wanted, and lost, six years ago.” His fingers tightened on hers.
Shock and confusion dissolved. There was only hope. And there was Nic. Her best friend. A man she could trust. A man she could love.
“Are you applying for the position as the captain’s lover, Special Agent Talligar?”
“I am.”
She leaned forward until their lips almost touched. “You’re hired.”
Mary Jo Putney
New York Times
The Demon Dancer
I studied the homeless man’s corpse. He was the fifth I’d seen this day. Ragged clothes so dirty they’d clog a washing machine. A battered and long out-of-date Tennessee driver’s license giving the poor sod’s name and age. And a great big smile on his lined face.
My partner, Jamal Johnson, shook his head. “I can’t believe how all these guys died smiling, Dave. I suppose it’s some new street drug.”
“Maybe,” I said, but I didn’t believe it. Besides being a New York City detective, I’m a Guardian, from a family that has the kind of powers that used to be called magic. Witch burnings a few centuries back persuaded Guardians to live under the radar. Most of us lead normal lives, gravitating to work that suited our magical talents.
Me, I’m a Guardian hunter. I’m very, very good at tracking people down, especially criminals. Equally good at dealing with them after I found them. Not surprising that I ended up a cop.
My boss is a hardass New Yorker who would scoff at the very idea of magic, but he’s learned to send me out to the weird deaths, like this one. Five smiling corpses. No signs of violence.
It could just be coincidence—street people aren’t the healthiest cohort—but my Guardian instincts were screaming. “Have you noticed that they’ve been getting younger? The first guy must have been in his seventies. Each has been a few years younger than the one before. This poor devil is in his late fifties.”
Jamal considered. He’s no Guardian, but he’s a damned good cop. “Probably coincidence, but if some dealer has been going around handing out high-dose samples, they might be taking out the weak more quickly.”
“It will be interesting to see the tox report.” I checked my watch. It was midevening, and technically I should have been off duty two hours ago. Maybe after we cleared up this scene, Jamal and I could grab some Tex-Mex at the restaurant down the block.
I was about to get back to work when a very, very bad feeling struck me. The kind where you drop everything and
I didn’t quite do that, but I said, “Jamal, I have to be somewhere else ASAP. Can you wrap up here and get a ride back to the station with one of the uniforms?”
He gave me a quizzical glance, but said only, “Sure. See you tomorrow.”
We’ve been partners a long time. No need to explain things. I pivoted and headed for my car, wondering what could have set off such loud alarm bells.
I PARKED RIGHT in front of my East Side destination—a Guardian talent that’s useful in New York is being able to find parking when needed—then took the steps of the neat brownstone three at a time. I felt as antsy as if I were the only one who could save a room full of kindergartners from certain death. Instead, I was responding to the silent distress of Bethany Sterling, one of my favorite people in the world.
Bethany swung the door to her apartment open before I could knock. No surprise there since she’s also a Guardian. She looked her normal self—petite and straight-backed despite her years, her silver hair pulled into an elegant twist. But her deep-set blue eyes showed the anxiety that had brought me running.
Giving thanks that she seemed all right, I asked, “Lady Beth, what’s wrong?”
She smiled wryly as she stood back and ushered me in. “Apparently I wasn’t shielding my worries as well as I thought. You always could read me better than anyone else.” She closed the door behind me. “You’re worried, too. Tell me about it while I make a nice pot of tea.”
Briefly I described the dead street people while Bethany filled her electric kettle. It’s one of the British types that serious tea drinkers use because it heats water to boiling in seconds. After pushing the on button, she stood on tiptoe for the tin of my favorite Darjeeling tea. I reached over her head to take it from the shelf.
She isn’t a lady in the sense of an English title, but she was named for an ancestor called Lady Bethany Fox, so my brother, Charlie, and I like to call her Lady Beth. Not only was she English born, but the title suited her classy nature.
She warmed the teapot, then added tea leaves and poured boiling water on them. “I suspect our worries are related, David. Early this morning I sensed a strange, menacing energy sweeping into the city, and it’s getting stronger. Something is very wrong.”
“And I have the corpses to prove it. Any idea what the cause might be?”
She set out two teacups and produced a cookie jar filled with her rich, crumbly scones. As she set them on a dainty china plate, she said, “I think a demon has come to New York.”
I experienced a moment of severe cognitive dissonance at the contrast between the sweet silver-haired widow and the words she’d just said. But though Bethany Sterling was indeed sweet, she was a Guardian hunter like me, with special abilities to track the ungodly and enforce justice.
I glanced across the kitchen at the old photo that hung over the neat computer table. It showed a young Bethany dressed in parachute gear early in World War II. She’d trained as a secret agent and parachuted behind Nazi lines in France, single-handedly freed a jail full of Maquis, and done a lot of other heroic things.
But she hadn’t managed the rescue that mattered most—her equally young husband had been a Guardian healer, like my brother, Charlie, and he died in a prisoner-of-war camp, treating fellow prisoners right up to the end.
So Bethany Malmain Sterling was one formidable woman even at her present advanced age, though she refused to divulge the actual number of her years. She’d also, in her youth, been one very hot babe, with cool blond hair and dangerous blue eyes. I wish I’d known her then. But I’m damned lucky to know her now.
“A demon,” I repeated. “This is new? The city has plenty of them, starting on Wall Street.”
“This isn’t a joke, David,” she said with mild reproof. “The—entity—is no metaphor, but a malicious noncorporeal being. A demon that feeds on human energy. Have all the victims been male?” When I nodded, she said, “So it’s a succubus.”
“A succubus,” I repeated. “Ooooo-kay. At least that would explain why the men were smiling.”
She judged that the tea had steeped long enough and poured the steaming liquid into the mugs. Then, knowing me, she added a dollop of rare and expensive Highland single malt to my tea. “There are worse ways to die, but I imagine that most of the creature’s victims would prefer to live.”
I took a long, appreciative swig of tea and whiskey. “Is there any way to get rid of this demon, or will it keep feeding indefinitely?”
