A Ferry of Bones & Gold (Soulbound Book 1), page 12
Emma nodded, already tying up her thick black hair into a ponytail, ready to get to work. “We got this.”
Jono flashed back to the demon from last night and wasn’t so sure about that. Leaving the bar behind him, he made it to the car right as Patrick started the engine.
“Is it safe to leave Marek alone?” Jono asked as he buckled up.
“If the gods want his ass saved, they’ll tell me,” Patrick said cryptically.
Jono didn’t know what Patrick meant by that. “Did you find what you were looking for back there?”
Patrick pulled into the street, staring straight ahead. “No.”
Jono couldn’t tell if he was lying or not. The lack of scent was strange, forcing Jono to rely on his other senses. He dialed up his hearing and listened to Patrick’s heart beating just a touch off rhythm.
Liar, liar, Jono thought to himself.
Whatever answers Patrick had found in the bar, Jono wasn’t privy to them.
“You sure about that, mate?” Jono asked quietly.
Patrick stared straight ahead and didn’t speak, his heartbeat strong and even in Jono’s ears—except when it skipped a beat.
8
Patrick spent two hours at the PCB bringing himself up to speed on the case files, all the while trying not to think about what his magic had pried out of Tempest’s walls. The residual hellish taint that had been at the other crime scene was barely present in the bar, but his magic had still caught on what remained.
He’d still found where the soultaker had most likely stepped through the veil: at the rear of the bar, in the short hallway where the bathrooms were. Traces of a look-away ward had been buried beneath the taint, the remains too degraded for him to locate any magical signature. Patrick was certain the perpetrator hadn’t been in the bar at the time of the attack.
Patrick didn’t have time the other night to go over the crime scene with his magic, too worried about getting Marek somewhere safe. Knowing that the soultaker had ripped its way through the veil with outside help reinforced Setsuna’s silent implications during their phone call.
Third time’s the charm, Patrick thought grimly as he pressed a hand to his chest, T-shirt rubbing over his scars.
He reached for another case folder, flipping it open and sorting through the stack of reports and crime scene photographs. Patrick had taken over a small conference room since no desks were free out in the bull pen, utilizing every last bit of space on the table to sort through everything. For the most part, PCB officers left him alone, but there was no hiding from their chief.
“I got an angry phone call from the god pack alphas this morning,” was the first thing out of Casale’s mouth when he entered the conference room sometime later.
“I told them to stay out of the case,” Patrick said as he drew a silence ward on the table, pushing static through the room with his magic. “Maybe I should have them arrested since they’re incapable of listening.”
“That’s a media mess we don’t need right now.”
Patrick shrugged. “Wouldn’t be me dealing with them.”
“DCPI has enough problems killing media rumors about this case. Let’s not make their job harder,” Casale told him.
Patrick set down the stack of photographs depicting mangled bodies and looked over at where Casale stood. “Your wife sent your son to guard Marek.”
“I know. I’m rethinking my appeal to Washington right about now.”
“It’s a little late for regrets.”
“I’m aware of that. You should know Rachel called me this morning as well.”
Patrick frowned. “Let me guess. She wants you to keep her updated on the case.”
“Right on the money. Of course, this is the first I’ve heard of her being interested after brushing off my concerns for the past few months when she wasn’t making it difficult to appeal. I’m not inclined to play nice.”
“You don’t need to. SOA Director Abuku instructed me to handle the case, not any local agents. You’re not required to keep Rachel updated, and I’d rather you didn’t.”
“I have no desire to be in the middle of a federal intra-agency tug-of-war. Besides, your boss said to only work through you, so I will.” He didn’t exactly sound happy about that, but Casale was nothing if not dedicated to his job and doing it right to the best of his abilities. “Now, you want to tell me what a god pack werewolf is doing following you around?”
Patrick glanced out the interior frosted windows that looked onto the hallway. He could see Jono’s shadowed form where he sat outside the door, still in the spot Patrick had left him.
