“What’s funny?” he asked.
“Nothing, treacle.”
That always brought a smile to his face. “You crazy man.”
“Ain’t that why you love me?”
“Sure, I love your weirdo ways.”
I lightly punched his arm. “Who you calling weird?”
“You.” He gave me one more grin, then his expression faded back to serious. “Let’s focus.”
“Yeah, you’re right.” I rolled my eyes. “What are we gonna do with Sonny? This is just one stupid, never-ending circle with him.”
“We need that stone back.”
I sighed. “He’ll only take it again.”
“One thing at a time. You didn’t see which way he went, I take it?”
“No. Sorry.”
“Shit.”
“Let’s think about this logically. We know him. If we were him, where would we go around here?”
He stared at me for a minute. “Brem’s.”
“Wait, what? But that’s just asking for more shit.”
“That’s why we have to shut it down before anything kicks off.”
Brem was a vampire who ran a gang and prided himself on providing anything you wanted—at a price. Basically, he’d own you forever, getting you to do all sorts of bad crap for him.
Sonny, as much as he pissed me off, would crumble under that pressure. To be under Brem’s control was worse than death. He’d end up falling in with an even worse crowd than the one he was already in with—and that was saying something. Brem was on a whole other level of nasty, hiding beneath a shell of expensive suits and haircuts.
“He’d be desperate enough now,” I said in agreement with Dean as we crossed the street. “That stone’s upped the ante.”
“Exactly.”
“But won’t Brem just take it?”
“No. Too easy.”
We turned right, keeping up a hasty pace.
“I hope we’re not gonna be too late.”
Across the road, pasted onto a wall, was a flyer for a Divine Fire Conclave meeting over in Rembrandt Square. Everyone just called them the Conclave—kind of a global label they had now. They were a new religious group, not really having anything to do with any mainstream religion or church.
This world. Man, it was complicated. There was a constant sense of everyone being out of their depth, and the Conclave was a complication that had risen to come and take advantage of that. As with most things in life, some people were fine with supes sharing their air, others were not. According to the Conclave, supes were evil, against God—all that stuff. They scared me more than anything else because it was like holding your breath, wondering where their hateful message, dressed up as faith, would build to. There was one of their ‘churches’ set up in almost every city, with an alarming number of followers, and leaders who had a major public presence. The head of them all was Giles McGregor—High Bishop, he called himself. He ran the entire global enterprise of hate. It’d had four years to build, and it was now at toxic levels, wealthy as hell.
Not all supes were bad—just like people. They were either the shit end of the stick or the not shit end. Okay, so then there was also the space between, but none of that mattered to the Conclave and their tunnel vision.
The rights of supes, who had once been thought of as human, remained the same. Nothing had changed, only that supes now had their own special prisons if they were at the really shitty end of that good old stick.
Faith in government was fading. The council had a bleak reputation—corruption, scandals, murder. It’d lost all its power. I was surprised to see it still active. The time would come when it would fade away. It had nothing left to give or offer.
Would the Conclave step in to take its place?
With the supes and the pods, and all the mess, came a whole new set of problems. Cases needed to be solved that were beyond the regular whodunnit humans were used to. Whatdunnit was now added to the common vocabulary. The council and the government decided it best to license investigators to handle paranormal cases in towns and cities, acting both privately as well as liaising with the police. That allowed the cops to focus on the human cases. They were stretched to their limit as it was. And so, Paranormal Investigations Agents (PIAs) were born.
There was a lot of crossover with working with the cops, of course, especially if dead bodies were involved. We had the power to make an arrest. Cases could begin as a human problem, only to then not be. We were kind of like supernatural police, but not quite coppers, more sleuthy.
Jake & Dean Investigations was just what the doctor ordered, but also one of six different PIA firms in the city of Amsterdam, each competing for business as cases came in. We all took on private cases, or cases police would contact us about. Some were even given to us by the council to handle. There were strict guidelines for infringing on another agency’s investigation or stealing one during the puzzle-solving process. In fact, there was a whole rule book on the issue that was a great alternative to a sleeping potion.
Basically, don’t fuck over other PIAs. End of. If you needed to team up and ask for help, that was cool. These rules had to be explained to clients—that they would have to terminate a contract, if they’d hired a PIA, first before taking on another agency. Double-booking was bad. A healthy rivalry was good, but not an unhealthy one. There were blurred lines on the whole rivalry thing because the husband and wife duo of the Jansen Agency were, well, knob heads.
“Let’s go,” Dean said.
He took the lead, me hot on his heels. I followed him down to the end of the street, across a canal, then made a left in the direction of Brem’s lair.
Man, I hated that wanker. But I’d have to keep it cool if I didn’t want a bloodbath on my hands. All I wanted was to get back home to our daughter, then
