Pride and Poltergeists

  PRIDE AND POLTERGEISTS

  Book 9 of the Dulcie O’Neil series

  HP Mallory

  Copyright ©2018 by HP Mallory

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. Please do not participate in or encourage the piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  Acknowledgements:

  For my son, Finn, who makes this world magical.

  For Len, thank you for always believing in me and for your encouragement. I love you.

  To my editor, Teri, at www.editingfairy.com: Thank you for a job well done, as always.

  To Crystallee Hopkins: Thank you for coming up with the amazing title!

  PROLOGUE

  Casey James, Special Agent

  Human

  I stood at the head of the room, listening to everyone breathe. Their inhales and their exhales, their rattling lungs, their coughing, their sighing, and their muttering. It was the only sound in the world, soft as a whisper and cold as death, because they all knew why we were here. People didn’t come into the Situation Room for tea parties. They came to make war. Occasionally, they even came to prevent it.

  The door opened and closed. The muttering stopped and every head turned. President Odyssey took a seat at the head of the table, flanked by her chief of staff and the secretary of state. The first was a short, spindly, little man named Simon Richmond. I didn’t care much for Richmond. The other was a woman with stark, white hair and burning, blue eyes called Hana. She was beautiful, flawless as a porcelain doll, and just as disturbing.

  Hana was the only magical creature in the room. The only monster in this human administration, and she walked like she knew it—with a certain confidence and bravado. She was a Valkyrie—a spirit guide to the brave and reckless, and also an empath, capable of reading the intentions of everyone in the room. Something which made her invaluable as secretary of state and was likely the only reason she was allowed to have a job in the human government. In general, humans were suspicious of anything that didn’t resemble them. I couldn’t say I disagreed with that generality. In my position, I’d encountered numerous Netherworld creatures that were anything less than law-abiding.

  “Madam President,” I said in greeting.

  President Leandra Odyssey inclined her head, squinting, wearing the magma-and-hot-water look I’d only ever seen when she was about to declare war. She didn’t say hello.

  “What’s this about?” asked Richmond, already writhing in his customary confusion. Balding, with a ring of white hair surrounding his head like a crown, grey eyes, and a nose that never seemed to stop twitching, he reminded me of a mole. The chief of staff wasn’t accustomed to being out of the loop. Not that anyone else in the room knew much more either.

  “You’ll know soon enough,” I said, trying but failing to keep the bitterness from my voice.

  Richmond’s face turned pink with what little rage he could muster at two o’clock in the morning. Hana was standing behind him, a silver shadow with her arms crossed, the barest hint of a smile on her lips, too sharp to be genuine and too dull to be hate. Hana’s liquid, blue eyes landed on Richmond only for a second. She didn’t move, or even blink, but I knew what she was doing.

  A second later, Richmond was calm. He took a deep breath and settled into his chair like he hadn’t spoken at all, courtesy of Hana’s power and her magic ability to put the chief of staff back in his place.

  I swallowed hard. Hana wasn’t supposed to do that. There were, in theory, clauses that prevented her from using her powers on coworkers—but if it meant Richmond would shut the fuck up, I wasn’t about to call her out. I had to wonder if Richmond was even aware that Hana had magicked him, but I quickly dismissed the thought because it wasn’t important. The most important issue was: what the hell was going on with the Association of Netherworld Creatures, the ANC?

  President Odyssey cleared her throat. It was two o’clock in the morning on a Saturday, and the look in her eyes told me this had better be damn good.

  “There’s been a breach in the ANC,” I said.

  The entire room sucked in a collective breath. The Association of Netherworld Creatures, the organization responsible for keeping the peace among creatures of magical and other uncanny origin, weren’t exactly doing their job. And that was bad news.

  President Odyssey’s fingers curled into a loose fist, but she said nothing. Hana looked at each of the generals, admirals, cybersecurity personnel, and secret service in turn with a strange look on her face, one of haughtiness maybe. Whatever it was, I had trouble identifying it, and that realization left me nervous.

