Dragon Justice

Right on cue, there was a touch of current against my awareness. *torres*

The feel of that ping was unmistakable. I sighed and got to my feet. “I hate it when you’re right,” I grumbled, shoved my lunch back into the fridge, and headed into the office to face my fate.

We had started two years ago with one suite, taking up a quarter of the seventh floor. About a year back the guys acquired the second suite of offices on our side of the building and combined the space, repurposing the original layout into a warren of rooms that gave the illusion of privacy without sacrificing an inch of workspace. Nice, except when you were doing the Tread of Dread, as Nifty had dubbed the walk from the break room to Stosser’s office at the very end of the long hall.

I knocked once, and the door opened.

“Sir?”

Usually I’d have started with “you rang, oh great and mighty?” but what worked with humans could backfire spectacularly with fatae. The fact that I knew that—the result of years more experience interacting with the nonhuman members of the Cosa than anyone else in the office except possibly Venec—was why I’d been called here. Nick had it in one.

“Torres. Come in.”

I came in, closing the door behind me, uncertain of where to go after that. The office was large enough to hold five people comfortably, seven if we all squeezed. Right then, there were only four—me, Stosser, and two figures, cloaked, with their backs to me—but it felt crowded as hell.

Then they turned around, and all the air left my lungs in a surprised, if hopefully discreet, whoosh.

* * *

Benjamin Venec took good care of his investigators. If they were stressed, he gave them something to snarl at. If they were worried, he could provide a sounding board. If they were pissed off, he was willing to fight with them. But he couldn’t force them to relax; even if that had been his style, his pups were stubborn. They’d decide when they went down, not someone else, opponent or boss.

So he could have told Torres to go home and get some sleep. She might even have gone—or at least started to. But he knew her: something shiny would catch her attention, either a case or a person, and she’d be off again. That was just…Torres.

The fact that he had given up any right to be jealous of either things or people she deemed shiny didn’t seem to help the slight burning sensation to the left of his gut when he felt her sudden rush of surprise, followed by a shimmer of glee and anticipation that was uniquely Bonita Torres.

Her signature was like coconut liquor, spicy and warm, and he let himself enjoy the taste—offsetting the burning sensation, or enhancing it, he wasn’t sure.

The pleasure was balanced by a sense of moral discomfort, though. They’d agreed to stay out of each other’s headspace unless invited. Bonnie had been scrupulous about maintaining that agreement. He hadn’t. And claiming that it was part of his job, as her boss and teacher, nothing more than he did for the others, only went so far in justifying what his mentor would have called a blatant misuse of Talent.

Ben didn’t even try to justify it, not to himself. He might be a bastard, but he was an honest one. He simply couldn’t avoid the overlap: even with his walls up, he was hyperaware of every strong emotion that passed through Torres, and the girl never felt anything halfway. It should have been annoying to his more cynical, jaded self, the way she threw herself wholeheartedly into every step of her life and dragged him along, via the Merge, without even realizing it. Instead, the experience amused, exasperated, frustrated, and invigorated him, sometimes all at once.

He let it ride. The first rule of dealing with the Merge, they had discovered, was not dealing with the Merge, and so far, he had been able to ignore the other, totally unprofessional urges. Mostly.

The fact that Bonnie took other lovers had been established—by her—early on. Also established: it was none of his damn business. She kept her private life private, but the Merge… If she knew how much leaked, even when she thought her walls were up, she’d be horrified. And mortified. Thankfully, she was as particular as she was omnivorous, and they had been few and far between lately. He always knew, though.

He waited a minute, just letting the Merge-connection wash over him, and the sense of surprise and excitement faded, her thoughts settling into the focused hum that meant that whatever was making her quiver was work-related.

Work was within his purview. Ben tapped his pencil against the desk, resisting temptation for all of ten heartbeats.

*new job?* he queried his partner.

*interesting problem* Ian sent back, not so much words as a perception of something sharp and dark, versus Bonnie’s sense of shiny.

Ben tapped the pencil harder.

*too much* he suggested, with just the sense of scales tilting too far to one side. The past few months they’d been getting a steady stream of work, from piddling jobs like the one they’d tested Farshad on to the more complicated blackmail-and-possible-murder case he’d given Sharon, Pietr, and Jenna.

