Chapter 11

Chapter11

Ezra deemed our debrief happen in the men’s room at the end of the walkway, muttering “no cameras” before he shoved me inside.

The guy taking a piss at the urinal swore and told me to get lost, but when Ezra pulled the hand dryer off the wall and crumpled it like it was paper, he hurriedly tucked his dick away and bolted.

“What did you lear—ouf!” Ezra flinched.

I shook out my fist. He hadn’t actually doubled over, but my bruised knuckles were totally worth it. “Forfeit that, asshole.”

Kick him in the groin. Punch him in the head. I swear Cherry was shaking pom-poms.

I eyed Ezra.

He stomped over to the restroom door and locked it, trapping the two of us together. “You think I’d have let it get that far? Thanks for the trust, partner.”

“Oh no.” I poked Ezra in the chest. Hard. “Only one of us gets to be outraged, and it’s not you.”

He slapped my hand away. “It would never have come to you being the forfeit.”

“You couldn’t guarantee that.” I hopped up to sit on the clean counter. It was better than standing barefoot on the tiles of a public restroom, despite them looking meticulously clean and glossy. “You said it yourself. You couldn’t influence the dice.”

He rubbed the back of his neck and, for an incredibly powerful vampire, suddenly looked sheepish.

I picked up the crumpled hand dryer, ready and willing to brain him with it. “Explain yourself.”

“Okay. See…” He exhaled, then did a double take. “Your eyes have gone green.”

I swiped the dryer a couple times in his direction, blinking to get my shedim self under control. “You’re trying my patience.”

Ezra flinched at my growled words. “Vamp compulsion gets stronger the older we are, right?”

“Vamps can’t compel inanimate objects. Not even Primes.”

“No, but Primes have a mild twist on compulsion magic. At least I do.” He paused. “Telekinesis.”

“Bullshit.”

He held out his hand for the dryer.

Was Ezra about to show me one of those cards he kept so close to his chest? A thrill surged through me, and the air was thick with anticipation. This covert rendezvous transformed the familiar space into a sanctuary of shared secrets.

I slapped the dryer into his palm. Or into an arena where blood might still be spilled with no one the wiser. That didn’t lessen the excitement.

“If you’re done bruising me,” he muttered.

“Not even close.”

Sighing, he placed the dryer on the counter and stepped back a few feet. A second later, it did a somersault and slid jerkily over to him. There was no wisp of warm air like when Henri had manipulated the dice with his orange flame magic.

“Even this sized item tests the limits of my ability,” he said. “It’s mild. A party trick, though no one else knows about it.”

“You fucker. You didn’t think to mention this ace up your sleeve before we came here?” It was much better for my mental well-being to hang on to my anger than imagine a young Ezra with long stretches of time by himself practicing this little trick, knowing he had no one to impress with it.

“Could you fake a racing heart and accelerated pulse when I did it?”

I blinked. “Uh, well, no.”

“Exactly. I knew there’d be vampires here. Demons too.” He narrowed his eyes. “Which begs the question of why they’re walking around glamored and you aren’t.”

“This is not my fault! I have no idea why this happened, and if you’re accusing me of deliberately blowing⁠—”

“What? No.” He raked a hand through his curls. “That’s not what I meant. Look.” He reached for me.

I crossed my arms. I still felt as raw as if I’d been flayed, and I wasn’t ready for non-violent physical contact with him.

“I wouldn’t have harmed you, Aviva. I swear it.”

I laughed bitterly. I hadn’t been in any danger, fine, but it would take time getting over my feelings of betrayal and the fear I’d end up in debt to one of the other players. “Bit late for that.”

“I did the least damage I could,” he said quietly.

I frowned, suddenly unsure whether we were still talking about the dice game. However, my anger dissipated. I checked in the mirror and found that my eyes had returned to their light brown color. “It’s a fair question,” I admitted. “About why my cover was blown.”

I told him what I experienced stepping through the portal.

Ezra picked up the hand dryer, manipulating the metal in different directions to re-form it. The dryer roughly assumed its original shape, but it was never going to once more become smooth and shiny and unmarred. Same, dryer. Same. “I don’t love that something knows you’re a half shedim,” he said, “even if it’s just a supernatural security system. Though it might have worked out in our favor. You lost the glamor, but this story played out better.”

