Preternatural Affairs, Books 4-7: Shadow Burns, Deadly Wrong, Ashes and Arsenic, Once Darkness Falls: The Descentverse Collections

Chapter 1

As an agent with the Office of Preternatural Affairs, getting assigned new cases is always exciting.

Sometimes it’s even exciting in a good way.

When I roll into work on a Monday and find a new case on my desk, it feels like waking up on Christmas morning. I just don’t know if I’m going to get the He-Man action figure I’ve been begging to get for weeks, or if it’ll be a cylinder of stinky cheese with cat bite marks on the rind gifted by senile Aunt Marisela.

On a good week, I might nail a coven of misbehaving witches for something hilarious, like accidentally cursing an entire high school with hirsutism. Coming up with solutions for a team of magically hairy cheerleaders was the kind of stuff I lived for.

That would be a He-Man case.

On a bad week, it would be another gruesome murder by a powerful demon far beyond my ability to kill. You know, the kind of cases that end with running, screaming, and months of visits to an OPA-appointed therapist’s couch.

Those were definitely the half-masticated Munster cases.

I had no way of telling what case was inside the manila folder being gripped by my partner, Agent Suzume Takeuchi. The excitement flushing her cheeks definitely wasn’t any indicator, either. She got excited over weird things.

What is it this time? I asked, wheeling around to follow her back to the elevator. I’d only gotten halfway down the hall when she intercepted me.

Suzy flapped the folder at me. No idea yet! Not much info.

There was a single page inside the folder, which I skimmed on the way to the parking garage. We’d received a tip about a possible haunting from someone who lived in Mojave. The town was a good two hours’ drive north of the office.

Possible haunting? It was definitely going to be a He-Man day.

Visiting Mojave meant four hours of driving round trip. Throw in an hour for lunch, and we would be gone for an entire work day.

Plus, there’s no such thing as ghosts. That means there’s no such thing as a haunting, either. There wouldn't be any actual work waiting for us on this work trip.

It was practically a vacation tossed onto Suzy’s desk.

Normally, the OPA didn’t have the budget to investigate tips like this. If it didn’t involve immediate peril, a major threat to our finances, or dead bodies, we stuck it at the bottom of the to-do list and ignored it for months.

Why’d we get blessed with this one? I tossed the folder into the backseat of one of our company vehicles. Suzy had already checked it out of the motor pool. One more piece of paperwork I didn’t have to do.

I thought you could tell me that. Suzy held the keys out of my reach when I tried to take them. Director Friederling dropped it off.

So this is a special case, I said.

Officially speaking, Suzy and I worked for the Magical Violations Department. Less officially, we were also part of a team that handled special projects led by Fritz Friederling, the Germanic Jet-Li of Beverly Hills—one of my closest friends.

You’d know better than I do if this is a special investigation, Suzy said. What did Director Friederling say about it?

Didn’t even mention it to me. I swiped for the keys again. My reach was superior, but at five feet tall, Suzy was fast as fuck. She was in the driver’s seat in about half a heartbeat.

I feigned disappointment. I didn’t even want to drive the two hours out to Mojave; I wanted to catch up on some reading. But if Suzy had caught wind of that, you bet your balls I would have been behind the wheel. Her favorite thing in the world was being difficult.

Tucking my briefcase under the dashboard, I discreetly removed the newest Brandon Sanderson novel before buckling in.

Sweet, sweet fantasy novel, here I come.

Suzy whipped out of the parking garage and I checked my phone. No messages from Fritz. Not many emails at all, actually. It had been a quiet couple of weeks around the OPA campus. We’d cleared a lot of our backlogged workload and nothing urgent had popped up recently.

That was probably why we had time to look into this tip, especially if Fritz didn’t have anything to say about it.

Definitely a He-Man case.

I tossed my phone into the cup holder, kicked back, and reclined my seat.

Suzy gave me a suspicious sideways look. You’re in a good mood.

I just have a feeling it’s going to be a good day, Suze. I pulled down the visor for a little extra shade. A real good day.

And I thought that all the way to Mojave, too.

Mojave was an odd town. There's not much to it. A couple of gas stations marking the place that train tracks and freeway aligned, surrounded by miles of barren desert. Exactly like any other remote shithole in the wastelands of southern California.

Except that this particular shithole had front-row seats to some of humanity’s stranger landmarks.

The nearby hills are covered in wind turbines—hundreds of tall white fans with skinny blades whirling all day and night. It’s also near an airplane graveyard, which is exactly what it sounds like: one big-ass trash dump of old machinery that nobody could be bothered to recycle.

As if those aren’t good enough, it’s also not unusual to see rocket launches in the sky over Mojave. Yeah, like let’s-go-to-space-type rockets. Cool science stuff that’s about as far from my supernatural job as possible.

Mojave is the perfect place to try that kind of experimental crap because there’s nothing to be destroyed out there. They could probably nuke the whole place and you’d never be able to tell the difference. Might even be an improvement to the gas stations’ décor.

The GPS led us to that shithole and, mercifully, right on out again.

Soon, the turbines and airplanes disappeared, along with all the yellow dust. Our turnoff from the highway cut through rocky cliffs in the foothills. The road was shadowed by cones of igneous rock marking volcanic vents.

Suzy muttered to herself as she drove, taking so many hard turns that I finally had to give up on reading my book. I’m not a nervous guy, but stick a woman behind the wheel of a car on a road that looks like it was scribbled on a map by an angry toddler, and it gets my adrenaline going.

You sure this is the right way? I asked.

It’s right. The GPS says it’s right.

The GPS didn’t have any fucking clue where we were. This road wasn’t on the screen.

Pavement turned to dirt. The SUV jittered around me. Felt like being a kernel tossed around in a heated Jiffy Pop popper.

Maybe we should call Fritz.

Yeah, sure, Suzy said. She didn’t take her eyes off the road.

I checked my phone—no reception. So much for that.

The road soon widened and the canyon changed. Creepers took over the barren cliffs. Trees dotted the rocky path. Grass flanked the dirt road—actual grass, green and glistening with moisture that shouldn’t have existed in the desert.

