She seized his thick wrist in a tight grip, held it away from her. “Don’t,” she said tightly. “Don’t touch me. Don’t test me, or I’m going to screw the consequences and move heaven and earth to see you thrown in the cells.”
“I have no doubt you could.” A beat. “Parker.”
The way he said her name sent a ripple of heat through her insides. Her chest, her belly.
Between her legs.
Her grip tightened. The tendons and muscle beneath her fingers flexed; so much corded strength.
He raised his other hand. Slowly, making no effort to disengage from her grasp, giving her every opportunity to dodge him, the tips of his fingers touched her cheek.
Callused. Roughened. Gentler than she expected. They burned a path down the line of her face. Across her jaw.
“Relax,” he said. Ordered, more like. His tone didn’t leave room to compromise. “I’m not your enemy.”
“You’re a witch,” she scoffed, but she couldn’t pull away. Couldn’t look away from the heat in his gaze. “Don’t patronize me, Mr. Wells.”
“Yeah, I’m a witch.” The rough edges of his fingers grazed her lower lip. “So why haven’t you thrown me out yet?”
Because she wasn’t positive she had the clout. Because she wasn’t sure that the rest of her Mission was prepared for the political storm that would follow.
Her eyes narrowed as his fingertips traced the line of her throat. “You lie to me, Mr. Wells. You make a habit of it. I don’t like liars. I don’t like
witches
.” He skimmed under her jaw, as if he were seeing her through his touch. Memorizing the feel of her skin.
His other hand remained locked in hers, rock steady. Completely at ease.
His smile pulled one side of his sculpted mouth higher. Sexy. And too damned smug.
When he reversed the position of her hand and his, it twisted so fast Parker couldn’t react. Suddenly, her wrist flexed in his fingers, shackled in an unbreakable grip, and his other hand circled her throat.
Not like he had last night. Not in anger, or in a bid to hold her still. This was slow, deliberate. A symbol, she thought wildly, a point. But what? Why?
Her heart pounded. Why did the feel of his palm over her pulse send her body into meltdown?
“Only I noticed,” he said, lowering his face so that his breath wafted hot against her temple, “this thing that happens when I’m near you.” He inhaled deeply, which slid his chest against hers. Warm and hard and male. And
bare
.
She shuddered, caught in his spell.
Trapped by his assault.
“You’re wearing that perfume again. Do you know what that does to me?” His words should have made her snort in mockery of his arrogance.
But she couldn’t force it out of her too-dry throat. Instead, she gasped.
“When you’re turned on”—his mouth lowered to her ear, lips brushing her sensitive skin—“your scent changes. Subtle. Real subtle.”
It should have turned her
off
. It should have sent her into convulsions of laughter. It should have . . . Oh, God, it should have made her cringe.
Instead, as if he touched a flame to her body, need swamped her. Wild. Sexy.
She wasn’t any of those.
But he made her want to try.
Parker closed her eyes as his tongue darted out against the overly sensitive shell of her ear; a flick, a taste. She nearly jolted out of her skin.
As he leaned back, his chuckle filled her senses as deeply as the scent of him; musky and faintly tangy. Woodsy and man and lust.
He let her wrist go with a deliberate slide of his callused fingers against the inner skin of her arm.
Parker swayed as he pulled away.
Her fists clenched. Enough was goddamned enough!
“Sit your butt in that chair,” she said, every word tamped down to an arctic chill, “and stop playing games.”
This time, to her vast relief, he obeyed. Mostly. “No games,” he replied. “Just facts.” As he sat, the leather chair cushion creaked. Absurd counterpoint to his all-too-nonchalant drawl.
“Then give me some more facts,” she retorted. “Real ones. Which of my missionaries are working for you?”
“Me?” He grinned. “You give me too much credit.”
Her fingers twitched. Nearly curled into a fist before she forced them still by her side. “How many of my agents are mine?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then what does Sector Three want with the Mission?”
There. Simon’s expression shifted, an almost imperceptible change. Except to her. Parker didn’t sit. She braced her hands on her desk, met his eyes directly.
Deliberately.
“Why is Kayleigh Lauderdale trying to seize control of Operation Domino?” she pressed.
He raised his fingers to his lower lip, a gesture she was sure he intended to look casual. She didn’t buy it.
