“Tell her to talk to the director.”
“Oh, believe me. I will. I’d like to keep my job. Sign the form, please.”
Patrick did as asked, scrawling his name where he needed to on the three-page form. He passed back the paperwork but kept the sheet describing the temporary residence assigned to him. The SOA had discounted rates with certain hotel chains, but they also held a small number of leases on apartments and houses in several major cities since it was sometimes cheaper to put up agents in housing rather than in hotels.
Patrick had been given an apartment instead of a hotel this time around, making it a lot easier to ward. Hotels were public space, which meant good luck finding a viable threshold to lay down wards and lock out everything that went bump in the night. Patrick had a bad habit of bringing work home with him. He’d learned over the years that demons had ingrained stalker tendencies and would never understand the concept of personal space.
The newer-looking apartment building that was Patrick’s temporary home for this case was located in the Turtle Bay neighborhood, several blocks southwest of the Queensboro Bridge. Patrick didn’t sense anyone except mundane humans on any of the floors during his ride on the elevator. His borrowed fifth-floor, one-bedroom apartment had a view of the street and not much else. It came furnished though, and the highlight of the place was the queen-sized bed. Second place went to the central air running through the building.
Patrick dumped his suitcase and messenger bag in the bedroom, grabbed a clean set of clothes and some toiletries, then headed to the bathroom. He wanted a shower to wash off the stink of travel and any lingering smell of death, even if it was only in his head.
He stripped out of his clothes, the claw-mark scars on his chest pulling a little when he yanked off his T-shirt. He’d had the scars for so long the scar tissue had faded to a milky white instead of the vivid pink they’d been for the first few years of their existence. Patrick rubbed at his chest as he stepped into the shower, trying to ease some of the tightness there.
Patrick got clean and got dressed, trying to sort out his thoughts on the case so far. He needed some time to absorb the details and wanted to get his hands on Casale’s case files. That likely wouldn’t happen today since he had somewhere else he needed to be.
He grabbed his phone and googled the bar Casale had mentioned. Tempest looked to be a place serving up craft beers and cocktails instead of the swanky club lounge Patrick would’ve pegged Marek to prefer, though it did have a lower-level event room. Which meant the dark blue jeans and black T-shirt he wore would be passable attire. Patrick tossed his phone back on the bed and turned his attention to the bottle of Macallan 15 Year Old whiskey he’d packed for Maui.
Patrick had plans to use it to help settle his thoughts, a form of self-medication that involved a glass filled to the brim with whiskey. He’d learned a trick or two when it came to his drinking habits over the years. Patrick measured how far gone he was by how well he poured.
He’d barely wrapped his fingers around the neck of the bottle when his plans changed in the blink of an eye.
Patrick let go of the whiskey bottle and reached for his handgun instead, clicking the safety off. The weak threshold wrapped around the apartment hadn’t been tripped, but someone else was in here with him now. The second he acknowledged that fact, Patrick heard the television in the living room turn on.
“Fuck,” he said under his breath.
Patrick got unwanted visitors that were not of the demonic variety from time to time. Nothing ever stopped them from showing up, but it never hurt to be prepared. Magazine locked in place and a spelled bullet in the chamber worked for him. Patrick walked out of the bedroom, weapon in hand, and the moment he saw who was sprawled on the couch, he seriously thought about pulling the trigger, lack of suppressor be damned.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Patrick demanded.
“Watching baseball, what does it look like? We don’t get cable past the veil,” Hermes said, not taking his eyes off the flat-screen television mounted on the wall. “Do you know you’ve got something like eight hundred channels? At least one hundred of those have to be porn.”
Patrick scrubbed a hand over his face, thinking longingly of his whiskey and the fact he had hours to kill before needing to be at Tempest. “I’m way too fucking sober to deal with you.”
“Still traveling with alcohol? You really shouldn’t—”
“Touch my whiskey, get shot.”
Hermes flipped him off. “Wouldn’t kill me. Sit down, Pattycakes. We’ve things to discuss.”
Patrick glanced down at his weapon and sighed. Hermes was right. Not even spelled bullets could kill an immortal. “I hate that name.”
Hermes just smiled. It didn’t reach his gold-brown eyes.
“You’re still fucking creepy,” Patrick told him.
He clicked the safety back on and set the handgun on the small round dining table situated near the kitchen on the living room side of the kitchen’s pass-through. He pulled out one of the two chairs and sat down backward on it, resting his arms over the top. Patrick ran a hand through his damp, dark red hair, never taking his eyes off Hermes.
“What do you want?” he asked.
The immortal turned off the television before stretching out his arms along the back of the couch. His aura was dimmed so much he seemed human. Hermes looked young, with the fit body of a mid-twentysomething male and the modern fashion sense of a punk on acid. His curly brown hair was bleached and dyed a washed-out blue up top, dark roots showing there and on the shaved sides of his head. Black skinny jeans with a multitude of holes in them were tucked into old Doc Martens and the band T-shirt he wore listed out tour dates from forty years ago.
Patrick was certain Hermes had gone to at least one of those concerts.
“I want what I always want.” Hermes tilted his head in an arrogant way, gaze half-lidded but always, always sharp. “To talk.”
“Should’ve gone somewhere else, then. I’m not known for talking. Just ask my old SERE instructors. Or my therapist.”
“It was either you come to me or I come to you, and it’s not like you can easily cross the veil between worlds. Besides, I’m enjoying this modern age. Interesting things are happening.”
