Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

“Where the fuck do you think you’re going, you goddamn snitch?” I leaped over the box of rubbish that Benny knocked off the dumpster as he ran past. Damned goblin was at it again.

Benny laughed, but when he saw me clear the pile of garbage, he let out a yelp. “Oh, crap!” He knew what I’d do to him if I caught him.

But the alley was a long one, and—to my joy and Benny’s dismay—it ended in a high chain link fence that covered the entire exit. He glanced over his shoulder to see how close I was, then frantically began climbing the links. He was spry, I’d give him that.

I reached the fence when he was halfway up, and immediately followed him. Luckily, I was faster and stronger than he was. Before he could reach the top, I grabbed hold of his ankle and yanked, hard. He tried to hold on, but I pulled harder.

“Give it up, you little creep. You aren’t winning this one!” I took a deep breath and pulled again. He tried to kick me, but I had a firm grip on his ankle. The next moment, he lost his hold and fell. I let go of the fence and dropped with him, still holding onto his foot, and we both rolled on the ground.

“Let go of me, you freakazon!” He struggled, but I pinned him down, sitting on top of him so he couldn’t get away. Goblins were notoriously squirmy.

“Oh, I’ll let you go, once you give me back that bracelet. Trust me, Benny. You think I’m scary? Try facing the woman you stole from. Of course, I could cart you back to Analida and let her take care of you, but I’m giving you a chance to live. You know she’s a snakeshifter, right?”

I leaned down, staring into the goblin’s twisted face. Benny was a low-life thief, but I let him be usually, because he often fed me information I needed in exchange for a few bucks.

But this time, he’d signed his death warrant, unless I could get the bracelet back. Nobody stole from snake shifters and got away with it. They were nasty tempered enough when they were happy. Piss them off? You had an assassin on your trail.

“Lucky for you, Analida’s in a party frame of mind. And you’re also lucky that I’m the one that noticed you swiping her bracelet. She was too drunk to come after you herself, so I told her I’d get it back for her. And you’re very lucky that I’m not going to kill you, like she would have. Now give me the diamonds and I’ll let you go and tell her I have no idea who you are—that I managed to get the bracelet but you ran off.”

Benny froze. “She’s a snake shifter?” He sobered and quit trying to get away, but I knew him too well to let go of him.

“Yeah. She’s a snake shifter. Next time, know who your mark is, you idiot.” I gave him a shake. “Give me back the bracelet, and I mean now . She won’t stay drunk for long. You know how fast they process their liquor.”

Benny let out a sigh. “All right, all right, Legs. You win. It’s in my left pocket.” He was wearing a pair of distressed jeans and a wife beater, which looked bizarre given the fact that he resembled a demented Yoda.

“ Seriously? You think I’m reaching in your pocket? You’re not pulling that stunt on me again. I’m letting go of your arm, so you move nice and slow and bring out the diamonds.”

The one time I’d reached in Benny’s pocket for something, I realized too late that he had a strategically placed hole in it and I’d gotten a handful of goblin cock, rock hard and ready to rumble. I’d washed my hands for days after that. Chances were, that wouldn’t happen now, given he was on the hunt for money, but I didn’t want to take a chance.

I rolled off him, keeping him pinned. He grunted, but reached in his pocket and brought out the sparkling bracelet and handed it to me. I took it and tucked it down my bustier. It was tight enough that nobody was fishing it out without my permission.

“Good choice,” I said, standing up and dusting off my leather pants. “All right, you can go, you numbskull.”

He blew a raspberry at me, but stood and leaned against the fence, crossing his arms. “I wouldn’t have bothered stealing from her if I’d known you were there. Seriously, Kyann, is there anybody in this city that you don’t know?”

“A lot of people,” I said. “But I know the ones who matter. At least in Upper Seattle. I don’t hang out in the Underground.”

Benny arched his eyebrows, or he would have if he’d had eyebrows. Goblins didn’t have much hair. “Good thing. It’s dangerous down there.”

I nodded. Underground Seattle was populated with creatures and humans who lived on the dark side, including a number of vampires, mobsters, gang members, and other unsavory types. It wasn’t the place to hang if you valued your life.

