Author: A. L. Kessler
Category: Paranormal
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I wasn’t sure what to say. “Okay, fine.” Is what came out of my mouth. I climbed into the Hummer and made a mental note to see what the body shop would want to repair it. I didn’t want to drive without a seatbelt for too long, and I didn’t want Levi to see the damage when I returned the Hummer.
Merick climbed into the passenger side. “Are you okay after last night?”
“Just a little banged up physically.” I shrugged. The pack doctor was nice enough to stich me back up. “Mentally, I’m worried I might have caused a huge rift in an alliance and I might not be seeing Simon again.” Even if he lived.
Merick didn’t ask any questions as I headed toward the PIB office. He sat there in silence, and I wondered if he already knew what happened or if he was just trying to give me space.
My phone rang, and I glanced at the screen. “It’s Travis.” Fuck. I didn’t want bad news while driving, but I didn’t want it to go to voicemail either.
I answered it with the hands-free system. “Agent Collins speaking.”
“He made it through the night. I thought you should know.”
“I appreciate you telling me. I’ve been worried about him.”
Travis snarled a little. “Seems he’s worried about you too. He mumbles for you when he wakes up.”
“Let him know I’m okay. He and I can talk when he’s feeling better.”
Travis said something under his breath. “You’re not allowed on pack lands right now.”
“Trust me, I have no intention of going up there unless there're problems that trip my magic.”
“Later.” He hung up on me and I sighed, tightening my grip on the steering wheel as I drove.
“Travis is upset with you.” Merick looked at me. “I should have stayed last night.”
I shook my head. “He’s upset with how the fight turned out. I think he’s just taking it out on me.”
“Good to know.” Merick shook his head. “Do you think Samuel was behind the attack last night?”
“Without a doubt. It was blood-starved vampires that attacked us last night as well.” I frowned. “But Simon was the only one seriously injured. Zayne took the Hummer through the blood-starved vampires, but they didn’t really do much to attack us.”
“Do you want to know my opinion on this?” Merick glanced at me.
“If you have some sort of insight, I’d love it.”
“I think Samuel is working on dividing you from your team and security. Think about it.”
I did. The fight between Levi, Mario, and I, hurting Simon. “You, Liz, and Zayne are next. Oliver is already out of town.”
“We stay close, we stay together,” Merick stated. “I have some members of the Cult that will help if we get in a pinch.”
I didn’t want anyone’s life to be in danger because of me, though. “We need to take Samuel out, and fast.”
“It’s going to take time. He’ll know we’re planning something.”
“He’s expecting it. He’s trying to force our move. We need to buy us time.” I sighed. “I have to focus on this case first. We’ll figure out Samuel as we go.”
“He’s made two moves. Do you expect him to make another?”
I nodded. “Yeah, but I’m not sure how to stop it. The best we can do is avoid it.” Maybe.
We drove the rest of the way to the office in silence. I’m sure his mind was turning with the additional information he’d gotten, and I was trying to figure out how I was supposed to repair the alliance with the wolf pack. If Simon didn’t pull through, that was going to be a lot harder.
I walked into my office with Merick right beside me. He pulled the chair up to the wall so that he was out of the way. He pointed to the flamingo against the window. “Is it in time out?”
I shook my head. “No, turns out that Agent O’Donald has a phobia of flamingos, so he asked me nicely to put it away from the desk so that he could come in and chat with me.”
Merick gave a short laugh. “He avoided your office for a year because of a lawn decoration?”
I smiled. “Yeah, silly, but I’m glad it didn’t turn out that he couldn’t come in because of the spell.”
Merick nodded. “Yeah, that would have caused more trouble than we wanted.”
There was a knock on the door, and I paused. Speaking of trouble, I could see Nick’s face through the small window on the door.
I sighed and got up and opened the door. “What’s up?”
“Liz sent me down to you for a bit.” He shrugged and held up some folders. “I figured whatever it is, it’s important, so I’d do my desk work here.”
Interesting. I hadn’t heard from Liz yet this morning, so I wasn’t sure what to make of the situation. I stepped aside. “Come on in.”
He glanced at Merick, who pegged Nick with an unfriendly stare.
“Extra security?” Nick asked.
I wasn’t about to give away anything. “He came to help me decipher some things on an older case.”
Nick made a noise of disbelief, grabbed the other chair, and started spreading out on the other side of my desk.
Unlocking my computer, I was about to get to work when Liz came running into the room, slamming the door behind her. Her key card worked for my office, but she rarely used it.
She stared at the three of us and then let out a breath. “Guys, we have a problem.”
“Tell it to take a number,” I muttered and went back to my computer.
Liz ignored my sarcasm. “The girl has woken up, and her mother is downstairs demanding to speak to the agent in charge of the case.”
“Why is this a problem? Go down and talk to her.” Nick motioned. “Why are you hiding up here like a coward?”
Liz glanced at me. “She’s an elemental, and she’s threatening to burn the building down.”
I rubbed my eyes. “What?”
“She says she’s an elemental, and if she doesn’t like the answers she gets, she’s going to burn the building down.”
“I thought her daughter was an elemental.”
“She is.”
