Elemental Disturbance

  Elemental Disturbance

  Office of Preternatural Affairs Book Two

  Voss Foster

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Author’s Note

  Also By Voss Foster

  About the Author

  Sneak Peek: Sovereign Malpractice

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons is entirely coincidental or beyond the intent of the author.

  Toxic Influence © Voss Foster 2020

  Cover Art © Coffee and Characters 2020

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the author.

  Requests to use the material will be considered and may be directed to: Voss Foster at [email protected]

  For Tiva, Blaze, Cosmo, and JJ.

  Acknowledgments

  Does it ever get old to hear that there are too many people who go into making a book to ever give them all the credit they deserve? It probably does, but it's definitely the truth. I guarantee there are people I'm not even thinking of who dropped a stone in the pond and, years later, they've had a distant effect on me that led to this book, that book, or the other book.

  So today, I want to acknowledge some of those distant pebbles. So thank you to Gretchen and Ana, who were writing books back in middle school and helped convince me that I could do it, too.

  Thank you to Sarah and Ty and Karena, who were my very first real audience back in the day.

  Thank you to Aunt Brenda, who's still the inspiration digging through my life over a decade after your passing.

  And something less distant: thank you, reader. I know this one might get old. I say it every time. But every time, it rings true. Without you, there is no Office of Preternatural Affairs. There is no book. There is no Voss. There's just me alone in my bedroom telling myself stories about a troll. So thank you.

  And with that, suit up, get your Glock, and file over to Remote Transport.

  We've got a job to do.

  Chapter One

  Summer sucks when you have to actually fucking wear clothes. I was always more of a "tooling around the beach in board shorts" kind of guy, but for some reason the FBI frowned upon that as part of the official uniform. Not even for casual Fridays. Of course, it was Tuesday anyway, but casual Friday was really more of a state of mind. Any way it was sliced, it was an oppressive regime that ended in me wearing a suit in the middle of August in Florida. A fairly comfortable suit, but still. Oppressive.

  Running also didn't help, so I was in a bit of a mood while I led our handcuffed selkie drug dealer into the back of the SUV. And my bit of a mood may have had me being a little rougher than necessary, although considering he was selling dragon's dew to human middle schoolers, I wasn't that concerned if his cuffs bit in a little bit. And I wasn't concerned at all with him not liking me that much. Wasn't putting a whole lot of stock in his opinion of me, in fact.

  Gutt leaned against the side of the SUV, wearing sunglasses that didn't exactly fit correctly. Even after being in the Mundane for ten years, preternatural specialization hadn't exactly caught on in the commercial fashion industry. Fitting drugstore sunglasses to troll anatomy wasn't exactly a great investment, I had to imagine, and Gutt didn't seem to have much interest in getting a pair specially fitted for his size.

  He pulled the sunglasses—I mean, functionally they were just pince-nez at this point—off when I got close, nodded to me, then scowled at our magical drug dealer buddy. "Dragon's dew? Really? It's dangerous enough when the dragons take it. What do you think happens when a human takes it?"

  The selkie scoffed, a slightly dry, brittle sound, but that was it. Even when I shoved him into the backseat and slammed the door shut after him, he was obstinately wordless. I looked Gutt head on, summoning as much exasperation as I could muster. "Why exactly was I the one doing the running and chasing and arresting? I don't remember agreeing to that part of the plan." My crotch and armpits were miniature little swamps, just dripping sweat.

  Gutt just shrugged. "I've gotten stuck in far too many alleyways around here to go chasing slippery little drug dealers through Miami. You're far more svelte and far less likely to need help getting around a tight corner than I am. It was purely a logical decision."

  "Right. I'll make sure to list that in the report." I rounded to the driver's side and opened my door. "Agent N'Gutta of Droshheim was unable to pursue because he's got such a broad manly physique, and also because he missed his morning cup of tea and ate three maple bars on the way over and was feeling sluggish."

  "I hardly remember that portion of our conversation."

  "Doesn't mean I'm wrong."

  We got in and buckled up. Gutt snorted, but he was smiling, showing off all his massive teeth, including the two incisor tusks that could very well crush bone if necessary. Or so I assumed. Never had the pleasure of experiencing that firsthand, and it felt a little too rude to just come out and ask him.

  He spoke while keeping his eyes firmly focused ahead. "It was two maple bars and an éclair."

  "Right. Because the cream filling in that éclair was so light and definitely wouldn't bog you down." I checked behind me, then pulled out onto the street. "Where do I go for the transport?"

  "The nearest parking garage or empty back alley."

  And lo and behold, there was a parking garage just a few blocks to the right. "You're sure we can't just do it in the middle of the road?"

  "Not unless it's an emergency. Giant black SUVs disappearing tends to throw a wrench in the traffic flow. We stopped doing that after the twelve-car pile-up outside LA."

  I led the car around the corner, down the road, and into the dark, shady cool of the parking garage, stopping at the gate long enough to get the ticket we wouldn't end up needing. "Okay, now?"

