loganjacobs
patreon
Kill Monsters Get Rich 2 Chapter 3
🕑 Added 2022-06-25 14:00:01 +0000 UTCKegan was evidently a man of many talents, because I hadn’t noticed anything remotely suspicious when he’d bumped into the young man, whose name was apparently Jake Haystead. I hadn’t seen Kegan’s hands go anywhere near the oblivious kid’s wallet or pockets or anything.
And it seemed Jake Haystead hadn’t noticed either, because despite the fact my sister was staring after him with absolutely no subtlety, he didn’t turn around, or pat at his pockets, or do anything other than keep walking.
“This should get you into the library, no problem,” Kegan said as he passed Jake Haystead’s student ID to Asami.
I knew students would often lend and borrow their friends’ ID cards if their own was lost or forgotten at home, so I knew no one would be suspicious if they saw Asami didn’t match up to the photo-- assuming anyone even noticed. I couldn’t imagine that was the most pressing thing on the minds of the library staff.
“I’ll be able to get into the older collections, too, with this,” Asami said as she took the ID card. “Proper research and historical accounts, stuff we can actually use.”
“I wonder if they’ll have any books by supernaturals in there,” Kylah mused. “There are quite a few who are known in human academic circles, too.”
“It would be handy if there were,” Carmen said. “We’d be able to rely on that properly, rather than Twilight or whatever.”
“You know, I have a vampire friend who actually really likes those books,” Asami said with an amused smile as she slipped the ID card into her back pocket. “They’re total nonsense, of course, but she thinks they’re funny.”
“A lot of supernaturals find human takes on magic very interesting,” Kylah explained to Carmen and I. “Sometimes it’s actually quite accurate, maybe because someone involved in the writing actually is a supernatural. But a lot of the time it’s just... wrong. And it’s funny!”
“I get that,” I said with a grin. I liked the idea of a vampire explaining the inaccuracies of vampire pulp romance. “But it’s not super useful for figuring out whatever the hell is killing random hikers in the woods.”
“That it isn’t,” Kegan agreed, and he pointed at me. “So, Sami, you’ve got this?”
“Absolutely,” the Japanese woman said with a firm nod.
If I was being honest, the research part of this monster hunting business didn’t appeal to me. I loved learning about the magical world and the people within it, but actually researching, looking through old books for the tiny nugget of information we needed, that was not my idea of fun.
Unfortunately, though, it was the only way we were going to stop these murders, because it was uncomfortably obvious the Order of the Eye wasn’t going to do shit to help.
I remembered what Amaryllis, a Seelie faerie who’d tried to have Kylah, Carmen, Asami, and I killed, had said a few weeks ago. She’d talked about the veil that separated the human world from the magical world and how the separation was unnatural. She’d been convinced humanity was naturally subservient to magic, and that faeries-- and other magical species, but mainly faeries-- should rule over humans. Before the veil, humans had known about magic, and they’d feared and respected it, and it was a time she clearly missed.
But since I’d never much liked being told what to do, I reckoned I preferred the world as it was now.
The veil wasn’t very popular with other supernaturals either, though. Many believed the separation of magic and humanity was wrong, and that they were meant to intertwine. On the far other end of the spectrum to Amaryllis were people like Jamison Hawthorn, a half-fae we saved who apparently believed seers and human-magical hybrids such as half-fae were the natural order, the inevitable conclusion we were all slowly creeping toward.
But the Order had been established explicitly to protect the veil and what it stood for. Humanity possessed weapons of mass destruction and advanced technology and billions of people. Magic had arcane forces and power over the natural elements. I knew if the veil ever fell, the most likely outcome would be conflict, and a war between humanity and magic would devastate the planet and probably render both sides practically extinct.
So, insofar as ‘preventing the apocalypse’ went, I supposed I appreciated the veil and the Order. The Order were also the people paying us to hunt these monsters, and while they only did that because they didn’t want to deal with those problems themselves, they were paying a lot.
That reminded me, actually. We still needed to go to the Sanctuary and get paid for the revenant problem we’d just cleared up.
Kegan had evidently said the same thought, because he turned to me.