“Marek wants Jono to stay with me.”
Casale crossed his arms over his chest, arching one thick eyebrow. “Does he, now?”
“He had another vision after I warded his apartment.”
Casale’s gaze sharpened. “He had another vision? Of what?”
“Don’t worry. He’s not charging you for it. I was told to keep Jono close.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
Patrick tried not to let his frustration bleed into his voice. Orders from the gods always complicated everything.
“Werecreatures don’t have magic. It doesn’t make sense that you’d need to protect Jono from a demon who wants to eat magic.”
“They don’t have magic, but the werevirus was made from magic. It alters their soul for the physical change. They still die like everyone else who gets trapped in a soultaker’s teeth.”
“You think he might be a target?”
Patrick shrugged. “At this rate, who the fuck knows? But I’m not going to ignore what a seer tells me, so Jono stays.”
The situation wasn’t all bad. Jono was definitely easy on the eyes, even if Patrick needed to keep his hands to himself.
“You got anything else for me?” Casale asked.
Patrick reached out and picked up a photocopied page from an online investors website, the power couple standing in front of a desk unfamiliar to his eyes. Hermes’ warning hovered at the back of his mind, and Patrick’s eyes traced over the classically Grecian faces of the dark-haired woman and her husband.
“I need to set up a meeting with Isadora Cirillo,” Patrick said.
“Her contact information should be in the file. You got six days left. Don’t waste them.”
Casale let himself out. Patrick dragged his fingers through the sigil on the table, breaking up the silence ward. The static faded away. Before the door could shut all the way behind Casale, Jono slipped inside on quick feet, looking vaguely irritated.
“I told you to wait out in the hall,” Patrick said.
Jono dragged a chair out and sat down in it. “Piss off. Every cop out there is eyeing me like I need to be in handcuffs.”
Patrick had a split-second mental image of Jono naked and handcuffed to his bed. He bit back a groan and discreetly shifted on his chair. He seriously needed to get laid. Last night’s fun had woken up his dick in the worst way. Having Jono around testing his don’t touch resolve was proving distracting.
Patrick cleared his throat. “The case files are classified.”
Jono held up his phone and waved it from side to side. “I’ll keep myself busy.”
Patrick doubted Jono would keep his eyes to himself, but he didn’t want to argue. With the Fates having glued Jono to his side, it would be impossible to keep the werewolf out of the loop entirely. So Patrick put Jono out of his mind in favor of finishing his review of the case file, taking his own notes on a borrowed tablet of yellow legal paper.
An hour and a half later, he finished reviewing every single case file for each murder and absorbed the information found within. The clock on his phone said it was a little after 1400, and his stomach was reminding him he needed to eat something. Patrick started putting the case files back in order. It took him two trips to the bull pen to return them to the secured filing cabinet they were being stored in.
Returning to the conference room, Patrick retrieved Jono. Picking up his messenger bag from the chair, he jerked his head at the door. “Come on. You can have that lie-in back at the apartment.”
Jono closed the game app he was playing on his phone and stood up, stretching his arms over his head. His shirt rode up a little, pulling tight across his broad chest. Patrick thought he heard a bone pop in Jono’s spine, but he was too busy staring at the hint of chiseled abs to really pay attention.
Jono noticed and gave Patrick a lazy smile. “All right. You can join me if you want.”
“Not interested,” Patrick said, lying through his teeth.
If anything, Jono’s smile got wider. “Keep telling yourself that, love.”
Patrick did, every second of the drive back to the apartment. They left the PCB in the early afternoon, the ride made with the music on low, which Jono drowned out with questions after the second block disappeared in the rearview mirror.
“What was that at the bar?” Jono asked.
Patrick braked for a red light and took a moment to check his phone. Setsuna still hadn’t responded to his texts and emails. “You’re going to have to be more specific.”
