Chapter 17

Idrove the car down near the river, parking it under one of the bridges. I threw the keys into the water and left the doors open. A pair of homeless men eyed me up. "Great place to sleep if you ask me," I said. I pulled two of the bags out, and Cowboy took the other. Ruby hopped out and paced around, eyeing up the men. She lifted her lips over her teeth but didn't make a sound.

They waited until we were a good fifty feet away and then went for the car.

"They could tell someone we were here," Cowboy said.

"Doubt it. I just gave them a place they could sleep in relative safety for a few nights." I set out at a jog, despite the weight of the bags. The exertion felt good on my muscles and I relished in the way my breath shortened and my lungs burned.

I led him and Ruby back into the city. I suspected a few of my hideouts would still be safe. Or safe enough.

The first was my family residence in Queens—or I should say my mother's residence. It wasn't that big or fancy. Just an apartment in an okay part of town. It had been my mother's before she died, and she'd used it as a retreat when things got too tense between her and my father. Which had been often.

I hadn't been to it in years. Hadn't needed a refuge until now.

Daylight kissed the sky before we made it to the apartment building, sweaty and aching. Cowboy muttered something about his boots not being made for running. "We'll get better clothing today. After we sleep," I said.

I let myself into the building through the back door, not surprised the code hadn't changed in all these years. Up the back stairwell, up five flights, and then through the door that led to the fifth-floor apartment hallway. The last on the right was ours, a corner apartment. Better views of the city, plus an extra window to exit if need be.

I walked up to the door and put my ear to it. No noise.

"You sure it wouldn't have been sold?" Dinah asked quietly.

"The lease was paid for twenty years, along with maintenance and cleaning," I said. "Still a few years left on that contract."

I punched in the numbers on the keypad and the door clicked open. I dropped the bags and motioned for Cowboy to be quiet as I slid through the door in a crouch. The keycode worked and the place was supposed to be maintained, yes, but both those things meant very little in our world.

The two-bedroom apartment was a good size for New York, close to eight hundred square feet. Huge, really. My walk-through showed me that no one had been there for years other than the cleaning crew, and they'd been doing a piss-poor job, at best. I swiped my hand through the dust and rubbed my fingers together.

Cowboy dragged in the three bags and Ruby trotted ahead of him and went straight to the couch where she plopped herself down. A poof of air sent dust particles up, which sent her into a bout of rapid sneezing.

"You think we'll be safe here?" Cowboy did a slow turn. The skyline had brightened and the room was already heating from all the windows. I went to the far right of the couch and pulled the cord that slid the blackout curtains shut, sending the room into instant twilight.

"Safe for now. Door on your right is your bedroom. It hooks to the bathroom so shower, shit, shave, whatever. I'll take the first watch."

I motioned for him to go, then waited for the door to close before I pulled up a chair and sat. Twenty-four hours ago, I'd woken in the facility with Eligor's fingers in my mind and no idea when I would have the chance to make a break for it. Now, I sat in my mother's old apartment in the city I'd left behind trying to figure out which step to take next.

I blew out a breath and laid Dinah and Diego on the table. From one of the bags, I pulled out a cloth and cleaning supplies, then began to meticulously pull both guns apart, cleaning and oiling their parts.

"Ohhhhh, she has magic hands," Diego purred. "Magic, I tell you. Do it again, harder this time." I was ramming the bristle brush down the barrel.

"Like it up the ass, do you?" I pulled the bristle brush out and laid it on the table, then checked the barrel to ensure there were no stray pieces.

"You know," Diego said, "we are magical in a sense, imbued with souls and created by spells that not just any savage could pull off. I can feel more than you realize."

I paused. "You telling me you don't want me to clean you?"

"Shut it!" Dinah snapped. "I like it."

"Yeah, I know you do." I put my hand on her. "I missed you, Dinah. This last year . . . I wasn't sure I wasn't going to lose my fucking mind."

"You and me both, sister," she whispered.

Sister.

I swallowed hard, not wanting to think about that aspect of Dinah. Her soul belonged to my sister, and when she'd died, she'd been stuffed into the gun. To help me when the time came. Only I'd not known for years that she was someone I knew.

Someone I'd loved.

I let my hands do the work they knew so well as my mind wandered through what I knew for sure, what I suspected, and what I had to find out.

Abnormals were being hunted hard, so much so, the abnormal senators had been stripped of their office. We were being purged out of cities, and human law had been skewed against us.

Fallen angels seemed to be at the head of it.

I needed to find young Harden and get him to hack the tablet to see if we could find out why they were going after abnormals. Because it didn't feel like it was just as simple as knocking us out of the playing field.

And I needed to find a fallen angel so I could grill the shit out of him or her. The Empire State Building would be the best starting point for that plan. Old school in the clouds.

I must have been talking to myself under my breath because Dinah spoke up as I finished putting her back together. "And where does Killian fit into all of this? You got Bear covered but what about hot stuff?"

"Who is that?" Diego asked.

