26)

Cassy- Standing by a pit in the parking lot of the Party-mart

I watched Kinkade as she scrambled to crawl through the front of the mirror I was holding upright in front of me. This was followed by the sounds of someone else's belonging getting knocked about and dropped to the floor as she varnished from sight.

I guess she was coming to the meeting after all.

Looking around I called out to the other agents standing around on guard duty that I was going to need to steal someone's ride and that I needed keys.

I got a bunch of people looking back and forth at each other and not a single volunteer. “I got a meeting with the Thibedeau Patriarch and the Assistant Director, they will not be happy if I'm late.”

That got them moving

The mirror got laid face down flat in the trunk. Both to make sure it didn't get broken and to annoy the witch if she tried to crawl back out.

I voluntold someone else to get Johanson's arm on ice and get it to the main office.

Grimaud got in the back on his own while Otto tossed Riggs in to join him. “All tied up and ready to go, sure you don’t want me to ride shotgun?”

I shook my head, “I got one more to pick up and I don't see anything good coming out of the two of you meeting."

He gave me a curious look but I didn’t go into details. "No, forget I said anything. Just call it a night and your boy should be freed by dawn."

He shrugged and gave me a wave as I drove off to fulfill my deal with the devil.

The deal was just to give him a ride to a meeting, but still, it was the freaking devil himself.

Who by the time I got there was standing out in front of the necromancer's home wearing Tarnell Riggs's corpse while looking off in odd directions and chatting with the cringing homeowner, Ramone Krewe.

I got out of the car and opened the passenger door. “Ready sir?”

What had been a warm smile on the first's face looked creepy as hell on the dead vampire's. "Of course Cassandra." He turned and offered his hand to Krewe. "My apologies for all the confusion Ramone. I'll try to make it up to you if you’re ever down my way.”

Ramone reached out like a man poking his hand into a bear trap and cringed at what looked like a firm handshake from the First who then turned and got into the passenger seat of the car. As I closed the door on him, he was already messing with the controls on the center console. Managing to turn on the radio and switch the air conditioning to heat.

I then had to deal with a bewildered necromancer. “Who the hell is that guy? He sure as hell isn’t the original owner of that body. He just popped out of the cooler like my containment wards were nothing and just... started touching everything. I hit him with my best control spells and he just waved them off and told me to stop because they tickled. What the hell?"

I let him catch his breath, and started to explain, then I thought it over. "Ramone, I'm going to tell you two things. Who he is, is classified, and... you'll sleep better if you never know.”

His mouth gaped open and shut a few times before he gritted his teeth. "You know, I'm going to take that for an answer, just don't bring him back."

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Donovan- In the back seat of a Helios Phaeton

I heard someone get into the car and turn on the radio before turning on the heat for some reason before turning it back to cold air.

“Your mistake was adding a blood sacrifice to the transportation spell. You had turned into a demon far enough to open yourself to magic, but becoming a participant in a spell that included cutting off that boy’s arm was enough to flip you all the way over.”

What the hell?

Whoever it was changed stations a few times before setting into an oldies station.

“If it’s any consolation, all the magic you were tied into turned you into something new, something with a whole lot of potential. A brand new type of demon, you might want to come up with a name for your kind before someone does.”

My throat was so dry it was hard to talk at first. “Is he okay?”

There was a pause then a surprised laugh. "The orc boy? I wouldn't have thought you would care.”

"His sister tried to use a zip tie on his arm before he managed to yell at her enough to use a belt. Turned out he was a certified EMT, he had to talk her through step by step how to keep him from bleeding out until my daughter got back down and sealed off the wound. She hasn’t got to the point where she could regrow the arm but he seemed pretty confident his people could fix him up later.”

Guess I know who I'm dealing with then. I wiggled around but there was no way I was getting my hands out in front of me so I settled for just getting myself in a sitting position.

“Any chance you could have helped?”

Another laugh. "My daughter wanted a domain of her own, I wanted to see how she handled an emergency. She wasn't too happy with me either, nothing new there."

Someone else got into the car. "Is Johanson…?" The cop lady.

The man, who had to be Luther even if his voice was different, answered the unasked question. "My daughter sealed the wound and he's now being taken care of by three lovely young ladies, two of which aren't related to him, he'll be fine 'till you have time to go back for him.”

She thanked him and started the car.

There was displeased grunt before Luther spoke up again. "One more thing to tell you son. a message from your uncle."

“Huh?”

I felt a hand on my shoulder.

"He an asshole, but I do owe him a bit of a favor for the use of his corpse and he wanted me to pass a message on to you.”

"If you had finished him off as he told you to, none of this would have happened."

Son of a bitch.

"Like I said, an asshole."

Martin- Finishing getting dressed in his room.

I had closed the door to my room behind me, and as per our long standing agreement, Sally respected my privacy by not opening it.

Kidding. A lock glyph that I had commissioned from Cyra, one with enough power behind it to make it too much work to follow me into my room, was what kept her out. Instead, after she tried to open it, of course, she just kept making comments and jokes about my arm as I reattached it with more duct tape and finished getting dressed.

“Just think how easier it will be to scratch your back.”

“Consider all the jokes you can pull off by offering to give someone a hand.”

“I told you once you're too detached, way to go being too literal."

After a while Tosser began to growl at her through the door.

“Take it easy Tosser. You have to understand she was raised in the swamps by her grandmother and rarely interacted with other people. So she craves social interaction but lacks the maturity to approach things in a healthy way.”

Tosser’s eyes went wide in understanding. “Master’s servant is brat.”

Kinkade kicked the door. "Don't you be telling him that bullshit from your one psychology class. You're the one who hates being alone, that’s why you talked me into moving in with you even after we broke up.”

There was a pause followed by “Wait, did that little guy just call me a brat?”

I slipped on a light jacket and turned to check my appearance in the mirror over my dresser, only to see a bare spot in its place since that mirror was currently wrapped in layers of garbage bags and under a rack of baked goods down in the store.

"I never claimed to be well functioning adult either Sally. I'm just letting my troop of magic murder monkeys know that your behavior, however childish, is just your coping mechanism for being freaked out over me being maimed. And that I'm just giving you shit right back for the nonstop jokes about my traumatizing maiming that I asked you not to make."

I opened the door to see her looking worried that he had gone too far. While she had, she always did and that worked for us, so I hugged her. She leaned into it and asked. "We good slot machine?"

I sighed "Because I'm a one armed bandit. Are you done?”

She nodded, I stepped back and waved at my outfit. “How do I look?”

She rolled her eyes and gave the same answer she always did “Overdressed, what's the plan.”

I headed over to my office and sat facing the mirror whose other side sat in darkness with the sound of nearby traffic and a nearly constant changing of radio stations.

"I take the chance to confront my family while they discuss who tried to have me killed. Which if I had known was all it took to get me a meeting I would have arranged it myself. All you have to do is hang back out of sight and say nothing for once."

She took a step out of my office putting her out of sight from the mirror and pursed her lips.

I sagged into my chair. “Any chance of you doing the stay quiet part.’

She slowly shook her head.

Just as well, worrying about her safety, in a situation where for once there was a need to me do so, might be just the thing to keep me from doing something stupid of my own.