Page 1 of A Subtle Scar
Chapter One
Afunfactaboutme: everyone hates Mondays, but I don’t. Maybe I did once, but these days the job is the job, and I’ve forgotten to mind which day of the week I get to do it.
That didn’t mean the rest of the Federal Investigative Service agreed with me. There were always several security guards on duty, manning the front desk in the foyer, the agency’s lettering supersized on the wall behind them. On this particular Monday morning I could see the security guard who double-checked IDs, Dustin, had done some partying that weekend, judging by the bags under his eyes, and being here at six in the wonderful, glorious, and already sunny March morning had to suck.
I headed across the FIS’s logo on the marble floor—shield, crown, and staff framed by a laurel wreath—and put on a smile for Dustin. He wasn’t into men I was pretty sure, and I wasn’t looking to get into anything with a coworker to begin with, but a smile never hurt.
“Good morning, Dustin,” I said as I swiped my ID and held it up for him to visually confirm that I was the guy in the picture, the one with black hair just a tad longer than the dress code the agents had to comply with. Not that he really gave it a second glance. People here knew me as the blue-eyed Mister Chipper who never forgot a name.
“Hiyas, Agent Chandler,” Dustin said and actually tried smiling back at me. The veins in his eyes stood out, and his skin was dry.
“Not an agent,” I said as I walked past him to the elevators that ran up the atrium like glassy veins. “Have a good day.”
Well, maybe I sounded like an agent and dressed like an agent—if you didn’t know suits; if you did, you’d know I was spending more on them than agents did. More than they could afford. At any rate, I was probably the only federal consultant for magical affairs whom every one of his co-workers liked to call an agent, even the agents.
The elevator took me just one floor up. Like the rest of the FIS, eggshell walls and stone floors contrasted gray doorways and signs next to those doors, but unlike the floors above us, there were few single-person offices here. Instead, it housed a research library, the bullpen in which they kept the junior agents—that is, the children fresh from the Academy—and the consultants in their own wing past the children. I was secretly convinced the higher-ups had arranged the floor plan like that so the junior agents would get regular exposure to magic users when we walked past their desks in our comings and goings.
The children, being children, were not happy about the Monday either, those that were here at least. Most were still in bed, tucked in and not concerned with all the bloody, fraudulent, or otherwise criminal affairs the FIS concerned itself with.
I walked the length of the bullpen, smiling and wishing good morning to everyone who looked up and caught my eye. Most were still pretty green since graduation from the FIS Academy had happened in February. There were a couple outstanding agents in the group, Jill Denton, who would definitely go on to have her pick of positions, and another, Chih-Ming Huang, who would probably get the same buffet of choices. With the rest of them, it was a betting game. Both Jill and Chih-Ming were alert and happy to return my greeting. Ah, almost weaned already.
The double doors to Consulting had a cutesy ward in the handles. Magic users, it let right through; the rest of the population, it announced to the department secretary. Some senior agents with their own upstairs offices hated that and preferred calling us to them if they deemed our involvement necessary.
I felt the ward fizzle against my skin but otherwise it remained silent.
Unlike the rest of the floor, consultants had offices, and the two mages and the very experienced magic users among us had their own.
My office was the last one on the left, making it the corner office. I usually kept the hallway window shutters open so people knew whether I was in there and busy or not. Today, this meant I saw the Devil right away.
Lucifer, handsome as hell and taken as a seat on the subway during rush hour, was sitting in one of my two guest chairs. I opened the door, and the immortal turned.
“Good morning, Chandler,” he said, throwing me a dazzling smile and inclining his head so a strand of his hair fell forward to brush along his right temple. “Not letting go of the early bird status, I see.”
“Hi,” I said and walked around my agency issue desk to drop my briefcase, sit in my not-agency-issue ergonomic chair, and boot up my desktop computer. “Why would I let go of that? It means people bring me coffee.” I indicated the two reusable thermos mugs he’d put on the desk, one in front of him, one in front of me.
“Well, my angel would never let me go see you without at least a small token of my appreciation. She cares too much for that.”
The angel in question wasn’t the Devil’s boyfriend, but more his personal assistant with an attitude. “How is Mistress Metatron?” I asked.
The last I’d seen of the angel was back in Brunswick when I had met Lucifer and his boyfriend, the exceedingly powerful necromancer Lionel Hawkes, on the job. It should have been an easy job, just a day of overseeing their work so internal affairs wouldn’t have a heart attack later on, but it had turned a lot weirder.
Really, it had been a break in monotony, and it had left me with a necromancer colleague I respected and the Devil, his boyfriend, who brought me coffee every now and then.
“Oh, she is still enjoying anything at all to do with sushi. And genital piercings. I will tell her you asked.”
“And the boyfriend? Wait.” I tapped the reusable mug. “You normally bring me Scottish coffee from that bakery over there. Does that mean you guys are back?”
Lucifer smiled indulgently and turned his head so his artfully mussed hair caught the light. “What a detective you are, Chandler. Yes, we returned for my sweet Nelly’s birthday. Which is why I am here.”
He pulled a thick envelope from his inside pocket and held it out to me. It was the fanciest thing in faint gold with my name embossed on it in shimmery, jet-black ink.
“Don’t tell me you’re getting hitched for his birthday?” I wove a quick spell to tear the envelope neatly.
“Pfft. It’s not like the rich are taxed so excessively that there’s a reason for matrimony, and my Nelly knows exactly to whom he belongs. Plus, why would I put a ring on his finger when I’d much rather put that ring somewhere else?”
I looked up at him. Lucifer was a bit of an oversharer sometimes, but by no means an indiscriminate one. In the literature, he was well known for his expertise with name magic, so I was under no illusions when speaking with him. He wasn’t as vapid as he came across. In this case, I assumed he wanted to see whether I’d be scandalized by the thought of any kinky goings-on. I wasn’t.
“I see what you mean, but I really can’t talk about a colleague’s private life in that way. Or his private parts.”