  "Yes, now." Gutt waved his hand through the air. In front of us, there was a shimmer, like a heat mirage. A shimmer that was way, way too familiar to me after the last few months working with the Office of Preternatural Affairs: magic. Honest to God magic that was going to carry our happy asses back to the Miami PD where we could hand this guy over. He wasn't a big enough deal to take him back to the Miami Field Office, let alone DC. And honestly? I didn't want to deal with that paperwork, and I was pretty damn sure Gutt didn't want to either.

  I pushed through the shimmer at a creep, just in case the portal let us out a little too close to a concrete pole or something. As we passed, the world lit up into neons and pastels and colors you didn't see outside of the Las Vegas strip and shroom-induced hallucinations. It was the Hidden Kingdoms, the secret spaces where the preternaturals lived perfectly on their own…well, until recently, anyway. After a prison break spilled out into our world, they didn't have a lot of choice but to reveal themselves to us. Dragons burning up wheat fields in Kansas and sorcerers tossing around exploding balls of light in downtown Chicago… Well, even humans were observant enough to notice that.

  All of us poor rubes in the OPA were still cleaning up after that mess. Ten years down the line and half of
the escaped convicts were still on the loose somewhere, either in the Kingdoms or in the Mundane. Plus we had a ton of other magical problems that needed to be handled. With the last mess in NYC a few months back—all human life almost ending, terrorist attacks, mysterious poison that killed almost instantaneously, nothing big—we were definitely a little busy as of late. Anti-human and anti-preet crime alike had taken a nationwide uptick after that.

  We passed through the Kingdoms and back out into a parking lot. Right in front of a nice, empty parking spot instead of a light post. "You're good, Gutt."

  "I'm well aware."

  I turned off the car, hopped out, and grabbed the drug-dealing selkie. "You paying for my dry cleaning to get the sweat stains out of this shirt?"

  And by god, he responded with actual words that time. "You could have let me go. No running, no sweat."

  "Right. Let you go so you can get more kids hooked on a drug that'll leave them…Gutt, what's the fancy word I'm looking for?"

  "Exsanguinated."

  "Exsanguinated. Yeah. Let you do that? I don't think so." I dragged him out of the car and led him to the door. "I didn't go to medical school, but I'm led to understand that losing all the blood in your body? Not great for your overall health and wellbeing."

  I got him through the doors, Gutt right behind me, and handed him off to the waiting officers. Sherriff Barcelo, an older Cuban gentleman with a neatly trimmed mustache and goatee, nodded at me as the selkie went past. "Anything special with him?"

  "Keep him hydrated," said Gutt. "Fresh water will keep him going, but selkies need significant exposure to salt water no less than once per day. At least twenty eight ounces. Directly out of the sea is best, but table salt in tap water can do in a pinch."

  I nodded as though I actually knew the specifics of imprisoning selkies. I relied on the rest of the OPA, and on the manuals they'd written when they weren't available, for stuff like that. "Keep watch around the schools for a while. Don't know if there might be more lurking around somewhere. This might be a bigger operation." Dragon's dew came from a dragon's conflagratory system, or the equivalent in non-fire-breathing dragons. It was rarely used by certain alchemists to treat bad illnesses or issues in dragons, and far more often used by preets to get high on a plus-size magic spike. But even with dragons, using too much or in the wrong situation would attack the veins and arteries, not to mention the heart damage. Preets didn't hold up that well to it, and the sudden rush of magic into a largely non-magic population had already turned up half a dozen dead kids and a dozen or more dead adults, depending on who you asked and which reports you read. If there was more to this, it needed to be weeded out.

  Barcelo nodded, clicking his tongue affirmatively. "You've got it. Thank you for this. We were at a loss."

  "That's why the OPA exists, Sherriff." Gutt rolled his shoulders back. "Now if you excuse us, we have paperwork, I'm sure."

  And we left on that. "Want to take bets on how fast Svenson's going to ask for my report?"

  We piled into the SUV. Gutt waved his hand lackadaisically behind his head to create the portal we could back up through. "Svenson's still on you?"

  "I'm surprised, too. I'm thinking of starting an actual pool, see when he's going to finally get off my ass." I backed up, into the bright colors, and back out into our parking garage in Washington DC. I shifted around, pulled into the empty space, and turned off the car. "You want first dibs on the betting?"

  "I might take you up on that."

  We got out and went to the elevator…and I don't know, maybe Director Svenson had secretly installed a tracking chip in the back of my neck, but my phone lit up as soon as we headed up and into the range where my cellphone could actually pick up signal. And yeah, it was Eric Svenson, FBI Director and fairly recent pain in my ass. "Director Svenson."

  "Eric, please. Call me Eric."

  Yes, there was that worthless attempt at trying to connect with me, make us allies in his attempt at meddling with OPA affairs. "We got three of the drug runners out of Miami. A selkie and two elves." I liked to mention as much preet shit as I could, just to make sure he understood that we were doing this job that no one else wanted to. "They're in custody with Miami PD. No evidence that there's anyone more than that, and if there is, we can get back down there and clean up a little more. Everything was textbook."

