“Tetra, look out!” Val bellowed. She lunged and tackled the faerie at the knees. Tetra went down with a grunt as a roaring flame rolled over their heads.

The two guys in overalls sprang out of the truck. One wielded a flamethrower, and the other had a shotgun.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Val curled her body around Tetra’s and held up her shield. The shotgun blast at point-blank range slammed into the shield with enough force to shove them both back. Val scrambled to raise the shield again, but Tetra yelled and flung faerie dust at the guy with the shotgun.

He screamed and tried to drop the gun, but his skin had melted onto the metal. Gurgling and shrieking, the guy fell to the ground and lay there, convulsing.

Val lurched to her feet and charged Flamethrower Guy. He aimed the nozzle, and a stream of fire rolled toward her. She raised the shield and charged through it blindly. Heat scorched the back of her hand as the flames covered the conductive metal. Then the shield slammed into something that crunched, and the fire stopped. Val trampled the fallen gangster as she charged the office.

“Right behind you!” Tetra barked.

Val plowed into the office door shield-first. Hot metal collided with Plexiglass and shattered it. The door collapsed in a shower of plastic shards and wood splinters, and the gangster standing by a scorched oil drum in the back corner raised a handgun. He held a heavy ledger in the other hand. It gaped open to show handwritten pages.

“You guys don’t learn, do you?” Val snarled, tightening her grip on the dagger. There was dried blood on the blade and hilt.

The guy fired. Val blocked with the shield and felt the thud as the bullet lodged in the softened metal instead of bouncing off. She grunted and raised her dagger.

“Get him, Tetra!” she roared.

The gangster released the book, and it tumbled toward the flames as Val hurled the dagger at him. Tetra darted under her arm almost as fast as the blade flew. Faerie dust appeared in front of her in a cloud of holographic sparkles.

The dagger slammed into the ledger, and the faerie dust hit the gangster in the chest. His head snapped back like he’d been punched, and he crumpled to the ground as the dagger pinned the ledger to the opposite wall.

Tetra delicately stepped over the fallen gangster and tried to pull the dagger out. Sirens yowled in the distance, rapidly coming nearer.

“Merlin’s baby-smooth butt cheeks,” Tetra growled. She braced a foot against the wall and pulled, but the dagger didn’t budge.

Val peered into the scorched oil drum. A burned laptop lay within, melting and releasing a horrific plastic-y smell.

“Do you think they destroyed everything?” Tetra asked.

Val stepped over the gangster, who was dead. No one could be that color and still be alive. She plucked the dagger from the wall with an easy jerk. Tetra caught the ledger.

“It all depends on what’s in that.” Val nodded at the book.

Tetra flipped it open. “A shitload of numbers, that’s what.” She paged to the front. “Oh, hang on.”

“What?” Val leaned closer.

Tires screeched outside. “NYPD!” someone yelled. “Show me your hands!”

“Oh, crap.” Tetra grimaced as footsteps rang through the warehouse. “We’re standing in a warehouse full of dead bodies.”

“I think we’d better put our hands up,” Val suggested.

She shook her shield into its armband and raised the dagger in her thumb and forefinger as two wide-eyed officers burst into the office, clinging to their handguns for dear life.

“Show me your hands!” one screamed pointlessly.

“Drop the knife!” another yelled.

“Knife?” Val scoffed. “Excuse me, sir, this clearly has two edges. It’s a dagger.”

“Drop it!” the female cop bellowed.

Val delicately laid the dagger on the nearest table and placed her hands behind her back. The female cop holstered her weapon and cuffed Val, then Tetra, while the male cop talked into his radio.

“Shit.” The male cop edged nearer. “That’s…that’s Freddie Petersen.”

The female cop leaned over the body. “I barely recognized him.”

“Wasn’t that Giorgio Jones at the door?” The male cop stared at Val. “Who are you people?”

“Two kick-ass girls who did your jobs for you, that’s who,” Tetra announced.

Val stomped on her toe.

“Hey!” Tetra squealed.

“My name is Valerie Stonehold, Officer, and I’m acting as a bodyguard for Blair Abercrombie and Yuka Marniq of the Anvil Brewery. Organized crime joined forces with BrewCorp and its CEO Anthony Warner to destroy the brewery and hurt my clients,” Val explained calmly.

“I know about the case.” The female cop’s eyes narrowed. “You can’t prove your allegations.”

“She can now.” Tetra nodded at the ledger she’d set on a cheap desk nearby.

The cops exchanged glances.

“We’re here in response to a 911 call.” The male cop shrugged. “We’re legally allowed to search the premises.”

The female cop opened the ledger and gasped.

“What?” the male cop asked.

She slowly unclipped her radio and lifted it to her mouth. “Control, requesting a supervisor on our scene in Brownsville. We’ve…we’ve found something unexpected.”

Val and Tetra waited in the back of the cruiser. No one would tell them anything. The warehouse crawled with police, from uniformed officers running yellow tape around the scene to forensics specialists to swaggering detectives who cast cool glances at the cruiser. An officer stood guard at the cruiser’s hood, his gaze darting from the corpse of Mr. Molotov to Val and Tetra. A puzzled coroner crouched beside the dead gangster, frowning.

“I’m bored,” Tetra complained.

Val rolled her neck on her shoulders. “I’m sore.” She shifted her weight, then winced as her bandaged wrist touched the handcuffs. “Oops. Almost broke the cuffs.”

“Not to humble-brag or anything,” Tetra teased. “How long do you think we’ll be stuck here?”

“Not long.” Val shrugged. “Or we might end up imprisoned for murder. You never know.”