The Silver Stag

  THE BREAK ROOM was about a third of the size of the waiting room, with a long table in the center, a small range and refrigerator on one side next to a counter, and on the other side, another counter with a small sink, several drawers and cupboards beneath it, and a microwave. A sofa sat against the end wall, with a pillow, and a couple blankets neatly folded over the back. The lights were fluorescent, and there was a glare to the room that made me feel alert. Definitely a working room, not a hangout space.

  Three people sat at the table, two men and another woman. One of the men was burly, and looked like somebody you might meet in a dark alley. He was bald, with a Snidely Whiplash mustache. Dressed all in black—black jeans, black turtleneck—he looked muscled and fit.

  The other man was thin and tall, with wire-rimmed glasses and long brown hair that reached his ass, pulled back in a neat braid. His eyes were deep brown and right off the bat I pinned him as Native American. He was wearing a striped polo shirt and blue jeans.

  The woman must have been in her mid-sixties, with a narrow nose and a hawkish face. She was busty, with a narrow waist and curved hips, and she was wearing a neat, brick red, linen pantsuit. Her long silver hair was pulled back away from her face by two thin braids on either side, and I had the immediate sense that she was Crypto. What kind, I couldn’t tell, but one look at her eyes was enough to tell me I didn’t want to mess with her.

  All three of them looked up as we entered the room. Herne sat at the head of the table. He placed the file folder he was carrying in front of him, but left it closed.

  “Meet Ember and Angel, our two new employees. As I told you this morning, Angel will be taking over the receptionist desk, while Ember will be joining us on the investigations team. I’ve told you about both of them, but they don’t know who you are yet. So, introductions.”

  He motioned to the woman. “This is Talia, our head researcher. She does all the legwork. She prepares the dossiers, finds out all the background information on people and places. Basically, anything I need information about that isn’t of a technical nature, I turn to her.”

  Talia looked us over carefully. “Hello, girls. Welcome to the agency.”

  On the outside, she seemed friendly enough. But there was a reserve beneath the pleasant demeanor. It would take time to get to know her, and if we pressed, I sensed she’d slam down a wall so fast it would smack us in the face.

  The burly man went next. “I’m Viktor. I’m head of security, and you need my okay before you check out any weapons from our armory. I’m also here as backup and muscle.”

  “Don’t let Viktor fool you. He may be the muscle of the agency, but he’s also one hell of an investigator and he’s got an IQ of 180. Brains and brawn in one package.”

  “I just wish my family felt that way,” Viktor said. He glanced over at us. “You’ll find out soon enough, so I might as well tell you. I’m half-ogre. My family disowned me because I took after my human mother. If I’d been a girl, they wouldn’t have cared, but men in my race are expected to be brutish. And by brutish, I mean big. Really big.” He grinned as he said it, shrugging. “You do what you can, and hope it all falls together in the end.”

  I blinked. I’d heard of ogres but had never met one. “You look plenty big to me,” I said before I realized that I was actually saying the words aloud. I blushed, but that broke the ice and everybody laughed.

  Viktor slapped the table. “From your mouth to my father’s ears, I wish. But it is what it is, and at least I have a good job, thanks to Herne.”

  “I wouldn’t have anybody else on my team,” Herne said. He motioned to the other man, who looked younger than any of us. “And this is Yutani. He’s our computer programmer and all-around tech guru. He’s also one of our investigators.”

  Yutani saluted us with two fingers. He was leaning back in his chair, staring at us with an unreadable expression. But he didn’t seem angry, or unfriendly, just observant.

  “Welcome to the company. Before you ask, and because you probably should know, I’m a coyote shifter. Great Coyote dogs my heels, so fair warning in advance. Sometimes his energy splashes over onto the other people I run with.”

  I rubbed my forehead, trying to suppress a groan. The last thing we needed was Coyote’s energy running rampant in our lives. It felt like we already had enough chaos as it was.