“And since my human form is my natural state, I wasn’t exposed to all and sundry. I guess that’s a silver lining.” Still sitting on the counter, I turned on the tap and wet my hands, using my fingers as a comb to detangle and fix my hair as much as possible. “Let’s run through the memories I got.”

“That was an excellent call, by the way,” he said.

“You’d think I’d exceled at making critical assessments for years or something.”

He tossed the still-dented dryer onto the counter. “I wasn’t being patronizing. Look, we got through a tough situation together. Either this is a fight about something else, or you can move on like the professional I know you are.”

“Let’s move on,” I said tightly. Guilt sat in my stomach like a heavy stone, but I didn’t have it in me to apologize for being overly sensitive.

I launched into the memories I’d gotten from Maud. She was super chatty and Ezra stopped me multiple times to clarify a point of conversation. The only useful information from her time at the Copper Hell tonight was when she ordered some rare vintage of wine at the bar in the atrium, was told the shipment had been delayed, and that Calista was looking into it. Maud had gotten sulky and flirted with the bartender to let her speak to Calista.

He’d refused, saying Calista was busy and would get to it in due course.

A bouncer showed up and told Maud to let the bartender do his job. Maud hadn’t liked that, but she’d dropped the issue. Neither the bouncer or bartender acted cagey about Calista.

“They don’t know she’s missing.” Ezra paced the restroom. “Someone has to be running this place, though. What did Henri get us?”

“Some useful tells if I planned to gamble against some other players, but nothing in terms of this investigation. Clyde had an interesting memory, though. There are staff corridors throughout the yacht.”

“I know that already.” Ezra pulled a key card out of his coat pocket with a cocky grin. “I thought it might be useful, so I liberated it from the guy who served my drink.”

I high-fived him. “You weren’t wrong. One of the doors in the hallway up here was of great interest to Clyde. He didn’t know the security code and a wrong try ends in…” I sucked my bottom lip into my mouth, sorting through more memories. “I don’t know the specifics, but Clyde really didn’t want to get it wrong, and a key card wouldn’t unlock the door. I think I can find where it is, though the code is anyone’s guess.”

“One thing at a time,” Ezra said. He unlocked the bathroom door.

With a grimace, I slid onto the floor. I was going to bathe in a vat of disinfectant when I got home.

I followed him back to the spiral staircase, staying close as we descended. There were entrances to the staff corridor here in the atrium, but we’d be too exposed. Ezra was pretty sure he knew of another one outside, so we left.

The night wind whipped my hair into my face. I was barefoot, in a thin tunic and pants, and I was freezing. I’d have sprinted to our next destination because my toes were going numb, but there were other gamblers out here and we had to play our roles, so I shuffled miserably after Ezra.

A grizzled man in his late sixties leaned against the railing, idly watching us approach. He sucked on his cigarette, not caring about the ash that fell onto his wool fisherman’s sweater. From his gray eyes that caught the moonlight to his windswept salt-and-pepper hair, this older man was handsome in a rugged way.

However, he appeared out of place among the menacing vampires and glittering humans. Was this the captain? His bulky muscled arms looked capable of hoisting masts or steering jibs.

Did one steer a jib? Maybe I should have read more pirate books. Watched a documentary or two.

He flicked his unfinished cigarette into the ocean. “Having fun?” His voice was gravelly and conjured up the rough swell of a stormy sea, but it wasn’t unpleasant. There was something mellifluous about it, something that hinted at freedom swimming in the wild waves.

Ezra brushed past him without a second look. The Crimson Prince didn’t deign to notice most people. It was generally better for them that way.

I gave the older man one last curious look over my shoulder.

He leaned out on the railing, his face to the water, but, as if sensing my gaze, turned. He was too far away, and it was too dark to see his eyes, but I shivered, positive that he was seeing into me. I picked up the pace, glad when we turned a corner and he was lost to view.

The key card worked perfectly on the scanner, and Ezra and I slipped inside the corridor without being seen. It was empty, but we had no idea how long it would stay that way, so I guided us as quickly as my legs—and Clyde’s memory—allowed. We eventually came to a narrow stairwell. “Up here.” We hurried onto a tiny landing.

“Voilà.” I motioned at the heavy wooden door with a numeric keypad mounted next to it. Best-case scenario, it’d set off an alarm. “How are we going to get past⁠—”

Ezra punched in the final number of a six-digit sequence, and the light on the keypad turned green.

