Even Villains Have Interns (5 page)

Addison giggled as Dylan and Travys fell in line
behind her.

Delilah shoved the glass at her intern. “Drop
that with one of the wait staff and meet us at the back door.”

“What’s going on?” Dylan demanded.

“The blond man in there? That’s Ivan Petrovich,
a known mob operative. The client’s father is rumored to owe them
money, and she’d make lovely ransom bait.” Grabbing Addison by the
shoulders, Delilah steered her to the back door. “We’re moving out
now. Alert her overnight team. Tell them to meet us at the
house.”

Addison smiled drunkenly at her. “Kiss me?”

“You’re still not my type,” Delilah said.

Travys ran up to them carrying everyone’s coats.
“I grabbed them from the jacket claim,” he explained.

Delilah held Addison’s coat by the shoulders.
Addison stuck her arm in the sleeve on the third try and Delilah
zipped her up. As she turned Addison around, Delilah slipped a hand
into the coat pocket and palmed the phone she found inside.

Their party made it to the waiting vehicle
without trouble, but as soon as Addison sat down she reached for
her phone. As everyone else buckled up, Delilah watched the drunk
girl check her each pocket three times over.

“Problems?” she asked when it was clear Addison
had run out of places to search.

“My phone.” Addison pouted.

Dylan sighed and rolled his eyes. “It probably
dropped out at the coat claim.” He reached to unbuckle himself from
the front passenger seat.

“I’ll get it,” Delilah said, holding up a hand.
“Go on ahead. I’ll be a few minutes behind you.”

“I don’t like that,” Chad said in her ear.

Dylan nodded at Chad’s comment. “We shouldn’t
split up. Addison can wait until morning for her phone, right?”

Addison gasped as if she’d been slapped. “No
phone? All night? Are you crazy?”

“It won’t take me more than five minutes to find
the phone. I’ll be right behind you.” Delilah waved away Dylan’s
next argument. “My call. It’s okay.” She took her earpiece out and
tossed it to Travys. “I’ll see you in thirty minutes, give or take
a stoplight.” With a flash of a smile she stepped back into the
bitter winter cold.

The car wheels were turning before the door
locked. Delilah watched them drive off. In her pocket, she thumbed
Addison’s phone off. The last thing she needed was the GPS tracking
her every movement. The cab which had followed Addison’s car pulled
up, cabbie hidden by an upturned collar and an oversized flat
cap.

“Where to?” Freddie asked as she climbed inside.
He turned down the police radio built into the dashboard.

“To wherever the mayor was shot.”

***

Snow crunched under Delilah’s boot as she
stepped out of the cab on East Jackson Drive. “Park down by the
university,” she told Freddie as a voice on the police radio
confirmed an ambulance was en route to collect the final remains of
Mayor Arámbula.

Buckingham fountain was beautiful, even late on
a winter night. Past the skeletal trees, golden lights illuminated
the sparkling water—the strobe of blue and red from the waiting
squad cars rather ruined the romantic affect.

The cab pulled away. Delilah walked through the
fresh-fallen snow, drifting across the icy sidewalk with the calm
demeanor of someone exactly where they belonged.

At the edge of the square, one of the officers
noticed her. “Ma’am, can I help you?” he said stiffly, shining a
flashlight at her face.

“No.”

He squinted, trying to make out her face under
the black top hat she wore. “Did you hear anything? See
anything?”

“I didn’t.” She watched as the ambulance pulled
up and paramedics hurried to the body. They lifted the dead mayor
onto a stretcher and a scrap of paper fell out of his pocket. The
wind caught it, lifting the paper up out of the snow and blowing it
toward her.

“Hey!” one of the officers shouted. “Somebody
grab that! Gelphi! Catch that!”

Delilah snatched the paper out of the air with a
gloved hand. “Here,” she held it out to the policeman she assumed
was Officer Gelphi. Three barely legible words scrawled across the
paper: Kalydon - 77 Wacker.

“Thank you.” Gelphi took the paper back with
obvious hesitation. “Ma’am, I’m going to ask you to move along.
This is a crime scene.”

