11)

Donovan- Face to face with the demon that stole his heart.

I stared through the glass part of the door at the demon, the demon glared back.

“Roxir, first prince of Ma’shehith, and not one of your fans.” Whispered Gothy.

He slowly turned his head, making eye contact with each of the girls in turn before coming back around to me. He sneered and began to walk up from the remains of the parking lot. Stopping before the doors and still looking at me as he tossed the now thoroughly mangled paper cup neatly into the trash can outside.

Without looking.

“Invite me in.” he whispered in a low, angry, growl.

Yeah, I'm not going to piss this guy off again. Hell, I'll even hold the door open for him, but before I could...

Red stepped up and pulled open the door, but blocked it with her body. “Prince. This is my domain.”

Big nasty stared down at her for a moment, before his face took on what could be called a softer look. Softer for a face full of scales, sharp teeth, and yellow snake eyed horror film evil.

“I don’t want your whole domain Marger...”

“It’s Damia now.” She interrupted as she hip checked the door to keep it open while she crossed her arms. He rolled his eyes.

“Hi Rox!” Gothy waved at him from the counter and tossed her hair back.

The big guy seemed to shutter a bit. “I see you Oglindati, and...the other one?” As he quickly looked away from Gothy to toothy.

Toothy shrugged, “It’s Clarice, and you should probably just call her Linda from here on, using the other name is... bad."

He glanced over to Gothy, or Linda, who was looking all weird and staring off into space, glassy eyed. Yeah, don’t know what that’s all about, but I should probably start thinking about them by their real, or fake, looking at you Damia, names so I don’t call them what I'd named them in my head. Damia, Linda, Clarice, and... holy fuck why is he looking at me again.

He looked back at Linda, then back at me, and grinned. What was that all about?

“I greet you...Damia, first princess of Perdition and petition to enter your domain so that I may feast on your riches." he leered down at her. Yeah, let’s see what you girls do when he brings it.

Toothy...Clarice began to step up, one hand reaching up to the big ass sword on her back, Damia swept a hand back to stop her.

“...and if I say no?”

He huffed, he puffed, and then he took a step forward, one hand clenched and rising up to strike as she stared him down.

“BE NICE.”

Everyone but Damia looked over to Linda as she spoke with an even flatter, duller voice, sounding like it was coming from somewhere deep down and very far way away. A thin slit, lit up from within had opened up along her forehead while her eyes stared sightlessly at the floor. The ribbons wrapped around her arms and legs seemed to grow thicker and pulsed as they began to squirm around her limbs, almost rising free.

“Shit, those things are a part of her.” I barely whispered the words, but her eyes turned up with a sad look on her face even as something bulged out and moved under the skin on her forehead.

Roxir, first prince of whatever, gave Linda a long hard look before turning to where Damia stood in front of him. Then he stepped back. “Then of course I will respect your claim."

Linda clapped her hands, suddenly back to normal, well normal for whatever the hell she was. “Oh, good. Everyone is friends again”

Damia shot her a worried but grateful look. “Yes, all friends here. You are welcome in my domain first prince, help yourself to anything you wish.”

She stood aside, holding the door open as she fanned her hand to the entirety of the store, ending up her hand pointing at me. Big red gave her a smile and a nod as he stepped in.

Great... Now I’m trapped in here with four of them.

Martin- Dealing with a pack of hyperactive imps.

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They were everywhere and into everything.

I know my spell on the store would, so far as I knew, repair, replace and clean up everything they were breaking, eating, and making a mess of, but...it was just so disorderly. I still felt responsible for the store even under these conditions.

Things were knocked off the shelves, ripped open, and trampled underfoot, some were even in the restroom making splashing noises, which I did not believe were coming from the sink

At first, I just let them rampage until I simply could not stand it any longer. I tried yelling at them, waving my arms, even calmly warning them not to eat the dishwasher pods, a bit too late on that one, and now I have foamy vomit being spewed about. The little creatures would look up at my yells at first but more and more they just ignored me to look over at Tosser. Who ever so carefully kept his eyes averted from me.

It almost seemed like there were a lot more of them than just the eight I had counted earlier.

I finally ignored the chaos and just headed over to stand a few feet away from Tosser with my arms crossed until he looked vaguely over in my direction "We obey... the master."

Oh, you little…

“Fine, your master commands you all to calm down.”

The store went still, Tosser, then the other eight one by one gathered around me and dropped to their knees, with a firm, group spoken, "We obey the master."

Well, at least I know the others can speak.

“Great. One, you may take what you need, but don't open things up just to see what is inside. Or otherwise make a mess."

I gave them all a look, they stared back blankly. Wonderful...

"Two, if you need to drink you can turn on the tap in the sink." I walked over to show them said sink. Then got a bottle of water from the cooler, twisted it open, and handed it over to the smallest of the three females. "Or get a bottle from the fridge."