"Killian is her man," Dinah said. "A hot-as-sin Irishman who quite frankly I'd like to see down his pants too."

"Ah, family. I get it. Save the family or stop the bad guys from doing terrible things that might get to your family." Diego gave a shimmy on the table. "Tough decision."

I leaned over the table and closed my eyes, struggling to breathe through the emotions. I'd faced this choice before, and it hadn't gotten any easier.

"Fuck," I muttered as I got up and went to the small pantry. There were preserved army food bags, and I ripped one open, added water and stirred it up. Once it was somewhat glutinous, I poured it into a bowl and tossed it into the microwave.

While it heated, I paced the small kitchen. Bear had said he was safe enough, but he looked like he'd been through shit. He'd been without me for another year of his young life, again believing I was dead. No, that wasn't true; he'd been told I was dead and this time he hadn't believed it at all.

"If you go to him now, they'll follow you right to him," Dinah said, stopping me in my tracks. "You have to deal with this first."

"You sound like Eleanor," I said.

"Who's that?" Diego asked.

"My other gun," I said. "She died protecting me."

Diego was quiet, no doubt understanding exactly what I meant. Eleanor had been pointed at me, and the only way to save me was to misfire. Doing so had destroyed all her inner workings, killing her a second time.

The microwave dinged and I pulled out the now piping hot bowl and went back to the table. Dinah sighed as I sat next to her. "You know I'm right. If they are hunting abnormals, they'll want Bear. He's like you, strong."

She wasn't wrong. "I'm a shit mother," I said as I scooped what was likely supposed to be some sort of pasta dish into my mouth.

"No. You're a mother bear," Dinah said. "And mother bears are mean-ass motherfuckers who get shit done. You love your boy, and I love . . . you know, I love him too." Her voice caught, and I knew she was thinking of her own child. She'd had a daughter before her soul had been stuffed into a gun, and Emerald was out there too. Missing.

That was why Easter had Dinah when they'd been caught by the facility. I'd been pregnant, unable to go looking for Emerald and so I'd asked Easter. I knew that Dinah would do all she could to help Easter find her child. But it hadn't happened that way, not at all.

"We'll do this, then we'll find them both, Dinah. I swear on my life, I will do all I can to find her," I said, my voice low.

"Okay. Then let's kill these assholes that have put us into the position of walking away from family even if it's the right thing to do," Dinah said. "I've got your back, you know that."

I covered her with both hands. She was right. We had a job to do, and that job was going to get fucking ugly before it was done.

Scarfing down the rest of the meal, I made myself swallow the food even though it stuck in my throat. Next was the shower. The showers in the facility were lukewarm water, and you had only three minutes.

I got the box of hair dye from the bag and took it with me. They'd dyed my hair blond back there, part of their ritual of making me someone I wasn't. They'd done it to a few of the abnormals.

An hour and a half later, I stood in front of the mirror, looking back at a person I recognized. Jet-black hair, ice-blue eyes, scars littering my collar bones and upper chest.

Scars of the past that had made me who I was. I shook my head, dried off, and went out to the main living area, still wrapped in the towel.

The clothing I had was Rosita's, and while it was fine for a cut and run, we were in the middle of a fight that required a bit more than running shoes and jeans.

I dug around in the one bag. Peter had stripped several of the downed soldiers of their clothes, aiming for those that would be a closer fit to him and Cowboy.

Nothing in my size. I blew out a breath and looked down the hall. My mother's room was at the end. I made myself walk there, made myself open the door and step into her sanctuary.

The bed was a king-sized mattress in a four-poster Edwardian-style frame that dominated the space. Really, there wasn't room for much else. I sidled past the bed to the closet and pushed the doors open.

Inside was an array of clothing and a puff of stale air that smelled like my mom, of her favorite perfume. Honeysuckle and clean linen. I slowly pushed through it, looking for something that would work. My mother had been a pet, in essence, a kept woman who lived on the whims of my father. Which meant she had to dress the part.

The feel of leather stopped my hands and I pulled out the piece of clothing. Leather pants?

"Mom, look at you," I muttered as I untangled them from the hanger.

"What did you find?" Dinah yelled from the kitchen. I went back and scooped her up, paused, and scooped up Diego too. "Wait, why is he coming?"

I put the two guns on the bed next to the leather pants. "Oh, nice! Those are good quality too, no cheap-ass pleather!" Dinah chirped.

I kept on pushing through the clothes, feeling more than looking. My hands stalled on something hard, stiff. I tugged the article out and snorted at the boned bustier. I looked it over. "Dinah, I think this has a spell woven into the fabric."

"Shit, really? What was your mom up to?"

As if I needed another question with no answer. "No idea." I dropped the towel and snugged the bustier on while Diego let out a low whistle.

The arrangement of the straps allowed me to put it on without any assistance. As I finished setting up the last buckle on the front, I turned to the bed. "See anything different?"

"Nothing," Dinah said. "What do you think the spell is for?"

