This Case Is Gonna Kill Me Read online

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  This one is for Christy Carbon-Gaul, attorney extraordinaire, friend, advisor, and an all-around smart, pushy, modern woman.

  Acknowledgments

  I couldn’t have written this book without the aid of Daniel Abraham, Ty Franck, Walter Jon Williams, and Ian Tregillis, who helped with the initial plotting. Walter Jon for the kick-ass title. And special thanks to Ian Tregillis, who had so many great ideas about the world and the mythology that I have shamelessly incorporated.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  About the Author

  Copyright

  1

  “This case is gonna kill me.”

  I stared down at Chip Westin and tried to think of an appropriate response. Actually, I would have been happy with any response, but nothing came to mind. This was my immediate boss, and these were the first private words he said to me after McGillary, one of the senior partners at Ishmael, McGillary and Gold, had introduced us.

  What does that mean? I thought miserably.

  Westin looked to be in his early fifties, balding, wearing an expensive suit that had probably looked good when he was thirty pounds lighter. His complexion was pasty, but he wasn’t a vampire. His cluttered office’s one window was blocked by a stack of books and files, and I suspected he didn’t get out much. His jowls looked like they were melting toward his collar, but this seemed to be caused less by gravity than by bone-grinding weariness and frustration.

  Thus far my first day at Ishmael, McGillary and Gold, one of the premier White-Fang law firms, had consisted of signing my insurance and pension papers, designating who would receive said pension should I die while still employed by the firm, being shown my small cubbyhole of an office, and being introduced to Westin. “You’ll be helping with his cases,” McGillary had said as he led me toward Westin’s office. Then he’d amended that, adding in a peculiar tone of voice, “Well, one in particular.” I could only assume Westin’s prediction of imminent death was related to that case.

  “Okay. Maybe you should tell me about it,” I said. I would have liked to sit down, but there was no available surface that wasn’t covered with papers, books, and files.

  “It’s a probate case. Back in sixty-eight, Captain Henry Abercrombie was serving in Vietnam when a werewolf went rogue and bit him. That was just after the spooks went public, and the military had to admit how many hounds were actually serving in the armed forces.”

  I blanched a bit at the pejorative term but let it pass. After all, I’d just met the man. Westin continued.

  “Anyway, he had a wife and three kids back in Newport News, and shortly after he came home on medical leave he separated from his wife, Marlene. He didn’t divorce her because of the kids, and he kept helping with expenses, but he never lived with them again. Then three years later, he left the marines and founded a company, Securitech.”

  I choked. Securitech was the largest private military force in the world, worth close to a billion dollars. They had serious clout. The last time Securitech had been in the news was when they’d received a thirty-million-dollar, no-bid contract from the DOD. A crusading senator from Minnesota had tried to reopen the negotiations, but the investigation was closed down by the White House and the Justice Department, and the senator abruptly resigned from Congress, stating the ever-popular need to spend more time with his family.

  Westin continued. “In 1980, Abercrombie decided to sire a werewolf heir, and he picked his second in command, Daniel Deegan. At this point the kids were grown up, so Abercrombie divorced Marlene. Then seventeen years ago Abercrombie was killed in a car wreck in Somalia. His human ex-wife, Marlene, and the kids—though they’re not really kids any longer, they’re in their fifties—retained us to challenge the will that left the company to Deegan.

  “In the beginning we raised the issue of the wording about progeny in the will. The lawyer who drafted the will for Abercrombie threw the word natural in front of progeny. We wanted to argue that sex resulting in pregnancy and birth is more ‘natural’”—he made quote marks with his fingers—“than biting somebody.”

  A Supreme Court decision came floating to the front of my mind. Geisler had established that progeny could mean the werewolf or vampire the testator had sired. In fact, the court had contended, that relationship was closer than the relationship with children produced by sex and birth, because the act of Making showed such a high level of intent.

  “But Geisler—”

  Mr. Westin nodded. “Yeah, kicked us right in the nuts. Sometimes I wonder if there’s a secret spook on the high court.”

  There it was again—the pejorative term for vampires, werewolves, and Álfar being used by a lawyer working at a White-Fang law firm. I assumed he had as-yet-undiscovered talents that made him valuable to the senior partners despite his atttitude. Judging by the piles of papers in the room, he was probably the firm’s resident research monkey, a highly esteemed position since most lawyers hated the role. Then I wondered if he had any idea that I had been fostered in a vampire household and that I might find this offensive. Again, I hid my reaction. Calling my boss out for being a bigot was not a smart move the first day on the job.

  “So, where does that leave us?” I asked. It felt good using the plural. Our case. It made me feel like a real lawyer.

  “In arbitration,” Chip said.

  “Geisler was years ago.”

  “Yeah, we’ve been in arbitration for seventeen years.”

