Two full seconds of perfect silence were followed by a thump, a scream, three gunshots in quick succession—not from my gun—and then pandemonium.
At the sound of the thump, I hit the ground. Now, as the crash of people running into furniture and a cacophony of angry and panicked voices filled the air, I curled in the fetal position and covered my head, praying nothing vital got stepped on.
"Whore!"
"Murderer!"
"Asshole!"
"How dare you!"
Insults and accusations were hurled like darts through the darkness.
Why had I told Moose to cut the lights? Why had I asked for everyone to be assembled? At Benny's? In the freaking dark, creepy ass basement? Why did anyone go along with this? It was obviously the literal worst plan ever.
One of them made a break for it. There was a sound of heavy footsteps thudding fast against the wooden stairs. As if it were a signal, the rest of them followed, pushing and shouting as they went.
With all the noise by the stairs and none of it close by, I dared to pull out my phone and turn on the flashlight. One of the cheap particleboard end tables had been knocked over. An old brass lamp lay on the floor. Two of the couches were now catywhompus. Holding on to the edge of the ping-pong table, I pulled myself to my feet and plodded over to the stairs. The voices were growing ever more distant. Probably I should hurry.
With a massive force of will, I managed to jog up to the top and follow the noise through the house to the front door. Up here, dim sunlight filled the rooms. True Michigan spring had finally decided to assert itself and the day remained gray and leaden as if night had barely surrendered its hold.
The door was open and Kohaku was dragging his wife down the front steps, shouting at her to hurry.
Kiki was fast on their heels, flying through the air, and Marcie raced along behind. The rest of the group struggled to keep up. Fennsa Gampeg's short legs stumped along mightily as she brought up the rear.
"Fools!" she screamed. "We need to kill her! She'll turn us over to The Organization!"
"Not. If. We. Get. Out. Of. Here." Kohaku yanked on Reiko's arm with each word.
She fought him the whole way. "I'm not going anywhere with you, you lying, cheating, piece of shit."
I stepped onto the porch just in time to see Moose come around the end of the house. He drew up short and watched the ridiculous gang of humans, demons, et al stand in the driveway and argue with each other.
After a few more seconds, a red-faced, trembling Joseph Benny screamed, "You're fired! All of you!"
His wife threw back her head and cackled. She jogged over to the Rubicon and jumped into the driver's seat.
"Hey! No!" Moose lurched in the direction of the driveway and I ran to hold him back. They were insane and at least one of them had a gun. I managed to latch onto his wrist with both hands and slow him down by holding on tight and digging my heels in.
The others heard the car start, and as one, turned to look.
Price leaped out of the bushes like one of the paparazzi photographers. "No! Not that car!"
Moose stopped so fast I fell on my butt in the dirt.
But the officer's words had the opposite effect on the criminals. They scrambled like so many roaches, scuttling away from the light, fighting and clawing at each other to get inside the car. With Fenssa hanging off the back bumper and Benny's legs still dangling out the back door, Nadine Benny threw the gearshift into drive and hit the gas. There was a screech of rubber on pavement and a puff of smoke.
Price threw himself in front of the car. "No! No, don't do this!"
But when the tires finally gripped, the car fishtailed, throwing him into the grass. The Jeep lurched forward. There was a crackle of static and a wind so fierce it pressed me down against the pavement. Thunder rattled the earth and a streak of lightning appeared. But rather than coming down from above, it burst upward from the space directly in front of the car.
The whole universe seemed to tilt sideways for a moment and then the car was sucked into the light. Another rolling boom left my ears ringing and then the light was gone, along with Moose's Jeep and all of its occupants. Joseph Benny's left shoe lay on the driveway with his foot still inside of it.
Moose plopped down onto the concrete beside me.
Price screamed and shook his fists in the air. While Moose and I watched in astonishment, he lay down on his belly and pounded the ground like a toddler.
"What the hell happened?" Moose asked softly.
The first few fat drops of rain fell from the swollen clouds. "They all did it," I mumbled.
"'scuse me?"
I looked up at him. "They all did it. All of them. Nadine killed the siren because Benny—"
"You!" Price pointed a trembling finger at me. "You did this." He struggled to his feet.
I might not be the brightest bulb in the chandelier, but I knew enough to get up off my ass. Moose followed suit, so we were both on our feet when Price came marching across the driveway toward us.
"This is all your fault. You couldn't just come in and see the obvious and sign off on putting that goddammed destructive mutant in prison where he should be." He jabbed me in the chest with his finger.
I stumbled backward, not certain how much trouble I'd get in for brawling with a ranking officer from The Organization.
"No!" He went on. "You had to get up on some kind of self righteous, lovey dovey, holier than though, high horse as if you actually know something about anything when all you are is a—"
Before I found out what he thought I was, a whole battalion of black cars with black tinted windows came tearing up the driveway.
Price took off running across the lawn. The lead car turned hard left into the grass and clipped him, knocking him on his ass for the second time in five minutes. This time, he stayed down, but he didn't stop screaming.
I had to give it to the lunatic. He could take a hit.
A dozen officers in black suits burst out of the other vehicles and converged on him. Once he was face down and cuffed, the driver's side door of the lead car opened. An umbrella emerged first, a pretty red one with little yellow daisies on it. Then Hawwa stepped out. She was so tiny, she could barely see over the top of the car to make eye contact with me.
Nick climbed out of the passenger side. Again, he was barefoot in gray pants and a white tee shirt. Again, he had crystal cuffs on his wrists. A random question about what The Organization did with all his clothes bounced through my skull, which seemed like one big empty space at that moment.
