Hotter Than Helltown: An Urban Fantasy Mystery (Preternatural Affairs Book 3) Read Online Free

hadn’t remembered to close the door. Behind my reflection, I could see Suzy leaning against the doorway, arms folded and eyebrows lifted.
    “Go ahead,” I said, sipping water out of the palm of my ungloved hand. “Say it. I know you want to.” I splashed the rest of the water on my hair. It wasn’t that it was an unusually hot day for Los Angeles, especially not this early in the morning, but panic messes with a guy.
    Suzy rolled her eyes. “Come here, Hawke.” She straightened my tie and tightened it once more. “You good?”
    “I told Fritz that I don’t do bodies when he offered me the job,” I said.
    “Yeah. I remember that.”
    “Nothing’s changed. I still don’t do bodies. Missing persons, sure. Witches abusing power, heck yeah. Demons supplying infernal bongs to college students—I’d do that again. It was hilarious. But murders? I draw the line at murders.”
    “I know,” Suzy said.
    She wasn’t giving me a hard time. I wondered if she was sick.
    “Are you good?” I asked.
    “This guy wasn’t just killed. He was mutilated.” She said it matter-of-factly. Suzy wasn’t bothered by dead guys at all. “Director Friederling called to tell me we’ve been assigned to this case, but there might be someone outside the organization who could find answers a hell of a lot faster. Save us some work, you know. And help us catch the killer before he kills again.”
    I looked at her blankly. “Like…the LAPD?”
    “Like…some kind of consultant.” Suzy gave me an expectant look.
    “Oh,” I said. “You mean her .” I didn’t say her name, not when we had a house filled with personnel who weren’t supposed to know that she existed.
    “That won’t be a problem, will it?”
    “Kind of. I haven’t really spoken to her since we got back from Reno. I’ve been busy.”
    “Oh yeah?” That information seemed to perk Suzy up for some reason.
    “I don’t even know where to find her.”
    “Guess it’s time to look her up again. You’ll do it, right? You don’t like bodies, I don’t like necrocognitive witches.”
    Could I find Isobel Stonecrow? Hell yes I could. I’d found her before, I could do it again. “I’m on it,” I said.
    “Great. Get out of here. Track her down. I’ll have the body taken to the morgue, and we can just ask Jay Brandon who killed him.”

CHAPTER THREE

    YOU’D THINK THAT FINDING one of our consultants should be pretty trivial. I’d worked two cases with Isobel Stonecrow now, taken her on a road trip with my team to Reno, and I’d even taught her a thing or two about magic.
    We were kinda coworkers. I hoped that we were also friends. It should have been as easy as picking up a phone and making a call.
    But Isobel didn’t do well with phone numbers. Or being tracked, for that matter.
    Which meant that finding her always required a little investigation of its own.
    “Working overtime?” Aniruddha asked, stopping beside my desk. His coffee mug said “Don’t Look at Me, I Just Cast the Magic” and was roughly the size of a bathtub. And that was his weekend cup. His mug was more like an Olympic pool during the week.
    Talk about a guy who can’t get enough of work.
    I minimized the window I’d been looking at and swiveled in my chair to face him. “Some cases just don’t have the courtesy to stick to office hours.”
    “Were you looking at Craigslist?”
    “No,” I said, by which I meant, Yes, now go away.
    His lips curled into a smile. “I heard you tossed your cookies all over a dead body today.”
    It had only been three hours since I left the Brandon house and rumors were already getting around. Again, on a Saturday. It seemed like the need to get a life was growing pretty desperate around the OPA offices.
    “No idea where you heard that,” I said. “Hey, are you working on the crank calls?”
    “Agent Gonzales was doing some research on that,” Aniruddha said.
    “Then what are you doing here on a Saturday?”
    He shot me a mind-your-business