The trees became denser until the sunlight couldn’t touch us at all. Low fog clung to the ground.

A manor big enough to house my entire extended family appeared out of that fog. It was a three story thing with dormers, shuttered windows, and aging purple roof tile. I could just make out the shapes of smaller buildings in the mist beyond it. Looked like some sheds, some cottages.

The sign at the end of the road said Paradise Mile Retirement Village. The right post was cracked, and only a vine curling around the boards kept the whole thing from falling down.

A retirement home. Fritz had sent Agent Takeuchi and me to a goddamn retirement home.

Suzy parked on the grass. Sliding my sunglasses down the bridge of my nose, I glared at the house beyond the ramshackle sign. It looked like it belonged in a Southern gothic, not in some muggy canyon oasis.

Paradise Mile. Funny, real funny.

I’d never heard of retirement homes in Mojave, but it seemed like a reasonable place to ditch old people. Airplanes, the infirm, whatever. Why not?

The real question was, why had Fritz sent me there?

I wasn’t the only one grumbling as I climbed out of the SUV. My partner groaned loudly, stretching her stiff muscles out after the long drive.

When she reached for the sky and bent to touch her toes, I got a pretty good look at the tight little body she hid under her tailored black suits. The slacks were especially flattering when she bent over.

I made sure to be looking at the house again by the time she was standing upright. Even with my sunglasses, Suzy knew when I was enjoying an inappropriate eyeful. It was some kind of magic power of hers. I’d managed to go all morning without getting punched in the stomach and wanted to continue that trend as long as possible.

If ghosts did exist, Suzy said in a low voice, I bet they’d exist here.

It did look like the kind of place that should have been haunted. The wraparound stoop, rotting wooden columns, and fluttering lace curtains belonged on the cover of a horror novel.

The creepiest part was the old people sitting in rocking chairs with blankets across their laps. They watched us emerge from the SUV like they suspected we were hoarding all the denture cream. Something about their sunken eyes and spun-sugar perms gave me the willies.

When I get that old, feel free to euthanize me, I muttered as we headed up the long walkway among the tangled bushes.

Suzy elbowed me so hard that I thought she might crack a rib. Shut up.

No, really. If it looks like I’m starting to lose it, go ahead and pull the plug. I mimed jerking a cable out of the wall. Pop! It’ll be a mercy killing. I’ll never have to smell like mothballs and foot ointment.

"Shut up."

Normally, Suzy tried to laugh at my bad jokes. Or at least she’d try to one-up them.

Which meant that she wanted me to stop for another reason.

I turned to see a guy who looked like he needed the plug pulled on his life support. He was a fragile old man baked to the color of leather by the desert sun. The weight of his wrinkles made his face sag, so the tufts of hair sticking out of his ear canals were hilariously perky. The fact that he wasn’t actually on life support seemed near miraculous.

Judging by his scowl, he didn’t think my bad jokes were very funny.

I thrust a hand toward him and put on my official voice. Special Agent Hawke, Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Badge, said the old guy.

It took me a second to realize he was prompting me for identification, not sharing a strange name.

I showed him my fake FBI badge. It looked as good as the real thing because it was produced by the same vendor. Nice thing about being a secret government organization is that we have access to all the same resources as the public offices.

He barely glanced at it before hissing, Fake. You’re both damn dirty frauds!

Excuse me? Suzy asked.

I know what you are. You’re the men in black. You didn’t come from no FBI office. You came from Area 51.

Man, that would have been a much cooler office to work at. I’m afraid you’re confused. We’re investigating an anonymous tip that references this, uh… I had to glance at the sign again to catch the name. Paradise Mile Retirement Village. Retirement village? What was that even supposed to mean?

Aliens, he muttered.

We definitely have nothing to do with aliens, Suzy said firmly. That much was true. Demons and angels came from other dimensions, not other planets. Are you in charge, sir? Or is there an orderly I could speak with?

Orderly’s done gone and gotten himself all busy with real work. He don’t got time for spooks like you. Herbert Richardson. That’s my name. Don’t you spread that around. Herbert rolled his tongue around in his mouth then spit out the corner of his lips, shooting a stream of saliva onto the grass. Names got power, you know.

With the aliens? I tried not to laugh when I said it.

Herbert shuffled up to me until we were toe-to-toe. He was almost a foot shorter than me. "You tell me, spook." He bit out every word.

I managed to keep it together until Herbert hobbled back toward the house. I covered my mouth with a hand, muffling my snorts.

Aliens. Hauntings.

This case had to be Fritz’s idea of a prank.

Herbert was too deaf to hear my laugh, but Suzy gave me a hard look.

Come on, I whispered to her. This old bastard is wasting our time.

Get a grip, Hawke. Let’s do the job and get to lunch. I’m starving.

Suzy stalked away, following Herbert toward the house. I got my laughter under control and trailed behind both of them.

The old people on the front stoop turned to me when I climbed up the steps. Their sunken eyes were dull, unreadable. Hard to tell if they were annoyed by our presence or just working on catatonia.

Agent Takeuchi, Suzy said, shaking hands with the woman nearest the door.

Her curls were so thin that I could make out the shape of her wrinkled scalp. Fortunately, for her sake, the giant hairy mole on her chin was distracting enough that most people might not notice that she was balding. Are you going to get rid of him?

Him? Who are you talking about? Suzy asked.

The bad man. The one who never lets us sleep. Her voice trembled as she spoke. Ghosts or not, she was legitimately scared.

We’re following up on a tip, Suzy said. If there’s anything we can do to make your stay here more comfortable, we’ll see about doing it.

A man three rocking chairs down spoke. I could use fresh linens.

Give me some credit. I didn’t laugh at that.

Don’t talk to the spooks, Herbert snapped at the other residents as he hobbled inside.

The foyer was spacious. The big windows had a good view of the sheer canyon walls. Empty birdcages hung from the ceiling, and a fountain half-hidden behind potted trees echoed through the whole room. I was pretty sure we'd find a nice tile mosaic underfoot if someone would scrub it clean.

