“What do you need?” Patrick asked.
When Marek didn’t respond, merely swallowed thickly, Patrick went to grab the plastic recycling bin under his desk and brought it around to shove it between Marek’s legs. Marek promptly leaned over and got sick. Patrick sighed as the smell of vomit filled his office.
“I’ll handle this, Henry,” Setsuna said.
Henry, unlike Patrick, knew better than to argue with the director. He murmured a quiet goodbye before leaving, closing the door behind him. Setsuna turned and tapped the tip of her intricately carved rosewood cane against the door, layering Patrick’s silence ward with her own.
“I wasn’t aware you had a visitor,” Setsuna said.
Patrick glanced away from Marek to meet Setsuna’s steady gaze, scowling at her. Patrick and Setsuna weren’t close. The secrets they shared ensured he would never trust her. She was still his superior, and still in charge, no matter what the Norns demanded he do.
The woman who had been his guardian for ten years after he was delivered to her care at the age of eight didn’t look her age, despite turning fifty-two at the end of last year. Her black hair was still cut in the shoulder-skimming bob she favored, and what wrinkles she had were faint.
The cane she carried was more a weapon than a need for balance. The carved Shinto shrine at the top and the winding steps leading up to it from the bottom tip were layered with kanji. Setsuna’s witch magic had turned the cane into an artifact, and she never went anywhere without it.
“I didn’t know Marek was stopping by until he did,” Patrick said.
Setsuna’s expression didn’t change as she came forward. “What do the Fates want from you now?”
Marek slowly sat up. Patrick handed him the box of tissues on the desk to wipe his mouth with. “They want me to go to Chicago to save Odin.”
“How fortuitous.”
Patrick scowled at her. “Is that what you’re here about?”
“I have your orders, yes, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“You still owe me a trip to Maui. Next time, maybe order me to go there.”
Before Setsuna could answer, Marek reached out with a shaky hand to grab Patrick’s shirt. He tipped his head back, eyes closed to mere slits, looking like every movement hurt. “What staff?”
Patrick grimaced, knowing the months of keeping that mission out of their friends’ awareness was over. “A problem you don’t need to worry about.”
“Urðr thinks otherwise.”
Patrick passed Marek the Gatorade again, ignoring that statement. “Take small sips.”
“Patrick.”
“If the gods want me in Chicago, I guess I’m going to the Windy City. Seems you wasted a flight, Setsuna.”
“Visiting you is never a waste of my time,” she replied, moving to stand by the other chair.
Patrick turned so he could keep an eye on them both. “If you say so.”
Setsuna pulled out a folded piece of paper from the inner pocket of her precisely tailored suit jacket and offered it to Patrick. “Eyes Only. The spell is curated to your magic. Lower your shields to read it.”
Some days Patrick was terrible at following orders. Other days, he knew he didn’t have a choice. He lowered his personal shields, letting his tainted magic slip free. Patrick took the piece of paper with careful fingers, skin burning briefly as whatever spell was embedded in it brushed against his magic.
When he unfolded it, all he saw was a swirl of black ink. Then the paper beneath his fingertips glowed briefly, the shine running along the edges of the paper. The ink started to move across the paper, orienting itself into lines of text. The Eyes Only warning sat below the header, which wasn’t the SOA seal like Patrick was expecting. Instead, the US Department of the Preternatural seal was stamped there, indicating the information had come from outside his agency. The internal designation was for the joint task force put together to find the Morrígan’s staff.
“A courier brought it to me on Friday from the Pentagon,” Setsuna said.
“Knew you didn’t come to New York because you missed me,” Patrick muttered.
Patrick skimmed the memorandum, a cold feeling settling in his gut. No wonder it hadn’t been sent by electronic means, and instead written out with magic for personal delivery to only those the spell was keyed to. If anyone used magic to try to read it, the paper would go up in flames.
As it was, he wished someone had burned the damned thing before it ever reached his hand.
Patrick stared at the name slashed across the bottom of the paper with a heavy heart. “General Reed signed off on it. Has anyone else in the joint task force received the same information?”
General Noah Reed was currently overseeing the US Department of the Preternatural, but he’d been the one to sign off on the missions Patrick’s old team were given. Reed was a fire dragon hiding in human form, who hoarded information the way banks hoarded money. The intelligence officers working under him almost always had information they could trust.
If Reed said the Dominion Sect was actively working in Chicago, then it was probably true.
Setsuna curled both hands over the top of her cane. “I explained to everyone involved that you would be the one best able to handle this problem.”
Marek tugged at Patrick’s shirt, not having let go yet. The twist of his mouth was more scowl than frown. The pain he must have been feeling from channeling an immortal wouldn’t deter him from the information he’d suddenly become privy to. Patrick was well aware of the degrees of Marek’s stubbornness when he sought to get his way or get answers. Patrick wondered if that was a trait gained from being a CEO or a seer.
“What staff are the Norns worried about?” Marek demanded.
Patrick sighed and folded the paper into quarters before shoving it into his back pocket. “I hate Mondays.”
2
“When were you going to tell us?” Emma Zhang demanded in a low voice.
Her brown eyes narrowed, but she didn’t move from her position on the couch because Marek was using her lap as a pillow. Emma was a tiny Chinese American alpha werewolf who co-led the Tempest pack, one of Marek’s oldest friends and business partners, and a woman Patrick never wanted to be on the wrong side of. Unfortunately, that wasn’t an option right now.
“Uh, we weren’t?” Patrick said.
Jono snorted as he held up the potion Victoria Alvarez had dropped off on her way home to help with Marek’s migraine. She was a nurse and working nights this month, but luckily the timing had worked out.
“We couldn’t,” Jono corrected, eyeing the handwritten label. “The mission came from a general, and the gods made it clear they didn’t want us to gossip about how they fucked up. Marek, you need to drink all of this.”
“I’m not sitting up,” Marek mumbled.
Leon Hernandez, who’d been standing behind the couch, turned and headed for the kitchen in Marek and Sage’s apartment. “I’ll get you a straw.”
Emma didn’t watch her partner leave, more interested in burning a hole through Patrick’s head with her glare. “You should’ve told us you got another mission from the gods. How are we supposed to help you if we don’t know what’s going on?”