Owl and the City of Angels by Kristi Charish

agents as I aimed for an alley—one that was too narrow by far for the mob’s purposes. The IAA agents were still standing, but too far back in the crowd to reach me anytime soon. Ducking a wild punch aimed at anyone dumb enough to get in the owner’s way, I climbed over a fallen pair of brawlers and bugged down the alley as fast as my feet would carry me.
    I was breathing hard now—my cardio had gotten better since Bali, but I was still a long way off from marathon material. I checked over my shoulder for the IAA again. They’d reached the alley and were moving faster now . . .
    There was a window a few feet ahead that had been opened a crack—not enough to tempt looters, but large enough I could wedge myself through. I vaulted up and crawled through.
    I’d landed in a restaurant kitchen, where half the staff was madly trying to shut everything down while the remainder tried to chase out customers still left up front. An angry cook glared and shouted something derogatory before reaching for a cricket bat.
    No time for niceties. “Sorry,” I offered in Arabic as I darted past him into the dining area. Another man behind the bar shouted, and I noticed a gun. These guys were ready to shoot looters. I pushed past a customer and opened the front door.
    Two IAA agents were standing in the doorway, mid-conversation on their communicators and about ready to open the door.
    “Oh you got to be kidding me,” I said.
    For a moment none of us moved, including the men in the bar.
    Who says there isn’t a common international signal for we’re all about to get screwed?
    I recovered first—years of practice and paranoia—and managed to stumble back and put a booth between me and the IAA.
    The IAA does not recruit slow. Both agents reached into their jackets, though neither was willing to pull out a gun—yet.
    “Alix Hiboux, aka Owl, we’re detaining you on IAA authority for breaches against regulation,” the one closest to me said, a midforties agent sporting a crew cut. I rolled my eyes. Where did they get these people? Probably poached from some military department, maybe even CIA. The IAA was funny that way. They might be the Grand Poobah of clandestine operations, but clandestine was the operative word. Officially they didn’t exist, so recruiting practices consisted of cloak-and-dagger-style poaching from various military and government spy departments. The mix of agents that resulted was eclectic, and more often than not a little crazy. Have to be to believe half the supernatural stuff that’s out there . . .
    Stall, Alix, stall . . . I raised both my hands over the booth’s ledge. “OK, seriously, guys, this is overkill for a minor dig site. Don’t you have anything better to deal with? Like hiding supernaturals or something?”
    Blond crew cut sneered. “You are our top supernatural threat.”
    “Seriously? Caracalla’s catacomb barely rates petty theft on the antiquities scale, let alone supernatural. And the only supernatural in there is Caracalla—and I didn’t steal him, I shoved a femur in his face. Hard distinction for you guys to make, I know—”
    “Put your hands on your head and drop to your knees,” crew cut yelled, interrupting me.
    Yeah, not happening . . . “This isn’t about Algiers, is it? Seriously guys, traps don’t count, and those aren’t supernatural either. Hell, you guys practically owed me the Cleopatra cuffs in damages and back pay,” I yelled back.
    “You’ve got to the count of five, Hiboux.”
    There must be some universal rule about the kind of people who want to become IAA agents . . . something along the lines of “assholes only need apply” . . .
    “OK, we might not like each other very much, but everyone in the IAA knows I don’t deal with dangerous artifacts or digs.” To be fair, the IAA might be dicks, but I figured that was why they’d never mounted a serious manhunt for me before. On their sliding scale of threats, I rate somewhere