Midnight's Emissary Read online

He started forward as I neared the door and I bolted, darting over the threshold and down one twisting hallway after another. I shot a glance behind me, cursing when I saw him keeping pace with me, not getting closer but also not falling further behind.

  I had no idea where I was or how to get back to the entrance. This was bad.

  I rounded the corner and stumbled over a book lying in the middle of the floor. I barely caught myself from falling.

  “What are you doing here?” a querulous voice asked. The tone said the owner wouldn’t accept any half ass excuses either.

  I looked up to find a pair of bright blue eyes looking out at me from a face so lined with wrinkles that it was hard to believe the owner had ever been anything but ancient. He looked like a sharpei. Even his wrinkles had wrinkles.

  “I’m not talking to hear myself speak,” he snapped.

  “Uh.” I glanced over my shoulder to find the other man had disappeared.

  “Oh, good lord, it’s like talking to a brick wall. No, I take that back. A brick wall would have a more intelligent conversation.”

  My stomach sank. I recognized him. He was the shop keeper I usually dealt with when making my deliveries. Talk about out of the pan and into the fire.

  “I was just trying to find the exit,” I said. Maybe he wouldn’t recognize me. It’s not like we’d had a lot of conversations in the past. He’d barely deigned to acknowledge me on the rare occasions I stopped by. “Your other shop keeper was showing me the way.”

  “Other shopkeeper? What shopkeeper? I’m the only one who carries that title.” The man’s eyes narrowed. “Wait a minute. I recognize you. You work for that upstart Jerry.”

  Damn. Guess he’d paid more attention than I thought.

  “Yeah. You work for his little company. What was it called?” He looked around as if the name was just lingering in the air, waiting for him to see it.

  “Hermes,” I said. No point denying it now. If he knew Jerry’s name, he’d eventually be able to tie it back to me.

  “That’s it.” He pointed at me. “It still doesn’t explain why you’re inside the store.”

  I shrugged, feigning nonchalance. “I was looking for a book. Why else would I be here?”

  His laugh was a cackle suited to any movie villain. “There are more reasons than there are stars in the galaxy. How did you even get in?”

  “Same way most do.”

  “Be more specific. There are a million ways to gain entrance.”

  I’d really hoped to keep that part secret.

  His eyebrows, two white caterpillars perching just above his sunken in eyes, rose in question as if to say ‘today’.

  “I asked the cashier at The Book Haven for a map to the feline behavior department,” I admitted.

  He harrumphed. “That shouldn’t have gotten you inside. The code changed about five minutes after you dropped my package off last time.”

  I blinked. On one hand, his response shouldn’t have been surprising. It was only good security to change passwords and codes once an unknown entity or hired errand girl was gone. I just hadn’t expected it to be so instantaneous.

  It did bring up the question of why the password had worked for me.

  He shuffled over to a book case and pulled down a red leather bound book and flipped through its pages as he grumbled to himself.

  He ran his finger down the page, pausing at one entry.

  “Ah ha, I was right. The code changed three minutes after you left.”

  He peered back up at me, his eyes a bright spot of blue amidst his wrinkles.

  I shrugged, not knowing what response he wanted from me. I couldn’t change the truth.

  “I don’t know what to tell you. That’s the code I used with the cashier. Maybe your system’s broken.”

  “Impossible,” he snapped. “It’s never once had even a hiccup in all the years I’ve been the shopkeeper.”

  Judging by his wrinkles, that’d been a long, long time.

  His eyes sharpened on the book at my feet. “What’s that?” his voice deepened to nearly a growl. If I hadn’t been staring at the old man in front of me, I would have sworn his voice was that of a young man.

  I looked down at the book he was trying to incinerate with his gaze. Its cover was plain leather with the title embossed in it. It was a deep brown and the pages cream colored.

  I bent down and picked it up. Out loud I read the words on the spine, “A study of the unexplained. The uninitiated’s guide to the supernatural.”

  “Let me see it.” He shuffled forward.

  I held it out to him, but he didn’t touch it, just peered at it like it was a snake preparing to strike.

  “Well, that explains that,” he murmured.

  “Explains what?”

  He gave me a gimlet glare. “Everything.”

  He turned around and shuffled away.

  Well, that wasn’t dire or anything.

  “Are you going to follow me so I can show you to the exit, or are you going to stand there looking like a great lump of clay? If it’s the second, you won’t last long. Things roam these shelves looking for an easy target like you to consume.”

  I looked down at the book in my arms. “What do you want me to do with the book?”

  “Bring it with you,” he snapped. Under his breath, he mumbled, “It’s not like it’d stay put anyway.”

  Pretending I hadn’t heard that second part, I hurried after him, book in tow. Staying off the dinner menu worked well for my long term goals. The sooner I could put this place behind me the better. I never wanted to be this deep in the bookstore again.

  He was mostly silent as he led me through the maze-like stacks of books. In contrast to the wide open rooms I’d wandered through before, he led me through hallway after small hallway of claustrophobia inducing spaces.

  “Tell me about the other shopkeeper,” he said abruptly. He sounded grim. Like he expected me to tell him the world was ending soon.