“Of course.” News vans were already parking on
Lakeshore Drive and she didn’t need to be on camera. “Have a good
evening.” Pivoting on her heel, Delilah strolled back along the
snowy streets until her nose was numb. Seventy-seven Wacker was an
office building that had been on the market for several months. It
wasn’t somewhere the mayor would have gone for a party, but a black
market business deal? That sounded plausible.

A warm breeze alerted her to company. “Fancy
meeting you here,” The Spirit of Chicago said.

Delilah stopped, watching him from the corner of
her eye. “How did you hear about this?”

“I have friends at the police department.
You?”

She shrugged. “I know all the good gossips.” She
turned to face him, or as much as there was of him. The festively
lit streets twinkled through his gossamer body. “Where were you
tonight, superhero?”

“Where were you, do-gooder super villain?”

With a grimace, she shrugged again. “Busy. I
have an airtight alibi. Over a hundred people saw me flirting with
a handsome man tonight. We didn’t get as far as drinks.
Disappointing, overall. Your turn.”

“I was trying to attract the attention of
devastatingly beautiful woman.”

Delilah almost laughed. “Oh? How’d that work out
for you?”

“She looked right through me.”

They turned side by side to watch the paramedics
cover the late mayor’s body. A chill that had nothing to do with
the temperature and everything to do with the muted pallor of death
wound its way up her spine, leaving her feeling isolated and angry.
The ripples of this would spread far and wide, destroying the peace
she worked hard to maintain.

The Spirit of Chicago solidified a little more,
filling in enough space to cast a shadow of his own and whistling
the first few bars of
All I Want For Christmas
.

Delilah sighed and shook off her malaise. “I
guess that’s our social plans canceled.”

“Ours?” the Spirit asked. “My invite to the
cookie swap must have been lost in the mail. I was going to make
snickerdoodles.”

“There’s a man dead and you’re joking?”

He held up a translucent hand. “Ghost?”

“Who can swim and grab towels?” Delilah raised
an eyebrow. “Let’s try the truth. You’re alive and well but you can
phase in and out of places.”

It was his turn to shrug. “Physics is not a
class I really understood.”

Delilah watched the news crews and police for a
moment longer before walking away.

The Spirit of Chicago kept pace with her. There
were no footprints, something she should have found more disturbing
than she did.

“Are we sharing information?” he asked.

“If I find any, I might be persuaded to share.
There’s no profit in this kind of crime, and I’m vexed beyond words
that someone would invade my city like this,” Delilah said.

“Yours?”

“I’m very possessive.” Delilah hit the call
button hidden in the folds of her coat, summoning Freddie.

The Spirit stood beside her, staring up at the
sky. “How will I find you?”

“How do you usually find me?”

He eyed her sideways. “I show up at a scene of a
crime and you’re there waiting for me.”

Delilah smiled as the cab pulled up. “Sounds
like a plan. I’ll see you at the next crime scene, then.”

Dad,

Something’s being brokered in Chicago this
week. Things have been quiet. Too quiet. And I’ve been told a
hunter’s coming to town. I don’t know what’s going on, or if the
mayor’s death is related at all.

Help me figure out what I’m looking for, so I
can deal with it ASAP?

D

The Spirit of Chicago drifted through the walls
of the late mayor’s office. Bookshelves lined two of the walls,
another was occupied by a window overlooking marble columns to the
street below, and the last was covered a detailed map of the city.
No personal objects on display; the family photos had come down a
few years ago when Mayor Arámbula and his wife had separated.

The Spirit of Chicago reached out and tapped in
the security code on the keypad. For a few minutes at least, he was
free to look around.

All the books were in their places. They were
the first things he remembered. Very early in his career, Arámbula,
then a city alderman, had invited him over to see the house. There
was a duplicate library. The mayor bought two of every book, one
for home and one for the office, so he never had to worry about
forgetting something.

People had underestimated Arámbula. He’d been a
force of nature, a bombastic man who steamrolled his competition
and naysayers. He was loud, larger than life; almost immortal.

The Spirit of Chicago frowned as he surveyed the
room. Everything was eerily normal. He half expected Arámbula to
come charging down the hall like a small locomotive, bellowing rage
as he shook one of the increasingly rare print editions of the
Chicago daily paper.

