friend.
He sighed and reached for the phone. Dialed a number. His brother Charlie answered on the third ring.
“Hey,” Lannes said, “it’s me.”
“Better be good,” Charlie muttered hoarsely. “Three in the morning here, man.”
A two-hour difference between Chicago and San Francisco. It was going to be dawn soon. “I have a problem.”
Charlie said nothing for a long moment, but when he spoke, his voice sounded clearer. Like he was fully awake. Sitting up. “What happened?”
Lannes told him. About the woman and the gun. The blood. The hole in her mind. He did not mention the link between them. There was no good reason for the omission, except that it felt personal, somehow. Intimate.
“So?” Lannes asked, when he was done. “Verdict?”
“I got nothing,” said Charlie. “You’re screwed.”
“Thanks, genius.”
“Good way to get a date.”
“Not funny.”
“Sorry.” His brother went silent. “I need to talk to Aggie about this.”
Which was the reason Lannes had called Charlie instead of his other brothers. Agatha knew people. People with resources who would not look twice at a gargoyle or dismiss claims of psychic mutilation out of hand.
Lannes had to marvel at his brother sometimes. His luck. His life. Charlie, through nothing more than an act of sheer desperation and compassion, had opened up a new world to them all-and found himself married, with a child, working now for an agency that operated out of San Francisco: a group of men and women, human and inhuman, shape-shifters, human psychics, all of whom masqueraded as little more than highly trained private detectives, mercenaries and bodyguards, simply in order to use their abilities, psychic and magical, to help others.
Dirk & Steele. An agency that operated in public merely to maintain a guise of human normalcy. Fooling the world with the greatest trick of all-hiding in plain sight. Much like Lannes and the rest of his kind. He could never have imagined such an organization existed before Agatha had come into their lives. It was an extraordinary twist of fate. Destiny. Magic. Mysteries beyond reckoning.
“Agatha isn’t at home?” asked Lannes.
“Not for a bit. She was sent to Argentina. Investigating that gnome scare.”
Lannes hesitated, trying to decide if he had heard right. “Gnomes?”
“You know, little dudes with pointy hats? Big white beards and blue coats?”
“That’s a commercial, Charlie.”
“Whatever. A kid took some creepy footage down in Salta. Little guy wearing a pointed hat, moving with a weird sideways walk. People got freaked.”
“It’s probably just a prank.”
“Sure. But Roland wanted it checked out. Just in case.”
Lannes frowned, unbinding his wings with one hand. “Gnomes? Seriously?”
“Gargoyles? Shape-shifters? My wife who can tell the future?”
Lannes grunted, stretching his wings. “Fine. But that doesn’t help me.”
“I’ll make some calls. In the meantime, be careful. You can’t be certain this isn’t just a ruse. Another way to… get at us. Again.”
Lannes almost asked if he and Frederick had been talking. The possibility of a trap was impossible to forget. Pressure, those lines of fate knotting tighter: coincidence and chance, quirk and happenstance. To have been chased out of a bar by a woman just at the moment when he would witness his car stolen-a theft intended by another woman. An armed, bloody woman. A lifetime of tenuous moments bringing him here and now.
The idea of being tricked scared him. But so did the idea of being wrong in another way. Because if the woman was innocent in all this-and he thought she was, he truly did-then abandoning her would be the same as a slow murder. He could not do that. Not without losing a part of himself that would be impossible to regain.
Determination was stronger than fear. He had to get this done. He had to be strong enough.
The witch did not break me. She did not.
Upstairs, he heard the water stop. Charlie
He sighed and reached for the phone. Dialed a number. His brother Charlie answered on the third ring.
“Hey,” Lannes said, “it’s me.”
“Better be good,” Charlie muttered hoarsely. “Three in the morning here, man.”
A two-hour difference between Chicago and San Francisco. It was going to be dawn soon. “I have a problem.”
Charlie said nothing for a long moment, but when he spoke, his voice sounded clearer. Like he was fully awake. Sitting up. “What happened?”
Lannes told him. About the woman and the gun. The blood. The hole in her mind. He did not mention the link between them. There was no good reason for the omission, except that it felt personal, somehow. Intimate.
“So?” Lannes asked, when he was done. “Verdict?”
“I got nothing,” said Charlie. “You’re screwed.”
“Thanks, genius.”
“Good way to get a date.”
“Not funny.”
“Sorry.” His brother went silent. “I need to talk to Aggie about this.”
Which was the reason Lannes had called Charlie instead of his other brothers. Agatha knew people. People with resources who would not look twice at a gargoyle or dismiss claims of psychic mutilation out of hand.
Lannes had to marvel at his brother sometimes. His luck. His life. Charlie, through nothing more than an act of sheer desperation and compassion, had opened up a new world to them all-and found himself married, with a child, working now for an agency that operated out of San Francisco: a group of men and women, human and inhuman, shape-shifters, human psychics, all of whom masqueraded as little more than highly trained private detectives, mercenaries and bodyguards, simply in order to use their abilities, psychic and magical, to help others.
Dirk & Steele. An agency that operated in public merely to maintain a guise of human normalcy. Fooling the world with the greatest trick of all-hiding in plain sight. Much like Lannes and the rest of his kind. He could never have imagined such an organization existed before Agatha had come into their lives. It was an extraordinary twist of fate. Destiny. Magic. Mysteries beyond reckoning.
“Agatha isn’t at home?” asked Lannes.
“Not for a bit. She was sent to Argentina. Investigating that gnome scare.”
Lannes hesitated, trying to decide if he had heard right. “Gnomes?”
“You know, little dudes with pointy hats? Big white beards and blue coats?”
“That’s a commercial, Charlie.”
“Whatever. A kid took some creepy footage down in Salta. Little guy wearing a pointed hat, moving with a weird sideways walk. People got freaked.”
“It’s probably just a prank.”
“Sure. But Roland wanted it checked out. Just in case.”
Lannes frowned, unbinding his wings with one hand. “Gnomes? Seriously?”
“Gargoyles? Shape-shifters? My wife who can tell the future?”
Lannes grunted, stretching his wings. “Fine. But that doesn’t help me.”
“I’ll make some calls. In the meantime, be careful. You can’t be certain this isn’t just a ruse. Another way to… get at us. Again.”
Lannes almost asked if he and Frederick had been talking. The possibility of a trap was impossible to forget. Pressure, those lines of fate knotting tighter: coincidence and chance, quirk and happenstance. To have been chased out of a bar by a woman just at the moment when he would witness his car stolen-a theft intended by another woman. An armed, bloody woman. A lifetime of tenuous moments bringing him here and now.
The idea of being tricked scared him. But so did the idea of being wrong in another way. Because if the woman was innocent in all this-and he thought she was, he truly did-then abandoning her would be the same as a slow murder. He could not do that. Not without losing a part of himself that would be impossible to regain.
Determination was stronger than fear. He had to get this done. He had to be strong enough.
The witch did not break me. She did not.
Upstairs, he heard the water stop. Charlie
Similar Books
