Ember took a deep breath, nodding once. We both stood in alert silence, absorbing the conversations happening around us, every move the high-level Consulate parapsychs surrounding us made. Her eyes slid to mine and held my answering gaze. Neither of us trusted anyone in this building, that much was clear.
When our car came, we rode to the subterranean offices in silence. Whoever decided to locate the more bureaucratic aspects of the Consulate in the basement knew what they were doing. There was very little I hated more than coming downhere. When the elevator reached level 13B, the doors opened on a waiting room.
Ember let out a long breath as we got out and waved to the admin at the window, who gestured for us to take a seat. We were expected. The temperature in the windowless, wood-paneled waiting room was several degrees too cold for comfort, likely due to all the spirit activity in the passages beneath the city.
Golden oldies played over the fabric-covered speakers affixed to each corner of the room. Ember slumped next to me in an uncomfortable chair that looked to have been manufactured sixty years ago, or yesterday, it was hard to tell. The scowl she’d worn since we left the safe house seemed stuck to her face. I had no real issue with that. We were in an uncomfortable truce.
What was interesting to me was the fact that she sat so close to me. Not just right next to me in her chair, but her shoulder actually bumped against mine, like it had in the laundromat. I could smell her perfume acutely, that black peppercorn note standing out to me more now that I’d determined what it was. Sharp, spicy, alluring.
“Why do you think they decided green shag carpeting went with these orange chairs?” she grumbled, almost under her breath.
I raised an eyebrow. “I’d call them ‘burnt sienna,’ personally.”
The faintest snicker slipped out of her, harsh and sweet at the same time. My low laugh joined her, and before I knew it, we were both chuckling. The admin, who sat behind a thick glass window, looked up. He peered out at us through thick-rimmed glasses, shaking his head as he picked up a hand-held speaker.
“Quiet in the waiting room,” he said.
Ember rolled her eyes. “C’mon, Jackie. It’s not like anyone isouthere.”
The admin’s name tag read “Jonathan.” He shook his head and pointed to the brass placard affixed to the wall next to his window. It read,SILENCE BUT FOR THE SCREAMING. It was my turn to shake my head as “Jackie” went back to typing. Indeed, there were enough Poltergeists on this level of the building to warrant the exception. Likely, there was quite a bit of screaming from time to time. I tried not to think too hard about that, lest I attract them.
I leaned over to whisper to Ember. She tensed for a moment, but then relaxed a measure. “Jackie?”
Ember smiled. “I used to babysit for him when he was little. His mom’s a Seer, lives uptown now in a nice condo. She works here too, I think.”
That was a bit of a surprise. I glanced at Jonathan again. He was young, with dark curly hair, medium-brown skin and an aquiline nose. Couldn’t be more than twenty-three, probably.
“Hard to imagine you as a babysitter,” I joked. I never joked.Why was I joking?I suppressed the urge to cringe.
Ember glanced at me sidelong. “Turns out I had a lot of time on my hands when my house got burned down and all my best friends moved away.”
Jonathan looked up and simply shook his head. She stuck her tongue out at him. He wanted to stick his tongue out, right back at her, I could tell. People liked Ember. That was something I’d noticed over the years, but hadn’t ever processed. She seemed to have trouble in her close relationships, but people who didn’t know her well loved her.
What would that be like?
The question ricocheted through me for long enough to make my stomach churn. Luckily, before I had the chance to do something about it, Lola Carmichael came out of the door next to Jonathan’s window. She was a tall, willowy woman with dark brown skin and eyes that noticed everything about a person. It helped that she was one of the Cognoscenti, an Intuit, if Iwasn’t mistaken—someone whose pattern recognition was preternaturally super-charged.
“Mr. Necroline, Ms. Verona. I can see you now.”
Today, Lola’s hair was combed out in a puffy halo around her head, and she wore a trim suit in emerald green. Ember and I followed her through a long, narrow hallway flanked with heavy paneled doors. Above our heads, the electricity flickered in the chandeliers. When we reached Lola’s office, she pushed the door open and gestured for us to sit in two leather wingback chairs opposite her desk.
As one of the Clerical Directors for the Consulate, Lola worried about the business of parapsychs operating outside the law. The technicalities of things. The business of keeping the Consulate’s extra-legal activities in line with what the Authority would tolerate, or worse, what it wanted from us in the shadows.
She’d helped me out of a jam before, about forty years ago, when I’d wanted to relocate some Necroline charges to the farming districts. They were orphans, and I’d wanted them out of Orphium. The Consulate didn’t like that kind of thing. They preferred to lure children into the life Eryx and I led now. Despite that, Lola helped me get them out.
As she sat, she locked the vast array of screens on her desk with a single button. “Your overlords command you to take charge of the child while we coordinate with the Authority to find their rogue agent.”
Rogue agent, my ass.Mike Fairchild’s actions were perfectly in concert with the Authority and it was a shame Lola felt the need to toe the Consulate line in such a way, but I understood it. We all did. There weren’t any alternatives.
Ember sighed in her chair. “We’re notqualifiedto do childcare.”
Lola Carmichael smiled. It was a devious kind of smile. She was used to games like this. “Ah, yes.” She pushed two clipboards towards us. “I anticipated you might make such a claim.We shall do a reconciliation to determine whether you are fit to take care of the girl.”
Ember groaned, and I let out a huff of frustration. It had been nearly fifteen years since I completed a reconciliation for the Consulate. They were such pains in the ass. Ember snatched the clipboard with her documentation on it off the table. Unlike my paperwork, hers was just a few sheets long. She was here more than I was, after all, to bring in the tithe. She’d probably done one recently.
I glanced at Ember’s list, and she frowned at me. “Keep your eyes on your own paper, Necroline.”
I chuckled again as I picked up the thick stack of paperwork and the pen Lola provided and began to move through it. A reconciliation was an accounting of known work done for the Consulate and… other actions that were unconfirmed. My jaw tightened as I began checking boxes. The years after burning the Maere’s mansion to the ground had been difficult. Getting the Necroline operation back in line after my adoptive uncle’s corruption had been a monstrous project. The blood on my hands would never come clean.
