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Hunter was with me—he was the only one who’d picked up the phone after the ODP called me to give me the news. A new dead body was found in the Bronx, and it was another case of Crackdown, judging by the two syringes still stuck in the man’s neck. The team took pictures and wrote everything down while Hunter and I did our own inspecting. The syringes were empty, but hopefully some of the drug remained inside them to do some tests. I held a hand in front of my mouth and nose when I kneeled close to the dead man. His black jacket was torn, probably by knives. The tears were too precise. He was lying on his back, head turned east, eyes closed and mouth open. I saw two stab wounds on his torso—one in his gut and one in his heart.
“Wraith,” Hunter said. “Maybe incubi.”
“We’ll know for sure from his blood.” Because right now, the dead guy didn’t look like anything—just a dead guy. “May I?” I asked the man with the camera in his hand, taking pictures of the scene.
“Sure,” he mumbled, then proceeded to move his lens to catch the drops of blood on the asphalt. I reached for a latex glove in my jacket pocket and began to search the dead man’s pockets.
Just a body, I reminded myself, but the smell was incredible. It had my eyes watering within seconds, but I kept on going. I wanted to see everything this guy had on him before the ODP took him to Headquarters. A watch was around his wrist. The ID in the wallet in his back pocket said his name was Miles Douglass, and he was thirty-three. He had some change and some business cards in there, but nothing that would tell us anything about how he’d ended up here.
In his front pockets, there were some crumpled receipts, a toothpick, and some pennies. But in the front pocket of his jacket, there was another card—this one completely red with his blood. I couldn’t see a single letter on there, but that wouldn’t be an issue. The ODP had more than enough means to clean that blood and tell me exactly what was on that card, but I had something even better—my mother’s powders.Onespecifically, which I’d used plenty of times before. It was meant to take any stain from any surface or fabric without doing any damage. I had some in my backpack for emergencies—I ended up with ketchup stains on my shirts most days at lunch—and it literally took three minutes for it to do its magic.
“Look at his hands,” Hunter said, leaning closer to inspect the hands of Miles Douglass. They were torn and bloody, his skin cut deep, the pinkie finger of his left hand almost completely cut off. He’d definitely struggled. “What would a guy need to do to end up like this?” he wondered.
“I don’t know, but he definitely didn’t take the drug willingly.” The syringes were stuck in the side of his neck.
“I doubt anyone would want that thing inside them willingly,” Hunter mumbled.
“It’s a weapon.” Worse than anything anyone else had ever made.
“You got that right. We need to find whoever’s making this asap,” Hunter said and stood up.
“We will. Let’s see what’s on here, first.”
When they woke me up at six a.m., I’d had to go back to Headquarters to get a car, pick Hunter up, and come to the Bronx. That’s where we went while the crew started cleaning up the scene and preparing the body for transportation. The black Sedan was a breeze to drive, and it had more than enough space for me to do anything I wanted in it. Pushing the driver’s seat back, I made myself comfortable and took out the small vials I kept with me in my backpack.
“What’s that?” Hunter said as he watched me put the card on my black trousers, then sprinkle the green powder over it. The blood was long dry, but even if it hadn’t been, the powder wouldn’t let it stain my clothes.
“That’s Yermin. It’s a plant. My mom dries the leaves and turns them to powder. They wipe out any stain from anything.” When I put enough powder on the card—almost the whole vial—I closed my eyes and gave some magic to it so it could start working. My magic wasn’t much and it was lazy, crawling down my arm slowly, just like always.
Except that time when I was being held captive by high fae and thought Dominic was going to die. I’d never felt my magic as strong as it had been that night. It had shocked me, but it had also made me a little bit curious, too. That’s why I’d been trying to practice it every day for the past month, though with no results.
But even that small amount did the trick and activated the Yermin within thirty seconds. The powder took the energy and began to steam a little bit, before it got on with cleansing the blood off that card.
“Man, you’ve got a powder for everything,” Hunter said. “How ‘bout one that makes dicks bigger?”
I almost choked on my own spit. “C’mon, Hunter! Are you serious?”
“Of course, I’m serious. And no—I am notsaying that I’m small, but the envy is real. I swear, you always want bigger.”
I groaned. “No—there are no powders for that.” I wouldn’t know even if there were—I was not a guy.
“Are you sure? Maybe you could ask your mom. She knows her stuff.”
“You want me to ask my mom for a powder to grow your manhood?”
He shrugged. “You can just saydick.”
I laughed. “Yeah, I’m not gonna do that, Hunter. Besides, Lynn seems to like it just the way it is.”
He immediately grinned and his face brightened up. “Oh, yes, she does.”
“It’s working,” I said, when I started to see the black ink printed on the business card, and I could already make out the white letters. Hunter leaned closer, and we both watched as the Yermin consumed every bit of dried blood on the paper, leaving the ink untouched.
“Wow, that’s so cool,” Hunter whispered. “Dave’s Grill.”
“Dave’s Grill,” I said and grabbed my phone to see what it was. Google found it for me right away. “It’s a bar in Hell’s Kitchen.”
“Hell’s Kitchen. So, it’s no use,” Hunter said.