“That’s not how it’s passed down. It typically skips around, which is why my mother wasn’t one.” I wasn’t going to say who else in the family was an elemental though.
“So if you have children?” Liz asked.
“It’d be a very, very slim chance. It’s a recessive gene, so it seems almost random.” I shrugged. “And it gets called to life by touch from another elemental.”
“Which is how my brother woke your abilities.”
I nodded. “From what I’ve gathered in my research, it has to be the same element.” Which was why Oliver never activated mine. “It’s not a common thing.”
Liz nodded. “Can you come talk to her with me?”
I wrinkled my nose. “I guess.” And then I could see what had her scared so much about this woman.
Liz and I walked out of the office, and Merick followed.
“You don’t have to come, she’s with me.”
Merick nodded. “I don’t want to be with Nick. I thought I’d go down and get coffee for everyone.”
“Why did you send Nick to my office?” I raised a brow. “This woman isn’t a threat to me, so I don’t need the extra security.
Liz nodded. “O’Donald wanted to look around the office without Nick there. He saw something in there yesterday that worried him. That’s all he would tell me. But, I told him I’d help.”
I snorted as we went down the stairwell. “Nick’s going to catch on if someone goes through his things.”
“Yeah, I know, but that won’t be my problem, it’ll be O’Donald’s problem.”
We walked out of the stairwell, and I could hear the woman screaming at the poor receptionist. “I want to speak to him now, and I swear if you tell me to wait or calm down one more time, I will burn this fucking place to the ground.”
Ah yes, she sounded like a gem. Liz and I stepped out of the hallway and saw the woman, who was no more than five feet tall,
leaning on the counter, trying to intimidate Mandy.
Mandy sat there and tapped the clipboard with her finger. “You need to fill this out so I can get you a visitor’s badge. Agent Jefferson or Agent Collins will be down to speak to you in a moment. But you cannot go back to a conference room without a badge.”
Liz cleared her voice. “We’ll take it from here Mandy.”
Mandy glanced up at us. “Agent A, Agent L,” she nodded to us.
The short woman threw her long black hair over her shoulder and pegged us both with a star. “I want to speak to the agent in charge of my daughter’s case.”
“That would be us.” I motioned to Liz. “This is Special Agent Jefferson and I’m Special Agent Collins.”
That had her hesitating for a moment. “Women?”
I nodded. “I know, male-dominated field and all that, but I assure you we’re quite capable of handling ourselves. Now, if you insist on threatening this building, we’ll have to escort you out. But if you can collect yourself, sign in, and be civil, we’d be happy to talk to you.”
She took a deep breath, picked up the clipboard, wrote some things down, and handed Mandy her ID.
Mandy narrowed her eyes at the ID and then wrote something else down on the clipboard. She handed the ID back. “Thank you, ma’am.”
Sometimes I wondered what kind of shit Mandy had seen where she could handle an outraged woman so calmly.
Mandy handed her a visitor clip and Liz motioned to the hallway. “Shall we go talk?”
The woman nodded, and she followed us to the conference room. Liz motioned to one of the seats at the table. “Please sit.”
The woman sat. “I’m Martha Parlor. I’m Lisa’s mother.”
“How is your daughter?” I asked and sat down as well.
Liz remained standing.
Martha shot me a nasty look. “If you’d have answered your phone, you would have known that she died last night.”
CHAPTER NINE
I glanced at Liz. She looked just as surprised as I did.
“I never got a phone call.” Liz kept her voice even and low.
This explained why the woman wanted to burn PIB down. “Neither did I. Did you call us personally?”
Martha took a deep breath. “No, the doctor on duty said that he would call you and that you’d need to talk to me. After I didn’t hear from you, I came down here first thing this morning.”
Liz frowned. “I’m calling the hospital now.” She stepped out of the room and I looked to Martha.
“I’m sorry for your loss.”
She held a hand up. “Save your canned words, please. My daughter was murdered, and you are sitting here in an office doing nothing about it.”
“I assure you, we are looking for leads to follow and trying to find out how it might tie into another death.” I tried to push away the thought of the half-charred body in the woods. “We were hoping your daughter would wake and be able to give us some information.”
She seemed to hesitate at that. “I want the murderer found, Agent Collins. I don’t think you can understand the grief of a mother losing a child, but I’m ready to burn down the city to look for this person.”
“Are you an elemental?”
She nodded. “Yes.”
“And Lisa?”
“Yes.”
“It’s rare for it to pass from parent to child.”
“Not all mothers are blood to their children,” she stated easily. “I expect an update in the next twelve hours, Agent Collins.” She wrote her number on a piece of paper. “I will only speak directly to you or Agent Jefferson.”
I pulled out my card and handed to her. “In case you need to get a hold of me.”
She took my card and stuck it in her purse. “Thank you, Agent Collins.”
I nodded, and she walked out of the conference room. I followed her and walked back to the lobby with her. Liz was nowhere to be found.
Martha walked out of the building and I looked at Mandy. “You doing okay?”
“Never better Agent A. I’ve dealt with worse.”
I smiled at her. “Good job handling her. If she comes back in, fetch me or Liz ASAP.”
