Free Vicious Grace by M. L. N. Hanover

the car. That I was too young to stay by myself, and he didn’t have time to find someone to watch us. His tone of voice left no room for disagreement.
    By the time I’d done what he said, little Curt squirming in his car seat and demanding cartoons, my father had transformed himself. His hair was combed back. He had a good gray suit on with a deep red tie. He smelled of cologne, and he looked like a movie star or a president. I’d never seen him this way, even for church.
    When we got to the doctor’s office, he dropped Curtis and me in the waiting room with my mother, and went back to speak to the doctors and nurses. Five minutes later, he came out with answers to every question Mom had asked him. My mother drank all the information in—yes, Jay was going to be admitted overnight; yes, cancer was a possibility, but it wasn’t the best suspect; no, there wasn’t cause for immediate alarm. I watched relief pour over her like cool water on a burn. But I didn’t miss my father’s little smile or my mother’s near-subliminal frown. The gray-suited man had been given a level of courtesy and respect that a woman couldn’t get.
    Lesson learned.
    Truth was, Chogyi Jake looked amazing in the right outfit. Brown linen so light it was almost blond, a black linen vest of matching cut, pin-striped shirt and tie that coordinated like a symphony perfectly in tune. He’d let the stubble of hair grow out just enough for the scattering of gray at the temples to show. When he chose not to smile, he could look seriously dangerous. By comparison, Aubrey, even in his best suit, never quite gave off the air of command, and Ex’s long hair wasn’t quite overcome by his quasiclerical black and humorless attitude. And me? Yes, I was the money behind everything. Yes, I was the one Kim called. Yes, I was Eric’s heir and successor with the weird supernatural powers and protections. I was also twenty-four and a woman, and even in my best clothes and most understated makeup, I looked more like Jennifer Connelly than an international demon hunter and occult expert. So by common agreement, Chogyi Jake took point.
    “Thank you for joining us, Dr. Oonishi. I’m sorry we couldn’t come to your office.”
    “Thank you,” the man said. “It’s probably good if we don’t meet at Grace.”
    “There are reputations to protect,” Kim said, only a little bitterness in her voice. Her dress was sherbet green and didn’t suit her. She wore it like a smock.
    The restaurant sat on the river, broad windows looking out over water glowing gold with sunset. A yacht had tied up while we were being seated, and now a young man had climbed up one of the deck ladders and was paying for his to-go order. The skyscrapers of downtown rose up around us like trees above rabbits, and the cool evening breeze mixed the smells of water and freshly grilled steak. Oonishi sat forward with his elbows on the table. His gaze shifted between us, restless and uneasy.
    “I take it,” he said to Chogyi Jake, “you understand why I need help with this problem?”
    “Of course,” Chogyi Jake said. “And I understand why discretion is important. We have experience with this kind of issue. You don’t have anything to worry about.”
    He delivered the lines with a conviction that almost had me forgetting that we’d had a small riot on the Cardiac Care Unit earlier in the day. Oonishi either hadn’t heard about it or hadn’t put it together with our arrival, because he looked reassured.
    “What can you tell us about the problem?” Ex asked.
    “You’ve seen the data sets?” Oonishi asked, turning his head almost imperceptibly toward Kim. When Chogyi Jake nodded, he continued, “We’ve been running the tertiary tests for almost three months now. Three nights a week, the subjects come to the lab. There are anomalies as early as the second session.”
    “Can you give me the date on that?” I asked. It was a safe question. The kind of thing that even a jumped-up