All Things Wicked (9 page)

“Did you save us?” she asked.

“Oh, yeah. As much as my brother pisses me off,” Jessie answered, her smile tired, “I love him. As soon as I got the message”—the word held a depth of meaning that Juliet found puzzling—“Naomi and I went looking.”

“Message?”

Caleb pointed at his sister as she hesitated. “Okay, that’s it. Why the hell are you so pale?” he demanded.

“Staying up all night worrying is hell on a girl’s complexion. You were practically dead on your—” Jessie straightened abruptly, shading her eyes as she stared at something beyond them. Her smile faded. “Oh, shit.”

They all turned as a splash echoed out in the lagoon. A boat glided over the green water, manned by a woman with magenta-streaked hair and a face full of silver piercings that caught the light, returning it in a flurry of bright color. The line of her too-full mouth was tense.

She guided the canoe to the dock, but it was the man forging through knee-deep water that seized Juliet’s attention. He was big, broad-shouldered, and heavily muscled. His close-cropped dark hair matched the thick eyebrows furrowed over eyes narrowed into slits as he pushed toward the house at a pace that promised violence.

Caleb’s grip tightened over her forearm. Juliet winced. “You’re hurting—” It broke on a gasp as he jerked her behind him, so suddenly that she stumbled, forced to grab the back of his shirt for balance. His muscles bunched under her touch, rock hard and leashed in rigid anticipation.

The action placed him squarely between her and the man with murder in his scowl.

“What’s going on?” she demanded.

Caleb said nothing.

Jessie leaned over the rocking chair. “Silas, don’t you dare!”

The big man ignored her. Ignored Juliet, who could only stare, frozen in place, as he seized Caleb by the collar and landed a punch that cracked like a gunshot across the crescent canyon.

His shirt ripped out of her hands as Caleb slammed into the side of the house. Windowpanes rattled, something crashed to the floor inside, and Jessie swore fiercely as she tripped over the stairs. She hit the ground so fast that Juliet spun, torn.

The woman’s fingers dug into the packed earth. As she shuddered, Juliet knelt, wrapping a supportive arm around her shoulders. “Are you all right?”

Jessie grabbed her shirt, fingers digging into Juliet’s ribs. Her face was paler, almost yellow, but her mouth twisted into a hard, angry line. “Naomi!”

“On it.” The extraordinarily tall woman with Asian features breezed past them to hook an arm around Silas’s raised fist. She locked her legs as the momentum of the trapped punch wrenched her shoulder. “Smith! Come on, I just fixed him.”

Caleb watched dispassionately, blood and mucus streaming from his nose. It edged his mouth, set in a fine line that mirrored his sister’s.

Silas tried to shake Naomi off. “You can fix him again,” he growled, his gaze locked on Caleb.

Naomi grunted, twisting the larger man’s arm behind him with effort. She hooked his other arm at the elbow and hauled him awkwardly backward.

The man wrenched at her grip, his face red, teeth bared. “You murdering bastard,” he said, his voice like thunder. “Let me go, I’ll beat his fucking—”

Naomi kicked at his knee as he jerked one arm free. The man grunted, face going white. “Don’t say I never do nothing for your princess,” she told the top of his head.

He cursed.

Juliet’s confusion flipped to sudden alarm as Jessie’s eyes fluttered. “Not,” the woman murmured, “good.”

“Caleb!” Juliet cried.

The seer turned to deadweight in her arms, and Jessie buckled, pitching to the ground in a tangle of gold hair and flailing limbs.

In the space of a single second, chaos flattened to frozen, brutal silence. Then it exploded. Naomi let Silas go, locked an ankle around his legs, and swept his feet out from under him.

The man hit the ground swearing. Juliet cradled Jessie’s head, stared helplessly as Caleb blotted at the blood streaming from his nose and yelled something lost in the fury of Silas’s angry orders.

He surged away from the wall, tripped as Silas grabbed his ankle and wrenched him off-balance. He sprawled on his ass, furious.

In the disorder, Naomi calmly knelt by Jessie and laid two fingers against the woman’s throat. She flicked Juliet a glance, her eyes impossibly trapped between blue and purple in color.

“Who’re you again?”

