Sinners & Sorcerers: Four Urban Fantasy Thrillers Read Online Free

plastic jug for months.
    “You drank a lot last night,” Kearney went on. She was an intense woman with a square jaw and no waistline. Fists clenched on top of the table. “When we tested you this afternoon, your blood alcohol level was still above legal limits for driving.”
    I didn’t want to talk about my drinking habits. I didn’t have drinking habits.
    “I need my phone call,” I said again. Felt like I’d been saying nothing else since they’d brought me here.
    “Where do you work?” asked the other detective, Ramirez. He was a skinny man with gray hair.
    I didn’t even have to think about the fake answer. It was habit now. “I work for the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”
    They didn’t look surprised by that answer, so someone had already found my fake FBI badge.
    “What do you do for the FBI, exactly?”
    “It’s classified.” So much more classified than they could ever know. They lived in a small world, an ordinary world. They didn’t know anything.
    Identifying myself as an FBI agent was usually enough to get me out of any degree of trouble. It didn’t work that day. Not after Erin, and not with Kearney shooting daggers out of her eyeballs at me. “I’m sure that must be stressful,” she said. “Working for the FBI, doing secret work. You have to unwind somehow. Who can blame you?”
    I kept my mouth shut.
    “How often do you think you go to the bar called The Olive Pit? Three times a week, four times? Every day? Just on Fridays? How much does it take to help you unwind, Mr. Hawke?”
    I knew this routine. I’d done it a few times myself. They were trying to establish a narrative. They would try to set me up as a woman-beating alcoholic, tell me I got piss-drunk and killed Erin, try to sneak into it sideways so that I wouldn’t even realize I was agreeing until I’d signed the confession. You’d be surprised how easily people would admit guilt when they thought someone understood them.
    But I wasn’t going to give them anything. They knew that I could ask for a lawyer at any minute and the interview would come to an end.
    Thing is, I didn’t want my lawyer. I had nothing to defend.
    I wanted the men in black suits to roll in here and erase me.
    “Who does the Glock belong to?” I asked Kearney, addressing her directly. “Did you check the serial numbers?”
    “Don’t you think it’s kind of strange to have a gun on your coffee table and no idea whom it belongs to?”
    “Yeah, I sure do,” I said.
    “You have a gun safe in your apartment.”
    And I had a gun in it, too. A Desert Eagle. They wouldn’t know that, though, because I’d warded the safe with the help of some of the OPA’s best witches, and nobody could open it but me. Seeing the stuff in there would have made Kearney grow chest hair.
    “I use it for my china collection.” I didn’t smile when I said it.
    Disbelief was etched all over their faces, but they didn’t challenge me on it. Why bother pushing? They thought they had all day. Really, they only had until Suzy came in with her backup.
    I hoped Suzy was close.
    “A heavy-drinking FBI agent with a china collection,” Kearney said.
    “I like breaking stereotypes.”
    “Tell me about how you got the scratches on your arms.” The order came rapid-fire, almost talking over me. Trying to startle me into answering.
    I turned my arms over so I could look at them. They had swabbed the scratches when I’d first arrived. Took a DNA sample out of my mouth and a vial of blood, too. The scratches had hurt the most. They were still tender.
    I didn’t have an answer for them, and I wouldn’t have given it if I did.
    “How long have you been thinking about killing Erin Karwell?” asked Kearney.
    I slammed my fists on the table. I knew better, but I couldn’t help it. “I didn’t kill Erin.”
    “Relax, Agent Hawke,” Ramirez said. “It seems like you’ve got a lot of pent-up aggression.”
    Yeah, I was feeding right into the damn narrative.
    The way he