  “That’s the same look my last girlfriend gave me when she found out who I’m bound to.” But he laughed, and motioned to the chair next to him. “Brave enough to sit near me?”

  Angel snorted. “Dude, don’t ever dare Ember. Trust me on that one.”

  I grinned at him as I took the chair next to Talia. “I’ve got enough chaos in my life, thank you.”

  Angel sat next to Yutani. Viktor pushed back his chair and headed over to the coffee pot, which was sitting next to the small sink.

  “Care for some coffee?”

  I raised my hand. “I never say no to caffeine. A splash of milk and a spoon of sugar, please.”

  “I’m a tea girl myself,” Angel said. “Black tea, two teabags in one cup, as strong as I can make it.”

  “I think we can rustle up some tea.” Viktor put a teakettle on the burner, then opened one of the cupboards and pulled out a box of teabags. When he returned with our drinks, Herne cleared his throat.

  “I expect everybody here to help Angel and Ember as much as possible. Before we get to our new case, which is a doozy, I’m going to reiterate the rules for the girls.” He glanced over at me with a frown. “I don’t mean any disrespect by calling you ‘girls.’ You’re both women, but you’re both young compared to most of us. But if it bothers you, just let me know.”

  I shrugged. “I’ve been called far worse. So long as you don’t ask me to get you coffee.”

  Angel shook her head. “Trust me, where I was working before, I had far less respect. And as receptionist, I suppose coffee is one of my jobs?”

  “Whoever gets here in the morning puts on the first pot. But yeah, I may ask you to grab a cup for me now and then.” Herne cleared his throat and opened one of the file folders in front of him. “The rules of the agency are simple. You are both required to sign an NDA. Trust me, if you break them, I will find out. Punishment is up to my father, and you do not want to get on the bad side of Cernunnos. You will discuss the cases and events in this office with no one except those in this room. Understood?”

  “Understood,” I said. “I had confidentiality agreements with my clients. For me, the ability to keep quiet meant that I had returning clientele.”

  Angel just nodded. “Understood.”

  “All right, next: we begin work at eight a.m., generally. You’re expected to be on time. Some cases will take us into the nighttime hours, and we adjust as necessary. You’re both on salary. Angel, you’re required to be here from eight a.m. until six p.m., Tuesday through Saturday. You get an hour lunch break, and of course, two coffee breaks. One in the morning, one in the afternoon. As long as you man your desk and get the work done, I don’t care if you sit there playing video games afterward, though only on a private laptop. Absolutely no visiting sites with the work computers where you might download a virus. When in doubt, ask Yutani.”

  She jotted down notes. Angel was a perpetual note-taker.

  “Ember, you work the schedule that the rest of us work. Investigators work as needed. If we’re on a case, you may be working around the clock. Angel, at times you may be called in as well. You both get sick leave, and after six months you both get two weeks’ vacation a year. After two years, you get three weeks’ vacation per year. Keep your noses clean—we do our best to fly under the radar of the cops. They know we exist, but there’s not much they can do about us, except to make life difficult. We work outside of their jurisdiction, but only when we’re on a case. If you’re speeding and they catch you, you get a ticket.”

  He let out a long sigh, scrunching up the side of his lip as if he were trying to decide how to say so
mething.

  “What?” I asked.

  Herne gave us a long look. “All right, here’s what you don’t know. What I haven’t told you so far. None of this is discussed in public, because if it were, whoever was doing the talking would be in one hell of a lot of trouble.”

  “Why do I have a feeling we don’t want to know what you’re about to tell us?” I asked, trying to inject a little levity into the conversation. But Herne wasn’t smiling, and neither were Yutani, Talia, or Viktor.

  “This is no laughing matter,” Herne said, and I felt duly chastised. “Are you the least bit curious why the cops wouldn’t even follow up on your parents’ murder?”

  I shrugged, “I figured it was because the cops were underfunded and understaffed.”

