I could feel it in my chest across the street.
“All right. Putting off worrying about a new artifact in Desert Flower for another day. Let’s go before the next shift shows up.” I opened my door before Cassander could grab me and make me stay, before he could say anything else like I care about you or don’t throw your life away for nothing .
Maybe he wouldn’t use those exact words, but it would be close enough, and if I heard him say it, I might start second-guessing, and that was a quick way to jump straight off the springboard into an empty pool.
As we crossed the street, I buttoned my jacket, the suit acting like armor. Complete with my sunglasses, I was becoming Damian Reyes, secret agent. Next to me, Cassander tucked his hand in his pocket, his own aviators reflecting the street, eyes invisible behind the lenses.
When we stepped into the gym, he didn’t take them off, and I gave us a second for our eyes to adjust. Not surprisingly, the only person in the gym was cut from the same cloth as the caveman from the pool hall.
If I was guessing, they were twins, or at least Irish ones. He stood, and I winced as the weight plates slammed down when he dropped the machine bar. I scanned the room, but it was empty. There were a few closed doors, but I doubted the caveman would let me do a search.
I waited for him to stride over, half a second from throwing us out.
“Tell Iris that Damian is here. And I want to parlay,” I said right when we reached the “tossing us out on our asses” portion of the threat. When Gym Rat Caveman hesitated, I raised both my eyebrows, pulling my glasses down just enough to glare at him over the top. “Or we can destroy this building just as easily as we did the last one.”
This was a man who only understood threats. Subtlety was too much for him. A smarter person would have understood parlay . But I wasn’t even sure he knew the vocabulary word.
He hesitated, so I looked up at one of the security cameras pointed in our direction, waving at it with my free hand.
“We’re here. We’re ready to talk. If you don’t want to…”
One of the doors clicked open, and caveman, who had just enough brain cells to realize his boss was on the way, moved back. Someone stood in the doorway, arm in a sling across his chest. I recognized him as the bartender from the night before.
A bruise stained half his face, and he glared at me. When he jerked his head, Cassander held up a hand. “We would have some agreement about our safety before we move.”
The bartender hesitated, and I heard someone talking in the back room. He cleared his throat. “Iris is offering safe passage as long as you don’t make any aggressive moves.”
I looked at Cassander, and I could only see a hint of his eyes from the side as he stared straight ahead, pale eyes calculating math I hadn’t even taken classes for. Finally, he removed his sunglasses, nodding at me and tucking the arm into the V of his shirt.
We followed the bartender into a small room, most of the space occupied by a desk.
Behind the desk, Iris looked completely untouched, and she stood, revealing a white suit with a pale pink shirt underneath. It was completely at odds with the more cowgirl chic outfit of the night before, but then I realized she was mirroring us. We were wearing suits; she was wearing a suit.
Her smile was a thin press of lips. “Damian. And friend?”
Her tone implied that she wanted Cassander’s name, but neither one of us took the bait. She gestured to the two chairs across the desk.
“We’re here to discuss peace.” I took the chair, crossing my legs at the knee.
“Interesting.” Iris waited until Cassander sat before resuming her own seat. “Terms?”
“You leave me alone. You leave my family alone. And we don’t tear down any more of your buildings.” I looked over at Cassander. “Anything else you want to add?”
“You, and anyone who represents you, is paid by you, answers to you, or anyone else in your organization will not interact with, injure, kidnap, or bother the Reyes extended family, close friends, or allies.” Cassander smirked, and I grinned back at him. If being fae came with a law degree, it was apparent Cassander was in the top one percent of the class.
“What he said.” I tilted my head toward Cassander. “Basically, you don’t bug us, we don’t bug you.”
“Interesting proposal.” Iris leaned back in her chair, fingers pressed together. She crossed her legs at the knee, and I realized she was mirroring me again. Her body was nearly identical to mine, and my fingers itched to mimic hers. We were back in that Zen state loop again, where I was mirroring her, she was mirroring me, and we were going to go on and on like this until the carnival rides shut down and the fun house mirror broke.
I waited, and finally, Iris gave in.
“I have a counteroffer.” The small smirk in the corner of her lips told me I wasn’t going to like it. “You get everything you want. You get your job back. You get to leave Desert Flower. We leave your niece and nephew alone. And in exchange, you give me him.”
Iris tilted her head, glancing at Cassander.
“You know,” I said, stalling. “I was thinking about leaving the shipping industry anyway.”
“I wasn’t talking about the ‘shipping company’ that was your front. I wasn’t even talking about the military that you haven’t been a member of since boot camp.” Iris waited, and it was my turn to blink first. Her smirk turned into a full-fledged grin. She was a shark, and I was the swimmer in a bikini about to get chomped in half. “I was talking about the SPA. You get your job back with them, everything that’s happened over the past week goes away. No one even asks any questions.”
My heart was pounding, the blood in my ears so loud that I barely heard her words as I struggled to put together every puzzle piece I had. This was the sort of moment my mother hated. This was the sort of moment that meant we hadn’t done enough research, that meant the job was falling apart right in front of our eyes, and the only thing we could do was hold on and hope that our cold reading would get us through.
“That’s an interesting proposal. I’m not sure how a local criminal would be able to get that done.” But my mind was a rat on speed making its way through a maze with cheese at the end.
