“Hey Hanna,” Tony said as he, Leonie, and a third man I didn’t recognize but who was clearly with them came through the broken back door. “What are we dealing with this time?”
“Three captives and one dead man.”
“Crime?”
“You been briefed on the recent attack on Monica?” When he nodded, I added, “Cathy here is the agent responsible for arranging the contract for the two men to become demon fodder. The dead man, and the two other men—one of them is unconscious upstairs—were sent by the contractor to kill Cathy and destroy any evidence.”
“At the rate you’re going,” Leonie said, kneeling beside the leashed shooter and quickly cuffing him, “we’re not going to have any room in the cells. You want to release him?”
I did so, and once Cathy was also cuffed released her as well. The minute the gag came off, she started abusing everyone. Tony raised an eyebrow and glanced at me. “You want to re-gag her? I really don’t fancy having to listen to that shit all the way back to the office.”
“How long will it take you to get back? I’ll add a time frame to the spell so you can question her later.”
“Make it an hour. Gives us time to process her. We’ve another team coming in to process the site and gather evidence. You might need to get that leg looked at, too—you’re bleeding all over the floor.”
I glanced down and saw that it was true. “It looks worse than it is.”
“I’ll be the judge of that,” the third man said and motioned me to shift around so he could properly examine the wound.
He placed a medical bag on the desk, then grabbed a pair of scissors from it and sliced my jeans from cuff to knee. After exchanging the scissors for hand sanitizer, he began his examination, his touch light but electric, making my skin prickle and burn.
It was a reaction to the magic he was using rather than his touch, and surprise rippled through me. “You’re an energy healer?”
Energy healing—or energy medicine, as it was more formally called—was a rare and much-sought-after ability that allowed the healing of wounds with a combination of the witch’s empathic, astral, mental, or spiritual energy.
“I am.”
It was absentmindedly said; his attention was more on the wound.
“Why the hell are you working for the Brisbane sub-office?”
He glanced at me, his smile reaching his silvery-blue eyes, a stark contrast to his dark skin and hair. He might be a Sarr witch, but there was human deep in his background somewhere. “I work for the head office rather than the Brissie sub, and was sent up here by your brother with strict instructions to patch you up and keep you going.”
“Seriously?”
“I wouldn’t be up here if I wasn’t. He said you’re obviously having one of those weeks, and he wanted to keep you in one piece so you could attend the twins’ birthday next week.”
I smiled. Big brother was worried about me, in other words. “None of that explains why you’re working for the Society in the first place. Energy healers can practically name their own price, and hospitals, private or not, would pay it.”
His magic was digging deeper into my skin, making my muscles twitch and dance, but he nevertheless looked up again, the smile in his eyes deeper. “If I say I feel it’s my patriotic duty, would you believe me?”
“If it’s the truth, yes.”
He laughed and returned his attention back to my leg. “It is, but the money is also a factor—the Society is extremely generous, and not just payment wise. I’m Gerard, by the way.”
“Hanna, as you obviously know. Why haven’t I seen you about before now?”
He half shrugged. “I’m only one person, and I’m generally sent to the investigations where the casualties are mounting up. Obviously, despite what your brother implied, your previous missions have not resulted in too much bodily damage.”
“Bruising and sprains not being counted as damage, I gather?”
“You gather right.”
“Huh.”
He continued to work, and, after a few minutes, the pain eased to a dull ache. He sat back on his heels with a sigh. His skin, I noticed, had taken on a slightly ashen hue, suggesting healing my wound had taken a lot out of him. Which, by association, meant that it had been worse than I’d presumed.
“Okay, you’ll need to take it easy for the next few hours—no walking about on it too much—to give the healing time to stick, but you should be right after that.”
