Storm in a Teacup (2 page)

"Behind you!"
 

Ripper's there first, his blade slicing the air just behind Ben's head. Another spray of neon green wets Ben's hair, and he scrambles forward, fumbling with his sword.
 

I peer at the second corpse. It's wearing a hair-necklace too, and I don't like that. I scan the grasses around us for any sign of movement. A breeze ripples the field, but none of the stalks of grass bend suspiciously. I know without the peaceful breeze that there aren't more out there. The pressing weight in my chest is gone, leaving the immediacy muted until nightfall when I'll go seeking these creatures out again. Time to go push my pen around my desk some more.

"You'll call for the body pickup?"
 

I wonder what the Summit'll make of this little affair. Two imps in Miller's Field sporting human hair like they're Southern belles making a fashion statement. It sounds like the beginning of a bad joke. I wait only long enough for Ben and Ripper to nod, then turn and head back to my car, the crackle of grass underfoot turning to the crunchy gravel of the ungraded track. I glance at the bush where I saw the baby rabbit vanish. No movement, but I have a feeling it's still in there. Maybe with the rest of its litter. I'm not leaving them there. No mama-less bunnies are getting eaten by imps today.
 

The right leg of my linen slacks has two crossed lines of bright green blood spatter across the knee. Dammit.

"Wait." That's Ben.

I keep walking. I don't want the blood of undead hellspawn drying on my favorite sword blade — or my slacks. "What?"

"Can we talk?"

"About what, Ben?" Damn it all to the six and a half hells. This is why he pulled a fancy-meeting-you-here. I didn't have to suffer through junior high school, so maybe this is my cosmic punishment. The universe's way of saying I didn't get out of this part, the hormonal fizzy fits and spurts that send blobs of burning Ben-feelings spattering all over me. Ew.

"About what I asked you at the last Summit."

I stop, one hand on the door handle of my car. I hate being right. "Ben. Don't even tell me you decided to turn up on a Class Five dispatch just to ask me out on a date again?"

Ben stops and shuffles his feet on the gravel road. He manages to look somewhat embarrassed.

"Oh, gods of the earth. You did."

"I like you, Ayala."

"That's sweet." I don't want to talk about this. I look beyond Ben, at the bush where I saw the baby bunny disappear. Ben keeps talking.

"Really. I mean it. I know I'm being stupid, but I can't help it." He sounds sincere. I don't doubt that he is, but the little streams of drying red and green blood on his face make him seem more than a little desperate.

I open my car door and jam my sword at Ben. No, not point first. I don't stab people. If I did that, the Summit'd throw me in their underground gray-walled beehive of doom.

Ben looks surprised, but he takes the hilt.

"Hold that," I say, and climb into the front seat. My phone sits on the center console, the LED light flashing. Probably my boss, wondering why I'm not back yet. I wish I could wipe my sword on that. I look around for a second. Aha. I grab the jeans that had concealed my sunscreen from me, duck back out of the car, and hold out my hand for the sword.

"You really should clean out your car," Ben says as he gives my sword back to me.

I do glare this time. "Okay, Ben, here's the deal." I start wiping the blood off the shiny blade with the old pair of jeans. They're already toast. I have a hell of a laundry detergent made by a neighbor who happens to be a witch, but it won't help these pants. "I don't date coworkers."

"You work alone."

"Doesn't matter. You're a Mediator, and therefore a coworker. Dating in the workplace is just...wrong."

"But you like me."

No, I don't. Not as a boyfriend, and maybe not even as a friend. He's that guy who always invites himself to parties, today being the perfect case in point. Guess it's time to go for blunt. He's right. I work alone. Mostly because people have these things called expectations.

"No. I'm not interested. I'm sorry. But I told you that when you asked me the first time." I almost feel bad for saying it that way, but it's true. Honesty. Best policy. Yadda yadda.

He gives me a sullen look. He's pouting. Oh, mercy.

"Fine," he says.

I sigh. "Ben—"

"No, it's fine." He walks away. Ripper is standing in front of his truck, pouring water from a canteen to wash the blood off his face and hands. He, for one, looks completely unimpressed by the whole exchange, which I am fairly certain he heard.

Nothing new there. Ripper is very seldom impressed.

My blade clean, I shove it unceremoniously back in the scabbard, murmuring a mental apology for treating it so harshly.

I give myself a quick once-over. Dammit. The splash of demon blood has eaten away the linen of my nice new slacks. My skin itches. Fantastic. I'll have to go home and change before I go back to work.

I've got something to do first, though. I fish a shoebox out of the back seat of my car, dumping its contents – a packet of earplugs and an empty bottle of orange juice – onto the floor.
 

My phone buzzes, insistent. I snatch it up. "Yello."

"It's Gregor."

"Concerned for my safety? Usually I can handle imps on my own, but I'm touched that you're checking up on me."

"I'm not checking up on you." Gregor sounds about as merry as a stump. "Are you back at work yet? I'm faxing something I want you to look at."

"Still at the field."

"You're getting rusty. Call me when you get back to the office."

"Rusty my ass," I say, but he's already hung up. Dammit.

I ignore Ripper's eyes on me as I stalk over to the bush. Gregor can wait.
 

The halfhearted rustle of leaves tells me they're in there. I've never tried to pick up a wild baby rabbit before, and I suspect these two are far too traumatized to flee. I pick up one of them. It must be the one the imp stepped on, because the bunny's ear is bent back at an awful angle, and it piddles on my hand the moment I lift it.
 

"Hush," I tell it. I place it in the shoebox and retrieve the other. They snuggle together in a corner of the box.
 

I don't look at Ripper or Ben as I drive away with the box in my lap.