“Why is Juliet Carpenter so important to—”
“Are you looking for a funeral,
Director
?” The question came slowly. Lazily. It didn’t match the calculated scrutiny of his gaze.
“What?” Parker frowned. “I’m looking for answers. Answers to questions that are putting
my
people in jeopardy. And if you don’t give them, Agent Wells, I’m holding you for obstruction.”
“Good luck with that.”
There. Another so-casual reminder of his independence flung in her face. Her patience cracked. “I can’t nail you for witchcraft as long as the labs are held by that cheerleader,” she said flatly, “but I damn well can hold you for insubordination. The cells are on my wing.”
His mouth quirked. “I can think of better things to do with a woman bent over a desk like that.”
She straightened so fast that her thighs slammed into the wooden lip. Heat flooded her cheeks. Temper spiked a wrecking ball through whatever control she had left. “Are you asking me to lock you up?”
“And if I was?” His eyes glinted.
Parker stared at him. “I can’t, can I?” But it wasn’t defeat fueling her as she pointed at him. “You’re protected.”
“For now.”
“Fine.” Only one answer to that. “Leave your gun and get out.”
He rose with the same ease with which he did everything else. “Are you firing me, Director?” His smile knowing, he rubbed one hand down his bare chest.
Insufferable, infuriating . . .
spy.
She gritted her teeth. “You’re on the payroll, but I don’t have to schedule you for anything. You’re suspended. Run back to your Sector Three masters and inform them you won’t be spying for them anymore. I’ve had it.”
“You sure you want to do that?”
Now? Oh, yeah. “Bring them on, Mr. Wells.” She may not have much choice in regards to the slow infiltration of her own people; she may not be able to handle Sector Three directly, but she’d draw the line somewhere.
Somehow.
His smile twitched higher, a deeper curve echoed in his eyes. “You impress me.” His eyes glinted. “Director.”
Parker’s fingers twitched. So close. So close to a concussion, and he didn’t even know it. Forcing herself to remain still, to glare icily at his back as he sauntered for the door, she said nothing.
Until she realized her gaze pinned to the middle of his broad, defined back. His very
bare
back.
The man was going to walk out of her office half naked. Bare-chested, smiling like a lunatic.
For God’s sake, was he trying to ruin her? Every agent on that floor would see him leave her office like that. There’d be rumors, speculation.
Another damned hole to climb out of.
She gritted her teeth so hard that the noise filled her ears. “Try not to go through the main areas.”
“Sorry.” He tossed her off a salute that couldn’t have spelled
too bad
more clearly if he’d said it aloud. “Only one way to leave. See you.” That pause, that grating halt before he dug in with a final drawled “
Director
.”
As the door clicked shut behind him, Parker seized the first thing that came to hand and pitched it.
Pens clattered against the door, rained to the ground. The container glanced off the panel, leaving a dent and bending the thin metal.
It bounced back across the floor.
Silence descended. Silence, and the ragged edge of shame as she realized she’d let the bastard do it again. As the blood hummed in her ears, Parker stared at the mess.
This wouldn’t do. Not as a Mission director, not as Parker Adams.
She took a deep breath. Reached for her comm.
Jonas answered within seconds. “Ready to go, Director?”
She shook her head. “Almost. I want a trace on Simon Wells’s comm at all times.”
Silence filled the line for a long moment. Then, slowly, “Ma’am? You what?”
“Crack his comm frequency, Mr. Stone.” Parker sank back into her chair, fingers tapping on the desk as she glared at the door.
And the memory of the bare, muscled chest that had filled it.
“I want to know who he talks to, for how long, about what. I want every message transcribed, am I clear?”
Jonas cleared his throat. “Sure, Director. I’ll, uh. I’ll get right on that. If you hang on, I can tell you where he is now.”
A muscle in her temple throbbed. “I know where he is right now, Mr. Stone.” In the middle of her operations floor, drawing too damned much speculation. “Just keep me posted on anything he does out of the ordinary.”
“Right, then.”
“Good. I’m headed out to meet your informant now. I’ll be in touch.”
“I’ll have your list compiled when you get back.”
She disconnected, set the comm on the desk, and stared at it while she mulled her orders in her mind.
Impetuous? Yes. She couldn’t argue that.
But he was hiding more than she could allow. Suspending him, removing him from the Mission offices would either put a hole in his espionage plans or free him to do whatever else Sector Three might want him to do. If the former, score one for Mission Director Adams.
