Nine Swords

Records

With eyes drooping and cheek resting on fist, Jack scrolled down yet another surveillance record of Adelaide Bedard. His reputation with the brass was taking a beating, but after reading about how many pursuers she’d foiled before he came along, he thought the bosses ought to be thrilled that he’d come as close as he had.

He loaded another record. Definitely some beer when he finished up.

He did a double-take at his computer screen and sat up. He read the passage again. He loaded a few earlier records.

He had a pattern. Pretty soon he had a plan, too.

Booze

Jack took a moment to enjoy his situation: a smoky honky-tonk with good whiskey in front of him and Garth Brooks playing in the background. Life was good.

His phone rang. A French woman’s voice asked him, “Drowning your sorrows already?”

He looked out the window at the woman standing under the streetlamp. “Why hello there, Adelaide. I thought you’d already left town.” He smiled, totally unconcerned. He saw her furrow her brow, so focused that she never saw the gremlins crawl out of her car.

Jack hung up and sang along with Garth: “I’ve got friieeends in loooow places…”

Sheen

It shouldn’t have sheen to it, he thought. It acted like a black hole, swallowing up everything around it, so it ought to look like one, too. But there it was, reflecting the light of a setting sun. A glossy black puddle of You fucked up.

Beside him, Sachiko stared at the filth. “I don’t understand. They should be safe here.”

Jack looked away. “This was my idea. I’ll take the heat.”

“I don’t know this—‘the heat?’”

“This is my fault.”

“No.”

“I could have found somewhere safer.” He’d already dialed Temple Hall. “Boss…it’s about those researchers. They’re gone.”

Coat-hook

Jack heard a ripping noise coming from the entryway of his apartment.

Ealdwic was the safest place he’d ever lived, but old habits die hard. He left the movie on to provide cover noise and stalked out of his bedroom with a revolver at the ready. He released his breath, relieved, when he saw that it was just the coat-hook that held his red leather jacket. It was one of those stick-on numbers, and had given way.

He decided to try and fix it with magic. Holding the coat-hook, he let his power flow into it.

The stupid thing melted.

Cool drabbles, Deerhound.

I didn't like that last one, so this is a do-over.

Coral

Jim smiled curiously at the coiled mass. “That’s a coral? I didn’t know they were around here.”

Jack kept his eyes in the binoculars. “Yeah, they do better in places with no people around.”

“You know, I might take it home with me. Be a good conversation piece.”

“If your idea of conversation is running and screaming, sure.”

“Running and screaming because of a piece of coral?”

A pause. A realization. Jack looked away from his surveillance, to Jim. “Coral SNAKE.”

Jim stared at Jack, freezing his outstretched hand. He looked down at the coiled mass, which began to move.

Nice edit! Here's some more:

Scrub
Hatch
Slip-shod

Scrub

“Know what you call a bee that doesn’t practice magic? A scrub. Also, dead.”

Jack dove behind a concrete pillar as the next fireball scorched it.

He pulled a small metal object from his belt pouches and removed the safety with a flick of his thumb. “Pull,” he said, and threw it. The warlock cackled as he zapped it out of the air, and then the next two.

The grenades filled the room with smoke. The warlock’s grin vanished when he realized what kind of smoke it was. No more fireballs.

Jack stepped out, slipped on a kuckle-duster. “Scrub, huh?”

Hatch

Pyotr strolled in to the café and immediately sat down across from Jack, uninvited. He set a package on the table.

Jack eyed the offering curiously. “What’s this?”

“A peace offering,” Pyotr sniffed. “I am tired of always arguing with a comrade-in-arms.”

Jack opened it, expecting little and finding a lot. “Hatch peppers.”

“You said they were hard to find in this country. So I found them for you.”

It was an unusual gesture, but a good one, and this stupid feud with Pyotr had wasted more than enough of his time.

“Thank you,” he said, and he meant it.

Slip-shod

“This kind of slip-shod investigation may have been acceptable to a Texas court, Mr. Wolfe, but not to the Templars.”

Jack glared at Dame Julia without trying not to. “Slip-shod.” “I have every subject’s life story in that file. I got all the details of what went down. I even killed the revenant. What part was slip-shod?”

“That woman murdered our best informant in the Golden Dawn. And you simply let her go.”

His patience with Templar methods, always short, finally ran out. “Well ma’am, in my professional opinion her dad was a sumbitch who got what he had coming.”