"This is just undignified," I muttered to myself. "This epitaph is going to suck."
Lasciel grinned at me, the wind appearing to toss her coppery curls into further disarray. Though the chilly breeze couldn't actually touch her, the loose folds of her toga still appeared to sway. "You did request this, Molly."
She was right, of course. Hannah had insisted that my grand exit had to be an incendiary and unforgettable affair. Something that would leave little doubt in the minds of the White Council that Catherine Lenhardt was gone for good. Hannah had faked her death in Sydney, Australia. I wasn't aiming for anything so grand. I wanted as little collateral damage as I could manage. Thus, we'd ended up here, and the backdrop to my alleged demise was going to be spectacularly mundane.
"Boise, Idaho," I sighed. "I'm going to die in potato country. Death by spuds."
Lasciel emitted a sound that carried amusement but was a little too dignified to classify as a snort.
I could have chosen any number of cities I was more familiar with. I'd seen a lot of wide-open country while traveling for my route. The Midwest was full of long stretches of land only occupied by ramshackle buildings and the occasional meth lab. I'd ultimately vetoed it. If I staged my death in Missouri or Iowa, I was more likely to attract the attention of one Harry Dresden. Wizards talk, and I didn't want this getting back to him. I thought it unlikely he'd make the connection between Catherine Lenhardt, warlock, and Molly Carpenter, missing person. But he was a smart man. I'd heard he'd made greater leaps before.
I shoved my hands in my pocket and soldiered on, hunching my shoulders against the wind. I trudged down the street, purposely lollygagging. I'd put in an appearance at a local supernatural hangout, sure that some well-meaning citizen would hear the name I'd given the bartender and put it together with my wanted poster. No one had a photo of me yet-thank God-but I'd become a bit infamous. I'd allegedly killed four people and hospitalized a fifth, evaded three Wardens, and disappeared for weeks. None of the locals would want me around. They'd been called. Now it was just a matter of when they showed up.
Which brought us to the second part of the plan. The choice of city hadn't been mere convenience, in the end. It allowed our cell to knock out two birds with one stone. There was another threat lurking in the heart of Boise. One I was here to eliminate. The Wardens needed a body, and I was going to give them one.
Lutheran Social Services was located on a quiet street, in a church. I was sure it would have been pretty if I'd been seeing it in the bloom of spring. It wasn't even dusted with snow, to give it a bit of contrast. The landscape was just an amalgam of browns. The wilted mats of dead grass and leaves, the little rivers of mud caked near the storm drain, and even the beige siding of the building were all brown.
The parking lot was empty but for a pretty silver Lexus. I eyed it as I turned the corner and started walking toward the front steps of the church building. The car was nice. Too nice for a social worker.
When I tried the knob, I found the front door unlocked. I opened it a crack and leaned just my head and shoulders inside. The church was a public institution, which meant I was free to enter without compromising my magic. But that didn't mean I had to be stupid and prance in without taking stock of the place first.
The room beyond was dark, so I could only just make out the rows of pews and the center aisle that would lead to the altar. The place was significantly smaller than I was used to, after attending mass at Saint Mary of the Angels for so many years. The building felt almost...cramped.
There was a square of light slanting from an office to the right of the entrance, and it was toward that door I drifted, keeping my shoulders hunched. For this to have a prayer of working, I needed to appear as vulnerable as possible. Young, unsure, a little afraid, and overall an easy mark.
"Hello?" I ventured, injecting a quaver into my voice. I hesitated on the threshold, grasping the doorjamb unsteadily as I peered into the office.
A woman glanced up from a small desk, and the ledger she appeared to be pouring over. She spotted me dithering in the doorway and her face broke into a wide smile. It was meant to be reassuring, I was sure. The woman looked like she could be the eccentric mother in any number of sitcoms, with a nice, normal face, badly permed blonde hair, and a little too much lipstick. Her clothes are tailored, professional, and probably designer.
Another giveaway. Social workers weren't paid well, so this stuff should really be too rich for her blood. And yet, here she is. Knowing what I knew, that little grin looked almost predatory.
"Ah, hello there. You must be Catherine."
I nodded slowly. "And you're Esme Ball, right? Officer Green talked to you on the phone."
It had been only too easy to con the nice police officer into calling social services. Just after exiting the local supernatural hangout spot, I'd made a detour to the police precinct, posing as a helpless runaway in need of protection. He'd lapped it up like cream and directed me toward the nearest social worker, dropping me off a block down from the building before tearing off to do his next good deed.
Esme's grin widened, flashing a few molars in the back. Her teeth were perfectly white and straight and she looked like she could star in a toothpaste commercial in a pinch.
"Yes, that's me. Why don't you take a seat, Catherine?"
I hesitated for a second more, really trying to sell the act. I'd never try to claim that what I'd gone through was as bad as what foster kids had to contend with. I'd had a healthy, happy childhood and would have continued on to stable adulthood, if not for the intervention of one very annoying brain-crawling shade. I'd still be welcome at the Carpenter house if I showed up at the door.