Damn, I breathed, pulling off my sunglasses so I could get a better look. I could almost see why someone would have wanted to retire there.

Suzy didn’t seem nearly as impressed. Have you had any incidents in this room, Herbert?

You tell me, Herbert repeated, just as bitingly as the last time. You’re the experts, ain’t you?

We work for the government. We aren’t psychics, sir.

We probably would have employed psychics if they existed, though.

Herbert grumbled, scuffing his feet on the dusty floor. No. The goddamn foyer ain’t had no incidents. It’s mostly been in the drawing room.

Lead the way, please, Suzy said. As we headed up the hallway, narrow-walled and low-roofed, she hung back to whisper at me. What’s a drawing room?

Kind of like a living room, I said. Somewhere to entertain guests.

How’d you know that?

Because I’d been reading way too much steampunk lately. I’m educated, I said loftily.

Suzy snorted.

The drawing room was in the back of the house and we had to get a short tour of the entire first floor on our way to reach it. The whole manor was a lot bigger than it had looked from the outside, and much nicer, in that older than dirt kind of way.

The narrow hallway led past a library, a dining room with a grand staircase (which was only slightly ruined by the presence of a chairlift), and a couple of sitting rooms with wallpaper that my grandmother would have loved.

Herbert finally took us into an airy kitchen behind the dining room. The cast-iron cookware hanging over the island was greased to a shine. The oven was a beast that could have roasted a whole cow at once. The windows were small, but it didn’t seem to matter; there was nothing on the other side but vine-draped cliff anyway. Not much of a view worth fighting for.

Do the residents eat pretty well here? The knives were kept on a magnetic strip over the sink. I brushed one blade with my fingertip, and it was sharp enough to slice a narrow fissure into the pad.

Why you asking? Herbert sounded like I’d just insulted his mother.

Just wondering. Looks like a well-stocked kitchen.

Is it a problem if we like to eat good? Can’t break into our brains with your radio signals if we don’t eat processed food with the neural implants the government adds? Herbert smacked his knuckles against his temple. It sounded like it hurt.

So much for making casual conversation.

There weren’t any incidents in this room, so let’s move on, Suzy said tactfully.

Ha! Notice you don’t deny the implants.

We can neither confirm nor deny the manipulation of packaged food goods. She kept a straight face as she said it, but I could tell Suzy was approaching her breaking point.

Herbert grinned toothlessly. I like this one, he said to me. Not as much of a liar as you other spooks! He flapped his hands at the door. Come on, come on, you gotta see the ghosts.

Have you encountered visible apparitions? Suzy asked.

What do you think, I’d call in a tip about ghosts I can’t see? Of course I seen them ‘visible apparitions’! What’s wrong with you?

Need that list alphabetized? I muttered too quietly for Herbert to hear through his hair-stuffed ears. Suzy only pretended to be deaf, but I caught her smiling.

The drawing room was almost as big as the foyer, but unused. Most of the furniture was covered in white sheets. There was a fainting couch by the window, a piano, a couple antique sofas, a table. The wallpaper was discolored where paintings used to hang.

The floor was coated in dust. The only footprints were Herbert’s, I assumed, judging by the uneven gait and duck-footed twist to the prints.

When we walked in, floorboards creaked and clouds of dust filled the air.

I sneezed into my sleeve.

What brought you back here in the first place, sir? Suzy asked.

All the cleaning I got to do, Herbert said. That dang orderly, he don’t do much cleaning. Told me not to bother with the rooms back here neither. They hired me to help around the house three weeks ago, and goddammit, I'm gonna done help around the house.

Another sneeze. Two sneezes. Three. My face was exploding. Pardon, I managed to rasp before ducking into the hallway separating the kitchen and drawing room. It was narrow, windowless, dark. My hair brushed the rafters. Some kind of servant’s access, maybe?

It was dusty there, too, but I stopped sneezing immediately. Being able to breathe the stale air wasn’t much of an improvement.

Herbert’s voice drifted from the other room. When I was cleaning the kitchen, I heard voices coming out of here. Then I heard something breaking. Came in to shut down the party. Found a broken oil lamp and them ‘visible apparitions.’

I wasn’t eager to return to dust central, so I explored the servant’s hall. There was a door at the end that didn’t lead to a room I’d seen on Herbert’s reluctant tour. I tried to open it, but it had no doorknob—just a keyhole on a plate. Must have only opened on the other side.

Kneeling down, I put my eye to the keyhole. The room on the other side was red. Just plain red, walls and floor and ceiling, a color so uniform that I couldn’t make out any difference between the carpet and the wallpaper.

Huh. Must have been a trick of the light.

Can you describe the apparitions? Suzy asked.

Scrubbing my nose, I reentered the drawing room. My partner was holding the pieces of a glass bulb that looked like they had once belonged to an oil lamp. That was what Herbert had heard breaking.

Don’t got to describe nothing, Herbert said. Make your own goddamn observations.

I opened my Steno pad to the first blank page, drew a line, and wrote crazy old people haunting at the top. New case, new page, time for some new notes. How are we supposed to do that?

Herbert gestured impatiently at a bookshelf. Well, look at them.

The bookshelf was populated by lots of old hardbacks and a few small photographs.

No apparitions.

My eyes started watering again. I held my breath, tried not to sneeze.

That’s little Gertie, Herbert said, pointing to the corner. Let me done tell you, if she’d growed up in my house, she never would have had these kinds of manners. God knows where her parents went. She’s a beast.

You can see Gertie right now? Suzy asked.

I’m not blind, woman! And this one’s—this one’s named Lynne, Herbert said to a shelf. She can be a real female dog, if you know what I mean, but at least she done got some manners.

I clicked my pen twice, tucked it into my shirt pocket. Seemed like I was definitely not going to need notes for this case. Herbert really was just crazy.

Then I sneezed again.

This time, I recognized the burn flaring up my sinuses, and it had nothing to do with dust.

Herbert looked irritated. You got a problem, son?

Sorry. I must be allergic to something around here. I gave Suzy a significant look. She frowned at me so I added, "Something must have bloomed powerfully this year."