“Do you want me to mirror you to the Sanctuary? So you can give Renée the photos?”
“That would be great, thanks,” I said to him, and I was relieved I had a decent excuse to get out of research. Plus, I knew we would be in very safe hands with Asami. Carmen and Kylah could trawl the internet for other useful sources, or try to get access to more detailed police files instead of just what was available to the public.
Ideally, we needed a police officer who was also a supernatural, but I had a sneaking suspicion we would be out of luck. Otherwise, the disappearances and murders would have been brought to the Order’s attention a lot sooner.
“Okay, so Kegan and Leo will head to the Sanctuary to speak to Renée, Asami will masquerade as a student to research in the university library, and Kylah and I can do a little on-the-ground detective work,” Carmen said in a conclusive tone.
“You read my mind,” I joked, and she grinned at me.
Being my twin, she obviously knew me better than anyone else in the world, but it was still funny to pretend like twin-telepathy was a thing. A lot of kids at our high school had asked us if we were psychic, and we’d quickly learned not to lean into the joke after all the stuff about the silver lines only we could see.
“It would help to speak to more local magicals,” Kylah agreed. “Or human law enforcement. We could pose as reporters.”
“I was more thinking FBI,” Carmen said with a mischievous grin. “Could you make us invisible and sneak us into the precinct’s record room?”
“I could make myself invisible while you distract the officers for good measure,” the blonde woman suggested, and Carmen pointed at her.
“I like it! Alright, so we’ve all got our assignments. Meet back at the motel in a couple hours?”
“Sounds good,” I said. “Is there anything Kegan and I should pick up from the Sanctuary, though? Books, clothes, et cetera?”
“Since we’re no longer Eyes, we no longer have access to their resources,” Asami sighed gloomily.
I could understand her frustration. I wasn’t even obsessed with books, but even I had been taken aback by the Sanctuary’s library. The sheer size of it, the impossible number of books, and the grand architecture had made it feel like something out of a fairytale.
But Asami was a researcher, and it was clear to anyone who talked to her for even a few minutes that she adored books. And now she couldn’t access any of them.
This was another thing I disliked about the Order, and another thing that made it so obvious that helping people wasn’t really what they were about. If they really wanted magical threats to be taken care of, they would lend their resources to anyone and everyone.
Instead, they played gatekeeper, which meant people who were less fortunate than Carmen and I, people who didn’t have three Eyes on their teams, including a researcher, got killed.
I didn’t know how yet, but I vowed to get Asami all the books she could ever possibly desire.
Once we’d all finished, Asami headed to the library to get started on research, Kylah and Carmen made for the police precinct, and Kegan and I returned to the motel.
I was familiar with mirror magic by now, but it still fascinated me. It was a particularly complex type of magic, but it was Kegan’s ‘affinity.’ I still didn’t know exactly how his being a half-faerie affected his magic, other than it meant healing magic didn’t work on him the same way it did on regular humans, but I wondered if his faerie blood had impacted his affinity.
Carefully, he used one of Kylah’s silver daggers to cut a shallow slice along the back of his arm, and he then dabbed a symbol on the mirror in our shared motel room. I was still taken aback by the way a mirror looked when it became a doorway, like liquid mercury that rippled and shifted but didn’t fall out of the frame.
I was used to mirror traveling by this point, but it still wasn’t a sensation I particularly enjoyed. It was similar to being trapped in a sort of bubble, because I could feel the liquid mirror around me, but I didn’t get wet, and it didn’t stick to me.
After several seconds of discomfort, I emerged into the entrance hall of the Sanctuary, located in Denver, Colorado, about thirteen-hundred miles east of where I’d been standing only moments before.
Kegan stepped out of the mirror just behind me, and I saw him tense as he took in the hall. His shoulders bunched up ever so slightly, and his jaw twitched as he clenched it just a little tighter than normal.
I could understand that. This place had been his home, the only one he’d ever really known, and two weeks ago he and Kylah had just… left. Walked out and left it all behind.
I couldn’t imagine what he was feeling because Carmen and I hadn’t really had a home since we were eight years old. Our foster parents Theo and Maria were kind, but they’d never quite felt like our family.