  “That’s true enough, but no. It’s because your parents were Fae. Light, Dark, doesn’t matter. The fact that they were Fae meant that there was never any real investigation, no matter what they told you. You see, Névé and Saílle both keep the authorities’ pockets well lubricated so that they’ll look the other way. Like the vampires own Wall Street, the Fae own the cops. And the governor, for that matter. Anything to do with Fae politics is paid lip service, only. Neither Fae Queen wants interference, and they pay well to keep the authorities out of things.”

  “Bribes? That doesn’t surprise me, but what about the United Coalition? Don’t they take exception to what you just said? Both the vampires and the Fae?” That was what the alliance was called between the Shifter Alliance, the Vampire Nation, the Human League and the Fae courts.

  “Nothing’s in writing, the money is laundered so well that it’s squeaky clean, and if there were any allegations made, it would lead to all-out war between the factions. The Fae courts and the vampires are so powerful that the other members of the UC choose to look the other way. If either side were to make inroads to control everything, I’m pretty sure it would be a different matter. But neither the vamps nor the Fae are looking to rule the world. As long as they keep out of most personal affairs, the money is too good to ignore, and it crosses too many hands.”

  “Essentially then, with the Fae, we have two warring factions who are allowed to play out their internal spats, as long as collateral damage isn’t too high and the payout is worth it.” I had always been jaded, but now I felt even more so. “It’s just lovely, knowing I belong to both sides and yet, to neither.”

  Herne shrugged. “And you represent an unacceptable union of opposites to both Light and Dark.” He leaned back in his chair. “Which leads us to the next rule. Under no circumstances are you to accept money from anybody other than the Wild Hunt. Not even a free lunch unless it’s a good friend. No gifts, unless it’s from a good friend, and I’m talking a person you see regularly. No bonuses unless I pay them. Nothing. The cops know we exist. The Fae know we exist. So does the United Coalition. They all know why we’re here, and they stay out of our work, as long as we don’t take sides. We keep the balance. We’ve taken on Light and we’ve taken on Dark. Cernunnos and Morgana have the last word and both sides grudgingly accept that. We’re balance keepers, more than anything else.”

  “Then we’re not here to stop this war?” Angel asked.

  “Nothing on earth can do that. It’s a continual battle that the gods have long come to accept. We keep it from breaking out into the human world, into the shifter world, and into the Vampire Nation. We keep the members of the United Coalition from taking sides. That means that at times, we take on blood vengeance debts. The Fae know and accept this—both Névé and Saílle.”

  “Then we’re not really the good guys,” I murmured.

  Talia spoke up. “You’ll come to learn that there aren’t really any truly good guys in this matter. As Herne said, we’re balance keepers.”

  The room fell silent for a moment. I glanced over at Angel, who was staring at me. I knew what she was thinking because I was thinking the same thing. The world was a rough place, and it had just gotten a whole lot rougher.

  Chapter 6

  AFTER A MOMENT, I cleared my throat. I didn’t like knowing that the government was essentially corrupt and taking bribes to allow a private war to continue, but it wasn’t anything that hadn’t happened before.

  “All right, now we know. So what are the other rules? We keep things quiet, no kickbacks, no taking sides. What else?”

  “Show up for work on time, let me know if you’re sick, keep your nose clean, do your work, and absolutely no side jobs. No moonlighting. There will be no more private cases for you, Ember. If we even suspect that either of you have a gambling or drinking problem, we have the right to take whatever measures are necessary.”

  “This is serious work,” Angel murmured.

  Herne gave her a nod. “The Wild Hunt Agency, along with the others like it, has a heavy investment in towing the line. We make it possible for the world to keep functioning without becoming a war zone, at least between the Fae. The Light and Dark courts were here before humans evolved, and will be here long after the rest of us disappear. At one time, far back in history, they tore the world apart with their skirmishes. On an individual level, I like a lot of the Fae—both Light and Dark. But as a whole, your people are a terrifying lot.”

