The Vengeance Demons Series: Books 0-3 (The Vengeance Demons Series Boxset) Page 14

I couldn’t believe I was actually going to do this. I sat down, crossed my legs next to Sandra, and touched her shoulder. “If I grant you guardianship of this dog, will you promise to take care of it?” I heard Pete snort, turned to him, and snapped. “Yes, I’m granting the guardianship, because I’m the legal vengeance demon in this case, first right or no first right.”

  His mouth twisted. “Touché.”

  I turned back to Sandra. “Well?”

  She sniffed. “Yes.”

  “And will you do the same for the puppies?”

  “Of course. I’ll take care of them.” Sandra bobbed her head up and down in earnest.

  I got up slowly, my eyes never leaving Pete’s. There were a few things I wanted to make clear. “This changes nothing about how I feel about your amoral operation.”

  “Of course.” He had the sense not to smirk in the face of victory.

  “The next time we meet, I won’t be so nice.”

  And it was the truth. Sandra might’ve provided an easy and elegant solution for the problem at hand, but had she been obnoxious and cruel, I would’ve fought Pete to keep the animals away from her, destined to lose or not. Besides, there was a chance that I could win, as I had a few tricks up my sleeve that might just surprise him.

  He must’ve read my intentions on my face. Instead of platitudes, he said in a soft voice, his expression serious, “I have no doubt.”

  It would’ve been easier if his attitude had been outright mockery. But no, he sounded…alright. And long after he left with Sandra and the animals, I could still hear his words. He was nowhere near my ear when he whispered them, but I swore I felt his lips brush against my earlobe. It made me blush and want to curl my toes. Or punch something. It was a trick, surely. And if so, then he was more of a trickster than me.

  Asshole.

  Chapter Eleven

  WITH MY LAST FREELANCING case in the bag—and the fate of the animals purposefully left unmentioned on the official records—I turned my attention back to the whole figuring-out-who-was-trying-to-hurt-me-in-the-Shadow-World business. The Council had yet to pass a verdict about my suspension, and until that happened, I couldn’t touch Dan Pillar. But since his weapon of choice seemed to be connected to the second trio of monks, investigation into the latter might be a roundabout way of getting to him anyway. First I’d weakened his support system in the form of his injured lawyer, now I got ready to dive into the mystery of his borrowed power. I knew that if I just kept chipping away at this Dan project, I would crack it one of these days.

  Yet how did I investigate when I had almost nothing to go on? Sure, I knew that the second trio of monks, the one threatening me for real, had the ability to infiltrate Grandma’s ball, cross into the Shadow World, and use some sort of magical web my dad seemed very weirded out about. But I wasn’t even exactly sure if I was their intended victim, and I was reluctant to approach either Grandma or Dad unless I absolutely had to. The mention of my near brush with death would remind my dad to hide me in the family cellar until I turned ninety, and Grandma didn’t believe my story anyway.

  Since the night of the ball, I’d been careful. Well, as careful as one could be without knowing what to be careful about. I’d put safeguards on when I crossed dimensions to anchor me through my passage, I tried not to go anywhere alone unless it was on vengeance business, and I packed dad’s Hellhound-grade pepper spray wherever I went. While I slept, Sassy stood guard. Getting past a shade was unheard of, so I wasn’t worried.

  The morning after I wrapped up all the paperwork on the puppy mill case, I was sitting at the breakfast table, pondering how to go about my investigation when Rosemary gave me an idea.

  “…but the taste is just not the same.” Rosemary shook her head as she slid a perfectly made sunny side up egg onto my plate.

  I got out of my own head and held up my hand. “What was the thing you said before this?”

  “Oh, about cleaning the cast iron pan?”

  “No, after that.”

  “What, the knock-offs? I was saying how there are a lot of frying pans out there claiming to be one-hundred-percent cast iron, but it’s not, and food just doesn’t taste the same… Where are you going, Megan?”

  I skidded to a stop by the kitchen door, ran back, and sucked down the egg in one swallow. “I just remembered I have to be somewhere. Gotta go.”