  Hana’s eyes settled on me and a chill shook my bones, an iciness that meant she was probing me for intention. Clearly, she didn’t know that I had enough experience with those who are magically inclined to realize when one is trying to use her powers on me. I did my best to ignore it, and her, reaching into my pocket and wrapping my fingers around a small, green-grey stone.

  “Garrison Hart was one of our assets, tasked with monitoring the Brokenview ANC and its portals,” I said, doing my best to thwart Hana’s abilities. Even though I was human, I had some of my own tricks up my sleeve.

  But back to Garrison Hart … There was at least one human agent in every ANC branch in the world, most of them American, Canadian, and British. All were FBI, carefully selected and trained at sites more secretive than the CIA’s farm. Their job was to make sure the Regulators at the ANC were doing their job and keeping their kind on the straight and narrow, or risk mass deportation. These human agents were assassins, thieves, and liars by trade, and they were damn good at what they did—never making mistakes. “According to Marcus Ream—Garrison Hart’s manager—there was a disparity between his last two reports.”

  “Disparity?” said Richmond, but I could see President Odyssey lingering on the word “last.”

  I nodded and palmed the tablet on the table in front of me. In response, the other tablets scattered around the table suddenly lit up, displaying two scanned FBI documents side-by-side.

  “These are Hart’s final two debriefings,” I said. “The first is routine stuff, mostly active ANC case files and lists of people caught stealing office supplies or sleeping together. Nothing too substantial.” Most ANC reports looked like that. The Regulators were good at their jobs, and the surveillance was nothing more than a precaution. Usually.

  “And the second?” asked Richmond.

  I sighed. That was where the problems started. “The second briefing we received three days ago. Same brand of intel, same lists, mostly the same people, but written in an entirely different voice.”

  “A different voice?” asked Hana, eyeing me narrowly. Her words were soft, barely more than a whisper, but everyone heard and they went silent, completely still. She continued to almost glare at me while I returned the intensity of her stare. I wasn’t someone who backed down easily.

  I faced President Odyssey. “If I may?” I asked as I nodded at my tablet.

  President Odyssey motioned with her hand that I should start reading. So I did.

  “Nothing more to say about the boys in custody. Their Feisty,” I started as I glanced up at everyone in the room. “Spelled t-h-e-i-r.” Then I returned to my reading. “Keep chewing at the bars like animals. Thomas Harley keeps visiting T.P.” I glanced up at everyone. “I believe the initials stand for Tootsie Pop, who happens to be an attractive blond that sits down the aisle from Garrison.” I took a breath. “Or I suppose he could be talking about toilet paper.” Everyone snickered, except for Hana. I glanced down a
nd continued reading. “I think he and T.P. are banging. Nothing going on here much. Mostly should be reported that this coffee sucks.’” I cleared my throat and adjusted my glasses as I faced everyone in the room.

  “So he’s not so good at spelling,” Richmond started. “So what?”

  I turned to face him. “So Garrison Hart earned his undergraduate degree at Yale and his graduate degree at Harvard,” I retorted, my eyebrows meeting in the center of my forehead. “When was the last time you met a Yale or Harvard graduate who didn’t know the difference between t-h-e-i-r and t-h-e-y-’-r-e?” Richmond didn’t respond, so I continued, this time giving all of my attention to President Odyssey. “In the remainder of the report, the words ‘gross’ and ‘reeking’ are used to describe the creatures in custody, the coffee is continuously denigrated and, coincidentally, also spelled incorrectly three out of five times that it’s referenced. Hart makes multiple inappropriate comments about his female coworkers, giving them nicknames he’s never used in previous reports. He continually goes off on unrelated, unnecessary tangents and keeps referring to the werewolves in custody as ‘wolves,’ while he previously referred to them always as ‘weres.’”

  General Tate wrapped his large hands around his tablet, mulling over the information I’d just provided and squinting at the words in question as he nodded slowly. His brow furrowed the longer he looked at it, clearly trying to solve the meaning of the shift. He was an impossibly large man with a square face, a set jaw, and a long, white scar running the length of his nose. He had the cold eyes of a wolf, and he spoke only marginally more often than Hana. His voice was gravelly and deep, on the rare occasions I ever heard it.