Her eyes brightened. I could actually see the light bulb going off in her head. Pretty powerful, Suzy agreed. Or in close proximity to where we’re standing.

See, I’m allergic to magic. If anyone casts a spell nearby, I struggle to breathe. The more sneezing, wheezing, and mucus, the more powerful the magic. Pretty awkward quirk for a witch, but it had its utility.

Like now, when it told me someone was casting spells in a supposedly haunted house.

What rooms surround this one? Suzy asked.

Herbert scowled. No bathrooms or nothing. We ain’t got no mold problems, if that’s what you’re suggesting. We’re up to code here. One of the first things I checked when they hired me. I'm taking care of everything.

I don’t mean to imply anything, sir. I’m just trying to get a grip on the house’s layout.

He scratched the whiskers on his chin. Storage closet’s over there. Got a hallway alongside the other wall. That was where I’d stepped out for a breather. It connects with an old servant’s bedroom. Probably the red room. That’s about it, aside from the gardens out there.

Suzy rubbed a spot on the window clear and peered outside as I kept sneezing. Nobody in the garden, she said.

And I didn’t see anyone in the hall or servant’s bedroom. I was so congested that I sounded like Comic Book Guy criticizing the latest episode of The Simpsons.

You stay out of the bad man’s bedroom, now, Herbert said. He don’t like no visitors. Even less friendly than Ander.

Ander is another apparition?

You’re not very bright, are you, spook? Herbert asked.

I chose to treat that like a rhetorical question.

That’s all that borders the room, Suzy said, changing the subject back. A closet, a hallway, and the gardens.

Aside from the basement right underneath us, yeah.

Suzy and I exchanged a look.

How do I get into the basement? I asked.

I hadn’t noticed the trap door in the servant’s hallway. When I opened it, what waited underneath was wholly uninviting in that dark, cobwebby kind of way. The narrow stairs led directly underneath the drawing room. They looked so old that I wasn’t even sure they could hold my weight.

You want to check that out? I asked Suzy. You’re smaller.

She looked kind of green. You go ahead.

I couldn’t remember the last time Suzy had been anything but gung-ho on a case. Probably because she was never anything but gung-ho.

You’re not claustrophobic, are you? If she were, I’d have to tease her mercilessly about it.

I immediately began planning an office prank involving obscene amounts of cardboard around her cubicle.

It’s the cobwebs, Suzy said out of the corner of her mouth, arms stiff at her sides.

What? The spiders?

Yeah. The spiders. Her cheeks were pink.

Suzy and I had been forced to go into semi-abandoned mines on a case earlier that year. I say semi-abandoned because the mines hadn’t been occupied by people anymore, but they had been home to demon-spiders the size of small horses. They would have killed us if we hadn’t gotten backup in time.

She’d come out of it a lot more fucked up than I had, both physically and mentally.

Okay, no problem. I shed my jacket and handed it to Suzy.

I was surprised that she didn’t try to prove herself manlier than me by jumping down anyway, but she was still standing stiffly beside the trap door when I headed down into the darkness.

The basement stairs creaked underneath my weight. I hadn’t thought to bring a flashlight to a job taking place during full daylight, so I felt along the wall for a switch and felt nothing but cobwebs whispering across my fingers.

Something cold bumped me in the forehead, gave a soft jangle.

Chain for a light bulb? I tugged on it.

Dim orange light radiated through the basement, painting long shadows on everything stored in the basement.

There was so little visibility that it was easy to imagine those shadows as things much scarier than the mundane reality. A stack of bulk toilet paper formed the lumpy shape of a giant worm. The faded Christmas decorations cast shadows of demons I’d once fought in downtown Reno. The fake potted plants looked like jagged teeth. Lawn maintenance equipment looked like…well, lawn maintenance equipment.

Giant rusty tree clippers don’t need to look like anything else to be creepy.

None of that was suspicious or out of the ordinary. I even spotted the spare linens that the one old guy had been asking for.

But there was one incredibly suspicious thing sprawled right in the middle of the basement, and it was no trick of the light.

Someone had left a giant fucking altar and circle of power in the basement of a retirement home.

Maybe Herbert wasn’t all that nutty after all.

I’d been doing intense study on circles of power lately, trying to beef up my ritual knowledge. So I could tell it was the kind of circle I’d never cast, not in a million years.

The symbols carved into the floor were jagged and hungry looking, augmented by white paint. Melted wax marked the thirteen points where candles would stand during a ritual. The altar was covered in bones. Big bones. Either someone had been butchering a deer at Paradise Mile, or someone had sacrificed humans for their spell.

Those marks, those remains, the placement of those candles—I recognized everything.

Someone was evoking demons from Hell.

Coincidentally, that someone—the witch himself—was standing on the other side of the altar, and he was aiming a gun at me.

His scrubs were stretched awkwardly over the frame of a high school football player who had gone to seed. His greasy hair was cut short. The name badge on his chest said Nichols. He stared at me with wild eyes, sweating so profusely that it dripped on the floor.

Neither of us moved.

We were frozen, staring at each other in shock. I hadn’t expected to find anything in the basement. And the orderly definitely hadn’t expected to find me, either.

I found the source of the apparitions, I called up the stairs, hoping Suzy would hear me, hoping she’d detect the worry in my voice and wouldn’t come down to investigate.

I couldn’t hear her response. Couldn’t hear anything but the pulse roaring in my ears.

The whole basement seemed to have reduced to the gun pointing at me.

The orderly’s tongue darted out to wet his lips. He was trembling. I have to do this, he rasped.

I lifted my hands slowly. Real slowly. Like I was saying, Hey, look, I don’t have a gun. Let’s talk.

The whites of his eyes made a bloodshot rim around his irises. We can’t talk. There’s no time if we want to be able to stop him before he performs the merging. Don’t you understand?

I didn’t understand what he was saying, but I did understand that I was one finger spasm away from joining those bones on the altar.

There wasn’t any time to negotiate, no time to talk him down.

The floorboards above creaked. The orderly jerked with surprise.

