Page 41 of Heart and Soul
Now it’s my turn to say: “Just one problem.”
“What’s that?”
“Oh, let’s see, maybe just the fact thathe’s a demon. Lying is their preferred language. I’d sooner trust a Magic 8-Ball.”
And now it’s Hillerman’s turn to press the button on her walkie. “Send him in.”
Once again, the bulkhead door whines open. I see an immaculate man dressed all in white, complete with a fedora tipped slightly to the side and, I kid you not, a fashionable cape over one shoulder. It’s Theo Coltrane, the Cleveland master. I can practically hear Darla and Ren tittering from the Agency two hundred miles away. Keeping a healthy coven must be a snap for Coltrane. Who needs compulsion when you’re stylish, rich, and strikingly handsome?
“This is your ‘stronger method?’”
“This is our verification process,” Hillerman says.
Arael leers at me. “More hypocrisy.”
Before Hillerman can ask me what he means by that, I say, “Fey elixirs and vampire mind reading? For an agency hell-bent on shackling the underworld, the UTF seems a little too eager to use our powers.”
Hillerman adjusts her librarian glasses and says in a perfect deadpan, “Well, I’m fresh out of Magic 8-Balls.”
“But you’ve got a master vampire. What are we doing here? How come you don’t know every single thing in Arael’s mind by now?”
“It’s not that simple. Humans aren’t equipped to resist when compelled, but underworlders have built-in defenses. Your underworld current creates resistance, like radio interference. Besides that, until recently Arael was too weak. Pressing too deep into his mind could have killed him.”
“Wouldhave killed him,” Coltrane says. His voice is velvet. “I’ve had to tread lightly.”
“Even still, you got nothing?”
Coltrane smiles, as though I amuse him. “Not nothing. We got the yellow house.”
“That’s how we knew Beyona might be there,” Hillerman adds.
I flip into full sarcasm mode. “Ah, the yellow house, good times. You mean the sting operation I set up, at great risk to me and my friends, in which you and your team of heavily-armed Navy SEALs ditched out to chase after the harpy, leaving me with nothing but a well-dressed socialite and a human to take down a rampaging ogre?”
Hillerman places her hands on her hips. “Divide and conquer.”
“From what I hear,” Coltrane says, “the ogre got the raw end of that deal.”
I count on my fingers. “Number one, that’s not the point, but number two, you’re absolutely right, and number three, I like you already.”
Coltrane flashes a beautiful smile of perfect teeth. “We meet again.”
“We’ve met before?”
“We saw each other at the Double-D a few nights ago.”
My face heats up. “Right. I saw you, of course, but I didn’t think…I mean, it was so busy that night.”
“It’s never too busy,” he says with a sparkle in his eye, and then, as if to demonstrate, he extends a hand to Cafeteria Girl. “Miss Jacobs. Always a pleasure.” When he kisses the top of her hand, Cafeteria Girl nearly swoons.
Hillerman clears her throat. “If you would, Mr. Coltrane.”
A fleeting dark cloud passes over his face, gone just as quickly as it came. He squares his shoulders and resumes his charming smile, albeit forced, for Hillerman. “All work and no play, as always, Agent Hillerman.”
“We’re looking for verification of a particular image.”
“An image of what?” he asks.
“You’ll know it when you see it. Won’t he, Arael? If there’s any resistance—if Mr. Coltrane doesn’t describe exactly what you told us—then I turn you over to Miss Jacobs and the FUA.”