“Aye, aye.” She gave a fake salute.
I turned to see Liz coming back down the hall. Her fists were clenched, and her cheeks were red. She was pissed.
“What’s up?”
“The girl died yesterday at noon, and there’s no record of anyone trying to call us. I’m going down there and talking to a supervisor and setting them straight.”
I didn’t want to be there for that conversation. “And the body?”
“Luckily ended up with Jason, but he didn’t know what the hell was going on with it until I texted him.”
So he just had a body sitting there waiting. “Okay, I’ll go see him and the body. You go talk to the hospital.”
Merick walked in right then with a tray of coffee. Perfect timing. Nothing like coffee before dead bodies.
I took my coffee from him. “We have to take a trip to the morgue.”
“You’re not supposed to be on the field.”
Liz and I both cursed.
“Come on, we’re going to go talk to O’Donald about that. I can’t be in two places at once, and it’s killing me that you and Nick are currently off the field.” Liz basically grabbed my arm and dragged me toward the stairs. Merick lifted the coffee. “I’ll deliver Nick’s coffee and wait here in the lobby.”
Liz and I went up the stairs. “He’s not going to suddenly change his mind on this.”
“He might. I need you on the field, and I need you for this case. I don’t know the last thing about elementals.”
“We need to teach more about them in the Academy. There’s not a lot of information out there and it causes fear.”
We got to the hallway to see Agent Ross standing there with O’Donald.
“Well fuck.”
And that was the wrong thing to say, because Ross turned to me with a nasty glare. She grabbed handcuffs from her belt loop and came after me. “Abigail Collins, you’re under arrest.”
“Again? What for?” I didn’t flinch, I didn’t move. “Agent O’Donald?” I looked at him to see what I should do.
“Stand down, Ross. Abigail isn’t your killer. She doesn’t kill with magic.”
Ross shook her head. “You don’t know that for sure. They’ve just never caught her.”
“Look at my aura. You know it’s true.”
She frowned.
Ah, she couldn’t read auras, just like me. “Look, I don’t know why you’re so keen on arresting me and getting me to containment, but I didn’t like my stay there much. I’ve had someone with me at all times if you need witnesses.”
“Paid for by the King of Vampires, to make sure his precious adopted witch doesn’t get in trouble.” She growled. “Paid witnesses, paid protection, everything about you screams suspicious.”
“Oh, really? And you’re perfectly normal? You tried to frame me for the murder of a PIB agent, who is still alive.” I held my arms out.
She froze at that.
“Didn’t think I was going to look in to that one, did you? Thought you had me with a connection to Grayson’s death, but you didn’t look into it far enough. Do you know why O’Donald knows I don’t kill with magic?”
She gave a quick shake of her head.
“Look further into that file you got unlocked. You’ll see it in there.” I walked past her. “Agent O’Donald, Liz and I would like to speak with you.”
“You two wait in the office. I’ll be there in a moment after I escort Ross out.”
Liz came up to my side, and we both walked to the end of the hall where his office was.
I sat down in one of the chairs. “Holy shit, that woman makes me so mad.”
“Way to call her out.” Liz laughed. “I’m not sure if she’s deranged or not.”
“I want to know why she’s off of administrative leave,” I muttered and leaned
back in the chair to sip my coffee. “I don’t like that she just tried to arrest me again.”
Liz nodded. “She wants you out of the way.”
“Which is exactly why you’re going to disappear for a bit.” O’Donald came back in. Liz and I just stared at him.
“We were hoping you’d let Abby back on the field.”
“She will be back on the field, but I don’t want people to know she’s on the case, not if Ross is going to keep coming after her.”
“I don’t work well undercover.”
He shook his head. “Think of it more like off the record. You’ll be able to contact Liz for whatever you need. I also want you to look into something else for me.”
I raised a brow. “Yeah?”
“Nick’s stepmom and dad, I want you to find whatever you can on them and their employer.”
“I know who their employer is, sir. At least one employer. I don’t know if there are multiple.”
“Who is the one you know of?”
“He’s a vampire named Samuel. He was Ira Diaz’s maker. He’s also the one who put in the order to kill my parents.” I tried to keep my voice even.
O’Donald nodded. “Liz told me that Annabella and Christof were responsible for your parents’ murder, and we are looking into ways to peg them for that as well. However, they are being stubborn and insisting they had nothing to do with it and their employer will bail them out.”
Over my dead body. Of course, Samuel might try to make that happen. “I’ll see if I can learn more.”
“Since Abby will be off the record, I’ll have her look for information in the less dangerous parts of the underground for this current case. It looks like that’s where we’ll be going.”
“Good, stay safe, Abigail, enjoy working from home. Please take the flamingo with you.”
I chuckled. “No, sorry. He and the doll stay. That’s their home.”
O’Donald grumbled something and then motioned us away.
Liz decided that she’d handle both the morgue and the hospital and promised that she would not scream or yell at anyone. Merick and I headed to The Underground club to ask questions.
I pulled the Hummer into a parking spot downtown in front of an unassuming brick building. In the front was a black wrought-iron railing that blocked off the stairway entrance to the club.