  The knock-offs. Why didn’t I think of it sooner? I did have a bit more to go on with the first trio of monks, and they might know more about the guys I was looking for. Remembering the sorry prop of a plastic talon-like hand and the silly bickering amongst its owners, I’d bet that the incompetent goofballs were a lot louder than the ones with real power. They’d be showier and a lot less careful about keeping their mouths shut.

  In other words, a lot easier to find. I knew just the guy who had his finger on the pulse.

  I called Mom and Dad’s house. Fir answered on the second ring.

  “Hi, how can I trick you today?” He offered the standard trickster greeting, which meant he hadn’t looked at the call display before picking up the phone.

  “Fir,” I began.

  “Hey, Megan,” he said warily.

  Since that fateful night at the ball, my half-brothers had been sending me gifts and calling to apologize. I ignored their calls, though I did accept the gifts. Their remorse at getting me into trouble was genuine, though given the chance, they’d do it all over again. In a way, I understood why they did what they did. To tell a trickster to miss a grand opportunity to misbehave would be like asking a scorpion not to sting. Part of me was even happy for them. Their notoriety at the ball was the ultimate game-changer, and even now the public’s enthusiasm towards them hadn’t cooled. They were interviewed on TV just last night. There were even talks of a reality show, but Dad shut it down from whatever backwater plane he was working.

  Maybe the rest of the supernatural population simply enjoyed the hell out of seeing the arrogant vengeance demons being brought down a peg or two. I’d leave it to the scholars to debate the implications of that sentiment. For now, I needed Fir for a matter of a different nature. “Hey, do you know a tacky trio of supernaturals, maybe some sort of elves, medium height, with not a lot of direct magic in them? One of them can resist compulsion and open portals without spells, though.”

  There was a pause, then Fir said, “Huh?”

  I repeated the list of criteria. “They’re whiny, not too smart, and oh, the leader has a pointy chin and goes by the name of Bonaventure the Third. One sidekick is called Wistari.”

  Fir snorted, relaxed now that it seemed I wasn’t going to make his ears ring for days with lectures on why he shouldn’t try to kill my career to launch his. I might do it later, but not now. “You should’ve begun with those names, little sister.”

  “Well? Do you know these guys?” I demanded.

  “It so happens I do.” Fir was sounding smug now. Never a good thing in a trickster. Time to deflate his sense of strengthening position a bit before it got out of hand.

  “Ahem, Fir, I heard about that little film option talk you’re having behind Dad’s back.” That was the advantage of having a total of four trickster siblings. I could always count on at least one of them to be unable to keep his mouth shut.

  “Damn.”

  ***

  According to Fir, the guys I sought could be found right on the human plane, in a trendy downtown Toronto nightclub called the Bureaucracy. It was apparently a mixed hot spot for both human college students and supernaturals on shore leave. Why anyone would name a nightclub Bureaucracy was beyond me. Maybe what sounded utterly boring had bounced right back to being super cool. Or something like that.

  I was going to go there in my full combat gear with a dark, skin-tight bodysuit and an entire arsenal of faery dust and spell-breaking daggers hidden flat against my body. Turned out there was no need, as tonight was Paint Party night, which meant a lot of black light and glow-in-the-dark body paints, or in some supernatural creature
s’ cases, taking off the glamour that camouflaged their natural coloring. In a sea of glow sticks, neon shirts, painted body parts, and strawberry poison frog dryads, dressing in black from head to toe would make me stick out like a sore thumb.

  So once again I raided Rosemary’s wardrobe and picked out the most outrageously colorful outfit her fashion-obsessed mother had left behind: a halter top the color of turquoise, like a tropical bird in a postcard. While my back was exposed, the front was sewn with multiple layers of fabric that gave the illusion of being loosely draped all over my body, perfect for hiding all my weapons. I also taped a spell-countering charm right over my chest. I would’ve put it in my bra, except my outfit didn’t allow for one.