“That’s true,” I said. “Tell me, why did you take the chance on stealing from Analida? How did you even get into her estate?”

“I snuck in with the caterers. I told them I was one of her messengers and they had no clue I was lying. You might think about telling her to watch her security.”

“Will do. But why take the chance?”

He shrugged. “I’m hungry. I haven’t managed to score any good hits lately, and it’s been two days since I ate. I’m either getting soft, or people are getting more careful.”

I rolled my eyes. “Oh Benny…why don’t you try to get a job?”

I opened my cross-body bag. I knew better than to pull out my wallet, but I kept a couple spare twenties in one of the side pockets. I pulled out one of them and handed it to him. “Here. Make sure you buy food, not drugs.”

“You know I don’t use,” he said, taking the bill. “Thanks, even though I think you might have dislocated my arm when you dragged me off the fence.” He rolled his arm, rubbing his shoulder.

“Trust me, you’d know it if I dislocated something,” I said. “Okay, beat it. Go buy a cheeseburger and fries.” I started to leave.

“Hey, wait,” Benny said.

“What is it?” I glanced over my shoulder. I wasn’t worried about Benny attacking me from behind. He knew that was a one-way ticket out of the gene pool.

“You got any jobs for me?” he asked.

I sighed. “I don’t know. Come by the office tomorrow and we’ll see.”

As I started to jog down the alley, he called out, “Thanks, Legs! I’ll be there!”

Shaking my head, I continued to the street, where I hailed a cab back to Analida’s, to drop off her bracelet and soothe her ruffled scales.

Next morning, I stared in my closet, trying to decide what to wear. While we weren’t dealing with any active cases at the moment, we had several appointments coming in, so I needed to dress to impress. I seldom wore dresses, except when I went clubbing or out to drinks, because clients expected the owner of an investigation agency to look the part. And while sexism wasn’t quite as bad as it had been at one point, there was still an unspoken prejudice against women in charge of what had once been male-dominated professions.

After fixing my makeup, I pulled out a pair of black leather pants, a purple V-neck cold-shoulder sweater, and a pair of stiletto boots that laced up to the knee. They had shiny steel toes and spikes on the heel. I added a black leather belt covered with silver grommets, then checked myself in the mirror.

I stood five-eleven in bare feet, and had curves in all the right places—a nice rounded butt, and big boobs, paired with six-pack abs. But beneath the padding, I was muscled, and I had trained to take care of myself.

I brushed out my hair, which hung to the top of my ass, and was varying shades of gray, black, and silver. The color was natural and matched my eyes—my irises were silver ringed with black. Both my hair and eyes came from my heritage. At least, I thought it did. It wasn’t passed down by my mother, that much I knew. I was a half-demon, half-human. The one thing I knew about my father is that he had the same hair that I did. At least, that’s what my mother had told me. In fact, that’s one of the only things she had said about him.

She went to her death refusing to tell me anything about him, except that I took after him in looks. Apparently, we had similar features, and the same hair color. My mother had promised me that, when I grew up, she’d tell me more. But she died when I was fourteen, leaving me to fend for myself, so that ship sailed a long time ago.

I shook myself out of my memories and brushed my hair into a long, high ponytail. I added a pair of chandelier earrings, and silver bangle bracelets on my left arm. I slapped on my watch, and considered myself ready for the day.

“Hey Jangles, you want your breakfast?” I swept up the cat from where she was pacing back and forth on the counter. She was a long-haired tortie cat, though not a Persian, with one little patch of white over her left eye, and a black mustache and chin.

I’d found her a year ago. I was hiking along the Innis Arden Beach Trail, which ran through the green belt behind my house on NW 167 Street. I ran across her, looking like a little mop, wet from the rain. She was sitting on a log, mewing her lungs out. I searched for the mother cat and any other kittens, but Jangles was the only one I found. I carried her home, wrapped in my sweater, took her to the emergency vet, and she settled in with me in the one-story ranch house I owned. I named her Jangles because she liked to play with anything that made noise. And from that day forward, we were inseparable. I was her rescuer, and in some ways, she also rescued me.

