Hotter Than Helltown: An Urban Fantasy Mystery (Preternatural Affairs Book 3) (24 page)

That greeting was nice and everything, but what was waiting in his office was even better.

As soon as I opened the door, Lucrezia de Angelis got to her feet and removed her reading glasses. Her eyes were wide. Her cheeks were pale under her layers of makeup. Janet from forensics hovered behind her with a clipboard—looked like she’d gotten a promotion to vice president’s assistant.

“Fritz,” Janet said, and then corrected it to, “Director Friederling.”

“Could we have privacy, Janet?” he asked pleasantly.

She glanced at Lucrezia then nodded, shuffling out of the room. The fact that Janet gave me a wide berth didn’t escape my attention.

Once she left, the room was awkwardly silent.

Even more of Fritz’s belongings were missing from the office. His diplomas and certifications had been taken down from the walls, probably shoved into a drawer somewhere. Lucrezia’s stupid bird statue was still perched on the corner of the desk, and she’d swapped out the curtains for her own.

Fritz took in the sight of it all with cool dispassion.

“Interesting,” he said.

“I’ve only borrowed it.” The all-powerful Lucrezia de Angelis actually sounded defensive.

He lifted an eyebrow. “As I understood it, the vice president should have a permanent office in the administration building. I must have been mistaken.”

“I have been watching the department closely in your absence.” She gathered her composure around herself like a cloak. “For instance, you might be interested to know that Catherine Reilly has received a partial pardon. Instead of sending her to a permanent detention facility, she’s going to rehabilitation.”

Fritz didn’t look like he cared, but I was definitely interested. “So she’ll be out soon?” I asked.

“Five years. Three with good behavior,” Lucrezia said. “She did aid a murderer.”

But she was going to get out. That was good.

The world needed more good people like Sister Catherine.

“Thanks,” I said, and I meant it. I’d been the one to request a review of her case earlier in the week. Lucrezia could have ignored it, or shelved it for someone else, but she’d gotten Sister Catherine out of the Union detention center as fast as I could have hoped for.

The vice president gave me a small nod. “As I said, I’ve been watching the department closely.”

“Mmm,” Fritz said. It was the most withering non-committal noise I’d ever heard. “Well, I’m back to take care of everything now.”

Her eyes flicked down to his feet. She didn’t seem to know which one to look at. His shoes matched, his slacks were long enough to hide his ankles, and there was really no way to tell which one had been amputated.

“I expected you to be on disability for some time,” Lucrezia said with a tight smile. Her expression said,
I was hoping you’d never come back at all
.

He smiled back. “When there’s so much work to be done? I couldn’t keep myself away.” Fritz toyed with the head of her wire bird statue, twisting its neck around so that it was staring at its own feathery ass. “I’ll have your personal effects sent to the administration building. Unless you’d like me to ship them back to Italy for you…?”

“Yes,” she said. “I think I’ll be going home. Everything seems to be in order here.” She looked at me when she said that.

I was grinning. Shouldn’t have been doing it, but I couldn’t help it.

“We’ll miss you,” I said.

Her fake smile vanished completely.

Lucrezia followed Janet out of the room. She was as stiff-backed as though someone had shoved that bird statue up her butt.

Once the door was shut, I jerked my thumb at it. “You know, if I was a paranoid guy, I’d be thinking she only came to Los Angeles to make you miserable.”

“That would be paranoid, wouldn’t it?” Fritz grabbed a box from under his desk and tipped the statue into it. He jerked the curtains down, tossed a few fancy pens in on top of them.

He finally sank into his high-backed chair and I’d never seen him look so happy. He hummed cheerfully to himself as he started typing an email.

It took a lot to bother Fritz. Losing a limb? Whatever. Losing his office to the VP? Now that would have been a fate worse than death.

“So what’s Lucrezia’s problem with you?” I asked.

Fritz drummed his fingers on the desk, contemplating the question. Last week, he probably wouldn’t have answered me at all—we were friends, but not
that
close. Now he said, “Some women aren’t willing to accept rejection.”

“You mean she wants a piece of The Fritz?”

“She used to,” he said. “Now I think she’d prefer if I vanished. It’s complicated.”

I thought of Naamah and her husband, Shamdan. How she had desperately searched for him over the years and killed any man who didn’t meet his standards. That confused mixture of love, grief, and regret that had driven her as a fallen angel.

Whatever had happened with Fritz and Lucrezia, it really couldn’t be that bad.

“Aren’t women always complicated?” I asked.

“Unfortunately,” Fritz said.

That took the mood from light to depressed in about three seconds flat. I could tell when it was time for me to leave. “I should probably get to work. Need anything else, boss?”

He clicked his mouse to send the email. “No, I don’t think I’ll need anything for the rest of the day. See you at Canyon Creek?”

I shrugged. “If that’s what you want. I’m your ride home.”

“I just invited the entire department to a party in honor of the case,” Fritz said. “They’ll be disappointed if you don’t go.”

According to the sudden commotion on the other side of the wall, the email had been received.