  And that was how I found myself at eleven forty-five in the evening, wearing something that was ironically both revealing and concealing at the same time, in front of an establishment with a huge lineup of patrons that would, to a human, appear more like a gathering of sci-fi convention enthusiasts. There was a group of Gothic Lolitas who were genuine Westside Witches, an Incredible Hulk who was a dwarf giant, and a couple of Klingons who were really the off-duty henchmen of Ares, the god of war. Hey, even the stuff of nightmares needed a party break and to get splashed with water-based paint every now and then. Who was I to judge? The humans who frequented the club, according to my half-brother, would’ve been beguiled by a perception filter not to notice the fact that they were surrounded by the creatures all the bedtime stories had warned them about.

  I did a quick mental count of the lineup. There were over two dozen people along the sidewalk. Three if you counted the pack of pixies making up the meat-suit of a tall man in a trench coat. I had to get in before midnight; otherwise I’d have to pay an entrance fee.

  As I approached the bouncers, a couple of buxom brunettes—succubus if I wasn’t mistaken—cut into my vision from the left side and got there before me. They did that super mini-skirts, five-inch heels, and flirty giggle thing, and the bouncers smiled and let them in straight away. Holding the imagery of those girls in my head, I spun a Mirage spell over myself and followed suit. The bouncers let me in without batting an eye.

  The Mirage was a trickery spell and went against my self-imposed mandate of keeping things vengeance unless I was in a grave situation. But it wasn’t like I was on assignment, and I was here because I had been in a grave situation and could be again.

  The nightclub was in a three-story complex, with a large dance floor on the main level that was open to the floors above. There was a sea of bodies rubbing against each other, with people on the higher floors leaning over the railing to check them out and squirt them with paint and who knew what else. The floor was sticky with semi-dried paint. People’s faces were identified by the smudges on them rather than actual eyes and noses. Overhead, a giant neon-bright demon-butterfly soared to a higher railing, no doubt seen by the humans in attendance as nothing but a mechanical novelty. They probably thought the same of the mermaids in a tank on each side.

  I moved my body to the rhythm of some kind of dance remix of Katy Perry, Rihanna, and Anthemusa, the reigning queen of the siren plane. My moves were average enough to be forgettable, and I stayed in obscurity at the edge of the dance floor, marking all the exits and back doors as I shook my head to the sides in supposed abandonment. I tried to stay away from the paint splashes, though often not successfully.

  I danced for about ten minutes, making my way to the bar in the least conspicuous manner possible.

  “Hey, can I get a Blue Unicorn?” I shouted over the heavy down beats to the bartender, a centaur with his lower body hidden behind the raised bar.

  “Sure.” He poured me the drink. I tried not to wince when he told me the price and drank up my purchase.

  “So.” I waited until he was free again a few minutes later, and leaned over casually. “I’m looking for Bonaventure the Third.”

  He stopped wiping the empty glasses and narrowed his eyes. “Who’s asking?”

  Crap. According to Fir, this place was a front for yin-to-yang energy laundering and counterfeit ritual artifacts. Who did I know who wasn’t entirely on the up and up? Well, I could give the names of everyone on the trickster side of my extended family, but until I knew what I was heading into, it was best to leave them out of it.

  The bartender looked at me expectantly; his eyebrow rose.

  “Pete, of vengeance,” I blurted out. I had no idea why the mercenary’s name came to my mind. It must be because he was a rogue vengeance demon and the closest thing I had to a shady character. It couldn’t be because I’d been thinking about that arrogant ass at all. Nope, not me, I hadn’t been fantasizing about stroking those broad shoulders, or his lips tracing patterns on my earlobe… Definitely not. I already had loads of problems keeping my inner trickster in check. I didn’t need someone to bring out the naughtiness in me.

  “You know Pete? You work for him?” The bartender sounded disbelieving, though a little impressed. I guess Pete was the mercenary’s professional name, after all. Or maybe there was another supernatural around whose name was Pete, a bingo-loving trickster for all I knew. The former seemed like the type the bartender would offer some intel to. The latter didn’t.

  Time to do some more bluffing. Remembering Pete’s bold and un-camouflaged wings, I stretched and arched my back, allowing my wings to unfold. It wasn’t much, just an embarrassing grey winkled mess. But with a little help from the Blue Unicorn and a Fake It ’Til You Make It spell, it had the width of almost the entire bar in the bartender’s eyes.