I leaped off the bottom of the stairs and dived into a shelf of bathroom supplies. Toilet paper and disposable razors and Band-Aids exploded everywhere. The debris cloaked me and made it harder for the orderly to aim at anything fatal—I hoped.

Bang! Bang!

Two gunshots, nearly at the exact same instant.

Wood exploded right next to my head, shattering one of the shelf posts.

Simultaneously, a perfect red circle appeared in the center of Nichols’s forehead.

His eyes went blank. He collapsed behind the altar.

I shoved the toilet paper off of me and spun to see Suzy on the steps, both hands gripping her Beretta. She was stiff. Glaring. Nostrils flared, eyes wide, jaw clenched.

The orderly’s arm was limp on the floor beyond the altar, the gun inches from his unmoving fingers. A puddle of blood oozed into the grooves of the circle set into the floor.

Hell of a shot from Suzy Takeuchi.

She didn’t lower the gun until she had kicked the orderly’s weapon away and checked him for vitals. You’re welcome, she told me, which I took to mean that the witch tormenting poor Herbert and company was dead.

So it wasn’t exactly a He-Man case, but at least it was over fast.

I’d had worse days.

Chapter 2

My name is Cèsar Hawke. I work for a secret government organization that handles everything that doesn’t officially exist.

Pretty cool, right?

We’ve got a department that handles dissemination of misinformation. Guys whose livelihoods hinge on convincing government officials that their city’s children didn’t vanish because of a bloodthirsty cult, but because of sex trafficking. Or that the winged thing soaring over their city wasn’t a demon escaped from Phlegethon, but a hot air balloon with an unusual design.

There’s another department for regulation of rogue demon hunters. Pretty big job there—especially since collateral damage from vigilantes is a bigger cause of civilian death than actual demon attack.

Try finding a job like that on Craigslist.

Me? I work with witches, mostly bad ones.

I’m pretty good at it. We’re all pretty good at our jobs, though.

You can tell we’re good because normal people keep living normal lives, oblivious to the work we do. You’ve never heard of Magical Violations, Infernal Relations, or Kopis Regulations because we’re so damn good.

Sure, the pay is crap, but I don’t do it for the pay. I do it because I like helping people.

Even when helping people means that I have to watch my partner shoot an old guy in the face.

You’d think after my front-row ticket to a man getting shot in the head, I might have trouble sleeping. But I rested like a chloroformed baby after my day in Mojave. Eyes shut at ten, eyes open at four, no dreams, felt awesome in the morning.

I didn’t make a habit of dipping into my sleeping potions, but I’d been working a lot of rough cases the past year. A succubus assassin, a psychopathic werewolf, a nightmare demon, even a fallen angel. Decent sleep was becoming harder by the week.

If I needed potions to rest, then dammit, I’d drink the potions.

It was the only way I’d be able to make it to my daily gym appointment the following morning.

To be honest, I didn’t really need to go to the gym at all. Sleeping potions weren’t my only magical augmentation. Strength spells were my real specialty. Every morning, I magically juiced myself using potions and poultices, and the outcome was a thousand times better than anything I could accomplish in a gym.

After years drinking my brew, I was strong. Really strong. I could probably bench a car if it was one of those wussy European two-seaters, but I’d never tested it.

Try finding someone willing to spot a lift like that. Good luck.

But I arrived at the gym by five in the morning, same as I had every other morning for months. Strong for the average person is weak compared to most preternatural enemies. I’d been working hard at building up my reflexes and speed.

The results had been less than magical so far. Let’s put it that way.

Still, you’d expect that potion-enhanced strength alone would help me win against a guy who’d had his foot recently amputated. Beefy ol’ Agent Cèsar Hawke versus some skinny dude missing an appendage? Easier than a drunk kid at his first frat party.

That’s what you’d think, anyway.

Get off of me, you stupid gimp, I groaned into the padded blue mats.

Director Fritz Friederling twisted my arm behind me until the elbow threatened to pop. What did you say?

Uncle. I said uncle!

He laughed as he let me up. It wasn’t a pretty sound. Despite the fact that Fritz was some suave martial arts master who drove sports cars and owned enough gadgets to make James Bond jealous, his laugh sounded more like Bill Gates sucking down helium.

Most of the time, he kept up the serious super-spy persona. Not a lot of people knew he had one dorky goddamn laugh.

But I did. He laughed at me a lot now that we were training together.

Fritz helped me get to my feet, of which I had two. Normal feet with normal toes and possibly a case of athlete’s foot.

My boss and friend, on the other hand, only had one normal foot, which looked suspiciously pedicured. The other leg was prosthetic from mid-calf down.

Fritz had several different prostheses depending on the occasion. I’d seen him with a business casual foot, a formal foot, even a boating day foot.

Today was the foot I can shove right up Cèsar’s ass model: a cage of elaborate titanium, both sturdy and impressive to look at, with gears that made him almost as mobile as he used to be.

You’re cheating, I said.

Fritz bounced away from me, shadowboxing with vicious jabs that I knew for a fact hurt when delivered to one’s throat region. Cheating? How am I cheating?

You’re wearing an enchanted foot. I could see the magic in the corner of my vision. There weren’t any spells that I recognized, but then again, I wasn’t much for exotic specialty magics like that.

They only prevent my leg from being disengaged in a conflict.

You sure they don’t also bless you with some crazy-ass Irish jig powers that make you fast as a freak?

Fritz smirked. Possibly. A few more swift jabs at his invisible enemy, plus a roundhouse kick fast enough to knock someone’s head off. It’s early. Let’s go another round.

Sure you don’t want me to pull out a punching bag for you? My face already felt like ground beef.

It’s a tempting suggestion. Punching bags don’t complain nearly as much as you do.

A punching bag also doesn’t have to show up for work in an hour, I muttered.

Of course, Fritz wasn’t worried about that. He was the director of the Magical Violations Department. Training with him in the mornings was a free pass for showing up so bruise-riddled that I couldn’t interview witnesses without traumatizing them for life.

I’d had to interview a kid last week. Some girl, about eleven years old, who had seen her alcoholic mother cast a curse on her stepdad. The child had cried when she saw my face. Suzy had been forced to finish the interview.