  I felt singled out. “Tell me about it. I have no connections with my own people, considering neither side considers me worth claiming.”

  “That was one factor that led us to your doorstep. That, and your life would eventually be trashed when they got around to snuffing you out.” Talia let out an odd clicking sound, tilting her head with a grin. Her smile was more intimidating than the stare she had met us with.

  “So I’m a charity case? I can live with that.”

  Talia let out a shrill cackle. I studied the older woman. I still couldn’t figure out exactly what she was. But the gleam in her eye kept me from opening my mouth.

  “What role do the vampires play in all of this?” Angel asked. “They seem to take a backseat to human affairs, but you say they rule Wall Street?”

  Vampires were an oddity in the world. There were too many of them for comfort, but given they couldn’t breed, and given that they were ostensibly proscribed from killing for their food, they seemed to take a backseat in the United Coalition.

  “Once again, don’t believe everything you hear. The vampires bear no love for any of the other members of the UC. We’re all just food to them, although they keep up appearances by playing by the rules. Unlike the Fae, vampires interact more with humans. They have a great deal of power in the business sector, and they do their best to keep their members under some semblance of control. They like the power games played by nations, unlike the Fae, and they prefer to work behind the scenes. They have a discipline and self-control that surprises me.”

  “So what you’re saying is that Fae are more like berserkers who don’t give a fuck what other people think, while the vampires are manipulators.” That made sense to me.

  Most vampires had been human to start with. There were very few Fae or shifters who ended up being turned. So vampires would have more at stake in the human community.

  “So to speak. I wouldn’t call the Fae berserkers, they’re just more chaotic.” Herne let out another sigh. “We’re getting off topic. You are asking about the rest of the rules? Basically what I told you. No side jobs, you show up for work, no gifts or kickbacks, keep your nose clean, no investigation into any of our cases without permission. And everything is confidential.”

  Talia opened a file that was in front of her, and handed us each a contract.

  “Read it, and sign it. We can’t start until you do.” She tossed us each a pen.

  I scanned my contract. All of the rules were included, as well as pay rate and job title. I blinked at the salary. One month would cover three months of my usual take. I heard Angel suck in a deep breath and realized she must have come to that part.

  At the very end there was a paragraph stating that if we broke the rules, we would
be subject to punishment as per decree by Cernunnos and Morgana. It was in stark bold print, and I realized they weren’t kidding. We were signing away our lives. I picked up the pen and hovered over the line requiring my signature. I glanced over at Angel.

  “You ready to do this?”

  She gave me a nod. She signed her name, and I signed mine. After dating the contract, I handed it back to Talia. When Angel and I were done, there was a palpable sense of relief throughout the room.

  “Tell me, what would have happened if we hadn’t agreed, now that we know all of this?” I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear the answer, but then again, it paid to know everything that we were dealing with.

  “You would have been relocated to a safe place. Let’s leave it at that.” Talia excused herself, walking over to the copy machine that was next to the sofa. She made copies of the contracts and handed them back to us. “It’s official, you’re on the clock.”

  “Now that we have that settled, let’s get right down to matters. Angel, you stay here for your briefing. Then you can go out and familiarize yourself with your desk. There is a rundown of duties in the center drawer that your predecessor left for you. It includes all the different phone extensions, the way you are expected to greet clients, everything you need. If you have any questions, feel free to ask. It’s always better to ask rather than assume.” Herne was suddenly all business. He straightened his shoulders, and opened the file folder in front of him.

  “A few days ago, one of our informants brought a situation to my attention. I’ve double checked the information and it’s valid, so I ran it by Cernunnos and Morgana and they both agree that we need to take care of this as soon as possible.” He pulled out a tablet, and quickly tapped on it. “Yutani, can you get Ember and Angel a couple tablets? And they’ll need work phones.”

  He turned to us. “Your work phones are for the members of this office only. Do not give the number out to anyone. All clients will be given the office number and your forwarding extension instead. You are not to use them for personal matters.”