Hear No (Hidden Evil, #1)

Chapter One

Chapter One

Six weeks later

Nathan shut the door of his restored muscle car. Tall, lean and relaxed, he was the kind of man who commanded the world around him with the authority of the Roman centurion he once was, three thousand years before. He walked to the curb where a blonde woman sat sobbing in front of a house party still raging at three in the morning. Behind her paced a nervous man in his late twenties, one whose look was a mix of guarded hopefulness and irritation.

Looking from the sobbing woman to the man, Nathan stopped.

“This is your emergency?” he asked. “A crying girl?”

“Well … I … god, can you just help me out?” the man replied.

He’s gotta be a newbie. Nathan was expecting the world to be ending, based on the text he’d received that summoned him here. He opened the trunk of his car and pulled the knives hidden in his waistband free, tossing them in the back. He always kept one on him, usually strapped to his calf, but the rest he wasn’t going to need to deal with a sad woman and her incompetent caseworker. Instead, he grabbed a black satchel out of his trunk, slammed it shut and then approached the curb.

It was a warm desert night in Tucson, Arizona, the kind that made him want to walk barefoot instead of wearing his loafers. He knew two things without a doubt and how to master the classy-casual look was one of them. The downside: it meant not going barefoot. He lit a cigarette, debating whether he could lower his standards enough to put on some sort of semi-stylish sandals.

After a deep drag, he faced the man behind the crying girl.

“What’s her sign?” he asked.

“What?”

“You heard me.”

“S… scorpio,” the crying girl answered.

“All right, newbie,” Nathan said to the man. He set down a small black satchel beside the girl. “The only reason I’m not leaving is because she’s a fellow Scorpio.”

There was a sigh from the other man, who raked a hand through his hair then rubbed his face. A young, recently appointed spirit guide – a cross between a glorified medium and supernatural case worker, Joey appeared to be no older than Nathan and was ready to panic, a sign of how new he was to his duties.

“What’s your approval rating?” Nathan asked curiously.

“Sixty five percent.”

“So no one will be surprised you couldn’t handle this. I’ll take it from here, Joey.”

“Can I watch?”

“I don’t give a shit.” Nathan sat down next to the sobbing woman.

He took a few puffs of his cigarette, listening to her cry. She was first gen, an angel incarnated for the first time as a human. She had a soul, a finite life, emotions, none of which an angel possessed when in its pure energy form. She was in her mid-twenties, old enough to realize what angels soon discovered when they became human: that there was evil in the world.

“I’m glad this is it,” he said to Joey. “Things have been weird lately. Lots of messes to clean up. This is a nice break.”

“I haven’t had to clean up any messes,” Joey admitted.

“How long have you been in the corps?”

“Two months,” answered Joey. “Messes. You mean like demon possessions and stuff?”

“That and a rash of first gens with extreme breakdowns. Pretty much every first gen has a meltdown when they realize they can’t go back to the Other Side anymore and are stuck in the human world. But lately things have been weird.” Not to mention Scott getting killed. First time for everything. He shook his head. “A lot of guides are overwhelmed. I’m the only one allowed to work freelance, but at this point, I need a clone.”