Making kids weep doesn’t do good things for the ego.

That titanium foot rushed at me again. I had no choice but to throw myself to the mats to keep from getting my teeth scattered across Fritz’s training room floor.

Good, he said approvingly.

I rolled to my feet and lifted my arms to block a few punches, retreating across the length of the hall. It was a big room—more than enough space for me to tuck tail and run without getting cornered.

Turns out that richer-than-God demon hunters like to leave as much room in the budget for elaborate home gyms as they do Bugattis.

When I managed to nail a kick in Fritz’s midsection, he stumbled across Macassar ebony floors and caught himself on a training dummy that had been sculpted by Buddhist monks. When he knocked me flat on my back, I found myself staring at rafters that had been wired with a Bose stereo system that could play Fritz’s awful jock jams at ear-splitting volumes.

And when he decided he was done pulverizing me for the morning, I’d mop up my blood with towels hand-embroidered with Fritz’s FF logo. Because, hey, why not put the monogram from his Italian graphic designer on everything?

Having all that space to escape meant I didn’t immediately end up flat on my back again. I focused hard on watching Fritz’s torso and trying to figure out how he was going to attack me next.

I wasn’t getting anywhere near kicking his ass, but after a few months of training together, I was getting slightly better at escaping without broken bones. I deflected most of Fritz’s strikes now. But I was slowing down. My muscles were burning, and I desperately needed to eat another strength poultice.

My foot slipped off the mats. I’d reached the wall.

"Break, break," I said.

Fritz took mercy on me. He stepped back with a wry smile. That wasn’t terrible.

Not terrible, I panted. I can take not terrible.

It was also hot in his training room. The giant east-facing windows made me feel like an ant under a magnifying glass. I stripped my shirt off over my head, tossed it aside, rolled my head around on my neck to try to loosen my stiff muscles.

Fritz looked impervious to the heat. He worked out in sweats and a t-shirt, always.

Apparently, my break only lasted as long as it took me to strip down. Fritz swung a punch as soon as I dropped the shirt.

His fist flew toward me, and I knew I wasn’t going to be able to dodge it in time.

I braced myself for the hit.

His knuckles stopped about a centimeter from my nose.

Hey, I said, actually kind of offended. I didn’t call uncle that time.

Fritzy?

He hadn’t stopped for my benefit. He had stopped so that the girl standing in the doorway wouldn’t see him breaking the nose of his alleged best friend.

It was Yelena Katzenberg, intern necromancer and student of nursing at UCLA. She was wearing one of Fritz’s designer button-down shirts, a pair of fluffy-toed stilettos, and a smile. That was it. Obviously she hadn’t had to drive herself in at the butt crack of dawn, since she’d already been up helping Fritz train all night long.

Oh God, Fritz muttered. He turned so that she wouldn’t be able to see his expression. Get her out of here, Cèsar. Make an excuse. I don’t care what.

I snorted. Your piece of tail, your problem. Fritzy.

Because I was already walking away from him, I didn’t see the donkey punch coming. I just found myself on the floor again with no sense of time passing.

Looked like the mats needed to be washed. Someone was bleeding on them.

Hey, that was my blood.

The ringing in my skull was a mercy. It meant I didn’t really have to listen to Yelena cooing over Fritz. Plus, my blurry vision meant that the sight of the girl draping her admittedly shapely limbs all over him wasn’t nearly as graphic as usual.

Has that witch been trying to beat on you? she wibbled in some kind of weirdo baby-talk voice.

Don’t worry, darling, I’m fully capable of defending myself. No dorky laughs from Fritz over Yelena; he sounded bored. Fun Fritz was gone and Director Friederling was in the house.

I don’t like how hard he works you. Let me rub your leg.

I was possibly going to barf on the mats, too.

That won’t be necessary. Don’t you have classes to attend?

A throaty giggle. "I could skip the morning class for you, Fritzy. Especially if you wanted a repeat performance of last night’s…you know."

Yeah, feeling really queasy.

Maybe tonight. The man had a lot more patience than I did. Or else Yelena had a magical vagina and nipples that tasted like candy canes. I have to prepare for work now. Why don’t you run along? My driver will be happy to take you to school.

Yelena pouted and whined at him, but she eventually left.

I rolled onto my back. I’d been immobile for too long; my muscles were already getting stiffer. My kingdom for an analgesic or six.

Fritz appeared over my head, offering a hand to help me up.

I took his hand, all right. And then I used it to yank him down, roll on top of him, and beat the shit out of him.

At least, that was the intent. I only got three good punches in before Fritz managed to toss me off—and halfway across the training room.

My back hit a rack of free weights. It hurt, but God, it was worth it.

Lucky for me, Fritz was laughing again. That nasally laugh punctuated with a snort. Great job, Cèsar. Nice one. He wasn’t being sarcastic. He meant it.

You’re welcome, I groaned as I got back up again, stretching out my back.

Fritz hadn’t gotten up. He was sitting with his legs stretched in front of him, grimacing.

Carefully, he disengaged the prosthetic from the fleshy part of his limb, which was protected by an ordinary sock. Good thing, too. The sight of his stump made me nauseous.

I’d climbed into a bell tower to save Fritz from the fallen angel. He’d been hanging where the church bells were supposed to be with a chain around his legs so that a clapper could dangle from his ankles. The chain had cut off circulation to one of his legs. He’d never gotten it back.

If I’d saved him faster, he’d still have that foot.

The sight of his leg terminating a few inches below the knee was a pretty solid reminder of that horrible night. Not just failing to save the entirety of Fritz, but having to kill a confused old angel and cut the heart out of her chest.

Bad night. Really bad night.

Is it broken? I asked when he set the prosthetic aside.

No, the numbing spells just aren’t doing their job. It aches. I could tell by the tightness in Fritz’s voice that it didn’t just ache.

I’m not offering to massage it. But I did go over to help him up.

His stump swept out, hooked behind my knees, and yanked me off of my feet.

I hit the mats again. Hard.

Fritz cackled as he bounced on one foot toward the butler waiting for him in the doorway. "Don’t drop your guard, Cèsar! Never drop your guard!"

