Ashes and Arsenic Read online

  He headed up the elevator, moving a little too quickly. Eager to escape. Couldn’t really blame him.

  I bent over the security desk and clicked through the footage. “I get the impression that Manager Milbourne there doesn’t think much of the OPA.”

  “Who does?” Suzy muttered.

  Gareth had been right about the program, though. It was easy to navigate. I went back through the footage from the night, looking for alarms, and found none. Nobody had been in the vault since two days earlier.

  “Two days ago.” Suzy squinted at the monitor. “Does that security guard look possessed to you? If he was possessed, he could have stolen everything, modified the footage, and walked out like it was nothing.”

  “They’d have noticed the missing money sooner. Besides, I told you, this isn’t a demon.”

  “You keep saying that, but I’m not seeing the proof.”

  My back was starting to ache from being bent over. I grabbed the chair and rolled up to the desk. “If it were a demon, the security tapes wouldn’t fail to show activity. Their powers aren’t that subtle.”

  Suzy plucked a bank-branded pen from the cup and tested it on the border of my Steno pad, which I’d set beside the keyboard. I slid it out of her reach. “Witches can’t mess with security footage.”

  “Actually, they can,” I said. “The right kind of witch can, anyway.”

  She tucked the pen into the breast pocket of her jacket, looking skeptical. “What’s the right kind of witch?”

  “Techno witches could do it—the ones with affinity for electricity. Or any witch with more generalized powers as long as he’s clever enough. I know a witch who’s done it multiple times.”

  “How the fuck do you know a witch who can screw with tapes? No offense, Cèsar, but you’re not exactly the most well-rounded witch that I know.”

  It would have stung if she hadn’t been right. I was best at potions, good at dismantling spells, and decent at detecting magic. Casting complicated spells wasn’t my forte. But I came from a family of witches and I’d grown up around magic, including witches who used magic for less-than-savory purposes—like modifying security tapes.

  Gareth returned with Janet and company, which saved me from having to answer Suzy. I snagged one of the smaller supply boxes from Tony as he passed. “Scan for signs of residue cleanup and work backward from there,” I said, and Tony nodded.

  Once he passed us, Suzy whispered, “Important-adjacent.”

  I snorted and opened the box. It was a collection of ordinary ritual supplies. Salt, a handful of thumbnail-sized crystals, a candle. All the stuff I needed for a simple circle of power.

  It always felt like cheating to use the OPA’s magic supplies. Everything was purified in advance by witches back at the office, who also anointed the candles and charged the crystals. It took all the legwork out of casting spells. You just assembled everything and let it rip.

  Cheating, sure, but convenient as hell.

  “If this footage was magically manipulated, the old images will still exist,” I explained, setting the crystals on the desk’s surface with the candle at the center. “I can find the section of DVD that got interfered with.”

  “You can?” Suzy asked. “I mean, you can?”

  “The spell is obscure, not difficult.”

  I spilled the salt in a thin line around the circle, containing the crystals and candles, and then muttered a quick incantation.

  The circle snapped into place, holding a tiny pool of magic at the center.

  “What is it about the building itself that made you think this was a witch thing?” Suzy asked. “Something had to tip you off when you were on the street earlier. I’ve been trying to figure it out, but I’m drawing a blank.”

  “Hang on,” I said, setting a tiny geode on top of the computer to focus the energy. My spell threaded out of the circle, through the crystals, and into the DVD drive.

  The video playback turned to static.

  “Shit, you ruined it,” Suzy said.

  “Not ruined. The magic’s just creating interference.” I pressed a button on the keyboard, telling the program to scan the footage for alarms again. The magic scanned, too. “Anyway, this building was designed by a witch. The way it’s positioned helps with spellcasting during the summer—prime time for money magic. Helps make the bank successful, I bet. But it also makes it vulnerable, because—”

  “Because other witches can use the positioning for spells as well.”

  “That’s right.” I felt a hard nudge when my spell came across magical interference on the tape. “Here we go.” I touched a finger to the crystal on the computer.

  The video of the vault popped back into view.

  “How the hell did you learn to do that?” Suzy asked.

  “My brother’s got some unusual magical skills. Let’s put it that way.”

  “Like modifying video tapes?”

  “Like monitoring security footage.” At her look, I quickly added, “Domingo has been out of the game for years.”

  “Sounds like there’s a story there,” Suzy said. Before I could play the footage, Janet called to her from inside the vault. My partner huffed and stood up. “Wait for me, okay?” She stepped over the new salt line that one of Janet’s techs was laying out on the hallway carpet, careful not to break the boundary.

  Suzy and Janet immediately started arguing. That was how conversations with Janet always went—nothing new.

  My curiosity was too strong to wait for Suzy to return.

  I clicked “play” on the program.

  Almost immediately, the monitor blacked out. The spell had led me to a blank patch on the tape. It only lasted a few seconds, and when it came back, there was someone standing in the vault.

  The angle of the camera made it impossible to tell much about the robber. He wasn’t in a security uniform or custodian’s coveralls, though. He wore a tracksuit with stripes on the shoulders.