  Seeing no harm in telling him about the creepy man I’d met, I said, “He had curly brown hair, brown eyes.”

  “Not that, you half-wit. I don’t care what he looked like. Tell me what he said.”

  I pulled a face behind him.

  “I can see you.”

  I paused, giving him a suspicious look. He hadn’t turned, so unless he had eyes in the back of his head, I doubted that. Unless he was another mind reader.

  I visualized burning the book in my hands, frowning when it pulsed with warmth against my fingers. If warmth was capable of giving off a feeling, this would have felt like indignation. I put that thought aside.

  The old man failed to respond to my visualization, which meant he probably was not a mind reader. Good. Those guys always unsettled me. I don’t like anybody knowing my most private thoughts. It’s like having a peeping tom with x-ray vision spying on you in your most intimate moments.

  The old man stopped and fixed a cranky stare on me.

  “Right.” What had the other man said? “He wanted to sell me a book.”

  “What kind of book?”

  I debated how much to tell him. Couldn’t hurt now. I was already in enough trouble. “A rundown of all the supernaturals and an insider’s guide to the politics between the different factions.”

  He harrumphed again. “You wouldn’t need such a thing if you would simply allow a clan to claim you. They would teach you everything you need to know.”

  Or only what they wanted me to know.

  “Yes, yes. I’ve already been over this with the vampires. I don’t need to go over it with a grumpy bookseller too.”

  He snorted. “Cocky and arrogant. What’s wrong? Afraid of losing control of your life?”

  I gave his back a searching look, not liking how closely he’d guessed my motivations. Even Liam hadn’t hit the nail on the head so aptly.

  Liam was a vampire I’d met last fall. The first vampire I’d met. Well, if you didn’t count the bastard who turned me. I didn’t. I tended to call
him Jackass in my head. Liam was also the vampire who said he would teach me a little more about this world, and more importantly, a little more about what it meant to be vampire.

  I hadn’t heard much from him since that promise, which me to breaking into a restricted bookstore trying to bluff my way towards obtaining more knowledge.

  “Sure, I guess you could say that.” There was no point in denying it.

  He gave me a gap toothed smile. “Good for you. Maybe you’re smarter than you look.”

  We turned a corner and suddenly we were back in the cavern I started in. The man’s head swiveled as he took in the expanse of books.

  He cackled. “I haven’t seen this section in a while.”

  How big was this place? Never mind. I didn’t think my mind could handle the answer.

  I tried to hand the book I’d been carrying to him. He waved me off and took a step back.

  “What was the price you agreed to?” he asked.

  “We didn’t,” I said. “He tried to tell me it was nothing and everything, but it sounded like it was too good to be true so I refused.”

  Well that and he had seriously creeped me out by that point.

  I tried to hand it back to the shop keeper again. He refused to take it, his old man face frowning at me.

  “Keep it. You’ve already paid the price, and it wouldn’t stay with me anyway.”

  My hands hung in the air, holding out the book, while I processed what he said.

  “No, I haven’t paid anything or agreed to any payment.”

  He shrugged. “Doesn’t mean it hasn’t already been paid. Look, the price really is nothing.”

  “And everything,” I protested. I remembered that part. It was the part that had tripped my internal alarms.

  He waved my protest away. “That means nothing. No worries. The book is yours.”

  “But I don’t want the damn book.”

  “Too late now.” He waved his hand at the door to the human side. “Out you go.”

  “Wait a minute. You can’t make me pay for something if I never agreed to the deal.” I’d learned this much from the sorcerer at least.

  My phone rang before the shop keeper could respond. I glanced down and pulled it out of my pocket. It said ‘Hermes Calling.’

  I looked up to find myself alone in the stacks of books. I spun around. Damn it, where’d he go?

  The phone rang again.

  I answered, “What?”

  The person on the other end sucked in a breath. “Is that how you answer when representing the company?”

  It is when they have possibly caused me to agree to a deal I had no intention of agreeing to.

  “What do you want, Janice?”

  “You know my name isn’t Janice,” Beatrix snapped.

  I did, but she looked like a Janice so that’s what I called her. It didn’t hurt that I knew she hated it, which is why I did it.

  “What do you want?”

  “You need to come into the office.”

  “It’s my night off. I have plans.” I glanced around the empty book cases. Or at least I had before the book keeper left me standing holding a book I didn’t pay for.

  “Too bad. Jerry needs all hands on deck.”

  “Can’t this wait until tomorrow?”

  Even if my excursion hadn’t gone as planned, I still wanted the rest of the night to figure out what to do next.

  “It can. If you want to be fired.” Beatrix’s voice was smug over the phone. She knew I wouldn’t risk that.

  “Fine,” I gritted out. “I’ll be there in an hour.”

  “Make it twenty minutes.”

  “Twenty minutes? Are you crazy? I have to go home first and grab my shit before heading to the office. No way can I get there in twenty minutes.”

  “I don’t want to hear your excuses; just get your ass here in twenty.”

  There was a click and then silence. I looked at my phone screen. That harpy had hung up on me.

  Guess I shouldn’t be too surprised. She had made no secret from the moment we met that she didn’t like me.