  I stared around at the paper towers and felt my gut sinking toward the soles of my feet. “So all this…” I gestured.

  “Depositions. Interrogatories. Transcripts of arbitrations. I got a few other smaller cases…”

  His voice trailed away and he looked around the office with the air of a confused dog. I was reminded of the old basset hound my foster liege, Mr. Bainbridge, had owned. Dilbert constantly forgot where he’d hidden his bones. Mr. Bainbridge had spent many a night out with a flashlight, Dilly lumbering alongside and tripping over his ears while his well-trained owner searched for the lost bone.

  I pulled Mr. Westin back to the Abercrombie case. “Why is this still going on?” I asked.

  The response was blunt. “Because our clients are crazy. The wife and kids are demanding the entire company.”

  “And the court hasn’t shut this down?”

  “They don’t give a shit. As long as we’re in arbitration it’s not their pro
blem.” He picked up a stack of papers and set it down. Picked up a file, flipped through it, set it aside. “We’re about to start another round, and I yelled for help. One of our witnesses died last month, and Deegan’s lawyers are challenging his deposition. I need somebody to help me prepare for this meeting.”

  “And that would be me?”

  “Yep. Your lucky day, huh?” Westin suddenly realized I’d been standing for a long time. “Oh, I’m sorry.”

  He left his chair, hurried around the desk, lifted a stack of folders off the client’s chair, and offered it to me. He then stood looking around. Once again I was reminded of Dilly. Westin tried to find a place for the stack of folders. There wasn’t one. I stood back up and he set the folders back down on the chair. Even that much exertion left him short of breath. Pants punctuated each word as he said, “Sorry my office is a mess. Maybe now that you’re here I can start to dig out. I’m really, really happy to have you on board.”

  “Thank you, I’m very excited to be here,” I said, and it wasn’t a lie.

  Or at least I wasn’t lying about my pleasure at having been hired by this particular firm. Only Gunther, Piedmont, Spann and Engelberg down in Washington, DC, had a better rep, but my folks—my real folks, not my vampire foster liege—hadn’t wanted me to go that far away from home this early in my career.

  “I’ll need you to read through everything and see if you can think of any other witnesses or arguments we can use to bolster the idea that Abercrombie actually loved his wife and kids and wouldn’t have cut them out without a dime.”

  “Despite abandoning them,” I said somewhat acidly.

  “No, no, no. He left them because he loved them too much to risk them, or warp his children by having them grow up with a werewolf daddy. It’s all in the presentation.” He gave me a grin that made him look like a delighted, fat-faced baby. “Our job is to present bullshit like it’s filet mignon.”

  I decided I could work with him despite his prejudice, and I made a conscious effort to start thinking of him as Chip rather than Mr. Westin.

  Chip rooted through the office, gathering up papers and files and piling them in my arms. When the stack was almost up to my chin, he said, “This should give you a sense of where we’ve been and where we’re at.”

  “Great. I’ll get started reading.”

  “We’ll drop those in your office, and then I’ll give you the dime tour. Also, I could use a snack, and the food’s better up in teak heaven.”

  It took me a second to figure out what he was saying. We were on the seventieth floor, where the human associates resided. On the seventy-third floor was where the partners dwelled. Things were fancier up where the partners worked.

  People said that working for a White-Fang firm was like stepping back to the sixties, but since I wasn’t alive back then, I couldn’t attest to the accuracy of the statement. I just noticed as we made our way across the common area housing the assistants that I didn’t see a single male secretary, and it seemed that the male associates had the nicer, larger offices on the outer walls.

  Chip kept leading us in and out of offices, as I tottered along behind like a pack mule with a precariously balanced load and he tossed out names like confetti. I have a terrible time remembering people’s names unless I can pin the name to a face, but the only way I could see their faces was if I peered around my stack.

  Only a couple of introductions stuck, because I was so worried about dropping the papers and causing a humiliating mess. One was Caroline Despopolis—blonde, tall, slender, and beautiful. We were both wearing Yves Saint Laurent skirts and jackets, but on her it looked fabulous while on me it looked dowdy. I wondered if the sage green jacket really complemented my black hair.

  The only other introduction that made an impact was David Sullivan, and that was because he was a vampire. His luminous white skin made his eyes look like dark brown velvet. His taffy-colored hair was carefully styled into casual disarray, and it was pretty clear his suit had never hung on a rack. Definitely bespoke. But here he was down on the human floor. Vampires were partners. Partners didn’t have offices on a human floor. Which meant he’d screwed up majorly to get banished like this. He saw my mental wheels turning as I did the analysis and reached my conclusion, and he rewarded me with a look that would have killed me on the spot if vampires really had that power.

  But he still had the intimidation thing down pat, and since I’d grown up in a vampire household I immediately reacted, offering a submissive and wordless apology by tilting my head to the side and shaking my hair off my neck. Not that he would ever have bitten a woman, but Sullivan neither accepted nor acknowledged the apology. He just snorted and disappeared into his office.