I planted my hands on my hips. “Maybe warn me next time! Also, how did you possibly know the passcode?”

“Lucky guess.” He grasped the polished brass doorknob, and I flinched, but he opened it without incident.

The rich scent of aged leather and mahogany was the best thing so far in this damnable place. It reminded me of the resource library at Maccabee HQ, where I’d spent many happy hours. I smiled, flicked on a green-shaded standing lamp, and whistled softly.

Dark wood paneling similar to the one in the Jolly Hellhound extended halfway up the walls, giving the room a warm and inviting feel. This was amplified by the small sofa and steamer trunk on wide, worn floorboards, which provided the perfect spot for gazing out at the panoramic view of the sea through the large window, framed by the heavy velvet curtains that were drawn back to the night. Directly under the window was an imposing antique oak desk, its surface worn smooth by years of use.

Ezra locked the door.

Behind the desk was an old high-backed leather chair with brass rivets and wooden armrests. I sat down, swiveling slightly, and opened the single drawer searching for a laptop, but there wasn’t one.

Ezra combed through the topmost shelf of one of the two bookshelves bolted to the walls, whose glass doors kept the manuscripts and leather journals from falling out.

I opened one of the Moleskine journals on the desk. “Back to that lucky guess.”

“It really was a guess,” he said. “Calista is an ancient Prime. She prides herself on her cleverness, so her numeric password wouldn’t be something obvious, but it would still be easy for her to remember. Like the birthday of a loved one.”

The journal was written in some kind of coded shorthand. I flipped it shut. “How could you possibly know that? I thought you weren’t friends.”

“We weren’t.” Ezra’s smile was acidic enough to dissolve bodies. “I told you she wanted to kill me. She just also wanted to meet the only other Prime before she had her henchmen take me out.”

I put down the journal with a jerky slap. “But you’re clearly still here.”

“Disappointed?”

I smirked, and I guess Ezra decided not to wait and hear my answer because he pressed on.

“Calista was big on hierarchies,” he said, “and in her mind, my existence threatened her power. It didn’t matter that I had no interest in challenging her.”

I was about to retort that Ezra was perfectly happy to play top of the food chain when it suited him, but I didn’t because it was exactly that. An act. He had accepted Darsh leading an investigation that Ezra was deeply invested in without much protest.

Yes, he’d pulled rank on our previous case and steamrolled over Michael’s authority, but how much of that had been Ezra armoring up to enter the lion’s den? It was bad enough he’d be crossing paths with Michael, he had to suspect he’d see me as well. At the time I believed that didn’t matter to him.

I stood corrected.

Plus, he’d not only accepted me as a true co-leader, he’d valued the input of the rest of the team.

“Calista sounds like she was quite the special unicorn,” I said.

“The night I was presented to her, she was sitting at a banquet table like some queen.” He snorted and unrolled a parchment scroll, his eyes scanning the thin paper. “She drank a toast, saying that her lucky day had become more fortuitous with our meeting. I made it my duty to find out what made the day special. It was her lover’s birthday. Giacomo Girolama Casanova de Seingalt. April 2, 1725.”

I gasped. “The Casanova?”

Ezra nodded. “Infamous womanizer and equally infamous gambler.”

“Bet you didn’t know Casanova was obsessed with magic,” a new man’s voice said.

I yelped because the grizzled old guy from the deck had stepped out of the solid wall next to me, filling the room with the scent of salt and night air. Not a man.

He snapped his fingers at me to move.

It took a second for my brain and legs to coordinate, but I hastily vacated the seat.

The demon sat down in the sturdy chair and swung his rubber boots onto the desk, still talking. “Alchemy, kabbalah, you name it, Casanova practiced it.”

Ezra edged closer to me, but the shedim stopped him with a wagged finger. “One more step and you’ll be sleeping with the fishes.”

“Spare us the mob movie quotes,” I said.

He furrowed his brow, then shook his head. “Let’s cut to the chase, Operative Fleischer. Did you find my partner yet or are you fucking around with your thumb up your ass?”

I opened my mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. “Ho-how did⁠—”

“Ho-how did I know?” he mocked with a sneer.