“Your magic smells wrong.”
“You don’t need to worry about my magic.”
“I think I should if you’re supposed to stand between me and a soultaker.”
The light turned green, and Patrick stepped on the gas. “Are you really going to complain about that now after last night when I saved your life?”
Jono stared at him and didn’t speak for five blocks. Only when Patrick braked to a halt for another red light did Jono move, preternatural quick, fingers brushing against Patrick’s throat. He reacted instantly even as Jono’s fingers snagged on the stainless steel chain half-hidden beneath his T-shirt.
Patrick twisted against the seat belt in the confined space without taking his foot off the brake pedal. Between one breath and the next, he had his right hand wrapped around Jono’s throat, fingers and thumb digging in hard. His left hand grabbed Jono’s wrist with enough pressure on the tendons there to make Jono’s fingers twitch.
Jono’s wolf-bright eyes narrowed to slits, but he was looking at the dog tags, not the near-murderous expression on Patrick’s face. Patrick had to throttle back the instinctive urge to kill at the unexpected breach of his personal space.
“Military before SOA,” Jono said around Patrick’s tight grip, the words nearly bitten off. “Is that how you got a soul wound?”
Patrick bared his teeth in a silent snarl, fingers tightening a fraction more before he let Jono go. He yanked the dog tags out of Jono’s grip, stuffing them back under his shirt. The light turned green, and he slammed his foot down on the gas pedal.
“You do that again and I will shoot you,” Patrick promised.
The faint bruises Patrick had pressed into Jono’s skin were already fading, the werewolf’s accelerated healing taking care of the minor injuries in less than a minute.
“So you’re Mage Corps.”
Patrick tightened his hands on the steering wheel and pretended it was Jono’s neck all over again. “Not anymore.”
He’d walked away from the military and his team to save his sanity. But Patrick still missed it some days: the uniform, the missions, the regimented way soldiers lived their lives, his team. The way he’d been able to delay the soul debt he owed immortals by paying his service to his country instead. For all the battles he’d been in, Patrick had been safe there on the front lines from something exponentially worse, as fucked-up as that truth was.
“Sorry,” Jono said a few blocks later.
“My life is not your business,” Patrick ground out.
“Then why do the Fates want me in it?”
Patrick didn’t answer him and kept not answering him for the rest of the drive back to the apartment. He managed to find parking a block away and paid the meter to the limit with his card. Patrick ignored Jono on the walk back to the apartment. Once inside and past the threshold, Patrick set up his MacBook on the dining room table and got to work.
The first thing he did was access the SOA’s archives through an encrypted employee web portal. Patrick had his notes from the case file, but he needed copies of reports from the Thirty-Day War the SOA had on file. His personal experience fighting soultakers was useful, but he needed more than memories right now.
The rest of the afternoon was a tunnel vision of research, so much so that he didn’t know how much time had passed until Jono was snapping his fingers in front of Patrick’s eyes to get his attention.
Patrick blinked, turning to look at him and trying not to wince at the stiffness in his neck and shoulders. “What?”
“Your fridge is empty. What do you want for dinner? I’m paying,” Jono asked.
“Is this an apology meal?”
“I’d cook, but you’ve nothing for me to cook with.”
The last time someone had apologized with food, his team’s sniper had given Patrick the last candy bar out of his care package. That was in the middle of an FOB after a long few days outside the wire. Tonight, he was in New York City with an abundance of choices.
So he went with the obvious one.
“Pepperoni pizza,” Patrick said.
Jono nodded at his request and pulled out his phone, tapping away at the screen. Patrick cracked his neck, wincing at the noise it made. Outside the living room windows, the world was drifting into twilight. He’d spent so long in the throes of research that he’d lost track of time. No wonder his entire back felt as if it were made of knots.
