Page 54 of Brother's Keeper

“Well?” I said as I approached. “Take him down! Wing him or some shit.”

Felix adjusted his grip on the pistol while his attention fixed on Ezrah. “He doesn’t have wings.”

I gaped at him, incredulous. “And you don’t have to be so damn literal. Just shoot him!”

While the investigator continued to stand and stare, I stepped closer, battling the urge to sight down the gun barrel myself. “Take the shot,” I told him. “I bet you never miss.”

“I can’t shoot him!” Felix’s voice rose in volume and pitch. “He hasn’t done anything!”

Terrorizing the guests was something. Distracting us from finding his brother, who was doubtless at the heart of this mess, was something, too.

Felix’s reluctance, the conditioned flinch response that had been the demise of so many investigators, drummed up impatience in me.

“This is what’s wrong with you law-abiding Capitol brown nosers,” I spat. “I’ll do it.”

I threw out a lasso of thought that caught Ezrah by one foot. His expression went stunned right before I yanked downward, dragging him to the ground like an angel plummeting from heaven. He crashed into the roof of a parked car, setting off an alarm of honks and flashing lights.

I turned toward Felix, whose pistol now hung limply at his side. “Come on, we need to ask him where his brother is.”

“His brother?” the investigator echoed.

The ground shuddered as well-dressed womenstaggered past in their high heels. I had yet to see Grimm, and I wondered how he felt about rogue Hex members trashing his shiny new mansion. He had much bigger concerns now than cigarette smell.

We reached the dented car cradling Ezrah Everett’s body. I climbed onto the front bumper of the late model sedan to walk up the hood, arms outstretched to steady myself through aftershocks from the earthquake.

“You knocked him out,” Felix said from where he stood beside the passenger door.

“And I can wake him up.” I stepped onto the car’s roof to crouch over Ezrah’s battered body. “Rise and shine, flyboy.” I patted his cheek with the back of my hand. “The nice investigator has some questions for you.”

I realized belatedly that the Everett twins—like the rest of the auxiliary Hex members—had no use for me. If given the opportunity to sell me out to Felix, Ezrah might just take it. I paused hunched over him, unsure if rousing him was worth the risk.

“Farrow!” A female voice screeched from the house.

I rose to stand on the sedan’s buckled roof and looked back toward the mansion, where Vesper waved.

“Get your scrawny ass in here!” she shouted. “We need your help!”

My face pinched as I glanced from her to Felix and back again.

“Arrest him.” I stabbed a finger at the unconscious man. “Find out where his brother is. Or ask your Magic Ball. Yes or no questions only, though. Might be a bit of a process.”

Felix nodded mutely, and I left him to it.

Reentering the house wasan entirely new experience. The lights had gone out, bathing the whole place in black. Furniture was upset, and chandeliers lay in shards on the floor. Drywall dust thickened the air and made me cough as I chased Vesper’s form—swathed in a predictably red dress—toward the back corner of the home.

“What’s going on?” I managed to ask as we skidded to a stop outside the formal dining room. Holland lingered in the doorway, wearing my suit coat with her arms wrapped around her middle and her posture hunched.

Inside, Tobin stood next to the twelve-person table. His face was strained with concentration.

“Don’t come in here!” he shouted at my approach. “You’ll get caught in it, too.”

Ten people stood around the room, staring at the massive light fixture. The ceilingbuckled down, spreading with cracks in a dozen directions. But there was no sound and no movement from the party guests or the rapidly collapsing roof. Everything appeared frozen, including the expressions of horror from everyone in the room.

Among the bystanders, I identified Willem and Nancy Briggs, side by side and stuck in the bubble of time the investigator had stopped.

Tobin alone seemed free to move as he turned toward me. “I need you to hold this while we get these people out,” he grunted through gritted teeth. “Can you do that?”

My eyes stretched wide as I glanced upward again. “Hold what? The damn building?”

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