Heart and Soul by Jackie May (reading list .TXT) 📗

eyes narrow in thought. Whatever he’s about to preach, it apparently requires his wise mentor face. “That’s what loyalty buys you.”

My claws extend. Heat flashes through my face. The sounds of munching popcorn intensifies. “I am loyal to the underworld. King Paul was practicing illegal necromancy when I busted him.”

“But you didn’t know that until after. You’d already made your choice.”

“To stop a serial killer!”

“Hey, did I fire you? Everything turned out okay in the end. I’m just saying, you’re damn lucky it did.”

“Well, I don’t feel lucky. I feel like the black sheep just for doing my job. Brenner was going—”

“Don’t!” Now Nick raises both pointer fingers. Darla scoots her chair forward, munching loudly. “Don’t you dare say that name. I don’t ever want to hear that name again. I got you in one ear with ‘Brenner found this and Brenner found that.’ I got Oliver Harrington in the other ear with ‘Brenner knows this and Brenner knows that.’ And I got Agent Hillerman with her entire foot”—he makes an uppercut punch to the air—“all the way up my ass with ‘Brenner is this and Brenner is that.’”

“He is what? What the hell did Hillerman say about him?”

He ignores the question. “Do you know what kind of shit hit the fan after Nora found out what Brenner dug up?”

“Don’t give me that. Nora found out from Henry. Brenner had nothing to do with it.”

“I was this close to losing her.”

“Ha! Losing her? Maybe I’m not caught up on the latest tally, Nick, but last I checked, you don’t have, and never will have, any notches on Nora’s bedpost.”

“No, she didn’t!” Darla squeaks through a mouthful.

Yes, I did. And like an idiot, I don’t stop there. “I wonder if you even realize she’s got you under her spell? Talk about a raw deal, Gorgeous—she gets all the control, you get none of that ass.”

Nick seems unfazed, damn him, but his eyes flick to others in the office. I follow his look to see that the fey enforcers are casting annoyed glances at me. The trolls are less subtle. They stare me down with flared nostrils.

Nick speaks in a very patient, nonthreatening tone. “Agent Davies, let me ask you: have you ever actually met Nora Jacobs?”

He knows I haven’t, but I see what he’s doing, and I better play along if I want to continue living. I clear my throat, as if embarrassed, and admit, “No.”

“I see. So, the truth is, you have no clue what the hell you’re talking about.” To the trolls, Nick turns his palms up. The trolls snort dismissively and turn back to their business. The fey enforcers dip their chins in a regal nod, as though justice and dignity have been restored to the office. Nick roasts me with a severe look that says, You’re welcome, but next time, I let them pull your spine out through your mouth.

I lower my voice. “Look, all I meant to ask is, have you made any progress on the revenant case, or not?”

“That’s a big old not. Obviously, things have been a little busy around here.”

“Which is why I should be working the case, and not you.”

“Wrong on both accounts. You can’t work it, because revenants come from sorcerers, and the sorcerer community has banned you for life. And I’m not working it, because Director West wants to oversee this case personally.”

I hang my head. “Director West? Isn’t that a conflict of interest? She won’t go after a sorcerer. The only thing she cares about is protecting their image.”

Nick shoots to his feet, clamps my elbow in a vice grip, and hauls me out of earshot from the others. Leaning in closely, he speaks in a calm but forceful tone that somehow feels more menacing than if he were shouting. “I’m going to do you a favor and spare you from embarrassment—or worse—by letting you in on something that everybody else here already knows. Have you ever wondered why Madison West is so respected by the entire underworld, and especially by the sorcerer community? Think about that for a second. I don’t know if you noticed by now, but sorcerers don’t do law enforcement. It’s blue collar. Beneath them. They’re tycoons, or senators, or dukes and duchesses, all that Old-World bullshit.”

He doesn’t have to tell me. Despite being one of Detroit’s most powerful witches, Elvira Harrington became the most controversial figure of the sorcerer community overnight when she aided me in the case against King Paul. The younger sorcerers think it’s badass—every eligible bachelor wants to court her—but the entirety of the older generation, including her own parents, has banned her from stepping foot on their estates.

“And yet,” Nick continues, “here’s Madison West, Miss High Sorceress, not only working for the Agency, but its director, its champion. And still, she commands total respect from her peers. Why?”

“Because she’s the boss. It’s a position of power.”

“Wrong. It’s because when it came to a choice between the underworld and the only man she ever loved, she chose the underworld. And when I say chose, I mean she had to kill him with her own hands.”

Beyond the gut punch of such a tragic and unthinkable scenario, I feel the sting of failure. As the consummate street roamer and eavesdropper of Detroit, I once considered myself the keeper of all gossip in this city. But I’ve never heard anything about this.

Nick’s shoulders droop, the fire leaving his eyes. Smacking me with that punch line was fun, but he finds no joy in sharing the details. “You should have seen her back then. With him, she was different. Those two…it was the real deal, Shayne, like you could only dream of with Brenner; I don’t care what you think you guys got.

“But it was that same old story—too good to be true. He wanted to be somebody more than he was, and he got in over his head with the wrong people. He hid things from her, and by the time she found out,