CHAPTER TWO

Alice, Guardian of the Fax Machine and our office receptionist, doesn't look up when I come in. She's got the phone cradled between her ear and her shoulder, and her blood-red nails clickity-clack on the keyboard faster than I could bang both hands on them.

I hover in front of Alice's desk, mind still on the baby bunnies I dropped off at Walden's Puddle, Nashville's wild animal rescue. It reminds me of the puddle of piddle I washed off my hand. At least the bunnies will be taken care of.

The person whose hair the imp was wearing, I'm not so sure about.

The office is quiet apart from the clacking and Alice's muttering into the phone. The fax machine is quiet and empty of any faxes. I wiggle my fingers at Alice, and she holds up one finger in response. I get the feeling that it's the middle one she wanted to put up.

The office waiting room is supposed to look very zen, but instead, it just looks naked, and waiting for Alice to get off the phone is making me feel anything but one with the universe. The walls are a pale green color, to look like bamboo or wasabi or something.
 

That's all, except for a circular wall clock with no numbers, only little slash marks at the four main spots. It looks more like a compass than a timepiece. What time is it, north by northeast? Dammit, I'm late.

After a long minute of watching the second hand tick around, Alice hangs up. She's thirty-eight going on twenty, and she has the boy toy to prove it. She drives around in a bright yellow Bug, and she had some metaphysical facelift a year back. At first glance, you can't tell. Subsequent glances betray a sort of pinched-ness beneath the surface.

She finally looks up from her clacking. "Yes?" Speaking displays a smudge of bright red lipstick in its second home on her front tooth.

"Did a fax come in for me?"
 

Alice gives me a harried look, smoothing her frizzy hair with one hand and digging in her desk with the other. "Yep. Here. From Gregor. He also called four times. Call him back so I can get my work done."

I salute and head back into my office.

I like my office. It seems to surprise everyone that I'm pretty girly. Hell, sometimes it surprises me. My office is painted a warm ivory and has deep blue accents in the form of window trim and door frame. The pictures opposite my desk are mountains, lakes, scenes I'll never see in person but like to escape to in my mind.
 

I settle down at my desk and sit back in my chair to pick up my cell.

There's a text from Gregor that just says "CALL." I call him back.

"It's Storme," I say.

"Took you long enough. I was about to come over there."

I sigh, straightening the papers on my desk. I can only imagine Gregor stumping in here.
 

"I heard that huffing and puffing, Storme. You get the stuff?" Gregor actually sounds tired. He's like the Energizer bunny when it comes to most things — well, a big, blocky bunny. I have bunnies on the brain today, it seems. Hearing him sound weary both tickles my curiosity and my alarm bells. His voice is a low rumble, very macho.
 

"Right here," I tell him. "By the way, Ripper and Ben showed up on the Class Five you sent me on. You wouldn't know anything about that, would you?"

"Who, me?" Gregor's innocent voice is about as convincing as an alligator's smile, and he must realize it, because his tone shifts back to brusque in an instant. "Got the body pickup call. Ben sounded like you'd kicked him in the shins. You turn him down?"

I scowl, even though Gregor can't see me. "What do you think?"

Gregor laughs. It sounds like a grizzly bear might sound. A really nice grizzly bear. "I bet you tore him a new one."

"Nope, no tearing. Minimal bitchiness. I was good."

"That's not the Ayala I know. Documents, Storme. Look at them. I'll wait."

I stare at the headline on the first page of the fax. I comb the newspapers every day for work, and I've seen headlines like it on and off for several months. It's not, however, the sort of thing Gregor usually brings to my table.

At least not before last month. My heart gives an odd little stutter when I flip through the pages.
 

When I'm not sticking my sword in things, I'm writing press releases. Just like any good Mediator. Kill stuff at night, work like a respectable contributor to society during the day. Usually Gregor points me in the direction of demon hot spots, or imps tanning in Miller's Field. Gregor's more the slice you up, ask questions later type. Neither of us hunts down missing persons.
 

The headline reads, "Clarksville woman still missing." I thumb through the rest of the articles with Gregor's raspy breath in my ear, frowning as I get to the end. Thirteen articles. Thirteen missing people. Different ages, religions, hair colors, piercings, everything. Nothing to tie them together. The articles date back four months, starting in March.

There's no pattern to connect them, nothing I can see in the full-color pictures under each headline. The only reason he'd be sending it my way is because he knows of the connection to me. I know he's still on the line, and I feel like he's in my head as well, listening to the gears as they turn and scrape against one another.

There shouldn't be a connection to me. But my birth mother was one of these headlines six months ago. I shouldn't even know that. Mediators are taken from our parents pretty much straight from the birth canal. The clipping of the umbilical cord severs any connection or bond we would have to our parents. That's supposed to be it, but a couple months back, I got curious.

See, that's exactly why I should have just left it alone. Mediators looking for their birth parents just cause problems. Like finding out one's birth mom poofed into thin air half a year back.

Gregor sending this package to me can only mean he knows about me poking around in the past. Irritated, I frown and push all thoughts of the woman who gave me half my DNA from my mind.

"You still there, Storme?" Trust Gregor to say he'll wait and then get impatient.

"Shut up. I'm reading."

He snorts in response, but he obeys.

Most of headlines are from the middle Tennessee area, but there's one here from Knoxville, one from Birmingham, one from Louisville, and one all the way up in Cincinnati. The articles don't mention if the people are human or not. Men, women — by the pictures, I can tell that none of them were Mediators — wrong eye colors. All Mediators have violet eyes, which makes us easy to spot in a crowd. They could be witches or morphs, though. My pen cap meanders its way into my mouth, and I gnaw on it, thinking hard. Gregor thinks they're connected somehow. Why?
 

"Okay, Gregor. Spill. Why do you think these disappearances are connected?"