Gray Witch (Black Hat Bureau 5)

“It’s all right, Dollface.” He kissed the top of my head. “You can cry all you want. It’s good for you.”

“I hate crying.” I shoved away from him. “I hate feelings.”

“Feelings hate you too.” He ruffled my hair like a big brother. “That’s why they’ve ganged up on you.”

“I want to punch them all in their touchy-feely faces.”

“I know you do.” He tweaked my chin. “You know what will make you feel better?”

Like a lady, I sniffed and wiped tears and snot on my shirt. “Punching someone else in the face?”

“That’s my girl.” A throat cleared in the vicinity of his pocket. “My second-best girl, that is.”

This again? Really? I was starting to develop a complex. “Et tu, Clay?”

First the daemon demoted me, then my dad—or first my dad?—ditched me, and now Clay dumped me.

“You’ve been neglecting me lately.” He lifted a shoulder. “Colby was there for me in my time of need.”

“I held his hand,” she confirmed, “when they announced the winner of The Great British Bake Off.”

A rustle of fabric drew my attention to Clay’s pocket where Colby’s antennae stuck up on high alert.

“He’s on the move.” Colby peeked out to point the way. “We can catch him at the intersection.”

“I don’t suppose you can tell if he’s got backup with him?”

“No.” Her frustration was evident. “There are no cameras in the area, so my vision is limited.”

Of course, my little hacker moth would have tried before it occurred to me to ask. “That’s okay.”

“We’ll do it the old-fashioned way,” Clay agreed. “You guys go down two blocks then cut north. Colby and I will head northeast. Eyes and ears open, people.”

They peeled off and began their recon from a safer distance while Asa and I waded into the thick of it by trailing Parish directly. We could have tracked him by the thick cloud of smoke curling over his shoulder as he pinched a cigarette between his lips. The scent that followed him wasn’t chemically treated tobacco but brimstone and death.

We didn’t have much to hide behind, but that worked for us as much as against us. We kept a clear line of sight on Parish, who was on his phone, distracted and alone, puffing away, while he strolled through a town where he had just kicked a hornet’s nest then stomped it flat.

“He’s baiting us.” I hung back. “There’s no way he’s this oblivious.”

Parish had a reputation, but that wouldn’t protect him if he kept his head down while enemies were circling him. And if he had been in that clearing, then he knew we were enemies. There was nothing else we could be after what he did to my mother.

A quick text to Clay told them to hang back while we watched for his next move.

“I can smell you,” Parish said, putting away his phone and his pretense. “You might as well come out.”

That sounded like a terrible idea, so we held our ground, waiting to see if he was bluffing.

“Show some spine.” He removed his jacket, let it hit the road, then began rolling up his sleeves. “Do you really want to die cowering?”

Only Asa’s grip on my upper arm kept me from launching myself at Parish and clawing off his face.

“I’m old,” Clay called, shrugging out of his suit jacket. “Insults won’t make me move any faster.”

His jacket, and the moth within, he draped over a branch, giving Colby cover to escape. As Parish had, he rolled his sleeves up over his forearms.

“You’re eternal,” Parish countered. “Age means even less to you than it does to my kind.”

“I bet you miss the old days when you could set fire to any old village you wanted, steal the maidens, and eat the humans.”