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Regardless of the history between the guild and myself, I had to admit they definitely had an advantage over the average demon hunter. The mansion that I knew housed over twenty hunters at one time was a far shy better than my own studio apartment.
A feeling of nostalgia came over me just as Alec’s car pulled up behind my motorcycle.
“You made it,” I teased, throwing my leg over my bike and setting my helmet down. “For a second there, I thought I’d lost you.”
Getting out of his car, Alec shook his head in disbelief. “I was going the speed limit. Not all of us want to tempt fate at every turn.”
“Pfft. Hardly.” We walked up to the mansion’s double doors almost like we were friends again. “I was in complete control.”
Alec made a noncommittal sound and pushed open the front door. I didn’t need to peek inside to know what was waiting for me. The granite floor gleamed in the light of the overhanging chandeliers, far too fancy for a bunch of hunters, but I supposed the prior leaders never felt the need to change it.
To most people, it looked like your average mansion, well, as average as a mansion could be that was run by a security organization called the Ashwood Security. They provided solutions for up-and-coming millionaires and the run of the mill pest control. However, when you stepped into the large wooden doors and saw the cases of artifacts that the guild had collected over the years, the real purpose behind the mansion becomes quite obvious.
Pausing on my way past the cases, I noted the new additions. A mask from one of the Egyptian Pharaohs. The bullet that killed JFK. They weren’t even the weirdest of the set of artifacts, but each had been used by supernatural beings.
Alec’s presence moved in next to me. “I see your pet angel still hasn’t brought back Michael’s blade.” He tut-tutted, and I glanced over my shoulder at him with a twist of my lips.
“I don’t know why you insist on calling her that. Mary does just as good of a job as any of us fighting demons.”
“Except when she gives the demons what they want, something that put us all in danger.” Alec shook his head, pushing his glasses up his nose.
“That was hardly her fault. Mary was tricked,” I pointed out, defensive of my best friend.
“Muriel,” Alec corrected me. “You should know better by now than to forget what she really is. Angels aren’t like us. They may hate demons, but they don’t have a burning fire inside of them demanding them to extinguish them.” His voice lowered as he stepped closer to me. “Not like us.”
I moved away from his warmth and started toward my dad’s office. “Mary’s not like that. If anyone has a reason to kill demons, it would be her.”
Alec nodded. “Of course, you were there when she appeared on our radar.”
“Exactly.” I pointed a knowing finger at him, daring him to argue with me some more about my best friend.
Mary or, as Alec had insisted on reminding me, Muriel had been overtaken by demons while she was on a rescue mission. Dragged into Hell and tortured, Mary barely made it out with her life. Too bad her wings didn’t.
I’d found her bleeding and out cold in the woods where I’d been looking into a disturbance in the area. Turned out that disturbance had been her. I’d nursed her back to health and showed her the ways of the human world and that, as they say, was that.
Sure, Mary was a bit unorthodox. She forgot quite often about human things like wearing clothes and telling little white lies. While I loved her bluntness sometimes, it could be a bit hard to swallow.
Not that I didn’t need to hear the truth every once in a while, but sometimes we just want our best friend to lie to us and tell us everything will be okay. Alec used to be that person before...
“So, uh,” I cleared my throat and blinked rapidly, “Dad was in his office when he disappeared?” I pointed at the closed door, forcing back the emotion in my voice.
If Alec noticed my struggle, he didn’t comment instead he pulled a pair of gloves from his pocket... who keeps rubber gloves on them?... and used one to open the door. It swung open, and the scent of my dad hit my nose. Cigars and burning wood. I inhaled and then sneezed. Something sickly sweet was mixed in with his scent.
My eyes moved over the leather chairs and the bookshelves covering the walls to the large mahogany desk. A massive bouquet of white and red roses sat on the edge of the desk. Completely out of place in the otherwise masculine room.
“We haven’t moved anything,” Alec told me as we walked into the room. “Though, we did dust for prints and came up with too many to figure out who might have taken him. Ted is working on it now.”
I smiled a bit at that. “Ted’s still working the forensics? Isn’t he like ninety by now?”
Alec matched my expression and then seemed to remember himself. “He’s hardly ancient. I don’t have to remind you that we age much slower than the average human. Our ninety-year-olds could kick the ass of any human fifty years younger.”
I snorted but didn’t argue. Moving away from Alec, I let my eyes search the room for clues. I came around the desk and started to reach for the cigar that had been left burning in the ashtray but stopped and arched a brow at Alec. “Can I?”
“Go for it. We’ve gone over every inch of the place already.”
With permission to touch at my leisure, I picked my dad’s cigar. It wasn’t even halfway gone, something my dad would never have done.
“Wasteful,” he’d say.
I lifted the cigar to my nose and inhaled for a moment, letting myself enjoy the familiar scent. It reminded me of happier times, when I had been his little firebug and he’d been my world. Mom had died shortly after I was born, so it’d been him and me for as long as I could remember. It devastated us both when we had our falling out.
“As you know, Director Ashwood would never have left a cigar lit and unfinished if he had left on his own.” Alec gestured his head toward me without a mention of my strange behavior.
I frowned and set the cigar back down. Shuffling through his papers on the table, I asked, “Was he working on anything particularly dangerous? Anybody he could have pissed off?”
Alec chuckled. “He’s the head of the Phoenix Hunter Guild. Of course, he’s pissed people off. If he isn’t, then he isn’t...”
“... doing his job right,” I finished the quote with him. “Yeah, dad sure does love to poke the nest just to see if they will bite.”
We stood in companionable silence for a moment before I moved away from his papers and to the bouquet. “What’s up with these? Did dad start dating or something?”
Shaking his head, Alec approached the desk and stopped beside me. “No, the flowers aren’t for him.” He plucked the card from its stand and held it out to me. “They are for you.”