  President Odyssey examined the documents, drumming her fingers against the table. Short, auburn hair framed a pale face lined with shallow wrinkles. She looked up at me with solemn, silver eyes, her lips pressed together in a thin, red line. I guessed one couldn’t smile often with a job like this.

  “Last?” she said slowly as she looked up at me. “You said this was Garrison Hart’s last briefing?”

  I nodded once. “His body was discovered by hikers less than two hours ago. In Virginia.”

  “Virginia? How the hell did he get there?” asked Richmond.

  “We think it’s likely that he was discovered by Netherworldian creatures, killed, and transported via portal, wormhole, or dematerialization,” I answered.

  “Discovered?” Richmond asked incredulously. “The ANC is well aware of our presence in their agency. They always have been. So what do you mean by discovered?”

  Maybe if you’d give me ten seconds to finish a sentence, you’d know by now, I thought as I took a deep breath. “I believe there has been a breach in the ANC,” I said, my patience shattering like glass. I faced President Odyssey. “We’ve received no communications from anyone in the agency, and the head of the branch has yet to contact us regarding Hart’s death—or his disappearance.” I faced Richmond with a brief nod. “You’re correct, ANC officers knew Hart was there and they’ve never had a problem with his presence before.” I let that sit in the air for a minute. “So if we agree that ANC officials knew Hart was there, we can also concur that they know he’s gone, and yet, they haven’t uttered a word about it.”

  “Then you think the ANC officials are in on it?” President Odyssey asked me pointedly.

  I shrugged. “Whether they were a party to Hart’s death or not remains to be seen.” I reached for a glass of water on the table before me and downed it. My throat was well beyond dry. “Madam President, what I can tell you is that the Brokenview ANC office is no longer under our control.”

  Odyssey didn’t look surprised.

  “Is this an uprising?” asked General Tate. “If there’s been no communication …”

  I shrugged. “We don’t know,” I said. “The ANC appears to be functioning properly from the outside. They may be staging an uprising, yes, or they may be operating under duress, unable to call for help.” If the ANC were rebelling, they would have murdered an acting human emissary and a federal employee, and that would mean war and deportations, and then protests and riots on both sides. “God willing, it’s a coup, and one that we can stop.”

  “Any word from Special Agent Vander?” asked Odyssey.

  Knightley Vander was a highly reputable Regulator for the ANC and their chief contact in Human-Preternatural Affairs. I led the human surveillance of the ANC on my end, and he was in charge of his. I shook my head. “I tried contacting Vander as soon as our team discovered Hart’s body, but have received no reply.” That was more than a little disconcerting. While Vander and I didn’t always get along, we had a good working relationship. I could count the times on one hand when I’d called and Vander didn’t call back. I couldn’t help but wonder if this protracted silence meant Vander’s ANC in Splendor, California, was compromised as well.

  “How do we know Hart wasn’t killed out of context?” asked Richmond, irritating me to no end. “Maybe he was helping the Regulators with a case that got out of hand. Maybe they don’t even know Hart’s dead yet. Hell, they might not even know he’s gone; they might just think he went out for a drink or something.”

  It wasn’t the craziest theory. The human agents stationed at the various ANC offices often lent themselves to ANC investigations, if only to the break the monotony of their own, less thrilling surveillance jobs. And if Hart had only been dead for a few hours, or even a few days, I might have believed it …

  “Because seven hours ago, we received another report in Hart’s name,” I said. “One that was very similar in voice and spelling mistakes to the second brief.”

  “So?” asked Richmond. “Hart might have sent it before he died.”

  “He didn’t,” I answered. “Hart has been dead for three weeks.”

  Richmond’s mouth popped open. President Odyssey inclined her head, clicking her nails against the table. Hana took a single step out of the shadows. Her pupils dilated as she examined me, tasting the chemicals seeping out of my skin that would tell her what I was currently feeling. I felt strangely violated.