There was silence from Ian, which could mean anything from disagreement to his being attacked at knifepoint by the supposed client.

No, if that were the case, even if Ian were his usual cool self, Torres would have reacted. So: he was being ignored.

In its own way, that was reassuring. Torres and Stosser both had the kind of focus that didn’t miss much. Whatever was going on there, he could safely ignore it for now in favor of…

Ben paused his pencil-tapping. Actually, there was nothing pending on his desk. Lou, their office manager, had the day-to-day things running smoothly, and with the exception of Ian’s new project, whatever it was, nothing new had come in needing his attention.

Ben exhaled, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Nothing did. Everyone was either out on a job or finishing up their paperwork. Nothing new needed to be evaluated and assigned. That meant he was free to pick up the job that had come across his desk this morning. Not a PUPI investigation; something from his previous line of work. He’d given up his sidelines while they got PUPI running, but not gotten out of the game entirely.

This project would only take a day or three, and it would be good to get out of Big Dog mode, use his other skills before they got rusty…and, he admitted, get himself out of Bonnie’s immediate vicinity, give the connection between them time to cool off a bit. She’d been single for a couple-three months now, but every time she did hook up with someone, he could feel himself hovering between an all-out confrontation or sliding the knife in deep, in places only he knew about. He was capable of both, he knew. Both would end badly.

Yeah, time away would be a good thing.

*taking a few days off* he told his partner and got a distracted mmm-hmm back. Not that he needed permission, but with Ian it was better to clear the decks anyway, in case he had something tucked up his sleeve that Ben would be needed for.

Looking at the packet of papers on his desk again, he picked up the landline—an old-fashioned rotary, thrice-warded against random current-spikes—and dialed the number in the letterhead. He let it rotate through the phone-tree options until an actual operator came to see what the problem was.

“Extension 319, please.”

He waited while he was clicked through, and a familiar voice picked up at the other end.

“Allen? It’s Ben. Usual plus expenses, and I can be there this afternoon.”

Chapter 2

Holy mother of meatloaf, the atmosphere in Stosser’s office didn’t just hum—it fricking crackled.

The boss did the introductions. “This is Bonita Torres.”

“The Torres is known to us.”

It took me a second, then my manners flooded back and I made as graceful a salutation as I could. A properly elegant curtsy requires yards of skirts and a fitted corset, but I didn’t think the Lord would be offended, so long as the proper respect was shown. How the hell was my name known to him? That wasn’t good. Or it was very good. I wasn’t sure.

The other unknown figure in the room laughed at my response, a low noise that sent a different kind of shiver down my neck. Oh, fuck. Stosser, damn him, looked utterly unaffected.

“She will be acceptable,” the other, still-hooded figure said. Her voice was low, a smoky contralto, but not even remotely masculine. It was the voice that could lure otherwise sane men to their doom with a smile on their lips and a sparkle in their eye.

A thought passed through my head that it wasn’t really a surprise Stosser was unaffected: he had already trooped merrily along to his doom, that being us, here, this.

I wanted very badly to know what the hell was going on, but also knew damn well to keep my mouth shut unless spoken to.

“Our guests have come to us about a child who has gone missing.”

I turned my head slightly, to indicate that I was listening to the Big Dog, but I kept my gaze on the Lord. Not that I distrusted him, exactly, but I wanted to keep him in my sight at all times. The Lady didn’t worry me—I might like guys and girls, but the Fey Folk kept it pure vanilla when they deigned to mess with mortals. At worst, she’d try to make me a lapdog, and my kinks didn’t bend that way.

“A Fey child?” Even as I asked I knew that wasn’t it. Not just because Fey children were rare and protected, but because the Fey would not involve mortals in their own business. While not nearly as arrogant as the angeli, the Fey were still about as insular as a breed could get, in the modern world. Which, in my opinion, was good for all concerned.

Every fairy tale you ever heard? The truth was worse.

“A mortal child.” Stosser clarified the case. The Lord did not move away from my gaze, allowing me to watch him, and I knew damn well he was allowing me to do so. His cowl lay against his shoulders, and his face was clearly visible, a Rackham sketch come to life, but twice as vibrant and three times as dangerous, if he desired. “A seven-year-old girl, abducted from her bed during the dark of the moon.”