“Juliet,” she replied, taken aback.

“Can you help me get her inside, Juliet?”

“What about—”

“Let ’em kill each other.” She heaved the unconscious blond into her arms. “Right now, I need a little common fucking sense.”

Chapter Eight

P
arker Adams, New Seattle Mission director, slowly laid her fingertips against the scarred surface of her borrowed desk and struggled to keep her features impassive. “With all due respect,” she began, then forced herself to bite her tongue as the woman in front of her raised one imperious hand.

“As you know, the Holy Order of St. Dominic requires a certain level of competency from each of its core foundations,” the woman said. Her tone oozed disdain. “The latest audits are beginning to show a disturbing pattern. Turnover, betrayal, and neglect.”

The director’s spine straightened. “With,” she repeated, icy precision, “all due respect, Mrs.”—she glanced at the digital readout in front of her—“Parrish, I think that if you take the time to look over the New Seattle Mission’s docket, you’ll find that our percentile of success meets or exceeds every minimum requirement laid out by Mission protocol.”

The woman smiled.

A headache threatened. Earlier this morning, Parker had been foolish enough to think that today might actually have turned into a good day. One team was out in the field on a mission that had every probability of ending in success, and the typical office emergencies had been kept to a minimum.

To be fair, she realized that her own office was run too smoothly to have many emergencies, and the lower city offices still didn’t trust her enough to risk bothering her with their own.

But for now, she’d take it. The betrayal of their last Mission director had hit them all where it hurt. A year’s worth of hard work and longer hours hadn’t quite smoothed over the chasm David Peterson had caused.

Still, there was some small success.

Which had been shredded the instant she had received a summons and arrived at the mid-low headquarters to find this pale, diminutive woman tearing into her missionaries.

They’d all stood to attention, staring at a spot just over the woman’s head, but Parker could only imagine how many verbal daggers the woman had flung with authority.

No one
spoke to her missionaries that way.

Except her.

Parker had icily ordered the missionaries back to their desks, hoping to spare them any more venom from the sharp-tongued Mrs. Parrish. Now, she found herself fighting a headache as she went toe to toe with a woman whose authority, as far as the digital readout could tell her, went as high as Sector Three. Exactly two clearance levels higher than her own.

Damn and blast.

“As I was saying,” the woman said through thin, colorless lips. Her voice was like gravel, grating even in quiet tones. “There is a certain amount of accuracy required in every foundation, and although the Mission’s record has been fairly reliable, there are some small matters that require a . . . more precise touch.”

Political code for internal affairs.

Parker studied her quietly.

The woman was short, rail-thin, and pushing sixty. The kind of woman whose brown hair was probably chemically maintained, and whose neatly pressed brown skirt suit likely had never seen a department store rack. Her cheeks were thin and hollow, her brown eyes nondescript behind frameless glasses.

Her hair was pulled back into a neat bun at the nape of her neck, glossy and unforgiving, and Parker didn’t miss the speculative glances the other missionaries kept sending through the slatted window of the office.

Parker’s own hair, though a detested copper red, was also pulled into a severe knot at the back of her head. It was the easiest way to keep it out of her face. She resisted the urge to pat it into place, disliking her own silent comparison between them.

“I’m afraid,” she said with careful calm, “that I’m not sure what you’re trying to convey, Mrs. Parrish.”

The woman’s fingers folded around a readout of her own, and she flipped it open. Its knitted cover boasted flowers, like something a grandmother would make. “Missionary Silas Smith,” the woman said.

Parker’s face remained impassive.

“Missionary Naomi West,” Mrs. Parrish continued, peering through the bifocals carved into the bottom lenses of her glasses. “Mission Director David Peterson.”

Blast.
“Silas Smith and David Peterson both turned rogue,” Parker replied evenly, “before my tenure. You
have
read the reports, yes?”

No matter what angle it came from, Mrs. Parrish’s smile was disturbing. Thin, precise, and pinched. “Refresh me.”

Politics. She could play them. “Of course,” she said. “Agent Silas Smith was trained here in the New Seattle Mission. After a particularly difficult operation, he was released from city service to work abroad. Fourteen years later, he was brought back during David Peterson’s occupancy as director. Agent Naomi West detailed in her report the events that led to Smith’s betrayal and subsequent death. In the interim, Peterson was ousted as a coven infiltrator.”