Then again, the Sanctuary had never been much of a home for Kylah and Kegan, either. I’d seen first-hand how some of the other Eyes treated them, mistrusted them for being half-faerie.
I wondered what that felt like for the Campbells to never truly have a place where they belonged. Carmen and I had the memories of our parents to compare Theo and Maria to. Kylah and Kegan had only known the judgment of the Order.
“You can wait in the motel, if you want,” I said to Kegan. “I’ve just gotta show Renée the photos. I can do that by myself.”
Kegan paused a long time before he answered, and I knew he was carefully weighing his options.
“No,” he said at last. “I’ll come with you. This was my home for years. I refuse to let it haunt me.”
I supposed that made sense. Haunted things were so much bigger and creepier in your head than in real life. If Kegan allowed the Sanctuary to become this Forbidden Place in his mind, it would only worsen how he felt, and it might even cloud his judgment going forward.
I clapped my hand on his shoulder, half comforting and half impressed, and then the two of us headed down the winding hallways toward Renée’s office.
The Sanctuary, on account of not actually being on the physical plane, was ever-changing. It was anchored at the front entrance to a dilapidated church, which also happened to be what the Sanctuary looked like to mortals, or non-seers.
All of this meant the corridors shifted, and rooms would become closer or further to walk to. I’d never actually seen any of them change in front of my eyes, but I knew they did.
Renée’s office seemed eager to see us, or perhaps the Sanctuary didn’t want Kegan and I within its walls any longer than strictly necessary, because we arrived quickly. Kegan knocked on the enormous doors, and they swung open to reveal Renée sitting at her desk, which was covered in paperwork, and she looked surprised when she noticed who’d just walked in.
“Kegan,” she said in a slightly stunned tone. “And Leo Rivera. What are you two doing here?”
“Collecting payment,” I answered, and I pulled the flyer for the revenant job out of my back pocket, plus my phone. Carmen had sent me the photos since her phone camera was better than mine, and the true horrors of poisoned magic were artfully rendered in close-ups of dismembered limbs and rotting innards.
Renée’s face didn’t even flicker as she looked at the photos, but given that she’d been doing this for a lot longer than two weeks, I had to imagine she’d seen far worse.
“Who was the initial spirit who poisoned the land?” she asked after several long seconds. She didn’t look up from my phone, just flicked over to the next photograph.
“Jonathan Rowe,” Kegan answered. “Hanged himself after his wife and child were killed by a disease outbreak.”
“Hanged himself? So he was tied to a tree, then?”
“He was,” I said, and inwardly I had to fight not to stare at her, because she’d figured out Jonathan Rowe’s anchor in about two-seconds, and she hadn’t even seen the place where he’d died.
But again, she’d been doing this for a lot longer than I or the Campbells.
“He must have been truly heartbroken that his death was enough to poison the land there,” Renée said after a moment as she handed my phone back to me. “Even without being administered last rites, many spirits still pass peacefully to the beyond.”
“Well, now he has,” I said. “So you see the proof, the revenants.”
“And you reburied them?” Renée asked, and she raised one eyebrow. “Or at least didn’t leave them strewn across the forest floor?”
“Of course,” I said, and Renée smiled encouragingly. She projected a very motherly demeanor, albeit a mother who was quite firm and strict, and I could sense there was real pride as she looked at Kegan and me.
Pride, and maybe relief.
Despite my issues with the Order, and my dislike for the way it handled things, I did genuinely like Renée. I could tell she honestly cared for Kegan and Kylah, and I also got the sense that she didn’t agree with everything the Order did, either. She’d been in favor of Carmen and I becoming real Eyes, of us being allowed to train properly and use the Sanctuary’s extensive resources.
She was also one of the very few members of the magical community I’d met who didn’t have a problem with the Campbell’s being half-fae.
And she’d known my father when they’d been kids. Not well, but she had known him.
Part of me wanted to ask Renée a barrage of questions every time I saw her, to try and get every scrap of information I could, because my own memories of my father were blurred with time and my having been so young. But another part of me wanted to preserve the idea of the perfect, caring man who had taught Carmen and I how to ride a bike, who had pretended to be a monster coming to eat us, who had cooked the best chili I’d ever tasted.
