A Ferry of Bones & Gold (Soulbound Book 1), page 10
“I’m here to see Rachel Andrita,” Patrick said in greeting.
The woman didn’t look away from her computer screen. “ID, please.”
Patrick handed over his badge in the folded wallet. Her eyes flicked from the picture on his ID card and agent number on the metal badge itself to his face twice before she seemed satisfied. “Thirtieth floor. Her assistant will be waiting to receive you.”
Patrick took the designated elevator up with a group of people in suits and skirt ensembles, all of them barely giving him a second glance. Several stops later, Patrick got off on the thirtieth floor and made his way to Rachel’s corner office after getting directions from the floor receptionist. A woman in her early thirties was sitting outside Rachel’s corner office at a desk that was surprisingly clear of clutter, typing away on a keyboard with fast strokes and wearing a hands-free phone headset.
“Sit,” she said, without looking up. “Ms. Andrita knows you’re here.”
Patrick arched an eyebrow at the curtness but didn’t argue. If this woman was anything like Brianna, Setsuna’s executive assistant, she wouldn’t let anyone into her boss’ inner sanctum without permission no matter their status. So he took a seat outside on a chair and waited.
At exactly nine o’clock, Rachel’s assistant got up to open the office door. “She’ll see you now.”
Patrick stood up and went to meet the SOA’s Special Agent in Charge of New York City.
The corner office overlooked the street instead of the side of a neighboring building. The wards wrapped around the space reminded him of the ones in Casale’s office, only stronger. Patrick cased the room automatically, checking out the commendations and degrees hanging on the wall and the bookshelves that actually held books rather than decorative knickknacks.
The space had that monotone feel to it all the government alphabet agencies seemed to have these days: all the furniture matched in dull colors, walls were painted white or beige, and halogen lighting made people’s eyes twitch by the end of the workday. Not a place Patrick wanted to work.
Rachel didn’t stand up or offer her hand in greeting when Patrick approached her desk. She merely took in his appearance with cool brown eyes. “Your outfit leaves something to be desired.”
“The director has never had a problem with how I dress for the field, ma’am,” Patrick replied mildly.
Since she hadn’t offered him a seat, he took one anyway. The narrow-eyed look she shot him told Patrick this meeting was going to go terribly.
Fucking politics, man.
Rachel leaned forward in her leather seat, all business. Her honey-blonde hair was pinned away from her face in a loose chignon that brushed the collar of her silk blouse. In her midforties, but looking at least ten years younger, Rachel was a career-oriented witch who had made climbing the SOA ranks her life’s goal. That she wasn’t yet riding a desk in DC with a title that carried more weight didn’t mean she wasn’t angling for a promotion.
Patrick knew this case would look good on her resume, if only it had stayed in her office. So he wasn’t surprised when the first thing Rachel addressed was the transfer.
“I understand Director Abuku felt it necessary to send someone from the Rapid Response Division, but this case has spanned six months already, and the PCB was mostly handling it with our help. I’ll be frank, Collins. I really don’t think your presence is necessary, and I informed the director as such last night,” Rachel said.
“I’m sure the director took your suggestion under advisement,” Patrick replied in the neutral voice he’d perfected in the military when dealing with incompetent—from his perspective—superior officers.
“I understand there was an altercation at a bar last night. What happened?”
“I really can’t say, ma’am.”
Rachel tapped her perfectly manicured fingernails against the hard oak of her desk. “That answer is unacceptable. We’re all on the same team here, Collins.”
“It’s an active investigation, and I report to the director, not to you. If you want to be read into the case going forward, you’ll need clearance from Director Abuku.”
Rachel didn’t show her irritation about her request being denied, a testament to her ability to read a room. Patrick wondered why a SAIC was so interested in a case formally assigned to a lower-level witch that Rachel hadn’t looked twice at. Only when it got taken out of her hands, metaphorically speaking, did she start to raise a fuss.
“I understand Chief Casale had plans to seek answers from a seer. Has that meeting occurred yet?”
Warning bells rang loud and clear through Patrick’s mind at that question. As far as he knew, Casale’s meeting with Marek hadn’t been telegraphed.
So he lied.
“I’m not sure.”
“We both know the bar you were at last night is affiliated with Marek Taylor, a seer the government keeps tabs on. Did he have a vision or not?” Rachel asked.
“Again, you’ll need to discuss that with the director.”
Rachel sat back and touched a few keys on her keyboard, staring at her monitor. “If the City is willing to spend that much money on a seer, then I really think my office should be more thoroughly involved. When this is over, you’ll be on your way again and we agents here in New York City will be left to pick up the pieces. You have a tendency toward collateral damage in the field. I’m not comfortable having you be my office’s representative. I want to assign you a partner.”
Patrick fought back a grimace. “No.”
“Excuse me?” Rachel said sharply.
“Ma’am, the case is no longer under the purview of your office. It’s now being handled through DC, which means it’s mine. I don’t do partners, and you don’t have the authority to change the parameters of how I run things.”
“I see.” Rachel clasped her hands together over the desk and stared him down. “Is stonewalling how you normally run things? Is that standard operating procedure for your division?”
