Touched by Fire (Demons of New Chicago #1) - Kel Carpenter Page 0,4
and pounded my fist twice.
Metal creaked. The door opened. Smoke poured out, and the scent of a cigar made my nose wrinkle. I waved a hand in front of my face.
“How’s it shaking, Pip?” Ronny said, the cigar hanging out of the corner of his mouth. “This the one?”
“Yup,” I answered, giving the unconscious warlock a shove through the door. Ronny was mostly human, and like most low-level supes, he’d always just thought he was blessed with more strength and speed than most people. Then magic became known to the world, and scientists found a way to test if people had any. It was one hell of a shock to find out about half the population was some sort of supe, whether full blood or watered down. In Ronny’s case, his grandma tangled with a werewolf, and while he hadn’t shifted, he had distinct advancements that weren’t human qualities. Like the ability to grab Trenton by the back of the neck and pick him up with one hand.
“Uh—what’s going—”
Ronny punched him in the middle, and the wind left his lungs. Trenton groaned loudly, and I rolled my eyes.
“I got it from here,” the glorified brute said with a grin.
“Knock yourself out,” I muttered, turning from the door as it slammed shut behind me. I walked to the end of the hall and took the door into the casino.
Blue and yellow lights from slot machines went off. I strolled right past them and through the card tables without a second glance. On the far back wall, the bar was up and running. A fairy dressed like she’d just walked out of a porno staged for the 1920s sang a jazzy tune that made my ears want to bleed. Her iridescent wings fluttered, and speckles of gold dust dropped onto the patrons. A subtle abuse of magic if there was one. Her singing sucked ass, but the effects of faerie dust, even in limited quantities, were such a potent aphrodisiac they basically handed her their wallets as she sauntered on by.
I took a seat at the two-person table furthest away from the horrid fairy.
The guy across from me looked up and lifted both eyebrows. His brown eyes widened.
“You already caught him?” he asked, closing the file in front of him. I nodded once, and he picked up his phone. One press of the button and a picture of Trenton filled the screen. He was being dangled upside down by his feet and beaten to a pulp.
Not an ounce of remorse touched me as I looked from the picture to Anders’ face.
He let out a low whistle. “You’re a cold-hearted woman, Pip.” Then he grinned and winked. “Just the way I like ya.”
If Anders wasn’t forty with thinning hair and watery blue eyes, I might have found it creepy. As it was, he was human—just like me—and one of the closest things I had to a friend—or he would be, if not for my trust issues.
I pulled my wallet from my back pocket and dropped it on the table. The metal piece hit with a clang that was drowned out by the rest of the casino. “I expect to see the full amount on that screen before I walk out the door,” I said, tapping the tiny plastic display, whose row of numbers were awfully close to zero. Wallets in the modern day were all electronic because the potential for magical abuse was too great. It all came in and out of the same bank, and any magic user or hacker dumb enough to attempt to break into it found themselves cursed six ways to Sunday.
“Yeah, yeah,” Anders sighed, pulling out his own wallet. He typed in the amount and the end of his turned red. I picked up mine and we touched the ends together, pressing the thumb sensor at the same time. Both ends flashed green, signaling the transfer went through. I pulled it back and glanced at the number before shoving it back in my pocket.
While my paycheck was no small sum, living in New Chicago wasn’t cheap. Not if you wanted electricity, running water that wouldn’t give you lead poisoning, and food that didn’t come from a factory that stopped producing fifteen years ago when the Magic Wars really dialed up. Even shitty processed food was astronomically priced these days. And fresh stuff? Forget it. If you weren’t rich—which humans never were—it was impossible to come by.