Most of Daryl’s species had been wiped out in the industrial revolution, though there were some signs that they were coming back in the mountains—now that we weren’t cutting down hundred-year-old trees anymore. Frail, pale, and sensitive to pollution, the woman didn’t get out much. She was a warrior, though, and for all her delicate beauty and flowing clothes, I’d seen her pin Glenn with a cheese knife to his throat when she thought he was cheating.
My eyes went to the ozonator Glenn had put in last month, the machine purifying the air and leaving it with the smell of a thunderstorm. It seemed to help, and now that I noticed, all the new furnishings were eco oriented, with no petroleum or synthetic anything to make her condition worse. Method to her redecorating madness, perhaps?
Jenks spilled a silver dust and rose an inch before dropping back down. “Daryl, turn it up!” he exclaimed as BRIMSTONE BUST AT LIBRARY flashed up on the screen and the lady announcer in her lavender suit began talking. The pretty, petite warrior woman licked her fingers and snatched up the remote, knowing how to work it as if she’d been born with one in her hand. Magic, technology—sometimes I failed to see the difference.
The announcer’s voice became loud and I leaned forward, straining over the hum of Jenks’s wings. “If you tried to use the downtown branch of the library this afternoon, chances are good that you were turned away as the FIB and the I.S. took part in a rare combined effort to catch one of the country’s slipperiest Brimstone distributors.”
“Brimstone?” Jenks shouted, and I shushed him.
“In a late hour of action, officials stormed the lower levels of the downtown branch of the Cincinnati library. The chase ultimately covered almost two city blocks through some of Cincinnati’s old bioshelters, created during the Turn, until Eloy Orin was apprehended trying to emerge from Central Ave.’s access doors.” The woman turned to the attractive, gray-tinged man sitting beside her and smiled. “Brimstone in the library? It gives new meaning to the phrase ‘hooked on reading.’ Right, Bob?”The TV changed to a shot of Central Ave., bright under a low sun. The picture was blurry, clearly taken from some distance. “Look!” Jenks exclaimed, hovering to block the TV. “Rache! That’s you!”
I leaned forward to see a figure in a red shirt being carried out by a man in a suit, Trent, obviously. “Good God, I look Brimstoned,” I said, hoping this wouldn’t be syndicated out to the West Coast. My mom would pee her pants, then call her neighbors to brag.
“Which is why you’re sitting,” Ivy said. “Eat your pizza. You’ve hardly touched it.”
“Quiet,” Wayde muttered from the kitchen. “I didn’t get a chance to see this.”
“You didn’t miss anything,” I said as I lifted my wedge of pizza while the announcer gave a brief history lesson on the tunnels and how there was no record that they connected with the library.
Again Wayde shushed me, his eyes bright. “She’s talking about you!”
I chewed quietly, not excited. Most times my name made the news, I had to hide in the church for two weeks.
“Though sources haven’t verified it, witnesses claim that Cincinnati’s very own demon witch Rachel Morgan was on the scene. Phone calls to the firm she calls one-third her own have gone unanswered—”
“Because I’m eating,” I muttered, shushed by both Daryl and Wayde.
“But Vampiric Charms is known to have worked with the FIB in the past.”
“Oh, crap!” I exclaimed as the thirty-second video of me wearing nothing but an FIB coat flashed up on the screen. I didn’t care if the important bits were being blocked out. I looked awful, my hair wild and the coat riding up to show my fuzzed ass.
“Whoa! I didn’t know the station had that,” Glenn said, and I flushed.
“Trent’s in the background,” Jenks said, and horrified, I looked to see the elf, his eyes averted.
“Oh God. Can we please turn this off?” I pleaded, and Daryl worked the remote to turn the volume down, her little mouth drawn up as she laughed at me.
Glenn stood behind Ivy, a beer in one hand, smiling at last. “Thank you, Rachel, Ivy, and Jenks,” he said, raising the bottle in salute. “You were the difference between success and failure. Good tag.”
Ivy shifted in her chair and raised her glass above her head, clinking with him. “I wish I’d been there at the end. I would’ve enjoyed smacking Eloy under the flag of justice.”