  It looked like he’d already cast his spell, since there were herbs scattered all over the floor and he was removing drawers from the shelves. He pulled boxes of money out by the handful, jamming them into a duffel bag resting by his feet.

  I paused the video. The resolution was too low to make out much of the spell. It was complicated, though. We’re talking animal bones, human blood, and herbs-that-only-grow-on-one-square-foot-of-land-in-Australia kind of complicated.

  Suzy was still arguing with Janet, so I hit “play” again, watching the man fill his duffel bag. Five million dollars didn’t take up as much space as I would have expected.

  Then he glanced at the camera.

  I paused the video. The resolution was still terrible, but it was definitely a face that I knew. That nose, the jaw, the overhanging forehead—he looked a lot like me.

  No wonder the spell cast on the security footage looked like something my brother might have done.

  That was because Domingo had robbed the bank.

  CHAPTER TWO

  MY NAME IS CÈSAR Hawke. I’m an agent for the Office of Preternatural Affairs.

  Don’t be surprised if you’ve never heard of us. We don’t officially exist.

  You won’t find our name on any government budget sheets even though we’re kind of a big deal. We get more than twice as much money as NASA. Our offices are spread all across the United States. The CIA wishes they could be as secretive as we are.

  We’re those guys in the black helicopters circling over your city. We’re the first to respond when something explodes, and we’re the people telling news organizations that it was a gas leak rather than the pyroclastic death spiral of a greater demon and his horde of fiends.

  Since what we do is highly classified—and requires specialized skills that most people don’t have—we can’t post job openings on LinkedIn. We have to recruit more discreetly.

  Me? I had been recruited after nearly beating an incubus to death with my fists. It’s not as impressive as it sounds. Incubi are fragile demons. But my fist
s aren’t the reason that the OPA wanted me. No, that was because I’m a witch. I was learning magic at the same time I was getting gold stars for taking shits on the toilet instead of in my pants.

  You’ve got to have skills to stand a chance against the kind of chaos that Hell unleashes on America.

  The OPA doesn’t hire all witches, though. Many covens are unaffiliated with us, and there are thousands of solitary practitioners who aren’t suited to join our organization. We leave most of them alone until they break one of our unwritten laws. Then we roll in with a fleet of unmarked black SUVs and make those witches vanish into black bags. Some are never seen again. Others end up working for us.

  That’s how we got Suzy Takeuchi. She can use magic to manipulate dimensional space. It’s a rare gift. Her employment with the OPA was inevitable.

  Then there are witches like Domingo who are too strong to risk recruiting. Strong at magic, strong-willed, and terrible with authority. If he got on the wrong side of the OPA—say, by stealing five million dollars—he wouldn’t get recruited. He’d vanish.

  And since I work in the Magical Violations Department, chances are good that I’d be the one making him disappear.

  The first item on my to do list after the bank was to return to the OPA’s Los Angeles campus.

  I took the security tapes with me.

  We handle evidence in two stages: temporary storage and then permanent. Temporary storage is on-site. That’s where everything gets tagged, categorized, and shelved until it’s no longer part of an active investigation. It’s not an impressive room, let me tell you. Looks like the back room of a Goodwill staffed by drunk people.

  Permanent storage happens off-site. Don’t ask me where the warehouse is because I’ve never seen it. Considering how much crap we throw at them, it must be roughly the size of the moon—or an incinerator. Either way, once evidence gets stored permanently, it vanishes.

  Today, I was counting on that.

  A young woman greeted me at the front desk in processing. I’d never seen her before. She was hiding behind a pair of thick-rimmed glasses and masses of bushy black hair. According to the badge clipped to her collar, New Girl’s security clearance was higher than mine.

  “Where’s Ivy?” I asked.

  “She’s dead. I’m Ivanna.” She snatched the padded envelope from my hands and squinted at the label.

  “Dead?” That old woman had worked for the OPA as long as it had existed.

  “Heart attack.” She turned a suspicious glare on me. “Case 9887-B? This case is closed.”

  “Yeah, that was my case. I closed it last week.” It was the last job that Fritz and I had worked on before he went out of town. Some demons had been using human volunteers as drug mules. We took the humans into custody, tossed the demons into our detention center, problem solved.

  You might be wondering why anyone would volunteer to be a drug mule for demons. I know I’d been confused to learn that the humans were willing, seeing as how it’s just about the most unappealing thing I’d ever heard of.

  Turns out that a succubus who wears a size 32G bra is really persuasive.

  Anyway.

  The case had been closed a week earlier, so all the evidence had already been filed. I was counting on that fact. It would keep the security tapes with Domingo’s face on them in bureaucratic limbo long enough for me to investigate. Nobody would be able to review the evidence while it was locked in processing.

  Domingo would be safe. For now. Until I found out whether or not I needed to kick his ass.

  Ivanna stuck a piece of colored tape to the side of the envelope. “Why didn’t this get turned in with the rest of the evidence last week?”

  “I thought I’d put it in the box for Ivy. Maybe it fell out on my desk and she didn’t notice.”

  “She would have noticed.” Ivanna actually sounded offended.

  “However it happened, it needs to get filed. Take care of it.”