Guess I was going to the bar.

“Canyon Creek sounds great.” I grabbed the doorknob, but Fritz spoke again before I could leave.

“Thank you, Cèsar,” he said.

He didn’t have to tell me what he was thanking me for, and I wasn’t going to blow the moment by getting all weird about it.

So I just nodded and stepped out of the room.

“Woo! Fallen angel! An office first!” Suzy seized me right outside the door, slapping my back in a way that was probably meant to feel congratulatory, but was going to leave a bruise the size of her tiny jackhammer of a fist.

I laughed uneasily, stepping out of her reach. “It’s a first?”

“What do
you
think? How many fallen angels have MVD agents run across while stalking nasty covens?”

Point taken. “Are we going to celebrate right now?”

“Director Friederling gave us all the afternoon off, so hells-to-the-yes, we’re celebrating. Last one to Canyon Creek is buying a round of drinks for the entire department!” Suzy winked and punched me again, this time in the bicep. I wasn’t convinced she didn’t have a bionic fist. It fucking hurt. “And that includes you, even if you are the guest of honor.”

I didn’t want to be the guest of honor for killing Mary, or Naamah, or whatever we were calling her. We’d put a confused old angel out of her misery. It wasn’t worth drinks and endless wings.

It felt like everyone should have been in mourning.

But it was hard not to get caught up in the energy of the other agents. It was Friday. A big case had been closed, and a killer had been caught. Without any other active life-or-death cases to keep us in the office, we were off work before lunch. What wasn’t worth celebrating?

The tide of fleeing agents pushed me toward the door, but I detoured to my desk to clean up my Steno pads, the files from the LAPD, the chimera face of the victims that had been assembled into a portrait so much like Fritz’s. I never wanted to see any of that again.

An open folder on Suzy’s desk caught my eye. It was marked with the same ten-digit case code. I peered at the papers she had clipped to the inside.

It was all her research on the crank caller. She’d followed a money trail from the gas station where the burner phones had been purchased—a Shell about a block from our office—to an ATM at a Wells Fargo that was a quarter-mile north of that.

Whoever had made those crank calls had been doing it from right outside the OPA offices.

Suzy appeared and snapped the manila folder shut. “Ready to go?” she asked brightly.

“What is that?” I asked.

“Oh, this?” She fanned herself with the folder. “Nothing. The case is closed. Dead end. It belongs in the shredder.”

I tried to grab it from her. “That didn’t look like nothing.”

Suzy dropped it in the trash on top of a big bouquet of roses. My eyebrows climbed my forehead. Suzy, getting roses? She didn’t have a boyfriend.

She followed my gaze to the flowers. Her cheeks heated.

“It’s complicated,” she said.

Aniruddha stopped outside our cubicle. “Can I walk over with you guys?”

Suzy’s smile went forced. “Sorry. Have to wrap some stuff up with Cèsar first. Go ahead and get drinks; we’ll be over in a few minutes.”

While she was distracted, I reached into the trash and snagged the card out of her flowers. I flipped it open.
For Suzume, the brightest star. —Aniruddha

I looked up at the guy in shock, but he was already gone.

Suzy whirled on me. She snatched the card out of my hand.

“That guy? The boring workaholic with the stupid coffee mugs?” I asked. “
Really
?”

“Yes, that guy.” I’d never seen her blush so much. Until that moment, I wouldn’t have thought she was capable. “Let me show you something. You can’t tell anyone. Okay?”

She clicked a file on her desktop. A picture expanded.

It was a security photo from a Wells Fargo ATM. It clearly showed Aniruddha withdrawing cash from the machine to go buy a disposable phone.

“
He’s
been making the crank calls?”

Suzy deleted the picture. “He wanted to pull me in on the weekends so we’d have to work together. When I confronted him with the evidence, he confessed to everything and asked me out. With flowers. Roses, meet trashcan.”

I laughed. I couldn’t help it. “He’s hitting on you by wasting company resources.”

“Shut up.”

“You’re his brightest star!”

“Shut up, shut up,
shut up
.”

“But Aniruddha’s been—”

Suzy silenced me with another hard smack on the back. There was nothing friendly about this strike. She was pissed, and it hurt that much more. “Like I told you, Hawke. It’s complicated.”

I slung an arm around her shoulders. I sympathized, I really did. And I was also incredibly relieved that the crank calls weren’t anything connected to fallen angels, their guardian witches, or horrible murder.

Maybe that was why I couldn’t stop laughing. The weight of the relief had left me dizzy.

“Suze, ‘complicated’ is our middle name in the Magical Violations Department,” I said. “And you know what? Drinks are on me tonight.”

***

Don’t miss the next book in the series:

http://smarturl.it/ShadowBurns

Dear reader,

I hope you’ve enjoyed Cèsar’s story. Make sure you don’t miss the fourth book in the series,
Shadow
Burns
!

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Hotter Than Helltown
. It helps other readers find the series, and I appreciate the feedback!

Happy reading!

Sara (SM Reine)

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