I would have enjoyed smacking Eloy a little more, too, and as the announcer flirted with her male counterpart, I set my pizza aside. Caught not once but twice with my own magic, I thought as I spun Trent’s ring on my pinkie. But at least we’d gotten him. My smile faded as the memory of the-men-who-don’t-belong surfaced. If their radio had been working, things might have turned out differently. I might not be so banged up, for instance. They had left, and that was just . . . wrong.
Focus blurring, I remembered Trent’s casual acceptance of everything, his matter-of-fact recitation of all the things wrong with me before the ambulance personnel had their look and confirmed it. He hadn’t panicked when finding me beat up and broken. Instead, he quietly sat beside me and looked for the-men-who-don’t-belong. A part of me thought I should be mad that he let me sit there in pain, but I wasn’t. He’d known what was wrong with me before the ambulance personnel had. Nothing had been life threatening, but finding the-men-who-don’t-belong had been then or never. Besides, I had told him no ambulance.
Head down, I spun the ring on my finger, squinting as I noticed that one of the three bands had turned black. It was a three-charm spell, I thought in surprise. It still had some power.
Wayde wandered out of the kitchen with a plate of pizza in one hand, pop in the other, and looked over the seating arrangements. Seeing the Were at a loss, I shifted my legs so he could sit between me and Daryl. “Thanks,” he said as he sank and a puff of vampire- and dryad-scented air rose. “I still don’t believe that you eat pizza,” he said to Glenn as he inched himself forward and out of the cushion trap to set his plate on the coffee table. “You’re okay, FIB man. You can run with me anytime.”
Glenn gave him a look, his expression one of wondering mistrust. “Thanks.”
Ivy picked a pepperoni off her pizza and gave it to Glenn. He was still standing over her, watching his bust through the newscaster’s eyes. “You should tell everyone at the FIB you eat pizza,” Ivy said. “It will do wonders for your street cred.”
“My street cred is fine,” he said. “And they already think I’m insane. Seeing that I like working with witches and vampires.”
Jenks hummed over my pizza, and I gestured that he could have it. “But it’s a good kind of insane,” the pixy said as he sat on the crust and used his chopsticks to nibble the tomato sauce.
Glenn made a noise deep in his throat, then headed back into the kitchen, clearly not convinced. Ivy stood with her empty plate and followed him. She was looking a little sultry, and I’d be surprised if she came back to the church with me tonight. Good thing Wayde was here to get me home. It’d be hard to drive with my ankle and wrist messed up.
Wayde choked, and I looked up from my bruised hand when he shouted, “Turn it up!”
Daryl was already reaching for the remote, but Jenks beat her to it, stomping on the button until the announcer’s voice blared, “ . . . tonight when Orin escaped, while being moved to a more secure FIB facility.”
“What?” Ivy exclaimed from the kitchen, and suddenly her scent poured over me as she stood at my shoulder, mouth agape.
“Son of Tink!” Jenks said, and Glenn bellowed for everyone to shut up. He had escaped? How?
“Authorities are asking for your help if you see this man,” the woman in lavender said as her face was replaced by a shot of Eloy, recent by the apparent bruise from where Trent had hit him and the swollen bump on his head from where he’d further slammed his head on the floor. Eloy’s head was cocked and he looked determined, angry, and disdainful. Anger stirred in me. He hadn’t escaped. Someone had broken him out. Eloy had said they were everywhere. The-men-who-don’t-belong, maybe?
“Orin is considered highly dangerous and should not be approached,” she was saying as another picture of him popped up, this time a full-body shot. “Please call one of the numbers below if you see him.”Two numbers: one for the FIB, the other for the I.S. “Call the I.S.,” Jenks said, hovering before the TV with his hands on his hips. “The FIB can’t even hold their farts.”
“You’re in the way!” Wayde leaned to see around him, but they’d gone back to a wide angle of the studio showing the newscasters sitting side by side.
“Sounds like a dangerous man,” the guy was saying, “evading both the I.S. and the FIB. Let’s hope they get this one soon.”
The woman smiled brightly. “If it were me, I’d be halfway to Brazil. You know how I like my sun. And speaking of sun, is there any sun in our forecast for tomorrow, Susan?”
I stared at the map of the East Coast, with the low pressure dropping down from the Canadian wilds, stunned. Nice segue.