Chapter 7

Chapter7

The left head on the cartoon Cerberus adorning the sign for the Jolly Hellhound Pub was a dopey-looking fucker with its tongue lolling out. The dog’s head on the right was asleep while the one in the middle stared directly out at the viewer with evil red eyes.

I was going to be so pissed off if there was an actual hellhound we had to get past, because my entire body hurt. The bulk of the glamor magic was concentrated in my stomach and thighs because those were solid body parts able to handle the strain of pinning the glamor to me. I had greater muscle mass in my core and legs, typical of most women, and it would be too much to, say, anchor the glamor to only my arms, though it still had to be affixed across my entire body.

However, I disagreed with Sachie about the disguise feeling like a flu achiness. In my opinion, it was the same as the dull, heavy pain I got halfway through my menstrual cycles sometimes.

Plus, I was still sore from my workout this morning, so this new layer of suck made me downright cranky. I had no energy to tangle with some demon dog and no brimstone-flavored Milk-Bone to make friends with one.

At least the discomfort would only last six hours, because like Cinderella, my glamor had an expiration date. Unless I ended up with an allergic reaction to it. The list of possible side effects that Sharnaz had rattled off sounded like they were straight out of a comedy skit: may cause pruny fingers, facial gout, and an exploding liver. I kept waiting for Sharnaz’s laughter and a “just kidding.”

I was still waiting.

According to the timer on my burner phone, I had five hours and thirty-seven minutes to poke around the Copper Hell and then get free and clear before turning into a pumpkin. Probably not literally, but one of the side effects was orange puckered skin, so I couldn’t discount it.

To take my mind off the pain while Sharnaz was torturing—I mean glamoring me, I’d scrolled through some of the online Maccabee resources for information on the Copper Hell.

I’d found a footnote about an operative who’d gone undercover there sometime in the 1920s. Glamor magic was still pretty crude back then, so he’d relied on a physical transformation. The disguise held; his cover story didn’t.

He was mailed back in pieces to his Mumbai HQ. It took eight weeks.

Reassuring myself that wouldn’t happen to me—if nothing else, global shipping times had improved—I cracked my knuckles and opened the pub door, hit with a wash of warm beer-scented air. It was unnerving seeing large, callused man hands instead of my perfect French manicure, but at least I wasn’t hairy.

Sharnaz had been a bit too keen to try that detail out and their pout when I’d kiboshed it was Oscar-worthy.

They’d done a fantastic job of magically disguising me as a dark-skinned South Asian man in a beautifully tailored suit. I’d opted to keep my regular height of five foot five so that I didn’t have to worry about eyelines, but we made my undercover persona, Arjun, stockier than me. If someone touched me, they’d feel Arjun’s build.

The pub’s interior was generic with a lot of wood paneling, a couple of dart boards, and a dinner clientele in a mix of suits and jeans. Once past the entryway, the pub smelled like spiced grilled meat. A server presented a table with their orders ranging from burgers to steak, and a delicious-looking lobster mac and cheese. The Jolly Hellhound might look like a dive bar, but the food had a high-end appeal.

Ezra hadn’t arrived yet, so I took a seat at the bar where I could see the door, and ordered a pint of whatever lager they had on tap, pitching my voice low.

The bartender barely glanced at me before grabbing a glass and dispensing the golden liquid with the barest of foamy heads on top.

I munched my way through some surprisingly fresh and salty pretzels from the bowl in front of me.

A couple of women at the end of the bar cast interested looks my way. Yes, I am a fine-looking gentleman, thanks.

“Been working here long?” I asked the bartender.

“About five years.” He slid my drink over. Good. He’d know where the portal in this place was and wouldn’t ask questions.

I nursed my beer, waiting for Ezra to arrive and grateful I’d stopped and grabbed dinner on the way. It had already been a long day and I had hours more on that boat.

Thanks to Sharnaz being as gossipy as most operatives, I’d managed to learn a bit more about the artifacts stolen from the Trad gallery, including Sire’s Spark. The gallery owners were adamant that Trad cops investigate, and since they weren’t really magic objects—allegedly—Michael had no reason to pull jurisdiction over what amounted to paperweights with great PR.

Maybe she hadn’t heard about the “blood calls to blood” aspect of Sire’s Spark, which it had in common with the infernal murders. Yeah right. Like she hadn’t gone over every detail of our reports with a fine-toothed comb. She either didn’t believe Sire’s Spark was relevant to the last case or, more likely, didn’t care.