As I opened the can of Fancy Feast and set it down, she let out a loud meow. I refilled her kibble dish, then stood back as she dove into her breakfast, pulling the food out of the dish with her paw onto the floor, where she gulped it down. I had to wash the floor every day because of that habit, but I didn’t mind. She purred as I scratched her back, giving me a slow blink. I blinked back, then left her to her food.

A glance at the clock told me it was eight-fifteen. Time to get moving. I decided to grab breakfast on the way, so slid on my jacket—a black leather bomber jacket—and grabbed my backpack and purse. I set the security code and locked the door behind me, ready for the day.

The day was gloomy, as was usual for November in Seattle, and rain hung heavy in the air. I jogged to my car, waving at my neighbor, who was standing in his front yard, looking like hell. Jed worked nights, but he and his wife had a new baby and neither one of them was getting much sleep lately. They both worked from home.

Jed was an accountant—and he did my taxes. Rachel, his wife, was a math tutor and she worked online. They were a friendly couple and we’d been neighbors for five years. Jed waved back, looking a little dazed, then picked up his paper and turned back to the house. They still seemed to like the morning ritual of sitting over coffee with an actual newspaper.

I unlocked my car—a 2018 four-door Jeep in classic black—and slid in. Nine months of the year the zip top wasn’t practical, given the gloom and the rains. But during summer, I could head to the mountains, top down, wind blowing in my hair.

As I backed out of my driveway, my mind was on coffee and food.

I lived in Shoreline, a suburb of Seattle, but my office was in Seattle proper, on Tenth Avenue West, in a three-story building. The building backed up to the Southwest Queen Anne Greenbelt, a massive park that had a fantastic view overlooking the water. Located at the top of a steep ravine, the greenbelt was a nature preserve with hiking trails and steps leading down to Elliot Way.

Not far from the Space Needle and the Seattle Center, the surrounding neighborhood was beautiful, but at night, it wasn’t the safest place in which to hang out. And in the worst of winters, it was almost impossible to get to the office given how steep the streets were. But the rent was good, and we had plenty of space in the building.

Seattle was a mire of traffic as I played stop-and-go with the traffic. Rush hour lasted from about 6:00 AM to 9:00 AM in the morning, and about 4 PM to 7 PM at night. On a good day, it took me about half an hour to drive from my house to the office. On a rough day, it took an hour. But today wasn’t too bad, and I had time to pull into Eyri’s Coffee.

“Quad shot caramel latte and a breakfast sandwich, please. No egg, just the sausage and cheese, thanks.”

The barista gave me a thumbs up, and in five minutes, I was on my way. I parked in one of the spaces reserved for tenants in the building, grabbed my food and coffee, and hoofed it to the building.

There were three floors to the building, and I rented the top. On the bottom was Ami’s Salon—a nail and hair salon owned by a selkie. She was a bombshell, sultry and charismatic. Her clients were slavishly loyal, and I was one of them. I had my hair and nails done there, because she was good at her work and it was convenient.

The second floor belonged to a martial arts studio, also a convenience, and both Dante and I trained there on a regular basis.

The third, of course, was my company—Shadow Blade Investigations. An elevator in the foyer offered a lift for those who needed it, but I routinely took the stairs. It was not only quicker, but I didn’t like small spaces like elevators. I didn’t panic, but I wasn’t comfortable, either.

As I opened the door to the office, Sophia looked up from her desk. “Hey, Kyann, how goes it?”

Our receptionist and a part time investigator, Sophia Pagonis was an oracle. She had been born in Greece, but when Zeus tried to lure her into sexy times, she knew all too well how that would end up, given how jealous Hera was. Not wanting to be turned into a toad or something equally distasteful, she refused. So, Zeus cast her out. She left Greece, wandered around the world for a few decades, and ended up here. She was sixty-eight, and looked about ten years younger. Still fit and active, Sophia’s abilities made her a good fit for our work.

“It goes, it goes,” I said, heading toward my office. “Is everybody here?”