The mess they had made began to melt away, turn to ash, or just thin out, which made them stir uneasily until Tosser let out a bark and pointed at me.

I snagged a loaf of Amazing bread off the shelf along with a few sticks of Thin Tims. "This is bread which you can eat for now, along with this jerky, nothing else for the moment especially anything with sugar."

“I’m guessing I also shouldn't get you wet or feed you after midnight either.”

I turned to the ringleader and pointed to the office. “With me”

Heading in I hesitated but finally sat down in Ali’s formally battered old chair and noticed the open desk drawer.

“There was a good sized mana stone in there and I would like it back.”

Tosser let out an angry bark out of the open door of the office. A moment later a particularly short and nearly fat imp reluctantly shuffled up to the doorway. Tosser held his hand out for a moment before the other one slowly let the stone to fall from its mouth into his leader's palm.

Tosser proudly presented the gooey, dripping thing to me. I wordlessly pulled the drawer further open and pointed to it, giving him the hint to deposit it within.

“Now you and I are going to Conversation.”

Cassy- On the road.

A quick search on Winterborn.mib, don't bother you need a sim card with a micro-lithoglyph to access that domain, showed that Tarnell Riggs had gotten a private investigators license but had no listed office. He did have the deed to a building just outside of New Orleans that had been bought in his name by the Graystock holding company. Which in turn was owned by another company, and another, and another, until it finally came back around to the last in the chain in turn being owned by Graystock itself.

My boss shook her head sadly as I reported all of that to her. "Someone is making the extra effort to cover their trail. However there is no way I am going anywhere near New Orleans, those freaks would panic and complain for weeks if I even looked their way.”

“Well that’s convenient, I wasn’t planning on inviting you.”

She reached out to pat me on the shoulder, well, reached up that is. “I’d love to watch you handle this on your own, but I need to keep an eye on things here, but you should take some backup.”

“Johanson?”

“Naw, he's got wet undies and you don't want to be stuck with him in a car since he smells like a swamp. Take Kinkade.'

“You want me to take a member of the Pact to New Orleans? The granddaughter of Maybelline "I go after the entire bloodline when a vampire pisses me off' Kinkade on a road trip to the edge of the Lafitte's personal fiefdom because you're worried they might freak out because of you.'

She smirked "Yep. That way if they complain about her lurking around their territory, it won’t be my problem.”

Right, that makes sense, for a Thibedeau.

I looked over to the end of the lot to inform Kinkade that she had been drafted. Then took my time walking over to give enough time to finish writing her phone number on a blushing Johanson’s arm and return his pen.

“Kinkade, you’re with me. Johanson, call for a replacement to stand guard on our boss, then go home and take a shower.”

The Pact witch glared at me. "I don't take orders from you.”

Johanson whispered something about “I do” and looked sadly at his phone for some reason before wandering over to Natalie.

“The Thibedeau is working on getting her nephew back, which I think you want to happen. If you think you can help her, feel free to stick around as a convenient target for her to harass when she gets frustrated. Or you can come with me to look into who is responsible for this mess.'

She looked over at my boss, then called “Shotgun” and beat me to the car. Clever girl.

The Bureau provides special dealer plates which start and end with the same number as a code to let both state and local police know not to mess with our unmarked cars. Having state police painted all over them tends to put people on guard and ask awkward questions.

The car is black, of course, a Helios Pheaton SUV. Standard for the Bureau, and only available to the Arcane. Even then the dwarves at Helios will only lease the cars out and insist as part of the lease that they are the only ones that service, repair, and even tow their vehicles. They haul them off personally even when they get completely wreaked to recover the metal.

I don't think they're worried about anyone discovering their secrets, they just hate people tampering with their work. They even complained when I clipped an air freshener onto a vent.

I fired up the engine and typed in the address on the GPS. As the air began to blow Kinkade took note of the scent “Is that real lavender?”

"My grandma grows it in her greenhouse, and gets just enough oil for the family."

“Nice, so where are we going?”

As we drove I explained the looping holding company and the building they bought for the possible vampire Tarnell Riggs.

“So, Trap?”

I nodded “Trap, decoy, scapegoat. Whatever it is, it’s still a lead, and if it is a trap.” I turned to give her a Natalie Thibedeau grin. “I got a Pact trained Wildax mage to back me up.”

"Yeah, yeah, eyes on the road Blondie. You know only the Families add the ax at the end, it sounds unbelievably pretentious from someone without one of their names. From them, it's expectantly pretentious.”

I shrugged "It's how I was taught at the institute, besides they look down on anyone who doesn't use it and we both know they’re the ones the Bureau really works for.”

She gave me a grunt in reply and we finished the trip in silence until the GPS announced we had reached our destination.