“There’s a party spilling onto Crescent Avenue Northeast.” A cold knot cramped my gut as I summarized the rest of the text from Remy to him. “A new drug hit the streets tonight.” I watched his face as I told him the rest. “They’re calling it…Faete.”
Ambrose perked at the word Faete and slithered closer to hear the rest, his interest genuine this time. The defunct fae club where we found Bishop half dead after the witchborn fae coven finished torturing him had shared the same name.
I doubted it was a coincidence. More like a billboard-sized message.
Bishop locked down his emotions before a single one escaped. “Any idea where it originated?”
“Remy tracked it to Greenleaf.” I filled him in on what Gayle told me about the fancy invitation Mendelsohn received from an unknown sender and got a bad feeling he had been invited to enjoy a sneak peek at coming attractions. “With his reputation for partying, I bet his name topped the mailing list.”
Clubs in Midtown wooed high-profile paranormal clientele with promises of discount booze, new drugs, or sex to keep them coming back for more—and bringing their friends with them.
“But,” I had to admit, “given its lingering effect on Mendelsohn and his pack, he might have been targeted for the pre-release bash for more clinical reasons.”
“No drug currently on the market affects wargs for more than an hour, tops.” Bishop stared off into traffic. “Faete gave those wargs an unprecedented high, if that’s what did it.”
If, because we needed proof before we started making accusations.
Sometimes being one of the good guys sucked. There were so many more rules for us to follow.
“I’ll touch base with the cleaners.” Bishop dialed them from memory. “We’re a day late and a dollar short, but they need to know the Mendelsohns are possible ODs on an unidentified substance so they can pass it on to the medics if they haven’t figured it out yet.”
Leaving him to tie up loose ends, I walked off for privacy to make a call. To Midas.
“We can’t confirm it yet,” I said when he answered, “but it looks like the coven made their next move.”
“Faete.”
A pang slid between my ribs and sharpened my voice. “You knew?”
He would have made the same connection with the name as me, and gwyllgi protective instincts being what they are, he also might have decided I was better off not finding out about it until it came to my attention through other means.
“As of forty-five minutes ago, yes.”
Or he could have found out in the last hour, same as me, and hadn’t had time to share the deets.
What can I say? Relationships were alien to me. No. Wait. Alien was a bad comparison. I watched enough science fiction to feel comfortable with the existence of life on other planets. But to love another person enough to forsake all others and make a life together? Little green men seemed more plausible.
“I’m in Midtown rounding up some of our teens,” Midas said when I kept quiet. “We’re missing four.”
“Bad idea.” I gripped the phone harder. “We don’t know enough about this—”
Techno music assaulted my ears, and I figured he must have entered a club. The noise made conversation impossible, even before the call dropped with a hiss.
“Bishop,” I called to him as I redialed Midas. “We need to go.”
No surprise, Midas didn’t answer. I told myself he couldn’t hear the phone ring over the noise, but I was a good liar and had trust issues. Even with myself.
“Consider us gone.” Bishop stepped back up to the curb and flagged down a yellow cab. “Our chariot awaits.”
Once he settled in, I slid across the seat next to him and gave the driver Greenleaf’s name and address.
Unsure why Bishop had chosen this mode of transportation, I offered, “Remy doesn’t work for Swyft anymore.”
“She never did,” he reminded me. “She was using the app to psycho stalk your boyfriend.”
“You’re not wrong” about summed up the situation. “But a cab?”
Swyft was cheaper, quicker, and their drivers could handle their passengers, for the most part, if things got ugly. At the very least, they knew who to call—namely me—if that happened.
“We need to quarantine Crescent Avenue Northeast and the surrounding area,” he explained. “Until we get a sample of Faete, and a lab analysis on it, we can’t be sure who it will affect or how. We don’t need to invite more paras to the party.”
With a name like Faete, the drug must be geared toward the paranormal community. That didn’t mean it was safe for human consumption. Likely, the opposite was true. A Swyft driver could be in more immediate danger than our cabbie, but I hadn’t registered that either. I had been too focused on Midas.
“Smart.” I gave Bishop a pat on the head. “That next-level thinking is why you’re my wingman.”
“And here I thought it was because you took sick pleasure in watching me wrestle Mendelsohn naked.”
“First off, I got stuck wrestling Mendelsohn naked. Secondly, has anyone wrestled him not naked?” I wasn’t joking. “It’s like he’s allergic to pants.”
The trip to Midtown was short, and I ponied up the cash—or the plastic, as the case may be—for the ride and the tip.
Bishop didn’t trust banks, or plastic cards, and he never carried more than twenty dollars in his pocket in the highly unlikely event he was mugged. He preferred the debit card Linus had issued him for purchases, which would be fine. If he bothered carrying it.
“Ever been to Mardi Gras?” Bishop gazed out the window. “All that’s missing are the beads.”
“Yes. Once. I’m not interested in a repeat.” I checked with him. “Are you okay to do this?”
Fae immune systems weren’t my wheelhouse, seeing as how good little necromancers avoided them, but his had been compromised recently by the Martian Roach who attempted to use him as its host.
“I’ll be fine.” He opened the door nearest the sidewalk and exited into the crush. “Watch your step.”
The crowd hid what he meant until I stepped out—and onto—someone’s twitching hand.
Bodies littered the concrete. Some curled into tight balls, others sprawled with their limbs flung wide.
Most weren’t moving, and I couldn’t tell if they were breathing.
“Goddess.” I accepted the elbow he offered until I found my footing. “Are they alive?”
“Most of them.” He nudged the nearest man onto his back and out of his own vomit. “What a mess.”
“The drug turned Mendelsohn and his females into giggling children with short tempers who wanted to play in a fountain.” As much as I wanted to crouch and examine the nearest victim, I didn’t dare. I might fall, and that would get me trampled or worse. “These people are comatose, not manic.”
This was either a different faction, or they had it worse for not leaving the area after their first hit.
Part of me questioned how the dealers could stomach lavish festivities after what happened to the Mendelsohns and whoever else had the bad luck to attend last night’s soiree. The rest figured they didn’t care, or they wouldn’t be dealing in illegal substances to begin with.