Not even a flicker of an eyelash.

The Church knew all this. Maybe more. What Director Adams wanted to know was
how
. How did a witch make it to Mission director without anyone knowing? How had he passed the tests?

Parker braced her legs behind the cover of the desk and continued coolly, “Agent Naomi West went missing after completing a mission that was ordered, of course, by the Church itself.”

“Missing.”

“She had already been flagged for surveillance,” she explained with brusque efficiency. “Director Peterson had been less than apt at keeping an eye on the ongoing health of his teams. I’ve rectified that.”

“Of course you have,” Mrs. Parrish said, reassurance served with a twist of condescension.

“The bounty on Naomi West is currently at fifty thousand dollars dead, twice that if brought in alive. She’s an apt candidate for processing,” Parker told her. “
If
she’s still alive, we’ll find her.”

“I’m sure you will,” the woman said, again in a smooth tone that didn’t match the words. “Unfortunately, these stains are not something that can be simply . . . talked away.”

Parker’s unwavering gaze had been known to make the biggest men of her units resist the urge to sidle behind the nearest heavy object. “Is this a disciplinary action, Mrs. Parrish?”

“Not yet.” Mrs. Parrish had a gaze of her own, and Parker forced herself to meet it head-on. “In that readout,” the woman continued, “you’ll note a new priority.”

She hadn’t yet, but then, the woman hadn’t given her any time.

Mrs. Parrish continued blithely, “I don’t care what you choose to name it, but this will be placed at the top of your to-do. Now, the Church has inferred that you’ll need extra hands, given your . . .” She paused tactfully. “Shall we call it,
loss
of experienced agents?” With the same disturbing little smile, she turned and picked her way across the clean but threadbare carpet. Her sensible, one-inch heels rasped across the floor, making Parker’s jaw ache as she set her teeth.

This wasn’t going well.

Regardless of what Parker said aloud, the Church had every right to investigate her teams. Two rogues—one a witch, even, straight from the greatest coven threat known to the Mission—and a missing agent who had long since been flagged for processing were a black spot on everybody’s record.

The woman opened the door. Parker’s fingers spasmed against the desk. She very carefully placed them on her hips, resisting the need to smooth down the tailored cream-colored suit she’d worn.

Two men stepped into the frame behind Mrs. Parrish. They split, one flanking each side. “Director Adams, these men are missionaries. As of this conference, they are assigned to your offices.”

Parker’s eyes narrowed. A fraction.

“This is Agent Tobias Nelson,” Mrs. Parrish continued, gesturing to a tall, very broad man at her left. He nodded, a faint, more than slightly patronizing gesture. His eyes were a brown so dark that they were almost black. His hair shadowed his scalp, thick black fuzz buzzed short. He was large, wide, meaty, and probably good to have in a fight.

Parker didn’t fight, but her street-level teams did.

Their casual, loose clothing and well-developed builds suggested they did, too. Nelson’s T-shirt did nothing to conceal the thick bulge of his arms.

The other man didn’t wait for an introduction. He slid into one of two chairs arrayed in front of Parker’s borrowed desk, kicking one ankle up over his knee in easy comfort. “I’m Simon Wells,” he offered, tipping an imaginary hat. His brown hair was longer, the same shade as the coffee-colored desk between them. His eyes twinkled at her, an odd mix of green and brown, and his lips curved into an engaging smile that she didn’t return.

Flirt. She knew the type.

Parker offered them both a nod. “Gentlemen,” she said coolly. Then, to the woman who waited expectantly between them, she arched one icy eyebrow. “Explain to me why the Church is placing their men in my Mission.”

The woman’s expression hardened. “Your Mission, Director Adams, is the Church’s Mission. Effectively
my
Mission. Your job is to oversee and maintain the Church’s interests—
my
interests—in this field, at the whim of the Order that you serve. These interests include, but are not limited to, the investigation and execution of witches, the ongoing protection of the innocents of this city, and
whatever else I say.
” Her eyes glinted behind the cut glass edge of her spectacles. “Shall I presume that there is no confusion on the subject?”