Demon-killing time. Wheeeee! Cherry sounded like a sugared-up toddler. We routinely hunted demons since the energy expended in the fight helped sate my shedim self. This asswipe would be a joy to take out, but I’d twigged on something he said. It was important, I was certain of it, but I wasn’t sure what it specifically was.

“If you’ve got relevant information,” Ezra said, “then tell us.” The silky menace behind his words would have sent most people scrambling to do his bidding.

“Shut up, Cardoso. I’m not talking to you.”

Ezra’s gobsmacked look would have been priceless under any other circumstance than the one where a demon moved through walls and didn’t bother to glance at the Crimson Prince when he insulted him.

That said, I’d hit my limit of cowering and simpering for today, and I was frustrated that I couldn’t puzzle out what was important about the demon’s words. I arched an eyebrow. “Have you got an alibi for Calista’s disappearance?”

“I could make you both disappear right now. Make it so you never existed. No one would come for you. No one would remember you. Still think I need an alibi, missy?” The amused glint in the shedim’s eyes suggested he was enjoying himself.

Like vamps, demons were exempt from my illumination abilities, but according to my synesthete magic, I was a pulsing ball of blue. No kidding, given the danger.

Or the rush.

“Missy?” I pressed my hands to my chest. “Ow. I’m so wounded. Shouldn’t a demonic douchebag have better comebacks?”

Blue dots spiked throughout my chest. A distant part of my brain cautioned me about mouthing off to this particular demon, but I couldn’t help it. I’d been accused of taking people’s weaknesses too far, and I’d certainly illuminated my own in certain situations.

But for the first time ever, I was actively exploiting my weaknesses, like a scab I couldn’t stop picking at. I’d been warned during training against turning my magic vision into self-harm. I’d always scoffed, believing myself free from those impulses.

This demon pushed my buttons, and childishly—or suicidally—I wanted to push them back. Unfortunately, the only way I’d see his weaknesses was if I deployed the magic in my ring. My own blue flame abilities didn’t include that talent. Not that I was against his death, but I’d have to tenderize the shedim first for that magic to expose his kill spot and take hold, and there was no way I’d get the chance.

Ezra started forward, his mouth open, but the demon flicked a hand at him. A surge of water slapped against the window, slipped through the glass as a liquid tendril, and swam up Ezra’s body to imprison him. He shot the shedim an annoyed look and broke free. “Answer my question.”

The demon blinked and the water cascaded to the floor.

I would have done my own double take, because Ezra had shrugged off a demon binding like he was swatting a mosquito, but I was busy jumping out of the puddle. My bare feet were already cold. Wet was not an upgrade.

The shedim narrowed his eyes. “No one likes a show-off.”

Water rose from the boards to once more trap Ezra in an anaconda’s embrace. He tried to get free, but the tip of the plume smacked him across the face hard enough to jolt the vamp’s head sideways.

Fury rolled off Ezra in waves.

I took an uneasy step back.

“You—” he snarled at the demon.

The fiend slapped a water gag over Ezra’s mouth.

The entire imprisonment took less than three heartbeats.

The demon waggled his fingers at me. “Now, can we have a civilized conversation, or do I feed you to a kraken?”

I was eighty percent sure kraken did not exist. “You set the tone when you asked if I was ‘fucking around with my thumb up my ass.’” I made the air quotes.

He chuckled. “I did, didn’t I?”

I ground my teeth together. “What do you want?”

“Your stellar conversation skills.” He sat up, his rubber boots thwacking onto the floor. “To solve this, you useless twit. Calista and I have been partners from the beginning, and I’d hate to have to break in a new one. I’ll do it if I have to, but what a waste of my time.”

“What a prince,” I sneered.

One of the bookshelf doors popped open. A slim notebook flew off a shelf and hit me in the gut. I grabbed it before it fell to the floor.

The cover flipped open and dogeared looseleaf spilled out. I grabbed the papers. Smudged calligraphy ink, ballpoint pen, even charcoal and blood, the items were written with all kinds of implements, but the thin slanted printing never changed. Most of the lines were crossed out, but there were still plenty of things written in that shorthand code.

“I can’t under⁠—”

The demon brought his fingers and thumb together in a “shut it” motion.

A muscle ticked in my jaw.

He gave a rusty laugh.

The coded words gleamed gold then audibly and visually cracked, the letters on the page rearranging themselves into lines of names.

