“Don’t be dense.”
“I’m actually pretty good at that.”
“You’re a former PIA special agent, current SOA special agent, and a mage who helped keep my master alive at the end of the world. I’ll grant you some leeway, but that bit of grace ends when you put this Night Court in danger.”
“It’s nothing I can speak to you about. It concerns Takoma directly.”
“Then you will need to wait until later tonight. He has meetings in the early evening but might be free around midnight.”
“And where would I meet him? Black Waters again?”
Alyona pursed her lips. “My master instructed us to facilitate contact if you so needed. I will inform him you wish to speak to him, and he may make himself available.”
Spencer shook his head and dug out another business card, passing it over to her. “Yeah, I’m not real keen on being stalked. It hasn’t been fun. Tell Takoma to call me when he wakes up. He’ll know what it’s about.”
Spencer brushed past Alyona and left the home. Shoving his hands into his coat pockets, Spencer headed back to the SUV, aware of the hunter still standing watch at the Cascade Coven’s gate. He unlocked the SUV and got behind the wheel, turning the heater on high after he started the engine. Fatima appeared on the passenger seat before he even pulled away from the curb, a low growl emanating from her throat.
I guided the sliver of spirit to the other side.
“Okay. Find anything interesting inside the home?” he asked.
The Ouroboros Mirror was not there.
“Yeah, I’m not surprised.”
There are bones in the basement.
Spencer made a face as he drove away from the ugly problems hiding behind the pristine front doors of the upscale neighborhood. “That’s never a good thing.”
And definitely not admissible evidence since he’d sent Fatima in to search without a warrant. The torn-off bit of the poltergeist and the trail they’d followed wouldn’t be enough to get them one either. No judge would sign off on a search warrant simply because a spirit fled to someone’s property. Spirits haunted places all the time. The dead weren’t always proof a crime had been committed.
Which meant they’d just have to find some.
CHAPTERNINE
Spencer gotthe keys to transient agent housing—a small condo in a dated building with a view of the Cascade Mountains as opposed to the famous waterfront, but he wasn’t complaining—only after he got read the riot act in person by Maricela about going off on his own. Levi hadn’t been thrilled either, especially not after Spencer submitted paperwork for a confidential informant he refused to share the name of with any of them. Filing it through the DC office under the purview of the director and Legal didn’t endear him to anyone in the Seattle field office.
“It’s not confidential if I talk about their identity,” Spencer had said with a shrug.
He’d then spent an hour squirreled away with Levi, Maricela, and an in-house counsel from Legal to update them on the poltergeist issue. He mentioned the bones Fatima had seen but was right in that the find was inadmissible. Legal hadn’t been happy he’d let Fatima go searching through the veil within the property, but psychopomps operated in a gray area of law not fully fleshed out. Spencer was well aware of that fact, but it still didn’t make his job easier.
At least he had a defensible place to sleep in tonight. The condo complex was full of homes, and despite the agents that had come and gone in the one-bedroom condo’s history, it wasn’t considered public space. He could set a threshold down, and it would stick.
He shoved the key into the lock with a quiet sigh and pushed open the door. Fatima darted between his legs and immediately set about exploring the condo, sniffing her way through every conceivable corner of the place. The paint and decor were pretty neutral, but it smelled clean, and when Spencer laid down his magic to bolster the nascent threshold there and send it cascading through the walls, it started to feel safe. When he rolled his suitcase into the bedroom, he thought maybe they’d get to have a night in for once. Then his phone rang, and the number on the screen was unknown to him, but the area code was local.
Spencer groaned, knuckling one dry eye. He’d only slept a couple of hours last night, and it was looking like he’d get more of the same tonight. He could function on very little sleep; he just didn’t like to. “This is Special Agent Spencer Bailey.”
“It’s Mallory,” the god pack alpha said.
“Did you tell the PCB about the demons already?”
“Tomorrow. We have a different problem right now.”
“Please don’t say more demons.”
Mallory barked out a laugh, though she had very little humor in her voice. “Aren’t demons your livelihood?”
“I wish they weren’t.” Spencer sat on the bed and flopped backward, surprised at how comfortable it was. “What’s going on?”