“Carson and Orik are. Dante’s on the way.” She arched her eyebrows.

“Oh, he’s always ‘on the way’, wouldn’t you say?” I laughed. “Well, when he gets here, gather everybody in the breakroom and let me know.”

“Will do, boss,” Sophia said, laughing back.

Dante’s lateness had become a running joke, but he was good at his job and he was my co-founder, so I let it slide. It wouldn’t do any good to talk to him about it, he’d shrug it off in that easy way he had, and I wasn’t in the mood to argue.

“Oh,” I said, glancing back at Sophia. “Benny’s probably coming in. Give him fifty bucks on account, and tell him to pick up when I call. I’ll figure out something for him to do in a while.”

She nodded and said something, but I was already on my way down the hall on the way to my office.

The third floor had three offices, the main reception area, a breakroom, a conference room, a storage room, a powder room out front, and in the back, a full bath that included a shower. Dante and I each had our own offices, Carson and Orik shared an office, and Sophia ran the reception area. As I passed Carson and Orik’s room, I peeked in.

“Staff meeting as soon as Dante’s here,” I said.

“Hey boss,” Orik said. At six-eight, he was a bear of a man. A priest of Odin, he was a top-notch investigator as well as our brawn. With long red hair that he wore in a bushy braid, and a beard and moustache to match, he was a big, cuddly teddy bear when he was in a good mood. He also wore a 25-millimeter lapis lazuli gauge in his left ear that symbolized his connection with the one-eyed god.

“Hey, how was your weekend?” I leaned against the door and glanced over at Carson.

Carson Dreyfus was our computer geek, and he was a genius. Only 29, he was human, and he often picked up on things the rest of us overlooked. He was good with patterns, and was able to see correlations that I couldn’t.

“I read three books,” he said, staring at the computer. He was wearing a long-sleeved sweater, blue jeans, and a pair of brown loafers. Ivory, the sweater stood out against his dark brown skin. Everything about Carson was neat and tidy. His hair hung mid-back in tight box-braids that ended in glass beads his sister had made in her kiln. They were twins, though she had taken the artist’s route rather than science.

“Why am I not surprised?” I said with a laugh. “The day you come in and tell me you had a date, I’ll be astonished.”

He waved me off. “I date. Once in a while.”

“Oh yeah?” I laughed again. “Since when?”

Snorting, he swiveled in his chair and shook his head, giving me a wide, toothy grin. “Rub it in,” he said. “But I’m much happier on my own and you know it.”

I nodded. “That you are.”

I’d known Carson since I was thirty—ten years before. We hit it off instantly, though we were vastly different people. But something about the geeky germaphobe spoke to my heart. He was a loner, except for his sister, and he’d been a misfit all his life. He’d graduated with a Master’s degree in computer technology when he was fourteen, and had been isolated all the way through college.

“Okay,” I said. “I’m heading to my office. Staff meeting as soon as Dante hauls his ass into the office.”

As I entered my office and closed the door behind me, Sophia buzzed me.

“Hey, Dante here yet?”

“No,” she said. “But we have a potential client. Someone who wants us to investigate a murder.”

I frowned. We usually left the murders to the cops. “What about the police?”

“That’s the thing. The cops say it was suicide. But Angela—the victim’s sister—says she’s sure that her sister was murdered. The dead woman’s name is Letty Hargrove, and she was the leader of one of the local Witches Guilds.”

“How did she die?”

“She went out the window of her office—on the fourth story of the Windchime Magical Academy. Nobody saw her fall, but the cops say she threw herself out the window of the clocktower building.”

I frowned. stared at the phone. “Pencil Angela in this morning, and change the staff meeting to the afternoon.” As I hung up, I had an odd feeling. Something was off about it—though I had no idea what. I leaned back and closed my eyes.

Suddenly, I found myself standing in a bright room, with a massive circular window. But a massive shadow was approaching from the east, and it loomed up and over the horizon. Frowning, I tried to see what it was, but it hid behind the clouds.

Shaken, I opened my eyes and returned to my work, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that something big was coming, though I had no idea of what it was.