Magical Hazmat by Cath Lauria

Author:Cath Lauria [Lauria, Cath]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cath Lauria

One hour, one confused intern—“I didn’t call them, I swear!”—bearing watered-down baking soda and a gallon of milk he’d grabbed out of the coffee shop, plus one hell of an explanation later and I was left with, if not perfect clarity, at least more knowledge than I’d had before. Knowledge that would have been extremely useful before I marched on the operatives’ home base like some kind of avenging kamikaze, only to find out that none of it had been necessary.

“You’re with the Department of Oversight?” I slammed one hand down on the back bumper of my van, where I’d been left after the guy heading up the assault on the Denver operatives’ headquarters had determined that, in fact, I had already done their work for them. “Seriously, Jamie?”

He winced, handing me a clean rag to soak with more baking soda and water. My lips still burned, but at least the milk had taken care of my eyes. “Yeah. Low on the ladder, but yeah. They’ve been interested in the Denver crew ever since the massacre went down. The council empath who evaluated Vasquez and the survivors said she didn’t think they were processing the loss as well as they claimed. She thought there was something going on under the surface, and the fact that they haven’t been utilizing their best operative on most of their jobs—and Lana is the best, no matter what they say—was suspicious. So they sent me in to see if I could identify what was really going on with the crew.”

“And?” I pulled the rag away and focused on him as best I could. The irritants might be gone, but they’d done their job too well. My eyes felt itchy and raw, and my throat really hurt. Funny that the “good” guys did more damage to me than Vasquez had if with less visceral terror. “What did you figure out?”

When Jamie hesitated, I snapped, “Come the fuck on, you owe me this much of an explanation after freaking me out and inspiring a rescue operation that you clearly didn’t need.”

He shook his head. “It’s not that. I actually could use your help with something, but it’s only tangentially related to the reason I’m here. Whatever you find, I won’t be able to act on it for a while. Can you handle that?”

Well, he’d gotten my interest piqued. “Maybe, whenever I get to know what it freaking is.”

“Okay, then. So … one of the reasons Oversight was so interested in this crew was because of some complaints we got from local assets about overly harsh methods. Not just roughing people up a little bit either—interrogating them to find out whether they knew anything about the Organ Grinder.”

“Since when have complaints by assets been enough on their own to get Oversight involved?” Even in New York, that wouldn’t have been the first step, and the assets in New York were powerful.

Jamie sighed. “Since we realized that the local council wasn’t doing anything to address the complaints. In fact, they seemed to be going out of their way to ignore any hint of wrongdoing from this crew.

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