  I took one last glance around the empty stacks before glancing down at the book in my hands. It looked so harmless with its leather cover and simple design, but then I think most books had that in common.

  What should I do with it? Leave it behind or take it with me? The shopkeeper seemed adamant that I take it, even going so far to say that whatever its price was had already been paid.

  Might as well keep it for now seeing as there was no one to hand it off to. I could always come back later to try to return it.

  I headed to the exit for the normal side of the bookstore. Making the meeting was not going to be easy.

  Chapter Two

  I was ten minutes late when I rode my bike up to the office of Hermes Courier Service. It was like any other building in the Warehouse District. It was three stories and made from the same red brick that a lot of the older buildings in Columbus were built from. It had the same warehouse windows laid out in the same small squares making up a larger rectangle. Parts of it had graffiti decorating the brick. Maybe a little run down and showing its age but otherwise there was nothing to set it apart.

  Recently, the Warehouse District had undergone a sort of renaissance as people bought up a lot of the older warehouses and turned them into offices and luxury apartment buildings featuring the industrial look. It had given the area a breath of fresh air. Making it a place you could go after dark without worrying if you’d make it to your destination in one piece.

  From the stories I heard from other couriers, Jerry had bought this place when it was first built. Some said even before it was built. Who knew if that was true? Jerry liked to play things close to the vest.

  I propped my bike against the brick, took out my chain and locked it to the drain pipe running up the side of the building. I wasn’t really afraid someone passing by would try to steal it as Jerry had enough magical security wrapped around this place to discourage that sort of behavior.

  I was more afraid of what my fellow couriers would do to it. They liked to play pranks, especially if they felt you were getting the good gigs. I’d only had to walk out once to find my bike tied to the top of a lamp post before I started locking it up.

  I detached the seat and put it in my messenger bag. It’d be just like these bastards to take the seat to mess with me.

  Not wanting to waste any more time, I hit the intercom button, then kept hitting it when no one answered. Beatrix had neglected to send me the new passcode for the door. No doubt on purpose.

  I held the button down for several long seconds, knowing that she’d eventually cave and buzz me through.

  Sure enough, seconds later the door buzzed, and I yanked it open before heading inside.

  The interior had changed again. Instead of a wide open, empty space, there was one hall with several doors opening off it. The floor was slate gray, polished concrete and the ceiling had all the pipe and metal work exposed.

  Jerry seemed to change the interior based on whatever weird mood he was currently in. This was the fifth change this year, and the year was only four months old. Even for him, that was a lot. It made me wonder if this newest change had anything to do with why he’d called me in on my night off.

  I headed for the stairs at the end of the hall and walked up to the second floor. The office door was nicely labeled Hermes making it easier to find than in the past. Once I’d had to open nearly every door in the place before finding the right office. I still had nightmares about what was behind some of those doors.

  It was like any normal office, a secretary’s desk sat next to the only other door and there was a waiting room with seating to my right. It even had those fake trees that were so popular in offices.

  Beatrix looked up from the file in front of her, one eyebrow lifting imperiously before she looked pointedly at the clock next to me. By this time I was more like fifteen minutes late.

  I shrugged. I didn’t feel too
bad about that, being called in unexpectedly and all.

  “Oh look, she finally found her way here,” a voice said to my right.

  The gnome folded the newspaper and set it to the side. I grimaced. Great, Tom. This visit wouldn’t be complete without him.

  I ignored him, knowing from prior experience that engaging him just escalated the insults. Beatrix watched the two of us with a bland expression. If I looked closely, I thought I could detect a slight smug tilt to her mouth. She was probably enjoying this immensely.

  “We shouldn’t be surprised. Miss Vampire keeps her own schedule. Never caring if she’s late or on time.”

  Not true. I’m usually tediously punctual. That, and early. I’ve never not made a delivery on time. Except that time with the werewolves, but even that would have been on time if the recipient hadn’t already been dead.

  Ignore. Ignore. You can’t win. He’s going to have an opinion either way.

  He came to stand in front of me.

  “I’m here, Beatrix. What’s so important that you called me in on my night off?” I asked, ignoring Tom.

  It wasn’t too difficult. As a gnome, he only came up to my chest, but that didn’t mean he was harmless. He was like a squat tank, short but with muscles that looked like someone had stuck a bunch of rocks under his skin. He could punch his fist through a car door and then yank that door off the frame. I knew, I’d seen him do it when one of his clients refused to sign the acknowledgement form. Cute lawn ornament he was not.

  He wore a skull cap to cover his pointed ears and curly brown hair. If his face wasn’t creased into a perpetual frown, I would have said he was cute, in a middle aged man sort of way.

  “Hey, I’m talking to you.” He poked me in the chest. “What makes you think you can just do whatever you want?”

  “Are you talking to me or just accusing me of crap that’s not true again?”

  Sometimes it was harder than others to ignore the cranky bastard. This was one of those times I was destined to fail.

  He frowned so hard that the skin on his forehead turned into a V.

  “Self-entitled little brat,” he said.

  “Name calling, really?” I leaned down. “You’ll have to do better than that. Shorty.”