There was no way that Iris Milner, whose criminal enterprise extended to running pot and petty crimes throughout the Coachella Valley, knew about the SPA, an organization so secret that most members of Congress didn’t know it existed. It was the sort of agency that the president only found out about when things got world-endingly, apocalypse-movie-level bad.
Which could only mean that Iris Milner wasn’t some small-time mob boss. Or she had someone pulling her strings who was a lot bigger than Coachella Valley.
“You want proof?” She raised both eyebrows. “I could tell you every mission you’ve been on in the past year, Special Agent Reyes. Or should we have your handler call you?”
“Sure, let’s call the whole gang so I can find out when the United States government got in bed with small-time criminals. Because I hate to tell you, you can tell me whatever information you put together, maybe even some of it is right, but you can’t convince me that a gang that still works out of a fake gym has the ability to pull strings with the SPA.”
I was running my mouth. I needed to find out who was behind her. Was it some larger criminal group? Was it one of the South American governments? Or even one of the criminal groups the SPA had disrupted over the years?
“Well, I’m not sure I can do the ‘whole gang.’” Iris pulled out her phone, selecting a contact before placing it on the desk between us. She pressed the speaker button. It rang once and then was picked up by a voice I recognized from the few times a mission had gone so bad that I had been dragged in front of the director of the agency. “Theodore. I was just having a chat here with Damian Reyes. He’s wondering when his vacation can be over.”
“Reyes.” Theodore Ashland, the SPA director who had been in charge since the nineties, cleared his throat. “Good to have you in from the cold, son. We are ready to have you back whenever this mess is cleared up.”
“This mess being…” I trailed off, waiting for him to fill in the blank.
“Well, the whole business with the fae, for starters, but going after our very good partner. We’ll have to have a talk when you get back.” Ashland cleared his throat again, the sound almost nervous. “Always nice talking to you, Iris. Give my best to, well…”
The call ended.
“So. You want—” I hesitated, unable to give up Cassander’s name. “—him in exchange for my job.”
“You have it.” Iris looked over at Cassander, who had been watching the exchange with a tight expression. “He was our target, after all. You should have stayed out of our fire team’s way.”
And there was the missing puzzle piece, the click that fell with the same impact of an elephant jumping off the high dive. Everyone wet, dead elephant, big mess.
“Green Scales.” I looked around. Every other Green Scales operation I had investigated was high-class. Expensive jets, cars that were only made in the dozens, enough money to pay every citizen in Desert Flower a pension for the rest of their lives.
“You’re in bed with Green Scales.” I narrowed my eyes. “And you’re, what? Looking for a promotion?”
“Does it matter?” Iris looked over at Cassander again, and this time, I realized he wasn’t just waiting; he wasn’t still by choice.
He was frozen, almost as though he was trapped in amber. He didn’t even blink; instead, the moisture collecting in the corner of his eyes fell on its own so it looked like he was crying.
“I get everything I want in exchange for him? No deal.” I glared at Iris. “You agreed to parlay. You agreed no harm would come to either of us. Let him go.”
“No harm is coming to him.” Iris picked her phone up off the desk, pocketing it. “Not yet.”
The sick part of me, the part that Cassander had been right about, the part that lived for the job and nothing else, was tempted. But almost as though I could feel actual fire under my skin, the temptation burned away. I was hot, hot enough that I was sure the room would fill with smoke. Hot enough that I wanted to turn and check we hadn’t set off another explosion.
“Let him go.” I scanned the room, and my new sight made the magical artifact light up in brilliant colors. I hadn’t noticed it before because it looked like nothing more than one of the cheap paperweights sold at a tourist trap off the highway. It was heavy glass, with glitter inside that sparkled in the fluorescent lighting.
Picking it up, I saw the magic disappear into me, my own innate null factor soaking in everything the artifact had to offer. Cassander gasped, shaking his head and glaring at Iris.
“You violated the terms of our parlay,” he said sharply.
“I did not, and even you, Shadow Prince, cannot use your magic against me in response.” Iris winked at us. “I had my lawyers check that and everything.”
The heat under my skin burned. I looked down to check if it was actually coming through, if she had used another artifact on me. Instead, when I spoke, I could feel it on my breath.
“No deal. There’s no peace between us.” I stood.
Iris followed suit, resting both of her hands on the desktop, eyebrows going up as she grinned at me. “No peace. That means war. That means you and yours are in danger. What are you going to do about that ? You’re just one agent, out in the cold, and as soon as I say so, your agency is going to come and pick you up and lock you away for the rest of your life.”
“Try.” I leaned in, a growl that I had never felt before rumbling in my chest. When I put my hand on the desk, I could feel my palm burning the wood. “Come after my family again and find out what I do when I’m backed into a corner.”
I lifted my hand, a perfect charred handprint left behind, but I was too good at what I did to even blink. I couldn’t be surprised, but from her expression, Iris was.
She frowned at me. Then, she raised her chin, a cool mask falling over her face. “Three days. Three nights. That’s how long we’re going to give you before we take everything that’s yours.” She glanced at Cassander, shaking her head as though in pity. “Choose wisely, Damian, because your dad? He’s what happens when you don’t pick the right answer.”