  The door to my office beckoned, and I managed to get through the door and deposit the stack just before the top files went sliding like the leading edge of an avalanche. As Chip helped me gather up the files he asked, in a too-casual tone, “That thing you did.” He cocked his head awkwardly to the side. “That’s like spook etiquette, right?”

  I cringed and Chip looked contrite. “I don’t mean any harm. It’s just the way I was raised. My mom worked here, but my dad never did like it, and didn’t much like the”—he made the mental correction and used the politically correct term—“powers, either. I hope you won’t mention that I used that term.”

  I wondered if Chip would also say his use of the n-word didn’t mean anything, and that it was just his background. But I didn’t want to start out my tenure by ratting out a coworker. “Sure. No problem.”

  “I heard from Shade that you were fostered in a spook—er, vampire household. Is that true?”

  “Yes, I was.”

  “How does a parent swing something like that?” Chip asked.

  “I’m not exactly sure. My family’s been pretty closely allied with the Powers since 1963. My grandfather was a lawyer, and he helped with the integration after the Powers came out—went public. However you want to put it.”

  “Sure does help your profile if you can establish that kind of relationship.” Chip ran a hand across his face. “I sure would like my kids to have that advantage, even if it meant that the boys might turn into inhuman creatures.”

  I gave a mental sigh and decided that this was a habit Chip wasn’t going to break easily. I also had to wonder why he was working in a vampire-run law firm, given his feelings. Had to be the mother thing. Vampires took loyalty to servants very seriously.

  I gave a noncommittal answer. “I’ll ask my dad. See if I can give you any pointers.” But I doubted it would do much good. If there’s one thing that can be said for the Powers, it’s that they’re snobs, and I had a feeling that neither Chip nor his offspring would pass muster with those households. I wasn’t exactly sure how we had rated. Maybe it had to do with my family’s illustrious past rather than our rather mundane present.

  We once again passed through the reception area on our way to the elevators, and I noticed that the secretaries and assistants went into a huddle after we passed. Maybe the word had spread further than Chip that I had been fostered in a vampire household. That would inevitably result in them thinking I had gotten the job through connections, which I had—sort of. All of this meant I was going to have to work that much harder just to prove I deserved to be here.

  I could feel the determination settling into my jaw as we stepped into the elevator. I almost suggested we take the stairs, but then I remembered how moving files and walking to my office had winded Chip and decided against it. Killing my boss on the first day was not a way to impress.

  The seventieth floor was nice. Mahogany and cherry wood, slate tiles, green glass partitions to separate the assistants, private offices for the attorneys. The seventy-third was opulent. Teak furniture, polished Carrera marble floors softened by elaborate oriental rugs, an antique sideboard where an attractive and obsequious assistant would mix the beverage of your choice. A client might have to wait, but they would have a cocktail to sip while they waited.


  And if said client wasn’t tempted by the wide selection of magazines, both foreign and American, they could drift to the wall of windows (all carefully treated with heavy UV screens for the protection of the vampires) and look out across the shimmering patch of green that was Central Park. Right now the early morning sun danced on the skyscrapers on the far side of the park and Columbus Circle, turning them into crystal spires and pulling rainbow colors from their windows.

  The receptionist looked to be all of twenty, and he was gorgeous in that pouty way that only a really handsome male can achieve. He ran a bored eye over me, and I could see the rejection. I tried to figure out why. Because I’m not seventeen? My outfit is dowdy? Then I caught his expression as his eyes drifted over to Chip. I’m with Chip. That’s why I’m being dismissed.

  “Anybody in the conference room?” Chip asked, pointing toward the heavy, carved-wood double doors.

  “No. I guess you can go in there, but be quick about it.” The kid’s tone was curt to the point of being rude. The level of disdain set off my alarm bells. Chip might not be a vampire, but he was still an associate in the firm.

  We stepped through the doors and were in a long hallway with offices to either side. The aroma of coffee hit my nose and my stomach gave a loud growl. I had been too nervous to eat this morning. Chip walked through a doorway on our left, and we were in a kitchen.

  The fluorescent lights glittered on stainless-steel appliances and granite countertops. My apartment didn’t have a kitchen this nice. A young woman was toasting a bagel.

  Leaning casually against a counter and wolfing down a powdered-sugar donut was a stunningly handsome man dressed in blue jeans, a silk polo shirt, and a blue blazer. His hair was a mix of white, gold, and black streaks of varying widths, as if a hairdresser had gone mad during a highlighting session. His eyes were green and he sported a spectacular shiner.

  Now that I was looking more closely, I realized he had a long grease stain across the back of his coat, which had one elbow ripped out. He was also pretty clearly an Álfar. Among all the Powers, only the fey folk possessed such devastating beauty.