But I did know something about being cast adrift in the world, suddenly divorced from everything that I'd once known. I now knew what it was like to be alone and scared.
"You are not alone any longer," Lasciel said, and she projected comforting warmth against my back, phantom arms winding around my neck in something like an embrace. That, more than anything else, disturbed me. I hadn't expected a Fallen to do anything so friendly as hug.
I finally sat, and Esme shut her ledger.
"Officer Green filled me in on your situation. So at this point, you're just looking for a temporary housing situation, am I correct? You're about to age out of the system in six months."
"Yeah," I mumbled. "Just someplace to stay. You know, until I can get a job."
"I think that can be arranged. I know a lovely couple who take in cases like yours all the time. It is so difficult to find families that take in teenagers, you know. But Penelope and John are good people."
It was a real effort to hold in a snort. Yeah. Penelope and John Cardenas were saints. And I was the pope.
John, Penelope, and Esme ran a lucrative little business, selling difficult foster cases to the red court. Teenagers about to age out and serial runaways were their favorites. Easier to explain the disappearances when they finally peddled kids to the vampires as blood slaves or easy meals. My alias, Catherine Finn, must have been their wet dream. Seventeen and a half years old, a frequent runaway, with no one but alleged alcoholics to miss me.
Once I arrived at the Cardenas house I was supposed to neutralize all three of them after plucking the information about the local Red that controls Boise from their minds. From there, Hannah and the rest could formulate a plan to eliminate the Red. Once power vacuum opened up, the Fellowship could capitalize on the chaos. I'd use Esme or Penelope to pose as my body double once the plan was done, with a bit of timely fire from Hannah to torch the body beyond the point that dental records could be used for identification.
"Thank you, Miss Ball," I mumbled, hunching my shoulders, trying to project a turtle retreating further into its shell. Weak. She needed to think I was weak, harmless. I wanted to get her into that car suspecting absolutely nothing.
"Let me get things sorted here and then I'll take you to meet them. Why don't you wait in the sanctuary for me, hm?"
I nodded and pushed up from my seat. Maybe she wanted to make a phone call to her buddies and needed me out of earshot. That was fine. I didn't see a phone in her office. Maybe she didn't have one. Most people seemed to use cellphones these days, anyway. I'd short that thing out in a heartbeat if I stayed.
I groped in the darkness and found the light switch to the right of the sanctuary's double doors. Wavering fluorescent lighting cast the padded pews into sharp contrast and bathed the cross at the back of the room in an orange glow. The dark eyes of a stained-glass Jesus bored into me from behind the pulpit.
"He didn't look that, you know," Lasciel said a little wistfully. A deep sense of melancholy settled into my bones as we stood in this little worship hall. The holy site hurt Lasciel, but not in the way I'd expected. It didn't sear her soul with guilt or bring down the righteous fury of the almighty to smite her. It made her...sad.
I raised a brow at the back of the room, though my incredulity was aimed solely at Lasciel. "Were you around to see him?"
It was surreal to consider that the angel hitchhiking in my cranium was older than the Earth itself and may have clapped eyes on the savior of the universe.
"In Gadarenes," she said with a mental nod. "Before we were bound to the coins. We could move more freely then."
"Holy shit. The exorcism of the Gerasene demoniac. 'I am Legion, for we are many, right?'"
Lasciel hummed, and I got the vague sense she didn't want to talk about it. I moved on to the more interesting part, not willing to press and lose the most interesting thing she'd shared with me to date.
"So you met Jesus in person? What did he look like?"
"Shall I show you?"
I was about to reply with an emphatic, hell yes, but thought that might be a bit sacrilegious. The tap-tap of heels drew my focus back to Esme Ball and I half-turned, shelving the question for later.
"Are we ready to go, Miss-?"
I cut off with a dry swallow when I spotted her in the doorway. She had her legs spread in a ready stance, her purse slung over one arm, and a small pistol clutched in one hand. It was pointing at me. None of our sources had mentioned she'd be leading me away at gunpoint. Her smile had given way to a horrible sneer. Some small, critical part of my brain noted she had coral lipstick smeared on her front teeth.
"Nice try, girlie. But I'm not an idiot. Maybe you shouldn't have put in an appearance at the bar, huh, Catherine Lenhardt?"
My heart lurched into overdrive and my hands balled into fists at my side. So that was the reason she didn't seem to have a computer or a phone. Esme was a practitioner and well-connected enough to have friends who'd told her I was in town. Hell, she might have seen me earlier in the day and was just waiting for an opportunity to hand me over to the Wardens.
I wanted to round on the stained glass savior and ask him "what the hell gives?" What had I done to deserve misfortune after misfortune?
No time for that now, though. I went for my wand, drawing fast like this was a wild west shootout. Not fast enough.
Esme took aim and fired directly at my head.
AN: No offense intended to anyone from Idaho. :P