If the latter, then Jonas would be able to track him. And she could gain more information than she currently had.
One way or another, she’d draw his secrets out.
Until then, she had an informant to meet.
S
he’d suspended him. Demanded his gun and kicked him to the curb.
Surprising as hell. And too much fun to worry about the consequences of it. He didn’t even bother reporting the sentence to Kayleigh; what did it matter? She’d made it clear she had other eyes and ears in the Mission.
Eyes and ears he’d have to ferret out, eventually.
Simon knew he should be less obnoxious, but watching Parker turn into a twitching mass of nerves with every calculated touch made him feel human in ways nothing else could.
Which was as much a problem as anything else.
Feeling human was the last thing he needed to do.
The drive along the New Seattle byway gave him plenty of opportunity to consider his options. Suspension wouldn’t fly for long. Sector Three wouldn’t allow it, and Parker was going to hate that.
He couldn’t blame her. Nadia Parrish’s ill-conceived plans had shoved too much of Sector Three onto her turf.
And Director Lauderdale wasn’t giving up the ground he’d already gained. Not without a fight.
The conspiracy—because it was exactly that—would only get worse with time. If it hadn’t already. Two months of closed-door meetings had shifted the balance of power subtly in the wrong direction. Kayleigh didn’t know half of it, but she’d learn what he only suspected.
He didn’t envy her when she did.
Simon leaned against the sodden brick wall outside the lower-street diner, one foot planted on the rough surface. High above, too far to get more than funneled echoes, thunder boomed and clashed.
The storm rolled in only an hour or so ago. If summer patterns held, it’d stay for another few hours and dissipate into a fogged mist. Which would settle into the depths of the city, infiltrate the streets, and turn them into humid pits.
While the upper echelons cooled off with whatever breeze ghosted along at those heights, these poor bastards trapped below the sec-lines would swelter in a heat made of damp and rot.
It didn’t get
hot
in New Seattle. Not really. Some days were warmer than others during the summer months, but the sun didn’t reach far enough to heat the streets. It just got sticky and wet. Skin-clinging, sweat-gathering, pore-saturating wet. Exactly the kind of weather that turned a man lethargic and slow.
Simon scraped his forearm across his forehead, grimacing as it came away damp with sweat. The rain didn’t fall in straight sheets. It hit the upper streets first, pooled and gathered in gutters designed to siphon the puddles away. It slid down buildings like the one he leaned on, fell like streams from gouts overhead.
Whole different worlds. Of course, he couldn’t judge. He’d spent most of his life down here, and even he had to admit he preferred the open spaces topside.
Too bad the walls surrounding the whole city still made it feel like the largest mousetrap in the world.
Simon checked his watch. It’d been exactly twenty minutes since the last missionary had left the diner. Seth Miles, recognizable everywhere by his usual fedora, didn’t see him around the corner. Simon made sure of that. The kid was a fine missionary. One of the good ones.
Exactly the kind of guy who’d try and interfere with Simon’s objective.
Not that he could blame Miles for it. Missionaries were sworn to go after witches, not other missionaries.
Of course, like Simon, Jonathan Fisher wasn’t just a missionary. He’d recognized the name on the list this time. Part of Simon’s own generation. His own rapidly disappearing generation.
He blew out a breath, scraping his sweat-damp hair back from his forehead.
Now or never.
He ignored the front entry, following the alley back around the building. The neighboring structures sat close enough to give the alley a three-foot span, cramped together so tightly that he had to turn sideways as wall-mounted pipes narrowed his passage. He stepped over piles of refuse, the forgotten remains of rotting garbage and discarded crates. Algae and black moss clung to everything, climbed up the base of the building to spread slimy green fingers through pitted and corroded brick. The smell permeated everything—decomposition blended with the festering miasma of old cooking oil and worse.
The diner, as far as Simon could recall, hadn’t always been a place that served food. Or what passed for food for those prices. The building had remained untouched for years, probably hosted more than just squatters in its time. It had picked up a great deal more of New Seattle’s charm than was strictly
charming,
but it had somehow turned into one of those places where people went to eat, waste time, and have a pint of bathtub beer.
The alley opened into a wider square. The smell seared through his nose, pungent fingers of decaying moss and burning oil. Black clung to the edges of the diner façade, spread out from the kitchen door as if it had long ago caught on fire and nobody had bothered to scrape the soot off.