I cradled my head in both hands. I’ll remember that.

He didn’t offer to help me up again. I did that on my own.

By the time I retrieved my shirt, Fritz was toweled off and glued to his Blackberry, speaking in his most professional-sounding voice. Director mode again. Judging by his end of the conversation, Suzy was on the other end of the line.

Fritz hung up as I limped over to him. Take a quick shower, Agent Hawke. We need to head straight to a scene from here. I was Agent Hawke again. The workday had definitely started.

I groaned, wiping the sweat off my neck with one of the FF towels. "Don’t tell me it’s another case where Suzy’s going to have to shoot a guy in the face. I met my murder quota over the summer and I am done."

No, the murder’s been taken care of in advance this time, Fritz said. Everyone at the Paradise Mile Retirement Village died last night.

Chapter 3

Agents with the Office of Preternatural Affairs are not technically supposed to have guns on the job. We have a separate branch specifically for violent confrontations called the Union of Kopides and Aspides—the Union for short.

If something needs to be shot, the Union rolls in with unmarked SUVs, combat gear, and unregistered weapons, and they pulverize it for us. That’s their job. They get to use their elite training and the OPA witches get to remain largely paper pushers.

It’s a nice idea, but that’s about all it is.

Most of us in the Magical Violations Department have guns anyway. You’d be crazy to go after a coven without one. Sure, we’ve all got ways of dispelling offensive charms—even I can deflect most fatal curses—but witches don’t always attack with magic. Preparing rituals takes time. It’s too unwieldy.

Why curse someone when you can just shoot them?

So most of us have guns, and the OPA has a procedure for what happens if we use them on company hours.

They also have procedures for what happens when people die.

Suzy had killed someone, so she’d been given a stack of paperwork taller than I am to justify the discharge of her sidearm as well as the resulting death. I’d been planning to help her work through it that day. She’d earned that paperwork saving my life, after all.

Unfortunately, now that everyone at Paradise Mile was dead, I had slightly more urgent work to do.

Looks bad, Cèsar, Fritz said. He leaned his elbows on the open door of his Bugatti Veyron and studied the retirement village over the frames of his Bentley Platinum sunglasses.

You're telling me, I said.

The creaky old house was now swarming with investigators. In fact, the whole valley was filled with SUVs, vans, and assorted OPA personnel. We don’t typically have the budget to assign so many resources to a single case, but there had been a dozen people living their last miserable years at Paradise Mile, and processing that many bodies was going to take time.

I was pretty sure that Fritz wasn’t referring to our staff when he said it looked bad, though.

He probably meant the blood splattered on the inside of the second-floor windows.

I can release you to catch up on paperwork at the office. Fritz said it casually, like he was trying to decide what to do with a pesky employee, but he was actually trying to do me a big favor.

I’d only ever agreed to work for Fritz under the condition that I didn’t have to deal with dead bodies. Obviously, that had changed in a big way. I’d done more homicides than most cops now.

But I wasn’t getting better at it. I’d nearly thrown up on a body during one of my last cases.

It had been months and I was still hearing about it from my coworkers. In fact, I’d probably hear about it for the remainder of my tenure with the OPA. That kind of reputation doesn’t just vanish on its own, not when you work with the kind of assholes that I do.

Fritz was offering me the easy way out.

Nobody would even need to know why I’d gone back to the office. No sane person would choose to help Suzy wade through paperwork—bailing out wouldn’t make my reputation any worse.

I'll stay here. I’d like to walk through the scene. It was even half-true. I needed to walk through the scene. Needed to see what had happened, where we had gone wrong.

I wouldn’t like it, but I had to do it.

Besides, I had to get used to all the blood someday.

Fritz pushed his sunglasses back up the bridge of his nose. Then let’s walk through the scene.

We had to put on plastic shoe covers before entering the front door. Never a good sign.

The foyer wasn’t bloody, so it was being used as a meeting room. A few members of each team were comparing notes, swapping clipboards, showing each other photographs on their DSLR screens. Janet from the forensics department was there—unfortunately—but she only glanced at us before going back to her clipboard.

Also a bad sign.

Janet didn’t like Fritz and me, and she never missed an opportunity to remind us of that.

If she was ignoring us, then it was a really bad sign.

Fritz conferred briefly with another agent before heading toward the kitchen, like he knew where we were going.

That’s where we started to need the plastic booties.

Herbert had died in the kitchen. I wouldn’t have been surprised to find him crushed under all those cast-iron skillets, but the reality of what had happened was much more disturbing.

He’d been slit open from wrist to inner arm on both sides. His jugular had also been severed. And I was pretty sure someone had gone out of their way to spray the blood from the artery around the room. It was splashed on the windows, the counters, the floors.

Damn, I said.

Fritz jerked the legs of his slacks up as he crouched to take a closer look at the body. He was still wearing the sunglasses, which did a pretty good job of hiding his emotions. I could tell he wasn’t disturbed, though. His calm was a weight at the back of my mind. A hand pressing down on the nape of my neck.

My boss and kopis had been through some crazy shit in his life. He didn’t talk about it much, but the fact that demons knew him by name and he fought like a tornado said enough about his history. That history also meant that Fritz had no problem getting all up in Herbert’s cadaverous business, blood puddles and all.

Sharp weapon, Fritz remarked. It’s very clean. What was it?

We haven’t recovered anything, but it looks like it was probably some kind of knife. Janet had entered the kitchen. Her blue latex-free gloves were eerily clean.

You sure about that? I asked. You thought that the fallen angel was murdering people with knives too, and those turned out to be claws.

We’ve refined our criteria for determining weapons. It’s definitely a knife. Probably a butcher’s knife, the blade about six inches long, recently sharpened by a professional.

Well, I could see that. We were in a kitchen after all.

I checked the knives mounted on the magnetic strip. None of them seemed to be missing.

Give me the timeline, Fritz said, straightening. Was this murder first?

There’s no timeline, Janet said.

I frowned. You can’t tell what order these victims were killed in?