The police were going to pin the murder on
either family trouble or political enemies, but that didn’t feel
right. Arámbula was rumored to be involved in half a dozen scandals
on any given day, but The Spirit of Chicago knew he wasn’t. And the
divorce had been amicable. Elsa had a new husband, and Arámbula had
walked her down the aisle. Privately, he told his friends he was
hunting for someone a little younger. A mid-life crisis wife. It
was his idea of a joke.

The Spirit of Chicago nudged the curtains aside,
not willing to risk turning on a light that could be seen from the
streets outside. Moonlight spilled through the clouds and glittered
on a golden apple.

That was new.

The Spirit of Chicago picked it up. Arámbula was
not a man who invested in paperweights, and an apple wouldn’t have
been his style at all. A recreation of a Mycenaean bull statue,
yes. But an apple? Apples were for teachers, a moniker no one would
have dared use for Arámbula. The Spirit picked the apple up,
peering at the smooth surface for an engraving, some hint of where
it had come from. The moonlight fractured oddly as he turned it. So
many angles. Almost like... He tilted his head and saw a number in
the pattern: seventy-seven.

***

Delilah growled under her breath and switched
the police radio off. All the chatter about the morning commute was
distracting her. So, Arámbula was dead. That left a power vacuum at
the top of two food chains.

She grabbed Alan Adale’s file from her desk.
File folders were dinosaurs, and the office staff loved teasing her
about her manila addiction, but there were advantages. No one could
hack a paper file. No one could search her hard drive and find a
copy of this information.

Not that she had much about Adale that wasn’t
public knowledge. For all his cold, mafia-man appearance, he had a
record cleaner than a priest’s miter. Normally she liked men
without any obvious vices, but this one was getting annoying.
Especially since she couldn’t seem to give him no as an answer.

There was a shortage of perfect men in the
world. Adale was attractive, intelligent... If she compared him to
a list of qualities she wanted in a long-term partner, he looked
like a winner. But the relationship had one fatal flaw: she didn’t
want to know what he honestly thought of her. Honesty was the death
of infatuation.

“I need a social life,” she muttered with a
sigh.

“What?” Travys said, freezing in the doorway,
his arms once again full of boxes. Luckily for him, one of those
boxes was donuts.

“You brought me breakfast?” Delilah asked as she
took the donuts and set them on her desk beside a stack of manila
folders.

He shucked his bulky winter coat and kicked it
carelessly under the chair. Such a boy thing to do. “Hungry bosses
are mean bosses.”

Delilah smiled and peeked inside. “Boston
creams! Now I know you want something. What is it?” She picked up
the chocolate-covered pastry and bit in.

“I have a Christmas wish list.” His eyebrows
bounced up and down in a hysterical attempt at an eyebrow
waggle.

“Mmm?”

“Well, I was thinking, since I’m spending
Christmas alone—”

“You’re not spending it alone!” Delilah huffed
around a mouthful of donut in annoyance. “We’re doing a family
Christmas in Vermont, New England’s Winter Playground. I’ve already
rented the house.”

Travys looked at her in confusion. “Who is doing
a family Christmas?”

“All of us. Angela, Ty, Aaron, Maria, Blessing,
Gideon, Mom and Dad of course, you, me, most the minions will be up
there. You know, the family.”

He picked his own donut out of the box. “At this
point we probably need to start putting a capital F on Family.”

“Daddy is not the Godfather type.”

“Are you sure he’s still not trying to take over
the world?” Travys asked, his eyes narrowing with suspicion.

Delilah shook her head. “We convinced him to
settle for a fiefdom. He has the castle and we own most of Llano
County now. It’s enough, I think. I mean, taking over the planet in
one generation is a pretty ambitious project, and he’s
retired.”

“From being a super villain,” Travys said.

“Exactly. His activities are strictly legal
right now.” She finished her donut and guiltily added, “Ninety
percent of the time. Probably. Maybe more like sixty. Still. He’s
getting better.”

Travys rolled his eyes.

Delilah sighed. “Never mind. You’re coming with
us. Christmas is handled.”