My mother had been clear about her lack of concern for any more dead infernals. It wasn’t worth my energy to be upset about it. Sadly, knowing that didn’t prevent it from happening.

Yet my gut insisted this artifact was pertinent to these deaths. It would be tricky to investigate without gaining the attention of the Trad cops, but I intended to try, and since Ezra was my partner in this hunt, I needed a moment to fill him in.

The door opened and a murmur ran through the pub, like the entire bar had been half-asleep and suddenly jolted back to full awareness. I didn’t have to look over to know who had entered.

Ezra had that effect on people.

Chairs were hurriedly scraped back, half the room moving tables out of his wake. The two women at the end of the bar fled, while the bartender overpoured a beer, the liquid flowing over his hand. He’d gone pale, his eyes wide.

This guy must have seen all types going through the portal to the Copper Hell. Ezra being a vampire wouldn’t faze him, this was all the Crimson Prince.

I rubbed my legs from the glamor discomfort. Awesome. A pinched throbbing was developing at the back of my neck, running up into my head.

To make things worse, Cherry bobbed up and down in my mind, excited for all the trouble we’d find.

Not trouble. Fact finding only. No fights.

Her presence withdrew to sulk.

I didn’t bother looking up; there was no need. Each of Ezra’s steps closer rippled through me as though he was transmitting an electromagnetic field, energizing me.

I slugged back some beer, trying to focus on something other than his nearing presence—and failed. His solid, sure steps were like a warrior’s, which put me in mind of the other thing I’d researched while I was being glamored: Ezra’s tattoo.

The angle of the photo made the first few words impossible to decipher, but the rest of the Spanish was clear: soñaba con conquistar el mundo. Plugged into a translator, it came out as “I dreamed of conquering the world.” Gag. I kept my to-do list on my phone. But hey, you do you, Ezra. He was powerful, charismatic, handsome, friends with celebrities and heads of state, and had fans who called themselves Ezracurriculars. What was next? Renaming a continent after himself?

Señor Conquistador—I snickered, he’d always be Count von Cardoso, supervillain, to me—took the barstool one down from me, and I fought not to inhale his familiar cologne with its notes of cardamom, cloves, and bergamot, that spicy orange. It tangled with the fresh, cool aroma of a windswept summer breeze that was his natural scent.

I tapped my thumb against the pint glass, covertly studying him through half-slitted lids.

He’d foregone the suit I expected in favor of black jeans paired with a black vest and a soft-looking white shirt with the first few buttons undone, exposing brown skin with a light dusting of hair. Over top, he wore this incredible brown leather jacket with black patches on the shoulders. Cut like a Victorian gothic frock, it fell past his hips.

On anyone else it would have looked like a steampunk costume, but Ezra elevated it to a timeless “death-bringer about town” look. I coveted it hard.

I’m not sure if he’d inherited his broad shoulders and height from his Venezuelan Sephardic father, but his darker Middle Eastern coloring was all courtesy of his Mizrahi Jewish mom. He’d loosened his jet-black curls into soft waves raked off his forehead, his dark brows strong slashes over eyes whose silvery-blue swirls reflected the turbulent danger of a stormy sea.

There might come a day when he didn’t take my breath away; it would be nice if I could pencil it in for tomorrow.

Ezra pushed away the mostly empty bowl of pretzels that sat between us. “One Bitter Abyss.”

“Ri-right away.” The bartender snapped into action.

A woman at a nearby table watched him with a feline smile flitting at the corners of her lips. She toyed with the stem of her wineglass.

I snapped a pretzel into shards, wishing I could chide Ezra, because what was the point of striding in here in full mobster assassin mode if you weren’t going to terrify everyone? I’m sure if I didn’t know that ginger ale made him hiccup uncontrollably, I, too, would be cowering right now.

Ginger ale, huh?Cherry Bomb smirked. Not how raking your teeth along his inner thigh made him shiver?

Yo, demon self. Save your evil for others.

I munched on the rest of the salty snacks, watching the bartender assemble bitters and cognac in a heavy cut-crystal glass.

He fired in a squirt of simple syrup then dripped absinthe in from a dark green bottle before garnishing it with a twist of lemon, and placed the drink before Ezra. “The back room is open for you to drink in privacy.”

Ezra nodded and slid off the stool. Almost casually, he nodded at me and said, “Get him the same.”