The idea that I could learn something that might lower my opinion of him kind of scared me, because those memories were all I had, and the last thing I wanted to do was somehow taint them.
Or, worse, taint Carmen’s memories of him.
“You work fast, the little team you’ve put together,” Renée said as she sat back down in the large chair behind her desk and gestured for Kegan and I to sit.
I was contemplating whether to say we couldn’t stay, because I’d seen how uncomfortable Kegan had been to be back in the Sanctuary, but the blond man sat down before I could say anything.
I sat, too, and Renée looked at us both over steepled fingers, and I thought she seemed a little less motherly and a little more authoritative now.
“I’m impressed by the work you five have done,” she said. “Thanks to your efforts, the missing half-fae in Los Angeles have been reunited with their loved ones, and we are keeping tabs on any known vampire associates of Sullivan Scratch.”
Not for the first time, I remembered that day in Scratch’s safehouse-slash-base-of-operations-slash-dungeon. He’d imprisoned as many half-faeries as he could get his hands on and had drunk their blood so he could withstand sunlight. When we’d found him out and hunted him down, he’d tried to bargain for his life with information on whatever was going on in Phoenix, Arizona.
We’d learned the Phoenix group was more than one type of magical species, and they were a group hellbent on taking down the veil, on reintroducing magic to humanity.
Many people in the magical world liked that idea, but only the most radical would agree with what Phoenix was trying to do, because there was no finesse to it, no delicacy. It would uproot everything humans thought they knew about the world, it would throw everyone and everything into chaos, and that wasn’t even getting into the fact the Phoenix group intended to subjugate, enslave, and possibly exterminate humanity.
Needless to say, I wanted to stop them. And I would stop them, as soon as we figured out exactly what their plans were.
“However,” Renée then said, and her voice pulled me out of my thoughts. “I want to remind you both not to get too brazen. You have had early successes, and saved lives, but you have still chosen an immensely dangerous path, and I don’t want those victories to go to your head. You are still very capable of being hurt and killed, even you and Kylah, Kegan, even with all your training.”
“Believe me, I know,” Kegan answered, and he put his hand to his side, where he’d been stabbed a few weeks ago. “We’re not being brash. This was a job we came across while doing something else in Oregon.”
“We decided to help, since we knew we had the means,” I added, and I tried to keep my voice pleasant, tried not to sound too judgmental and pointed, but I only half-succeeded.
“And that is admirable, but it’s still dangerous,” Renée told us. “You don’t have the resources of Eyes anymore. You don’t have the luxury of back-up, and I am not in a position to change that.”
I got the sense Renée’s hands were more tied than she was technically allowed to admit. She was the head of this Sanctuary chapter and a member of the Council, but she was beholden to the votes of her peers, such as Councilman Samuel White, whom I knew had a personal dislike of ‘half-breeds’ such as half-fae like the Campbells.
“We are being as careful as our choices allow,” Kegan assured Renée. “But Kylah, Asami, and I… we can do much more good and help many more people outside of the Order.”
“I know why you chose to leave,” Renée said, and her voice softened a little to sound more parental again. “And I’m heartened to see you all have such strong moral convictions. But you can’t blame me for worrying when you are putting yourselves at a marked disadvantage.”
Kegan frowned a little, and his lips pursed. Whereas Kylah twisted a lock of her wavy blonde hair around her finger when she was nervous, Kegan tended to curl his hands into fists like he was physically restraining himself from fidgeting or giving a tell.
Which was, in itself, a tell.
“It’s getting worse, isn’t it?” he asked after a long moment, and though he technically phrased it as a question, his voice was grim with confirmation. “Phoenix.”
I could see in the way Renée’s brow furrowed ever so slightly that Kegan had hit the mark dead on, and I wondered if Renée steepled her hands like that so she, too, would not fidget and indicate what she truly felt.
“Since you are no longer a member of the Order, I am not at liberty to discuss the confidential details of active cases,” she finally answered in a very measured, rehearsed sort of voice.