Simon approached the entrance, shoving his hands into his pockets. Jonathan wasn’t exactly a friend, but they knew each other well enough. And they sure as hell both knew the score. If Simon asked, the man would follow him. Just out into this alley, which was all the privacy Simon needed to—
Somebody was coming.
His senses picked it up seconds before the door flew open, slammed back into a discarded pile of bottle-filled crates, sending glass ricocheting into the wall. A man staggered through, tripped over the jagged lip where building merged with asphalt. Hacking, choking, his arms flailed as his legs gave out from under him.
Cursing, Simon looped an arm around Jonathan Fisher’s stocky chest. Blood speckled the air, red-tinged foam spattered Simon’s arm as he braced the man’s body weight against his own.
The smell of iron undercut the choking stench of oil and refuse, and a seismic roll of magic power jammed into the narrow alley around them.
“Son of a bitch,” Jonathan gasped. He clung to Simon’s arms, flecks of foam spraying.
Not good.
Simon’s magical gift wasn’t among the combat-ready. Useful as a rule, it nevertheless couldn’t compare to the more practical applications of fire-calling, lightning-wielding, even the telekinetic abilities that had ripped Carver apart.
Jonathan’s was like Simon’s. A kind of bio-magical control over his own body. Internal; useful without being obvious. The kind of thing a good missionary could use to keep himself at the top of his game.
Until it broke down.
“Hey, buddy,” Simon offered quietly.
“Simon.” Jonathan didn’t straighten. As his body trembled in Simon’s arms, tremors rippling under his skin, he coughed. Choked on the effort and expectorated a sticky, crimson mass to the broken pavement at their feet.
Simon’s grip tightened. “Losing it, huh?”
The missionary didn’t have to say anything. It was obvious. Whatever degeneration affected the Salem subjects, it hit fast and it hit hard.
A goddamned bang.
“Yeah, you and everyone else,” he said grimly. “I got you, Fisher. Don’t struggle.” Simon braced his shoulder under Jonathan’s, leveraged him to the pavement and away from the kitchen exit. Carefully, he wiped the rim of pink foam from the witch’s lips with his sleeve.
No one followed him. The bundle of sensory nodes in his awareness remained gathered in the diner proper, only a couple remaining in what he assumed was the kitchen. He’d know if someone detached from the group.
It’d give him time to see to a man who’d never been his friend but who shared a part of Simon’s past. And his future.
Jonathan deserved better than to go like this.
The man gasped for air as it rattled through his lungs, his eyes wide and staring. Not quite sightless. Aware enough that as Simon bent over him, Jonathan reached up and grabbed his shoulder in a grip that bit.
Simon couldn’t be sure, but as waves of power pressed outward, rippling from the dying man’s skin, he guessed the overkill was wearing down his body. Eating at it to fuel its own power surge.
Shutting him down.
“Damn,” Simon muttered. “Fisher, you look like hell.”
“Feel it,” he croaked. But his mouth twisted, a caricature of a smile. “No . . .” He coughed, hard enough to force bloody saliva from his throat. “No coincidence, right? You. Here.”
“No coincidence.”
Jonathan’s laugh died in a choking spasm.
Grimacing, Simon covered the man’s hand on his shoulder and waited for the worst to pass.
“Knew about Hannah. Peter and . . . rest. Too late for them. You . . . you, too?” Jonathan demanded, trying to raise his head.
Simon met the man’s eyes, brown and shimmering in a bottomless well of pain and, somewhere in there, recognition. He saw himself in Fisher’s eyes.
A laughable concept, if it weren’t too close to the truth.
“Me, too,” Simon agreed. “Carver bit it last night.”
“Too soon.” Even on the verge of implosion, the man didn’t give up.
Simon could have liked him. If . . . well, if everything had been different. “Yeah. Hannah and Carver didn’t last nearly as long. We hold the dubious distinction of lasting the longest.”
Fisher grunted, scorn and—not that Simon could blame him—anger.
Simon covered his hand with his own. “You’re on the list, buddy. You want me to leave you alone?”
He wouldn’t, but what did it cost him to let Fisher have a say in his own end? One way or another, he’d die. Either at Simon’s hand or at the end of a long, bloody breakdown.