I quickly checked my glamor, but it was intact, and Sharnaz had assured me that my natural scent was muffled by the musky cologne magically woven into the disguise.

I wasn’t the only man who sat alone or the only one in a nice suit. The second I had my own Bitter Abyss, I headed through the door with a “Private” sign on it and into the back room, joining Ezra.

The small space was pretty basic. The four tables each had a beat-up lampshade over them, casting weak white light. There was a metal door at the back of the room, a clackety hum from the baseboard heater, and that was about it.

Ezra had barely touched his Bitter Abyss. “Following orders like a pro, I see.”

“Those weren’t orders, just a misguided suggestion.” I used my man voice to get in the habit. “Arjun is a much better choice. He won’t attract as much attention.”

“What if the plan was precisely for you to attract attention so I could snoop undetected?”

I laughed and flapped a hand at his outfit. “And here you are, the picture of subtlety. My bad.”

“Well, you won me five bucks off Darsh for not showing up as Avery.” He held out his fist for me to bump.

I left him hanging. “I like the two of you better when you don’t bond.”

Ezra nodded at my glass. “Try it.”

Why? Was this some hilariously disgusting beverage that he wanted me to choke down? I took a sip and made a face because it was too intense for my tastes. “Do I need these ingredients to go through the portal? Is it not the same as going through the rift?”

A liminal wasteland called the Brink lay between earth and the vampire megacity Babel, which was built in an abandoned demon realm. Entry to the Brink was via a portal known as a rift. No one knew how or why they’d sprung up.

There were about a dozen rifts worldwide; Vancouver’s had been the last to be discovered about a hundred and fifty years ago, back when we were a fledgling city. They weren’t painful to traverse, more like getting a tight hug from a clingy relative who you couldn’t wait to get away from. Happily, it only took a couple of seconds to get free of its embrace.

“I don’t know how the portals into the Copper Hell are made,” Ezra said, “but it feels no different than walking through any door.”

I rubbed my sore legs. “Then why the drink?”

He traced a finger around the rim of the glass. “Most people going into the Copper Hell are either nervous or amped up. The alcohol relaxes them, and the Bitter Abyss order is the code for the bartender to unlock the metal door.”

“Like with a speakeasy. Cool.” I sniffed myself. “How’d you know it was me? Didn’t my scent change?”

“It did.” He licked a drop of booze off his finger.

“Then what? There were other men here by themselves and I sat like a dude, legs wide, chest puffed out.” I wasn’t angry, just curious about which of my undercover skills required more work.

“I’d know you anywhere, Avi.” He said it with a wink, an unexpected lightness settling over his Crimson Prince, hunter-mode demeanor, but there was a hidden charge, a depth to his words. If I still knew him better than anyone, saw him more clearly, well, the reverse also held true.

“That’s not stalkerish or anything,” I said, aiming for deadpan and not flustered. “And as I’ve repeatedly told you, you no longer have use of my nickname.” We were the only ones in the back room so revealing my name didn’t place me in danger, but it was still a jerk move.

He grinned. “We never fought when we were together.”

I hadn’t thought there was anything to fight about. Not until the end, but when I tried to pick a fight then—God, how I tried, because his anger would have been better than the cold wall he gave me—he wouldn’t participate.

“You were sweeter back then too,” he added.

“Bet you miss that.” I took a healthy slug and set my glass on the table, instantly regretting the alcoholic burn down my throat.

“Not in the least.”

Whatever, you weirdo.

He stood up with a firm tug on his leather jacket. “There’ll be others watching the gambling. Blend in with them. See if you pick up any gossip about Calista or where her office might be. It’s a big yacht. People love to show off that they know the ones in charge, or that they know things they’re not supposed to. If you’re going to be an unmemorable presence, use that to your advantage. Overhear things. We’ll need to access the guests with useful information, but without having to play and place any bets.”

“Better keep remind me how to job thing because walk and talk use all think thing.” I tapped the side of my head.

“You done?”

“I don’t know. Are you? I assumed that if I went in looking like someone with a dick, you wouldn’t treat me like an idiot. Apparently not, and now you’ve ruined any calming effect from that gross drink.”

“I don’t want you calm. I never have.” Ezra opened the metal door, revealing a mesh net woven of magic light strung across it. I couldn’t see through it or hear anything from the other side. His lips curled up into a smile with sharp edges and no warmth, his fangs peeking through. “I want you dangerous.”

Ezra stepped into the doorway and vanished.