When Kylah, Carmen, Asami, and I had infiltrated Sullivan Scratch’s operation, it had been via the fae Amaryllis. She was a noblewoman in the Seelie Court, and supposedly the Seelie were the benevolent faeries, but having seen Amaryllis for myself, I knew the Seelie weren’t so much ‘benevolent’ as ‘less unlikely to hunt humans for sport and eat them.’
But as best as I could tell, no one knew of Amaryllis’ involvement with Scratch. She’d deliberately kept a decent distance from it because, as a full-blooded faerie, she could not lie. And because of her status, no one would dare accuse her without hard proof.
Arguably, the fact she’d tried to kill the four of us-- primarily Kylah-- was fairly good proof, but we’d agreed not to bring that forward to the Order. Amaryllis was powerful and dangerous, and Asami and Kylah had pointed out to Carmen and I that the Fae Courts would not take such an accusation lightly, even if Amaryllis was guilty. Which she was.
It was all about appearances and manners and permissions. Even saying Amaryllis had been working with Scratch could spark a diplomatic incident, and the fact Kylah and the other targets of Scratch’s operations were half-fae meant few supernaturals would jump to their aid. Many viewed ‘half-worlders’ such as half-faeries and seers as less-than, as people who would not decide which world to belong to, and therefore people who belonged to neither.
As a Mexican-American who’d spent the latter half of his childhood in a white foster home, I could relate.
So, we’d kept quiet about Amaryllis. The Order possessed resources we didn’t and surely already knew Amaryllis was somehow involved, and they were either waiting for an opportunity to act on that information or-- and this was probably the more likely option, given the Order’s general policy of ‘not my problem’-- had decided not to act on that information at all.
In the meantime, I was eager to take down everyone who was involved with Phoenix, everyone who wanted to see innocent people hurt for the sake of a little power.
“So, it is getting worse,” I said to Renée. “You guys haven’t made any progress.”
I liked Renée, despite her position, but I didn’t trust the Order with any of Scratch’s files we’d found. The records all detailed what little he knew of Phoenix’s operations, what disasters they’d been involved with, some people he thought were members of the group, and all kinds of weird and creepy experiments on magic.
I hadn’t read any of the files, but Asami was slowly working her way through them. She’d mentioned to us things like vampires artificially inseminating half-faeries in an attempt to get ‘natural daywalkers’-- vampires who were permanently unaffected by sunlight, because they had faerie blood.
Kylah actually needed to leave the room to throw up at that part.
There was no way I was trusting the Order with that kind of information when people like Samuel White were on their Council. They cared about keeping humans and magic separate, keeping the veil up. By and large, they didn’t care if the magical world tore itself to pieces in the process. I wanted to help people, and I would, but with two half-faeries on my team, I had to think about their safety, too.
“Is the Order’s intense focus on the Phoenix problem why some of the other things up north have been neglected?” I asked with absolutely no attempt at subtlety. Renée knew exactly where I stood and if I pretended otherwise, it would be as much an insult to her as to myself.
Still, she fixed me with a warning look in her eyes before she answered.
“The Order is not as large as you seem to think, Leo,” she said. “There are not many members who are qualified to deal with such dangerous things, so we have to prioritize. Phoenix has a large body count and is attracting a lot of unwanted attention from human law enforcement.”
“There’s something up in Eugene, Oregon with a large body count, but you guys just slapped up a flyer for twenty-grand and basically told the locals to shut up,” I said in a voice that was a little more petulant and sour than I would have liked. But I wasn’t going to pretend like I wasn’t frustrated by this set up, even if I did like Renée as a person.
Even those who meant well could be caught up in bad systems and perpetuate issues. It became a moral failing when you realized you were enabling those problems and didn’t act to change it, and Renée knew the Order had problems.
“And I’m sure the two of you, along with Carmen, Kylah, and Asami, will handle it as effectively as you handled poor Jonathan Rowe,” Renée said in a slightly chilly voice.
“So, you admit the Order has to rely on bounty hunters and freelancers risking their lives with a fraction of the support?” I asked, and I met Renée’s eyes unflinchingly.