Patrick didn’t move an inch under her gaze. “This isn’t stonewalling. This is me following my orders, which come from the director we both serve under. If you have a problem with that, take it up with her.”
The impasse lasted at least a minute before Rachel broke the staring contest with a ploy at faux concern. “Every field agent is required to have a partner. The fact that you don’t is worrisome.”
“I don’t need one.”
Patrick could be a team player and had been in the Mage Corps, surrounded by people who’d been trained like he had been to deal with magic and demons in a war zone. He missed his old team more than his therapist knew, but those who were left were running dark right now and he hadn’t heard from them in months. Coming into the SOA when initially recruited, he’d tried working with a partner or two those first weeks after clawing his way out of the bottom of a bottle and suicidal thoughts.
It didn’t end well.
Setsuna had been the one to transfer his last partner and affirm his solo status in the records. Patrick worked his cases alone because of the gods he could never outrun. He didn’t need to subject someone else to his shitty life.
“I’ll bring up my concern with the director again. I want to be kept apprised of any new leads in the case as they come up,” Rachel said.
“I’ll keep that request in mind.”
The faint tic at the corner of Rachel’s mouth told him she knew he was only spouting lip service. “We’ll talk later, Collins. This meeting is over.”
Patrick tipped his head her way. “Ma’am.”
He left her office feeling like he had a target on his back. Patrick couldn’t get out of the building and to his car fast enough. Throwing himself behind the steering wheel, he slapped his hand against the roof of the car, warding the vehicle for silence despite the sting that came with using his magic right now.
He pulled out his phone and unlocked it, swiping into his contacts. His thumb hovered over Setsuna’s name before he sighed and tapped back to the keypad. Patrick entered a string of numbers instead, letting the call ring through three times before hanging up. He repeated that two more times before waiting thirty seconds and calling once more.
Setsuna picked up on the first ring.
“Line and location are secure” were the first words out of her mouth.
“I got voluntold to keep Rachel updated on the case,” Patrick said.
“Don’t.”
“I wasn’t planning on it before, and I’m definitely not planning on it now. What is going on, Setsuna?”
“I wanted you to form your own opinion without mine influencing yours.”
Patrick froze, staring at the empty seats in the car parked nose to nose with his. It felt like someone had poured ice water down his spine. “You don’t trust her.”
“I don’t trust a lot of people, and we are still cleaning house.”
“You’ve been cleaning house since I was a child.”
“You know why.”
Patrick swore, closing his eyes. Yeah, he did, and that was the problem. He leaned forward and rested his forehead against the steering wheel. “You think Rachel belongs to the Dominion Sect.”
“I think this case has been purposefully delayed from reaching my desk for six months. It was luck the DC office received the appeal from the New York City PCB at all.”
Patrick thought about Marek and his inability to have clear visions at the moment. He thought about the Fates who saw fit to saddle Patrick with a werewolf. He thought about the signs carved on the dead, Hermes’ sinister warning, and the too-sharp attention of a witch who should have been on their side.
The next words out of his mouth felt like glass, slicing deep. “You think it’s Ethan.”
Setsuna’s silence spoke volumes.
The Dominion Sect had gone by many names throughout the centuries, but their number one priority always remained the same: the subjugation of the gods and removal of the veil between worlds. Rogue magic users of every creed who belonged to the shadowy group all lived double lives, as did their many human followers. Ferreting any of them out was difficult. The higher-ups rarely made mistakes, but when they did, those mistakes were brutal for everyone involved.
Patrick’s mother had never really known the true nature of the family she married into. That blindness cost Clara Patterson her life when Patrick was eight years old and Ethan Greene had murdered her.
It cost Patrick more.
He leaned over the front-seat divider and opened the glove compartment, pulling out the pack of cigarettes he’d stashed there yesterday. Screw the no smoking policy on the rental; he’d pay for the damn cleaning fee.
Prying a cigarette out with his teeth, he lit the end with a bit of mage fire burning from his fingertip. He stuck the key in the ignition and turned it just enough to get power so he could crack the window open and flick ash through that thin gap.
“Handle this case how you normally would,” Setsuna finally said, breaking the silence after he’d smoked down half his cigarette. “I’ll send Rachel another email about her interference.”
“Make it a phone call,” Patrick said.
“It will be handled.”
His lip curled at that, knowing full well how Setsuna handled shit like this—by sending Patrick in. Only this time, she couldn’t use him. “And my backup?”
“On their way.”
“Who’s coming?”
Setsuna hung up without answering. Patrick wondered just who she’d chosen to send as help if she wouldn’t risk saying their names out loud, even on a burner phone. None of the choices he could think of were good ones.
“I hear smoking will kill you.”
Patrick had a mageglobe in hand, burning with raw magic, before his brain recognized the bored sound of Hermes’ voice coming from the passenger seat.
“God fucking damn it,” Patrick ground out, glaring at the immortal. “Do you really have to keep showing up like this?”
“Aww, Pattycakes. Did I scare you?” Hermes drawled, a nasty smirk on his mouth. “You should watch your back.”