No, there just doesn’t seem to be an order at all. Follow me.

We took off our booties before leaving the kitchen, then followed Janet up the stairs in the dining room, past the chairlift, to the bedrooms on the second floor.

A ladder bisected the hallway, forcing us to step around it to reach the bedrooms. It hung from the center of the ceiling, right next to a wall sconce shaped like an art deco seashell.

An OPA agent in a suit stood at the top of the ladder, scrutinizing the rungs; another agent held the bottom steady. I felt like there was a joke waiting to be made about how many OPA agents it took to change a light bulb, but it probably would have been too depressing to be funny.

What’s up with the ladder? I asked Fritz from the corner of my mouth.

Good question. He summoned another agent with a gesture. Agent Bryce appeared at his side. Her round face was half-hidden by glasses that made her eyes look like they were bulging from her face, though I bet she would have been a classically pretty woman without them. What’s up there?

We don’t know, sir. She seemed a little breathless in the director’s presence. Most people didn’t have the friendly rapport I did with Fritz, and he had a reputation for being kind of a badass. A well-deserved reputation, to be fair. It looks like it’s meant to lead to an attic, and there are grooves where we expect a door, but we can’t open it.

I looked up at the ceiling again. There really was a faint square at the top of the ladder, but I never would have noticed if Agent Bryce hadn’t pointed it out to me.

After what I’d found waiting for me under the trap door leading to the basement, I was relieved that this one wouldn’t open.

Have someone drill through the floor and send up a scout, Fritz said. He meant a magical scout, a little firefly that could go up and peek around for us.

Already on it, sir.

He patted her on the shoulder. Excellent.

Agent Bryce’s cheeks flushed crimson.

The square indicating what might be an attic was strangely mesmerizing now that I’d noticed it. Tilt my head one way, and I couldn’t see it at all. Tilt my head back, and it looked like a door waiting to be opened.

An agent was bringing a cordless drill up the stairs. I felt sick just seeing him approach. I didn’t want that attic opened.

This way, Janet said, drawing us away from the ladder and whatever waited at the top.

The bedroom doors all stood open, giving easy access to the forensics team. I peered through as we passed them.

Paradise Mile’s living quarters were about what I’d expected. Twin beds, dusty old carpets, antique armoires, warped glass on the windows. The doorframes and ceilings were low, obviously designed for people a lot shorter than me.

Oh, and the windows were painted in blood. The sunlight filtered through them and tinted everything crimson.

The smears on the glass were the only visible spots of blood. Otherwise, things seemed pretty homey. There were a few personal touches in each room: knickknacks on one old lady’s shelves, family photos in this other guy’s room, decorative plates in another.

Every one of the beds was occupied by a dead body. I only recognized one of them—the balding woman with the hairy mole—but I figured they all had to be the residents that had been eyeballing Suzy and me on the stoop the day before.

The victims looked like they’d been tucked in. Pillows under their heads, sheets up to their chests.

The blood hadn’t come from these bodies. They hadn’t been bled out like Herbert. They were peacefully dead, sallow-fleshed and silent.

So where had the blood on the windows come from?

Fritz took off his sunglasses as he stepped inside the room on the end. What killed her? he asked, gesturing toward the body in the bed with his glasses.

The current theory is carbon monoxide poisoning, Janet said. Old houses like this, there are lots of things to leak CO. The furnace, the wood stoves, whatever. Easy way to kill everyone in their sleep, just as easy to clear out afterward so that there’s no immediate sign of it within the house.

Herbert didn’t die in his sleep. It felt insane that I had to even point that out.

Maybe his murderer hadn’t planned on killing anyone with a knife. Fritz drummed his fingers thoughtfully on his chin. Maybe our killer planned to kill everyone in their sleep via asphyxiation, and Herbert was an accident.

I held up both hands to stop Fritz and Janet from continuing. Wait. Do we remember the demon worship in the basement? How did we go from demon worship to an impromptu stabbing and group CO poisoning?

The theories aren’t mutually exclusive, Fritz said. Even demons can be practical murderers.

Then why the blood on the windows?

Janet looked annoyed at me. We don’t have any perfect theories yet.

No fucking kidding.

We were on our way back down the hallway when I noticed a glint of metal under the floor runner. The sun rising over Mojave cast light through the warped bedroom windows, and the slight shift reflected off of something metallic. It barely peeked through the tassels.

I flicked back the corner of the rug.

There was our butcher’s knife.

It was an antique, totally unlike the new hardware down in the kitchen. Janet had been right about the blade—it was roughly seven inches long and brutally geometric.

The blade had been wiped off, but there were still blood smears near the hilt. They were drying brown.

I didn’t touch it.

Good eye, Fritz said as Janet moved in to examine the knife.

I’ll make lifting prints a priority, but we might not get anything good off of this if someone took the time to clean it, she said. If they wiped off the blade, you can bet they did the handle, too.

How long will it take to run them through the database?

Not long, Janet said. If we can get a good signal, maybe ten minutes.

Fritz nodded, then gestured to me. Show me where this demonic evocation ritual was cast, Agent Hawke. He called over his shoulder to Janet, We’ll be downstairs when you get results.

I followed him reluctantly. I’d been doing good with all the bodies—my self-control had reached a very special new level of ironclad. I wasn’t sure that could hold up against going back into that musty little basement, though.

On the way downstairs, my mind replayed the death of the orderly. The way his expression went blank when the hole appeared in his forehead, the sound of the gunshot following a second later, like time had gone distorted.

It was getting hot in the retirement home.

There was a photographer in the drawing room, but since nobody had died in that part of the house, forensics didn’t seem to be doing much searching in the area. There were no tags on the covered furniture. No sign that there’d been an investigation at all aside from a lot more footprints in the dust.

The trap door in the servant’s hallway stood open.

Down there, I said.

Fritz arched an eyebrow at me. Problem, Agent Hawke?

Nope. No problem. He’d know I was lying, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to try to preserve some shriveled scrap of my pride.

He took the lead down the stairs.

Before I could follow him, my gaze was caught by the door to the servant’s quarters. I can’t tell you why I thought I needed