Page 1 of The Last Slayer
One
“Here, have some Sex.”
I looked up from my desk at the sound of Valerie Johnson’s voice. Thirty years old, she was my sister—well, foster sister. Anyone looking at us would know we didn’t share a drop of common blood. Valerie was the only child of my benefactor and a partner at the firm founded by her great-great-great—repeat that many, many times—grandfather. I’d just made junior partner the year before, the youngest such in the firm’s illustrious five-plus centuries of history. We took care of all types of supernatural matters: hunting trespassing demons, casting made-to-order wardings, detoxing demon poisons, brewing specialty potions, performing exorcisms and divinations.
Valerie tossed a vial at me and leaned against the doorframe. With her hip cocked, she looked like a model who’d just stepped off a glossy page in a fashion mag. There were artful red streaks in her auburn hair, and a ruby halo formed around her head under the fluorescent lights.
I caught the small bottle and wrinkled my nose. “Fresh?”
“The very best.”
Damn. The higher the quality, the worse it tasted.
“Don’t be a baby, Ashera. You know you need it after a hunt.” She quirked an eyebrow. “Unless you’re planning on getting it from the source?”
That was a joke. Everyone knows that the ultimate source of Sex is the Federation of Mageship, and Valerie was well aware that I was on their shit list. I sighed, opened the vial and sniffed. Strong musk and lemon, a combination I didn’t care for. But there was something else. “What the—is this flavored?”
“Cinnamon. I thought you might like it better.”
I could feel my face scrunching. I swallowed the murky goo and clenched my teeth to keep it down. There was way too much spice, and it burned my throat.
“Quality stuff, huh?” Valerie said, a smile in her voice.
“Ugh! Next time stick to the regular unflavored kind.”
“Can’t. Supplier wants to sell those. We get seventy-five percent off retail.”
“Still twenty-five percent too expensive.”
She shrugged. “Everyone else liked it.”
Translation: everyone else who didn’t have to take this swill regularly. Valerie never had to drink it since she didn’t hunt. I should’ve moved to some seedy place with lots of strip joints and streetwalkers. And learned how to collect and store Sex—assuming the Magical Enhancement Agency would take me. I was more likely to get hit by a falling plane than be accepted into their ranks.
“Now that that’s taken care of, we need to talk.” Valerie’s large green eyes were blank and pleasant.
Uh-oh.
“I was getting ready to leave, but come on in,” I said, keeping my voice as blank and pleasant as her eyes. Much as I loved her, she had a nasty habit of springing bad news on me at the last minute, and I didn’t want to give her any advantage.
She entered my office and closed the door behind her, completing the sphere of wardings cast around the space. Every single darkmotif was Valerie’s original design; wardings are her specialty. They protected us from uninvited demons—oops, supernaturals—didn’t want to offend anyone. Some people could be ridiculously politically correct about stuff like that.
Her eyes scanned my office, from the medium-sized desk with its heap of documents to the wall covered with certificates and awards, the closet where I kept the tools of my trade, and the two plush black chairs for those who deigned to visit my humble little space. I gestured for her to sit down, but she didn’t. Maybe that was how she kept her black Armani suit wrinkle free this late in the day. Or maybe she really was one-eighth fairy like everyone whispered. There’s nothing like fairy glow to enhance mortal beauty without really turning it otherworldly, and I’d never seen her less than impeccable in all the years I’d known her.
“Can you stop off somewhere on your way home?” she asked finally.
I leaned back in my chair. “For what?” I really don’t lik
e it when people ask me to do something right as I’m about to leave. In this case it was especially irritating. I’d been working like a maniac to wrap up a mountain of paperwork. Hunts were great, but all the follow-up reports and forms? Ugh. I always put them off until the very last minute, and Jack had told me if I didn’t catch up on them this time I wasn’t taking tomorrow off, even if it was my birthday. I was considering hiring a freelance writer to make stuff up. I mean really, how many different ways can you say, “I came, I saw, I killed”?
“A new client,” Valerie said. “It’s urgent.”
“He can wait.”
“She.”
I lifted a shoulder. “Whichever.”
“She was referred to us by one of our former clients.”
“She can still wait.”
“Come on.”
“Come on yourself. You know my rule—I don’t extend my day for new clients. A current one, maybe. A new one, hell no.” Before she could argue, I continued. “The past few months have been crazy, what with all the incubus attacks. Last week alone I billed over a hundred hours. This was supposed to be my ‘easy week,’ and I’ve bagged thirty-one demons already. Besides, the ‘easy week’ was your idea.”
Valerie held up a perfectly manicured hand. “I didn’t want you burning out.”
“And Jack okayed it.” That should shut her up. The firm had two kinds of people: Jack, and everyone else. As the firm’s managing director and the only high-level diviner on the North American continent, he was the biggest cheese around. I’d seen politicians and top executives beg for Jack’s services without success. Also, he was Valerie’s father and my foster father.
“If you go tonight, she’s willing to double our rate.”
Ah. The real crux of the matter. Out of all the partners, Valerie was the shrewdest—or should I say the greediest?—when it came to finance.
“She’s been leached of all her Sex, it seems. Some creature of nightmare really got to her.”
Damn. I hated incubi even more than I hated working late. I twisted the silver ring on my index finger. It was inlaid filigree with a large M in the middle, a reminder of a vow I’d made to hunt down the one responsible for destroying the best chance at happiness I’d ever had. For a long time I’d gone after every incubus and succubus I could, but not anymore. I still wore the ring, but I also began to realize that the probability of my finding the one who killed Miguel was about the same as finding a needle in the middle of Nebraska.
Still, sooner or later, fate would deliver the bastard to me.
“Come on, Val. I need my beauty sleep. I’m officially not as young as I used to be, starting tomorrow,” I said.
She waved her exquisitely painted nails about. “You’re going to be twenty-seven, not sixty.”
“Send a team of junior hunters.”
“Can’t. She wants the best.”