Patrick snuffed out his mageglobe and stuck his cigarette back between his lips, drawing in a lungful of smoke. “You got anything worthwhile to tell me, or did you just show up to mock me because you’re bored?”
Hermes lifted one foot and put it on the dash, his dirty Doc Martens scuffing up the black interior. His knee poked out of the hole in his black skinny jeans, showing off a scab or two. “I have a message for you.”
“Next time, why don’t you just call?”
“So you can ignore me? Where’s the fun in that, Pattycakes?”
Patrick arched an eyebrow, as if the answer wasn’t obvious. “What do you want?”
Hermes’ hand darted out cat-quick, plucking the nearly finished cigarette out of Patrick’s mouth. He slipped it between his own lips, breathing in deep to burn it down to the filter. Smoke drifted out of his nose and from between his teeth. Hermes stubbed it out on the console between them, smearing ash around the cup holder.
“Isadora Cirillo wants to meet with you. Make time for her,” Hermes told him.
“How do you know the missing hedge fund manager’s wife?”
Hermes’ gold-brown eyes turned molten. “How do you think?”
The immortal disappeared, leaving only smoke behind. Patrick stared at the empty passenger seat, Hermes’ words ringing in his ears, the threat unmistakable.
“Fucking gods and their fucking games,” Patrick muttered, reaching for his pack of cigarettes again.
One of these days, they’d be the death of him.
7
Jono dug out his mobile, only half listening as Patrick drove off behind him. Swearing under his breath, he speed-dialed Marek while standing outside the Starbucks. The line rang a couple of times before Marek finally picked up.
“Yeah?” Marek answered, sounding worried. “Jono? Why aren’t you asleep?”
“The sodding mage left me at a Starbucks,” Jono growled.
“What?”
“He’s got a meeting at the SOA. Wouldn’t take me with him.”
“Man, I don’t want another migraine. Are you safe?”
Jono scanned the immediate area through his sunglasses, picking out all the office workers easily enough by sight and scent. He couldn’t smell anything out of the ordinary, but magic was always a tricky thing to defend against.
“Can’t bloody tell.”
The demon at the bar last night had seemed human right up until it wasn’t. Standing out in the open like this set Jono’s teeth on edge, but hiding inside the Starbucks wouldn’t be much better. At least out here, if he had to run like Patrick had suggested, he wouldn’t be boxed in.
“Why don’t you call an Uber and come have breakfast with us?”
“Patrick told me to wait.”
Marek snorted. “Since when do you listen to anyone, much less a mage?”
Jono sighed heavily, nostrils flaring with the remembered bitter scent of the mage in question. Patrick’s interest had been there at the bar and continued in the flat. Before Jono even knew what the other man was, he’d liked what he’d seen standing on the other side of the bar counter.
Patrick was all lean muscles and callused hands, with a cocky tilt to his head, and ginger hair that Jono ached to get his fingers in and give a good yank to. Getting eyes on Patrick in the bar last night had made Jono wish he wasn’t working, because he wouldn’t have minded taking Patrick home and absolutely wrecking him.
Then the demon had showed up, and Patrick had shown what he really was, and Jono had expected that whiff of desire in the bar to have been false. Magic users, he’d come to learn over the years, were a hard read, but scents never lied. It’s why Jono had tried to seduce Patrick a little last night—because he wanted to, but mostly so he would know Patrick anywhere through smell alone.
Jono wouldn’t have pushed for sex like that if he didn’t believe what he offered wouldn’t be reciprocated. He wasn’t one to force himself on people, or force obedience out of them, not like some god pack members he could name. But then the bloody bastard had gone and shielded like no other magic user he’d ever encountered before, and Jono couldn’t smell him at fucking all.
Drove him mad, and he couldn’t even say why.
“Since your bloody patrons ordered me to stay with him,” Jono finally said.
If it had been anyone else giving the order, Jono would’ve told them to fuck off and done what he liked. His rank as a god pack alpha—which was bloody ridiculous some days considering he had no pack—meant there were few things in the world that could make him obey.
But gods?
Jono knew a thing or two about gods and the punishments they could mete out for disobedience. If they wanted him to follow after Patrick like a mindless puppet, then he would, no matter how much it grated, if only to save his own skin.
That didn’t mean he had to like it.
Marek sighed. “I’m sorry, Jono. I really am.”
“Is he why you brought me here?” Jono asked the question again because he couldn’t help himself. He stared blankly at the street and the cars driving past. “To the States?”
“I want to say yes, but I don’t know” was Marek’s honest reply, as it always was when Jono searched for answers. “I wish I could see that for you.”
He’d never been able to, which Jono had always thought was strange. Marek’s offer of employment three years ago and a promise of something more in the future had been the lifeline Jono needed at the time. Leaving London had been painful—it was home and always would be—but it was no longer welcoming. He had no longer been welcome.
New York City hadn’t been much better, what with Estelle and Youssef looking for an excuse to exile him from their territory. Only Marek’s rank as a seer, driven by the Fates, kept the god pack alphas in check. They’d still denied Jono a place in their pack and forbidden him from forming his own in their territory.