  "And your report?"

  "It'll be on your desk, sir." Along with a pile of cat shit, if I had my way. I was "normal," so he wanted me reporting on all the other spooks down in the OPA. He couldn't be bothered to come down himself, convinced the OPA would be lying to him any time he tried to pay a visit. I didn't know if it was anti-preet bigotry or something else entirely, but what it definitely was, was a pain my ass.

  "Good. Glad you got things down there cleaned up. Those preet drugs should stay on their side. We have enough trouble with meth and heroin. Nice work. I look forward to reading that report."

  Right. He looked forward to the dry as fuck report about the routine operation, stepping in to help an underprepared police department. "Yes sir." And I hung up before we could keep on with our super fun conversation. The elevator doors slid apart, revealing a lot of FBI beige. "You think he'd notice if I copy and paste the report from two weeks ago?"

  "I can almost guarantee he's going through each report with a fine-toothed comb." Gutt pushed the doors to the main OPA office open. "It's simply a part of the job, now. It doesn't take that much time."

  "My issues aren't with the time commitment." Although anything that took time away from the actual work I was supposed to be doing didn't rank high on my list, either. "They're…ethical. Moral."

  "Yes, it goes against principle for you to have to report in on us for no reason. But everyone knows that's the case, now. You made certain of that."

  I nodded, lowering myself down at my desk. "I'm still annoyed by it. Just more today, I guess." We'd cleaned up a big problem in Miami, and here I was, having to file an extra round of paperwork just for the FBI Director.

  As I was filling out the first set of reports, Agent Swift strolled up, calm and cool and suave. Not at all looking like the leader of a major unit of the FBI. If I was going to guess, not knowing anything about him, I'd have pinned him as a jazz club pianist or something like that. Hell, for all I knew, he had that in his background. Swift was an enigma, but he got the job done and made sure we all did the same. "Everything's copacetic down in Florida, I take it?"

  "Yeah. Next time you should come so that Gutt has someone to talk to while I chase down the drug dealers. He seemed so lonely."

  "Gutt gets stuck in narrow alleys, and I speak from experience when I say it is a bitch and a half to get him loose again. Don't have enough Crisco for that in all of Georgia." Swift leaned over my desk, peering at the papers, then sighed. "You're filing two reports again. Wish he wasn't wasting your time."

  "Welcome to the club. I'll make commemorative pins." I continued to scribble out the basic information on the forms. "We have access to a dragon, right? Can't we sic him on Svenson, get him to stop wasting my time reporting on all the terrible things we're not doing down here?"

  "That might fall under misuse of FBI resources." Swift laid his hand on top of the wall of my cubicle. "He's going to drop it eventually, Dash. Just muscle through and keep being honest with him."

  "Oh, honest. Right. My bad. I guess I should cut out the part about how we summoned the Class-A that caused that earthquake in China last week? I thought it would make for a more interesting story."

  "Yeah, if you don't mind leaving that particular lie out, I think that would be best. Interesting as it might be to consider. Next major earthquake, I guess we could investigate." Swift righted himself. "Sherriff Barcelo already called me up, thanked me personally even though I was sitting up here on my withered black ass doing nothing. He's impressed with you two, and I may have jumped on the opportunity to get some better training on his mind for dealing with preets."

  "Yeah, they seemed
completely clueless. He had to ask about keeping an elf." Other than excessive longevity and the worldview that came with living for a thousand plus years, they were functionally identical to humans.

  Well, that whole thing with the magic, too, but we had anti-magical restraints for just that reason.

  Swift sighed, leaning slightly closer. "Not every police department has gotten on the bandwagon yet, although Miami's got enough of a population…well, it's not my job to judge whether or not they should be up to snuff by now or not." Swift shrugged. "Have fun with your paperwork. I'm going to dust off the old training systems and see what we need to change. No one's been interested enough in one for a couple years. That mess with Jörmungandr might have actually piqued some interest in what we have to say."

  I rolled my eyes. "Well, glad the death snake has a silver lining."

  Chuckling, he took a couple steps back toward his office, then his phone rang. I was starting to fill out the actual report for Svenson—as pared down as I could, since it was a waste of everyone's time involved—and Swift was at his office door.

  Except he never actually went in the office. He stayed at the doorway until he hung up his phone and marched back my way. "We've got a weird one. Meet in the vault."

  I looked at Gutt and shrugged. "Damn, I guess my paperwork has to wait."

  "You sound positively heartbroken."

  "Well yeah, but I think I'll recover." We got up and went into the little side room. The computer vault, with one wall of screens and a whole desk full of mice and keyboards. And Kimmy. This whole room was Kimmy's domain, and she currently sat in her office chair throne, long, dark hair tied back into a ponytail that hid her single platinum blonde streak somewhere in the middle. And of course she was dressed in all black.