The rain fell faster, great cold drops of water that plastered Nick's hair to his head and his shirt to his chest. He jogged across the lawn toward me, not sparing a glance for Price, who was still bellowing.
"He's unnatural! It's illegal! He can't be allowed to roam free. It'll be the apocalypse. He'll breed with her. This is how the antichrist comes! Don't you see? Can't you see? Why don't you see?" Finally, he faded into gasping sobs.
Nick stopped a few feet away from us.
"They confessed."
"I know. Mx. Landry had you bugged. We heard everything."
I wanted to be mad, but couldn't muster up that much negative emotion. Mostly, I was evenly split between being glad to be alive and ecstatic to see Nick free and looking healthy. "You're okay?"
"I'm fine." He looked over Moose's injuries. "Let me help."
"I don't need—"
"Please, let me help," he said again, and something about his tone made me realize he wasn't asking for Moose's sake.
He's hungry, I realized.
I shivered in the freezing cold rain, but not really because of the rain.
Moose nodded. "Sure, boss."
Nick met my eye. Without looking away, he took the first cuff off and handed it to me. It felt warm and surprisingly light, more like thin plastic than crystal. He unlatched the second, and I shivered again, suddenly no longer cold.
He turned his attention to Moose, and reached up to brush his fingertips over the bump on Moose's head, over his swollen eyes, down the sides of his face, and everywhere he touched, the wounds vanished.
"I'll just pretend I didn't see that."
We all turned to the tall, thin woman who approached. She walked through the rain as if in a bubble, her dark curls untouched, her black suit dry. Her no-nonsense square heels clicked against the pavement. "I'm going to have more than enough paperwork to deal with without handling a charge of unauthorized feeding." She held out her hand to me. "Morgan LeFay."
On autopilot, I shook hands with her. "Aurthur's sister?"
The corner of her mouth twitched. "Oh, you have to be Agent Nowicki."
"Yeah, that's me." Rain water trickled down my back and between my breasts. My teeth were starting to chatter from the cold. I wished she'd bring me into her bubble of dryness.
"Joseph Benny has financed more criminal operations around the world than any other single individual. We've been trying to nail him for years and you're the one who did it. You have our gratitude."
"But..." I looked to the spot where I'd last seen the car and then back to her. "Where is he?"
"Remember when he told you that Aglaope complained about an interdimensional portal in her closet?" Nick asked.
I almost forgot what we were talking about when I looked into his eyes. "Yeah. I remember."
"Benny had been playing with forces that everyone, and I mean everyone, is strictly forbidden from playing with," Morgan LeFay said.
Nick pushed his wet hair back from his face.
I considered peeling my shirt off.
"Price had it out for me," he said. "He's been determined to lock me up for a very long time, and this seemed like his perfect chance. When it started to look like the two of you might not let that happen, he planted one of Benny's spells on the Jeep to get rid of you."
"He tried to send us into another dimension?" Moose asked.
"Into the space between dimensions," LeFay said.
I just watched Nick watching me. The rain ran down his cheeks and dripped from the tip of his nose.
"We'll need you both to make official statements," LeFay said. "Tomorrow is soon enough. Go ahead and take the rest of this day." She reached out and patted my arm with her warm, dry hand. "Well done, agent. If you ever decide to leave The Agency, maybe I have a spot for you. You'd make a fine detective." She nodded in Moose's direction. "You, too."
"I ain't leaving Nick," Moose said.
King Aurthur's tall, skinny sister chuckled softly. "It seems no one ever does."
My eyes were still on Nick and his on me as she walked away.
Moose shuffled his feet and cleared his throat. "Well, uh, I'm going to see if somebody can give me a ride home. Joel's probably half dead with worry by now."
Nick finally looked away from me. He shook hands with Moose. "Thank you, my friend."
I wiped the rain from my eyes. "Who's Joel?"
Moose stared at me like I was an idiot.
"What? I just wondered."
"He's my husband."
"Your... He's..." I looked at Nick. Steam was rising from his shoulders. I lost the thread of my thought.
Moose walked away muttering. "...good detective. I ain't never... foolishness..."
"I didn't know he was married," I told Nick.
"I gathered that. He doesn't talk about his private life much."
The shivers came back, though whether they were fueled by the frigid weather or Nick's proximity, my fear or my hormones or some combination of all that, I wasn't sure. I took a single step toward him and he reached out and pulled me against his chest and held me. His cheek pressed against the top of my head. The heat of crackling electricity zipped over my skin. Steam obscured my vision. "When I heard the gunshots, nothing mattered but getting here to you. You need to understand that I—"
"Nicolai?"
He tensed, groaned, released me, and turned to face his mother.
"Adom is waiting to speak with you."
The muscle in his jaw flexed. "Nowicki is going to freeze to death out here. We need to take her home."
Her gaze fell on me and—was that pity I saw? What the hell?
"Of course, you must be cold," she said. "I'll arrange for one of the officers to take you home. Come." She strolled back to the car as if there wasn't the slightest doubt we'd follow.
I looked up at Nick.
He shook his head. "I need to talk to Adom."
"Right, sure. No problem."
He grinned and shook his head. "It's not a rejection, Nowicki. I have business to attend to with my father. I recognize we've got some unfinished business between us as well. I'll not forget it, but when we deal with it, I want to make sure we've got all the time we desire."
Oh my...
He planted a feather-light kiss on the tip of my nose, took the cuffs I was still holding, and turned to follow his mother.