I ran my hands over it, thinking about why Mom would have needed spelled clothing. And why a corset? Of all the impractical pieces of women's clothing, this was one of the worst. Although, to be fair, this one had molded to me even with the boning in it. I scooped up a pair of undies and slid them on—imperative when wearing leather pants—and then pulled on the pants.

I stood and lifted a leg, settling into an old yoga pose, then slowly moved through a series of tai chi motions that tested the limit of the clothing's flexibility. Which was stunningly good.

"How do they feel?" Dinah asked.

"Magical," I muttered, barely holding back a smile. "Like they were made for me."

"Or your mom."

I nodded and dropped my hands to the floor in a forward bend. The clothing felt like something I'd wear to the gym to work out in.

"Your tits aren't falling out," Diego observed. "That is disappointing."

Dinah snort-laughed at him. "Like you'd even have a shot of being shoved under her shirt. You're too big."

"Yeah, baby, I am too big," he drawled.

They bickered back and forth about that while I searched the closet for more clothing. The basics were easy, but if there was more of this magic wear shit, I was taking it.

But there was nothing else even close to the magic corset, which was a bit of a downer. I pulled on socks and a pair of ankle boots made for walking. I tried a few more moves, all decked out, and was pleased with the results.

"Good thing your mom was the same build as you," Dinah observed.

I nodded, scooped up the clothes I'd pulled out, and went back to the living room. There was a mid-sized TV that I clicked on—not with the remote, the batteries were dead, but with the buttons on the side of the TV. I flipped through the channels until I found the one I was looking for.

Channel 9.75.

Yes, the abnormal world had taken to Harry Potter just like the rest of the population, and they liked to use it for their code words and entry points. Killian had told me about this one. Before I'd met him, I'd been considered human, a hunter of the abnormals, and they kept their secrets closer than a granny fighting over the last ball of yarn at a sale.

The channel flickered to life but with nothing but static snow. I left it on with the volume low as I went to work on sorting out the items from bags at my feet. Weapons and ammo into one pile, tactical gear in another, wallets in my lap.

I took the cash out first and set it aside. The credit cards were a no-no, of course, the perfect way to pin us down. I didn't look at the pictures of their families that they kept.

That was the way down a path of regret that didn't fly in my line of work.

"Hello."

The single word came from the TV and my hands stilled.

"Hello," the voice said again. "Raids on the east side of Queens."

The TV flicked off on its own. East side of Queens. That was where we were.

"Fuck."

I scooped up Dinah and Diego, putting Dinah into her holster and keeping Diego in my arms. The fallen cast sleep spells over the buildings they hit, that was what Peter had said. I crept to the curtains and peered out. It was closing in on noon. Would they really raid in the middle of the day?

The building directly across from ours lit up like a giant five-hundred-watt bulb had been turned on. I shaded my eyes but didn't look away.

"What's happening?" Cowboy stumbled into the room and peered out with me.

"Raid," I said.

"During the day? I never heard them raiding during the day, always at night."

"My thoughts exactly. Either they're on to us, or something has changed." I frowned.

The steady thump of helicopters slid through the walls and I peered into the sky. Three huge helicopters hovered above the building across the way. Something like fairy dust fell from them, all over the building. It sunk into the stone before ten seconds had passed.

Next came the army boys sliding down ropes, landing on the top of the building armed with . . . I yanked out a pair of binoculars from the bag and watched through them. "Tasers. Not guns. Why aren't they just killing them?"

"You say that as if it's better," Cowboy said. "You want them to die?"

"You want to live trapped like an animal? Forced to lose your mind?" I spoke absently as I watched the tactics of the trained men. Not that I thought they were all that good. On the contrary, they were sloppy as hell as they made their way into the building, not checking their points, not watching their backs.

I swept the binoculars up to the helicopters.

"No winged monsters," I said softly. I couldn't quite pinpoint why, but I had a notion that a ride-along was going to happen sooner rather than later.

"What are you thinking?" Cowboy asked. The look in my eyes must have clued him in, because he followed up with, "Oh, shit. Why?"

"Not today," I said.

Cowboy let out a sigh of relief. "Seriously, I thought you were going to jump through the window."

"It would have been the roof with a grappling hook," I said. "We're close enough."

He laughed but that laughter died out when I didn't laugh with him.

"You're crazy."

"Likely. But I know it."

The sloppy army joes were spilling back onto the roof, tugging along two people. I assumed they were abnormals. Limp, sleeping, unaware that they'd just been tagged and bagged.

I put the binoculars down. "Since you're up, keep watch." I flicked channel 9.75 back on and let the static flow.

Taking Dinah and Diego with me, I headed back to the far bedroom. "Three hours, don't let me sleep any longer than that."

I shut the door, laid the two guns on the bed and then lay down next to them.

"You got a plan?" Dinah asked.

I closed my eyes, tried not to think about my mom here, hiding from my asshole father. "Yes. We're going to find Harden first. Then we'll hunt us up a fallen angel."

"And kill things?" Diego asked, hope in his voice.

I breathed out slowly. "Yes. We're going to kill things."