Simon had only made it down here in time for this by pure luck. How many other Salem witches were suffering like this? Like Carver?
Simon couldn’t be everywhere.
The man didn’t disappoint him. Letting his head fall back to the spongelike growth infesting the uneven asphalt, Fisher took a deep, rattling breath.
“Nah,” he managed hoarsely. Lightly, even. “End it clean, while you . . . while you can. Took forever to get . . . rid of Miles. Good kid.”
“Seems like it.”
He frowned. “Simon, this won’t end . . . You just—” Phlegm caught in his throat. Gargled.
“Easy—”
“Be careful,” Jonathan gasped out. He closed his eyes, fingers twisting in Simon’s wet shirt. Stretched the already abused fabric. “They all know . . . the missionaries, they . . . the new ones. They’re not like—Agh!” Power shuddered against Simon’s skin.
Fluctuated, just like the remaining dregs of Fisher’s life.
Simon stared down at him, at the ruined shell of what had once been a man just like him. Jonathan’s flesh mottled, moving as if fingers tried to work themselves out. Worms of motions, writhing. Twisting.
His mouth gaped as he choked, teeth bloody.
“I know,” Simon said quietly, answer to the unspoken threat. He smiled ruefully. “Everything’s going to be okay. I won’t be that far behind you.”
“Wells—”
Simon caught his free hand, held it as the man struggled.
“Listen to me,” he gasped, pulling on his shirt. “It’s . . . it’s different. Changed. No one’s working alone.” He spoke quickly, every word forced through mucus and blood. “Watch . . . your back, man. Something’s not . . . It’s all sideways.”
Simon unholstered his gun, the one he didn’t bother leaving behind when Parker suspended him. Jonathan’s eyes flared, and Simon’s gut twisted in shared horror and sympathy as he realized the whites were stained pink. A film of blood.
Degeneration
wasn’t nearly strong enough a description for this hell.
“I’ll be careful,” he promised and pressed the muzzle to the missionary’s forehead. “Ready?”
“
Do it.
”
His heart slowed. Evened. “Go with God.”
Red tears leaked from the corner of Jonathan’s eyes, even as he croaked a bitter laugh.
God had nothing to do with this.
As the gunshot cracked like thunder in the small alley, ricocheted from wall to wall and filled the near silence with echoes, Jonathan Fisher’s laughter stopped. Blood and gray matter splattered the pavement. He jerked once, a full-body shudder, and Simon flinched as the man’s power erupted on a wave of red and pink; like a sonic boom.
Harmless, if uncomfortable. It blew through him, formless as the wind, and faded before Simon could do more than brace himself. It left the filthy alley, left the world for all Simon knew. Left him, bloody and raw with emotions he couldn’t stop to give voice to, bent over the corpse of a man whose end would mirror his own.
He closed his eyes, holstered his weapon without needing to look, and took a deep, blood-saturated breath of rotten air and humid temperatures.
All the Salem witches knew what was coming. They all carried the same memories, the same so-called childhood. The cells, the needles, the drugs. None of it had ever brought them anything but a short life and a single opportunity to make it worthwhile.
Killers and spies for Sector Three might have been enough for some. It wasn’t for Fisher.
And it wasn’t for Simon.
Matilda Lauderdale had wanted something else for him. Something she’d refused to say, even when he’d stood over her dying body, demanding answers.
Now more than ever, he had to find out what. Before it was too late for him, too.
With steady fingers, Simon unclipped his comm, flicked open the screen. A few keystrokes put a check by Fisher’s name.
Done.
By habit, he scrolled through the list one more time, double-checking every entry. As it came to the end, he stilled.
The list had expanded by one.
P. Adams.
“Motherfucker.”
The whole game had changed.
T
estament Park wasn’t the only park in all of New Seattle. It remained the only one cultivated by the city, however—marked by a large, memorial fountain commemorating the rebirth of a city torn apart by Armageddon, placed squarely at the front gate so all the passing cars could marvel.
Or, as the case typically was, ignore it. Even Parker had stopped seeing the swatch of green as she passed it every day for work.
Only one kind of plant really did well in the mostly cloudy environment. Tough evergreens, scrublike bushes, anything that thrived in lots of rain and no real sun. The civic sector—the governing offices that took up the third side of the Holy Order quadplex—had decided that tithes should be set aside for the park.