  “What else?” Hana asked in her deep voice. “What else do you know?”

  I swallowed, hellishly uncomfortable. Hana had a way about her that made you shrivel in her gaze.

  “Several months ago, every registered ANC portal went offline all at once, and every ANC office in California went dark. And they stayed dark for several weeks. When they came back on, the acting head of the ANC, Caressa Brandenburg, told us it was a mass malfunction caused by a weather anomaly in the Netherworld. She also informed us that the former head of the Netherworld, Melchior O’Neil, had died in a car accident.” I took a deep breath. “No one at the CIA bought it, of course, and, interestingly, right around the same time, all of our assets in the Netherworld became compromised—as in captured or killed just before the fighting started.”

  “Fighting?” repeated Tate.

  I nodded. “The acting director of the CIA sent in Rowena Gem. Rowena is ex-KGB, absolutely insane, and the only person we were certain could insert herself into Brandenburg’s pecking order totally unnoticed. Rowena discovered there had been a coup, and the portals had been shut down by the former head of the ANC, Melchior O’Neil, before his death. We believe this was done in an effort to control travel to and from the Netherworld and to prevent his insurgents from getting through. The coup was executed by the heads of the ANC in Splendor, Moon, and Estuary, California, as well as several of O’Neil’s people. They brought an unsanctioned army through a temporary portal and decimated the existing Netherworldian government. Melchior O’Neil was killed in his home.”

  “So this is a coup,” repeated Richmond. “They’ve deposed their own … what did they call him?”

  “Head of the Netherworld, colloquially,” I answered, “but I believe the official term is Magister.”

  “Bit pompous,” said Richmond, crossing his arms, and for once, he wasn’t entirely wrong.

  “Perhaps,�
� I answered. “But there’s more. The brunt of Melchior’s power apparently came from some less than reputable organizations. Potion smugglers, creature traffickers, money launderers, mercenaries. It was less of a coup and more like a revolution, according to Rowena.”

  “Who are her sources?” asked Richmond, growing grouchier by the second.

  I suppressed a sigh. “I realize it’s two o’clock in the morning, but surely, you know I can’t tell you that?” I replied. “Rowena knows what she’s doing. If you don’t trust her intel, perhaps you’d like to go and collect your own?”

  Richmond made a face and sat back, resigning himself to be tired and bored. I turned back to the president. “It is my belief, as well as Rowena’s, that this was a necessary power shift. Apparently, popular opinion had been against Melchior for some time.”

  “He was a dictator,” a new voice announced from behind us.

  The door slammed shut before a lithe, Arabic woman with stark, black hair appeared. She was dressed in a green penny coat, a white blouse, and blue slacks. She pulled her gloves off slowly and strode to the front of the room to stand beside me, grinning at us all with the half of her face that hadn’t been burned into oblivion—she hid the red, webbed scars under an ivory half-mask with a single black garnet where her eye should have been.

  “Rowena,” I said with a smile as I turned to face the rest of the room. “May I present Special Agent Rowena Gem.”

  Rowena was human, but barely—the magic that scarred her was still stuck in her skin, and now … she could do dangerous things. Now, her blind eye could see things no one else could.

  “Agent Gem,” said President Odyssey, nodding in deference. “Good of you to join us.”

  Rowena greeted her in turn and faced each person in the room. Everyone was deathly silent. “I don’t believe the Brokenview ANC has fallen out of contact of its own volition,” she said, her voice heavily accented. Rowena had a magnetism about her, an allure that demanded attention with its enticing subtlety. Or maybe it was only because she was pretty. “Melchior maintained power through fear. He bred terrible beasts to patrol the Netherworld skies and terrorize the population. The original electoral system has been out of play for more than fifty years, and nearly everyone in his administration was linked in some way to the potion rings. Many of his personnel were being blackmailed, including a member of his inner circle that later joined the resistance. The administration that replaced him following the coup has linked him officially to the deaths of more than twenty ANC Regulators, including three of our own operatives.”