“Cali’s shit list,” he said. “People banned from the Copper Hell.”

There were a lot of names on it, and it didn’t mean that any of them were responsible for her disappearance, but still, it was something. I clutched the book to my chest. “Thanks, uh…Beelzebub? Steve?”

“You should have stuck with demonic douchebag. At least it was alliterative. You can call me Delacroix, but don’t make a habit of calling me at all.” The demon scratched his head with his nicotine-stained fingers. He pulled a tiny shell out of his hair, threw it on the ground, and crushed it underfoot. “You have three days to get Calista back.”

That was it! Both Ezra and this demon spoke about retrieving the body, not finding her killer. The timeline always seemed important to them. “This isn’t about vamp power dynamics,” I said. “What’s actually going on? Why is three days such a hard limit?”

Ezra tensed in his watery prison, but Delacroix smirked.

“Isn’t that the timeline for famous resurrections?” he asked.

“Vampires can’t rise from the dead when they’re undead to begin with.”

“I’m taking poetic license. Sue me.” He narrowed his eyes. “You don’t know, do you? Great. The C Team is on this case.”

I made that same “shut it” motion back at Delacroix. He clenched his jaw.

Cherry chortled. I didn’t—audibly—though I relished the hit, but only because Ezra’s brown skin had gone unnaturally pale, his eyes wide above the magic gag.

Vampires don’t leave bodies when staked. It was one of the first things operatives learned about the undead. Calista was a Prime. I ran through all the conversations we’d had about her and came to a chilling conclusion.

This case had been fraught with disturbing twists from the start, but this new one cast a long eerie shadow over the entire investigation.

“Calista’s not dead, is she?” I shivered. “If she was, we wouldn’t have a body, like all vampires. Our suspect staked her to subdue her and abduct her. The perp needs her for something. What?”

“I have no idea,” Delacroix said tightly, “but I have an active imagination. You better pray that whoever has her is more limited in their thinking.”

I straightened the loose pages into a ruler-straight bundle like I could put my world back into order. This had huge ramifications on the case. It changed everything, made it so much more dire. Michael was going to lose her mind. “I have to tell my team.”

Ezra made a strangled sound from behind his gag.

“Oooh.” Delacroix pulled a cigarette out from behind his ear. He patted himself down, as if looking for a lighter, then sighed. “Someone doesn’t like that idea. I can’t blame him. I wouldn’t want it getting out that I could be staked and imprisoned in my own body. Alive. Aware. Helpless.” He dropped the words like each one was more delicious than the last.

Ezra flushed angrily, his eyes darkening. He struggled so hard in his bindings that he was going to hurt himself.

My hand flew to my mouth. Is that what had happened when Calista captured him?

It was bad enough to imagine the excruciating agony of a stake tearing through my flesh, breaking ribs and piercing my heart, but then to be trapped, unable to scream or move? Had he felt that horrific pain or had he mercifully blacked out?

I instinctively reached out for him.

Ezra snarled at me, and I jumped.

“I have to tell them. You know I do.” I stood by the decision, but I hated the plaintive note in my voice.

Delacroix winged me on the side of my head with the unlit cigarette. “Don’t even think about having second thoughts. I have eyes and ears everywhere, so save us both the trouble and assume that I’ll know every move you make.” He leaned forward. “You’ll do whatever it takes to find Calista. Earn your girl detective badge and find Calista or I’ll find you.”

His eyes bored into mine, their color blotted out by a darkness so pure it made obsidian look like gray with delusions of grandeur. An ancient cunning studied me, promising untold cruelty should I fail.

I sucked in a swift breath. No, I’d beg for cruelty. Delacroix would upend my life with a chaos that was fearsome and violent beyond belief, and for an encore, he’d erase my very existence.

I nodded my understanding, since my vocal cords were jammed up.

The office door opened, revealing not the hall, but another portal strung with magic mesh. Fearful of where it led, I grabbed on to the sofa, but I was torn away like scrap newspaper. I tumbled into the abyss with a scream, reaching out for Ezra, who was still trapped.

His silvery-blue eyes were dull with anguish. He remained gagged, but he didn’t need to speak, because when he slowly and deliberately looked away from me—like in making my choice to tell the team, in leaving him behind, no matter that it wasn’t my choice, he no longer wanted anything to do with me—it said everything.