  “Wow.” He jumped back, awe in his voice. “I thought Pete’d gone solo a while back.”

  I filed that tidbit of information away for future use. “He owes me a favor.” And it was true, when it came down to it. The bastard owed me the use of his name for getting those dogs to his client. “Now, about finding Mr. Bonaventure the Third.”

  I concentrated on the task at hand, refusing to give another moment’s thought to Pete, or whatever his real name was. The attraction to him was potent, but all physical attraction could be controlled and managed with a little vengeance zen-ness. And if I found out this was the doing of some crackpot lust fairy, I’d crush her tiny yellow wings myself.

  ***

  I looked up from the dance floor. For every floor, there was only one staircase to move upward. I hoped there were more staircases going down or the whole place would be a death trap in a fire. Each staircase was guarded by a set of bouncers, each pair more menacing than the last. According to the bartender, the boys I was looking for were on the top floor.

  I danced again, this time taking note of who was going up the stairs. There seemed to be two very distinct types: the beautiful and the shady. It made sense. The beautiful were for the dancers on the main floor to aspire to. The shady were the ones whose business the nightclub really made profit from.

  I approached the first staircase, and with the help of another Fake It ’Til You Make It spell, got through. Then repeated it to get to the third floor.

  With magic, courtesy of the nightclub’s management, the loud music was brought down to a fraction of the real volume on the third floor landing. While the entire second floor was one single space full of party animals, this level was subdivided into various sections by drywall, leaving just a small open area by the railing. The dancers on this floor were merely window dressing. The real draw was what was behind the walls.

  I opened the door to the first room on the left and was greeted with the ruckus of bargaining, gambling, and wrestling. Each business, if it could be called that, was set up on a small table, except for the wrestling matches, which had tents at all four corners of the room. Some caterpillar spirits must be selling Wonderland-strength hookah, as a thick ring of smoke hung overhead, making me cough and my eyes water. The large room was lit by yellow fluorescent light bulbs, a sharp contrast to the glow-in-the-dark circus downstairs. I rolled the taste of the room around on my tongue, trusting that over anything I saw with my eyes. I d
etected everything from the earthy scent of woodland nymphs, to the metallic taste of the weapon-forging goblins, and everything in between. They seemed vibrant and happy, respectability be damned.

  In the center of the room, surrounded by a bunch of eager-looking minor supernaturals, was the trio of “monks” I was looking for. Gone were the dark robes they’d donned in the Shadow World. Medium height, rugged-looking with hearty bellies, their clothes were colorful and trimmed with gold threads. In fact, they seemed to have put gold on their body at every opportunity. Gold earrings, gold necklaces, gold watches, gold rings…though it looked like most of it was fake.

  I stood by my earlier assessment that they were some kind of elves. But I’d asked Fir about one of the sidekick’s ability to resist compulsion and open portals through sheer will, and he had no idea what species that could be.

  As the trio made their way through their bustling little kingdom, I stalked toward them. But my path was blocked by someone I’d never expected to find here.

  “Madeleine Abrianna Lex.” I breathed.

  For the first time ever, Madeleine looked like she wished I’d tricksterized her name. She looked around furtively, squeezing the brown paper bag she held tight against her body. That, of course, only made me yank it out of her hands all the harder.

  “Give it back!” She hissed.

  For a split second before I opened the paper bag, I wondered if I was making a mistake. What if she’d purchased some weird cross-species porno I’d never be able to un-see? They always say the most respectable types are into the craziest things.

  There was nothing in the bag but dozens of leeches, clawing over each other and yawning with their tooth-filled mouths. I almost dropped the bag.

  Then I realized the particular type of leeches I was looking at.

  Monk Leeches, the nicotine patch of choice for sex addicts. It absorbed a person’s sexual energy to keep their libido under control.

  I advanced toward Madeleine, clutching the bag, and at the same time tracking the three losers’ progress through the crowd with my peripheral vision. The boys were still making their rounds, shaking hands and exchanging pleasantries with those around them. They weren’t going anywhere for a while. I turned my attention back to Madeleine.