Patrick saved what he had compiled from his research using an encryption program. He signed off on his report for the PCB and emailed that to Casale, then sent another email to Setsuna in their personal code with the subject line of Still Not in Hawaii. He’d see if she finally answered that one, which was him basically asking—yet again—where the hell his backup was.
“Pizza will be here in an hour,” Jono said a couple of minutes later as he put his phone away.
“How many did you get?” Patrick asked as he closed his MacBook.
“I could murder a whole one by myself, so I got two.”
That meant Patrick wouldn’t have to share. He’d grudgingly accept Jono’s apology if it meant he got free food. He got up from the table, stretching out the kinks that came from sitting for hours on end in a hard chair. Jono had returned to the couch to continue watching television, having settled on a channel showing the highlights of what had happened in American sports that day.
“Didn’t think you liked baseball, what with you being English and all,” Patrick said. He sprawled out on the other end of the couch, kicking one foot up on the coffee table.
“You Yanks hardly show any proper football. Better something than nothing, even if baseball is the most boring sport in existence.”
Patrick really couldn’t disagree. He found baseball tolerable only when he was at a game getting drunk and eating too many hot dogs. Still, Patrick was content enough to spend the next forty-five minutes listening to commentators talk stats and show replays of today’s game highlights, if only to give his mind a rest. When Jono’s phone rang, Patrick watched him leave to go retrieve the delivery from downstairs since they couldn’t buzz the guy in. Jono returned a couple of minutes later carrying two large pizza boxes and a six-pack of beer.
Patrick ate straight out of the box, folding the greasy slices of pizza in half and devouring them one by one. Jono opened their beers by prying off the bottle caps with his hands, passing one to Patrick first before taking a sip of his. Patrick would say dinner was almost nice, if it didn’t feel like an extension of Jono’s apology in the car.
Dinner wasn’t enough to make him forget that incident, and Jono didn’t try to broach the subject again that night. The quiet between them felt strained, ushering Patrick to bed at a decent hour for once rather than waiting out the tension.
Patrick woke up at the ass crack of dark before dawn to his phone ringing. He fumbled it out from beneath his pillow and answered it without looking. “Someone better be dead.”
“So you’re psychic now as well as a mage. I’m not paying extra for that. We got another body,” Casale said, sounding entirely too awake for the stupidly early hour.
Patrick double-checked the time and swore under his breath. “It’s not even oh-four hundred.”
“Murder waits for no man.”
Patrick kicked the blanket off and sat up, rubbing hard at his eyes. “Where?”
Casale rattled off the address, then hung up. Patrick hauled himself out of bed and dressed in record time, holstering his sidearm on his right hip and strapping his dagger onto his right thigh. He came out of the bedroom to see Jono half-awake and pulling on his shoes, already dressed.
“What did I say about keeping your ears to yourself?” Patrick said through a yawn.
“How else am I supposed to keep up if I don’t know what’s going on?” Jono asked as he stood up and headed for the door.
Patrick pointed a finger at Jono. “Ears to yourself.”
As he passed by, Jono leaned down and snapped his teeth at the tip of Patrick’s fingers. “Sure thing, Pat.”
Patrick reflexively yanked his hand back and scowled at Jono, who only laughed in a way he refused to find sexy.
They left the building and retrieved the car. Despite the hour, a lot of other vehicles and taxis were on the streets, ferrying home late-night drunks and taking hard-core revelers to their next destination.
Patrick followed the GPS on his phone, taking a crosstown route before swinging a right onto Amsterdam Avenue. The address Casale had provided was in the Upper West Side, Morningside Heights, right smack next to Columbia University. Which meant instant media coverage they couldn’t afford. People equated most college students with kids who didn’t know any better, and the public always had a bleeding-heart complex when it came to kids.
He parked behind an unmarked police car and grabbed his agency jacket from the back seat. Patrick pulled it on despite the still-muggy weather, making sure his badge hung prominently around his neck. He didn’t want to keep taking out the one in his pocket every time someone needed to check his ID.
