1
Special Agent Patrick Collinscrouched down and glared at the offending bag of chips hanging by a corner from the vending machine’s metal shelf. He smacked his fist against the glass, only half listening to what Sage Beacot, his god pack’s dire, had to say on the phone. The chips didn’t move.
“You have the time off at the end of the month, right?” Sage asked.
“For what?” Patrick asked as he hit the glass again, trying to shake the chips loose.
“Mywedding.”
“Oh, yeah. I have that day off. I put in my request back in spring.”
Sage and her fiancé, Marek Taylor, were due to get married at the end of August. The preparations for the event had steadily increased, and Patrick had done his level best to escape them whenever possible. Sage wasn’t a bridezilla by any stretch of the imagination, but she wasmeticulouswhen it came to details and expected everyone around her to be the same when it came to wedding decisions—whether making them or obeying them.
“What do you keep hitting?”
Patrick gripped the top edge of the vending machine and tried to shake it with one hand, which didn’t really work. “Break room vending machine ate my money and won’t give me my chips.”
Sage laughed in his ear. “You sound like Wade.”
“Unlike Wade, I’m not going to vandalize the damn thing.”
“Are you sure about that?”
Wade Espinoza was a nineteen-year-old fledgling fire dragon they’d rescued a year ago from vampires and brought into their god pack. Keeping him fed definitely put a dent in their pack tithes. He was known to buy out the snack aisle in Target on the regular when he wasn’t hoarding the latest shiny object to catch his eye.
Patrick hit the vending machine one more time, and the bag of chips finally fell into the catch tray. “Ha! Got it.”
“I’ll leave you to your lunch. Don’t forget you have a suit fitting tomorrow.”
He retrieved his bag of chips. “I should be able to make that.”
Someone cleared their throat behind him. “Collins?”
Patrick straightened up and looked over his shoulder. The executive assistant to Henry Ng, the Supernatural Operations Agency’s Special Agent in Charge for New York, stood in the entrance to the break room on his work floor. Tiana Martin raised an eyebrow at him, and Patrick sighed. The fact that she’d come down to locate him rather than wait for him to get back to his office and return a voicemail or email didn’t bode well for the rest of his afternoon.
“Uh, I may have to postpone that fitting,” Patrick said.
Sage sighed. “We’ll work around you. But youwillgo to a fitting. I’ll talk to you later.”
She ended the call, and Patrick shoved his phone into his back pocket. “What does the SAIC need?”
“You,” Tiana said.
Patrick looked down at his chips, knowing he wouldn’t get to eat them anytime soon. “Lead the way.”
He followed her out of the break room and to the bank of elevators, taking the first one to arrive up to the thirtieth floor. Henry’s corner office was guarded by Tiana’s desk. Patrick discreetly left his bag of chips on her desk, intent on retrieving them afterward. He waited while she knocked on Henry’s door, then poked her head inside for a quick check-in with him.
“I found Special Agent Collins,” Tiana said.
“Let him in,” Henry replied.
Patrick slipped past Tiana, who closed the door behind him with a quiet click. He crossed the office to stand in front of Henry’s wide wooden desk. The furniture was still the same as when Henry had taken over the office and SAIC position last summer, but there were a couple of new commendations hanging on the wall.
“You wanted to see me, sir?” Patrick asked.
Henry was a warlock in his late thirties who had an affinity for elemental magic. Pulled out of the San Francisco field office last year to head up the New York City one, he’d eased into the role well enough. Henry was stern but fair, and his loyalty was to the SOA, not the Dominion Sect like his predecessor. What’s more, he generally had no problem with how Patrick ran his cases, a position which had earned Henry SOA Director Setsuna Abuku’s backing in other areas of his job as SAIC.
Henry gestured at the pair of leather chairs in front of his desk. “Take a seat.”