“Just because a system is not perfect does not mean it should not exist,” she answered unintimidated. “The Order of the Eye is one of the very few barriers that keeps order in the magical world. You know full well what would happen if magic was reintroduced on a large scale. Many people-- myself included-- would love to one day see a world where magic is once again allowed to coexist with humanity. But right now, it is safer for everyone if they are kept separate. And something like Phoenix is definitely not how we would want humans to rediscover magic. It is something that needs to be handled delicately, and preferably without a body count in the hundreds.”
“But Phoenix isn’t the only issue!” I insisted. “There are so many other problems, and you don’t even try to fix them.”
“I will not apologize for not having the resources to give every incident the same attention,” Renée said flatly. “As much as I would like to. Ralph Chander, I believe you know him, don’t you, Leo? He was in the same seat you are now only a few days ago, asking me to help him try and locate his missing niece. He is a nice man, and his husband, Conleth, is a friend of mine, but I could not help Ralph because there is nothing about the disappearance that would justify the Order’s involvement.”
“That’s precisely why Kylah, Asami, and I left,” Kegan said, and he made no attempt to try and hide the bitterness in his voice. “We were tired of how removed the Order is. The Eyes don’t care about Chander’s niece, and they didn’t care about the half-fae going missing, and they don’t care about whatever’s happening in Eugene right now. It markets itself as protection, as a place people can come if they need help, but it’s not. It’s just there to prop up a system you yourself admit is flawed.”
“Flawed is better than nothing,” Renée argued. “Without the Order, there would be nothing to stop any supernatural individual with ill intent from carrying out a string of murders that could garner worldwide attention. The secrecy of the magical world could not survive a Jack the Ripper of the twenty-first century.”
Renée then rose from her seat and placed her hands very firmly on the top of her desk, and I knew she was going to dismiss Kegan and I before she’d even opened her mouth.
“You have my gratitude for handling the issue in Oregon. I will see you are properly paid by the end of the week. In the meantime, I wish you all well, and again remind you to move with caution.”
Kegan and I both stood up, and I saw the blond man square his shoulders to mee the woman he regarded as a surrogate mother with the same cool indifference she projected onto him.
It was a difficult thing to love someone when you were so convinced they were wrong and you were right. I was impressed Kylah, Kegan, and Renée were so insistent on doing it.
“Thank you, Councilwoman Beckett,” Kegan said in an even voice, and he turned on his heel and walked out.
I followed right behind him, and we walked back to the mirror in the entrance hall in total silence. Again, the corridors seemed to be shorter than before, and now I was pretty sure it was because they wanted us gone ASAP.
Fine by me. I was getting more and more sick of this place by the minute.
It was a relief to step back into the motel room and see Carmen and Asami sitting on Kegan’s bed and giggling like college girls in a shared dorm, and when Kegan and I emerged from the mirror, they both turned to us with Cheshire-cat-like smiles.
“How’d it-- oh.” Kylah’s question died on her lips, just like her smile did, when she saw the forlorn expression on her twin brother’s face.
I crossed the room and kissed her forehead hello before I shook my head.
“We… had an ideological disagreement with Renée,” I told them. “But we’re getting paid for the revenant job, at least.”
“She seems to like the work we’re doing, even if she fundamentally disagrees with it,” Kegan said, and again he didn’t bother to mask the bitterness in his tone.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Carmen raise her hand as if she meant to reach for Kegan, to squeeze his shoulder and comfort him, but she let her hand drop after a moment and said nothing.
“It’s okay,” Kylah said encouragingly to her brother and me. “Renée… she loves us. I know she does. But when you’ve dedicated so much of your life to something… it can be hard to admit it has problems. It’s human nature.”
“Sunk-cost fallacy,” my sister added. “But I think I know something that might cheer you both up.”
“Oh, yeah?” I asked, and even that simple statement from Carmen was enough to make a wry smile tug at the corners of my mouth. “And what’s that?”
“We just got a text from Sami,” Kylah answered. “She’s in the library, and she’s found a whole lot of very promising books. We’re finally making real progress on this job.”