Parker’s lips compressed into a thin line. “None.”

“Excellent. Then I trust you’ll see that my new missionaries are welcomed and made comfortable. They will, of course, be assigned to the docket spoken of earlier.”

Parker didn’t look at either man, certain that if she did, she’d snap. Instead, she inclined her head in a frosty nod. “Thank you, Mrs. Parrish. And in turn, I trust that with their acclimation, the Church will see that the New Seattle Mission continues to thrive.”

“Of course,” the thin woman said, poker-faced. “Missionaries. Director.” With that, she turned and left the office. Her padded shoes didn’t click once the carpet turned into scuffed, bare tile. Parker watched her round the corner, then pass the glass walls that separated this office from the open desks filling the main room.

More eyes than hers watched the older woman go. Parker didn’t relax.

The one called Tobias Nelson turned for the door.

Parker snapped her gaze back to him. “Hold it.”

He halted, but only just. His head turned enough that she could see the set of his jaw, and Wells tipped back in his chair with an inquisitive smile.

“Have you both been sealed?” she asked.

Nelson grunted. “Yes.”

“I want to see them.”

In front of her, Wells’s smile edged into something wicked. He rubbed two fingers along the shadow of his stubbled jaw. “Why, Miss Adams, I hardly know y—”

She cut him off with a look carved from ice. “That’s
Director
Adams, and I reserve the right to inspect my team anytime, anywhere I so choose.” Her voice hardened. “Your loyalties can fall to whomever you want outside this office, but while you’re in my unit, you follow
my
orders. If there is
any
doubt, there’s the door.”

She didn’t have to say aloud what fell between her and the men arrayed in front of her. It was as crystal as if she’d carved it on the desk.

Your choice.

Damn, but she hoped they made the wrong one.

That easy smile reached Wells’s eyes, and from a frame of dark lashes, something glinted. “Yes, ma’am,” he said solemnly.

Her fingers twitched. She forced herself to keep them from curling into fists. Her glance flicked to Nelson, who had only half turned. He watched her.

Her stare drilled into his.

The seconds ticked by.

“Just do it,” Wells said quietly, and the big man’s scowl bit hard. Wordlessly, he yanked up the right sleeve of his plain cotton T-shirt.

To her left, Wells slid two of his shirt buttons free, baring more of a chest defined by muscles that were thick, but hardly as meaty as his partner’s.

Parker circled the desk, her four-inch spike heels snagging on the carpet with every step. She ignored it. She didn’t touch Nelson’s skin, only bent enough to study the black circle seal engraved into the curve of his shoulder. The symbols etched through the sigil seemed legitimate, though only magic could serve as a real test.

What she didn’t understand was the inked rectangle comprised of thin black lines beneath it.

Maybe the man liked tattoos. That wasn’t her problem, or her concern. God knew she had her share of walking ink canvases in her teams.

“Thank you,” she said. It took effort to keep from jumping as he jerked his sleeve back down and all but pushed past her for the door.

Setting her jaw, Parker turned to the other missionary.

Then choked on her own tongue as she found him standing shirtless behind her, the worn button-down hanging from his back pocket. He had a chest designed to make women drool. His abs were rock-hard, chiseled beyond anything she’d ever seen, tapering in to the waistband of his jeans, and Parker swallowed hard as her gaze took in the expanse of swarthy muscle.

“
Director
Adams?”

She jerked her attention back to his face, and fought back a flush as she realized he was smiling. That half-crooked twist of lips sat so close to a smirk, it only made her angry.

She wasn’t a kid. She was the lead director in a citywide organization whose function was to protect; a woman who had seen more than her fair share of hard-bodied men. The Mission was full of them. Women, too, for that matter.

He raised a broad finger and tapped the dark circle of ink imprinted on the front of his left shoulder, just under his collarbone. “As you requested.”

Parker crossed the room with short, sharp strides. She studied his tattoo, nodded even as she eyed the same black bar code embedded beneath the traditional seal.

Two men with the same set of tattoos?

A brotherhood? A unit tattoo?

She glanced up to his face, frowning as he smiled into her eyes. The question died on her tongue. Instinctively, she knew he wouldn’t answer.