  Ivanna held the envelope between her forefinger and thumb, as though it were dirty. “I should call the director of MVD and check with him.”

  “Director Friederling already knows,” I said. “He’s my kopis.” I didn’t want her trying to run this up the pole. If she managed to get a hold of Fritz, my boss and partner, he wouldn’t have any idea what she was talking about. Sure, he’d cover my ass—but he’d have to know what the cover story was first.

  “If he already knows, then it won’t be a problem if I call him.”

  I grabbed the envelope out of her hands. “He’s at the semi-centennial summit. You don’t want to interrupt that.”

  Ivanna faltered. “The summit? No…no, I shouldn’t disturb that. But…” She reached for her phone.

  “What’s that?” I asked, tucking the padded envelope in my jacket and stepping around her desk.

  She dogged me. “Don’t go back there!”

  I didn’t stop, even as Ivanna fluttered around, wringing her hands at the sight of an agent among her precious evidence. I walked up to the evidence tables and picked a random item. It was a lumpy bronzed statue the size of a microwave. I think it was probably meant to be some kind of humanoid figure, but the sculptor had fucked up big time. It mostly looked like a pile of shit.

  A yellow tag dangled off of one of the lumpier protrusions. I snagged it to read the case number.

  Ivanna slapped my hand.

  “Don’t touch evidence, you idiot,” she said. “You don’t know what any of this does.”

  “Well, what does that do?” I asked.

  “Nothing, as far as we know. Agent Banerji seized it from an unlawful archaeological dig in the Mojave. All we know is that it’s magical.” Ivanna double-checked the tag as if worried I’d gotten cooties on it. She re-tagged the ugly statue just in case.

  While she was distracted, I pulled the padded envelope out of my jacket and dropped it behind the statue.

  Then Ivanna dragged me back to the front desk.

  “All right, all right. I’ll get out of here.” I headed for the elevator, making my best contrition-face. I patted my empty jacket pocket as though the envelope were still inside. “I’ll come back after I get a review and approval from Director Friederling. Happy?”

  “I’m never happy when people waste my time,” Ivanna said, dropping into her chair again.

  “Ivy was nicer than you.”

  She barked a laugh. “Was she? Are you sure?”

  Now that I looked at her again, Ivanna looked kind of familiar. Like she might have been someone I’d seen once or twice before.

  “Are you related to Ivy?” I asked. “Grandniece? Third cousin twice removed?”

  Ivanna returned her attention to the desk. She shuffled through the papers, applying colored labels as she sorted. “Have a nice day, Agent Hawke.”

  I knew she was snarking at me, but she still had no idea how unlikely having a nice day would be.

  After all, the next item on my to-do list involved arresting my brother.

  CHAPTER THREE

  DOMINGO HAWKE.

  IT HAD been years since he rained magical mischief upon Los Angeles, but he was still notorious among certain circles. Hell, he would be notorious long after he was buried six feet deep with a box of his favorite cigars.

  And he’d definitely earned the notoriety.

  Domingo had been best known by the cops for all the 7-Elevens he’d knocked over. He’d throw a big circle around the convenience store, target everyone inside the building, and turn off their brains. Make it so that they didn’t notice the teenager with the saggy pants getting into the cash register.

  The first dozen times he cast that spell, he got caught.

  He refined his magic. Got better at it.

  Once he stopped getting caught, he started hitting up bigger targets.

  Emptying the Apple store in the middle of the day during the Christmas season had been his best work. That shit was legendary.

  There was more to Domingo’s trouble, though. I didn’t know a
ll of it. He’d started rolling with a gang after high school and I stayed far, far away from that. But all the local witches still uttered his name like he was the George fucking Clooney of magical crime.

  Pops had almost disowned him. I wouldn’t have blamed him if he had. Domingo was poison in the Hawke family for a few years there, stealing money from Abuelita, lying to the man who raised us, getting his siblings in trouble. Of course, our sister was smart enough to stay out of Domingo’s bullshit most of the time. I wasn’t.

  Domingo had gotten me arrested a couple times. All for being dumb enough to obey my big brother when he put me in a headlock and threatened to burn my comic books if I didn’t help him.

  To be fair, I’d still rather spend a week in juvie than lose my comics. They’re collector’s items.

  But that’s beside the point.

  Domingo used to be trouble. That’s what mattered.

  Just as importantly, he’d reformed. Around the time that I was smoking weed with my dorm mates in college, Domingo met the woman who would become his wife, Sofia. It’s a cute story how they met. Something about Domingo robbing her father, Sofia picking him out of a lineup, and then happily ever after. Eventually.

  She hadn’t been impressed by his rap sheet. Domingo decided he liked her more than the game. So he cleaned up to win her hand in marriage.

  It had been years since I’d had to bail him out of jail. Even more years since he’d gotten me tangled up in trouble alongside him.

  Domingo Hawke faded into legend, got a house in the suburbs, and became a family man.

  I’d thought that was the end of that story.

  Domingo’s house looked empty without Sofia’s old Porsche out front. The old oil stain on the driveway had been rained and sun-bleached away, meaning that her car hadn’t been parked there for a long time. Made my chest feel all tight to see it.