Frost Moon s-1

by Anthony Francis

  She shoved the lid away, and Phil and Balducci looked at each other and raised their eyebrows. "The psychic record ends there. I'm pretty sure the salt was to sever any remaining magical connection to the living host." She lowered her head. "I can't say for certain, but I got a very strong impression that dagger wanted to end the ritual in her heart."

  "That's… consistent," Philip said.

  "That's fucking amazing is what it is," Balducci said.

  "Language, Officer Balducci," Jinx said calmly. "I'm afraid that touching the lid is quite… aversive… to a sensitive such as myself. With your permission, I'd like to encircle it before I begin my examination. It might serve to dampen some of the 'vibes.'"

  "That… that wasn't the examination?" Balducci said.

  "No," she said. "That was a side effect."

  "Miss Anderson is a graphomancer," Philip said. "She's here to analyze the tattoo and give us her thoughts on why the killer may have wanted it."

  Jinx had pulled out what looked like a small makeup case from her shoulder bag and was feeling the table. "May I draw on this?" she asked, retrieving a piece of chalk from the case.

  Balduci let out his breath. "Sure. Why the hell not?"

  "Language, Officer Balducci," Jinx said, drawing a wide circle around the evidence tray. "I'm only doing this because I'm trying to help."

  "Uh, Philip," I said. "There was that matter of my… other associates-"

  "Davidson," Balducci warned. "I appreciate you bringing APD in on this, but you're-we're letting out a lot of information about this case to a lot of people-"

  "Current thinking," Philip said, ushering me towards the observation room to talk but speaking to Balducci, "is that if you have a known victim category, you alert them. That it's better to prevent more crimes than to nail the perpetrator."

  Balducci threw up his hands.

  Philip joined me in the observation room, and the door closed with a sudden click.

  There, alone together in the near darkness, I forgot what we were going to talk about. We stared at each other for a moment, his grey eyes glinting with reflected light from the window on room beyond, his strong physique outlined by the soft glow of the monitors. I drew a breath, and his eyes lit up and sparkled at me, hungry and alive.

  We closed the gap. His hand touched my waist, my hand touched his cheek, my head bent down, our lips almost touched- and then, just as abruptly, we pulled apart.

  "Whoa," Phillip said, reddening. "I'm, uh, sorry, Miss Frost-"

  "Me too," I echoed, feeling my face flush with embarrassment as well. "I-"

  "I assure you I didn't call you in here for that," Philip said, stiffening.

  "I didn't mind," I blurted out, then raised my hands as he raised his eyebrow. "Wait, I didn't mean it like that. I assure you, I stopped moving that fast back in college. I meant, I don't interpret this as any kind of harassment, Special Agent Philip Davidson."

  "That's a relief," he said, staring at the hand that had touched my waist like it was a foreign thing. Then his mouth quirked up in a wry smile. "Inappropriate touching!"

  I choked off a laugh. "Maybe inappropriate," I said, "but… still, I didn't mind."

  Philip glanced up at me, and his smile warmed. "Even more of a relief."

  Suddenly a bright wave of color splashed into the observation room. "Whoa," Philip said again, hopping back from the window as Jinx whirled her cane above her head with an odd, doublehanded motion, drawing a bright circle of light in the air like a giant halo. After a moment, the rainbow faded, an echo glittering across an elaborate magic circle she'd inscribed over the table. Despite myself, I leaned toward the window and looked at it: effective, but exhaustingly filigreed. I'd swear half of it wasn't necessary, done just for tradition-or because Jinx wanted to be 'extra special safe.' Trust a Wiccan to overthink everything.

  "She's the real deal," Philip said beside me, staring through the glass.

  "Yes," I said. "Did you really doubt-"

  "After all the shit I've seen?" Philip said, shaking his head. "But not doubting something and seeing it in the flesh are two different things."

  Which reminded me of our little plan. "Speaking of seeing it in the flesh… let's get the others in here so that Cinnamon can get a look at the lid."

  "Are you sure we want to do this?" he said, not directly meeting my eye, scratching behind his neck. "Your friend, she's a were, but she's young. And magically tattooed. And, I repeat, a were. If I had my druthers she wouldn't be out in the open like this at all-"

  "And what's the alternative? Send her back to the werehouse?"

  "We have safe houses," Philip said thoughtfully. "Keep her safe from prying eyes-"

  I let out a breath and glared at him. Maybe Banner was right. Philip was a spook with his very own black helicopter. What was he doing to me, making me lose my judgment like this? "You just met her and you're already thinking of disappearing her?"

  "I didn't say that," Philip said. "Just… I hate to see people get hurt."

  "Me too," I said. "But you don't know these people. They'll barely listen to me. They sure won't listen to you. We need a big splashy show that will make the threat clear."

  "Well, this will do it," Philip said, nodding toward the box lid. "What's wrong?"

  "What's Balducci saying?" I asked. Balducci was now reading from a document while Jinx worked, and she was responding- almost like he was interrogating her.

  I threw the door open.

  "And your employment?" Balducci was asking, taking notes on a form.

  "I'm a teaching assistant at Emory University's Harris School of Magic," she said, leaning over the lid without touching it, glasses off, spooky geode eyes flickering back and forth over the tattoo. "I also do contract programming for Wolfram Research."

  "What's with the fifth degree?" I asked. "Jinx is not a suspect-"

  "Background check," Balducci said, not looking up. "We gotta check her out before we release any evidence to her. It's a requirement."

  "It's all right, Dakota," she said, leaning her right eye close and waving her head back and forth. "You two have fun in there?"

  I reddened. "We, uh-"

  "We were… negotiating," Philip said.

  "Mmm, hmm," Jinx said, sitting back down. "Officer Balducci, I can roughly tell that this is a 'vessel,' a kind of magical capacitor but

  … I'm basically blind. It's like looking at it through shower glass. To really give you answers, I need to scan it and run it through my software."

  Balducci flipped through the form briefly. "It'll take a couple of days to get approval for that."

  "We are under some time pressure," Phil said. "Any initial thoughts you may have can help. Couldn't we scan it into one of the DEI computers so Jinx can 'look' at it there?"

  "Not unless you've got Mathematica with the Emacspeak extensions installed," Jinx said smugly. "And I very much doubt you have someone who could install that, much less-"

  Balducci leaned back thoughtfully and then picked up the phone. "I. T? This is Balducci. Tell me, you still got Jack Conway still working back there?"

  "Jack the jerk? Wonderful," I said, letting out my breath. "I'll go get Cinnamon,"

  "I'll escort you," Philip said, leaning away from the wall.

  And so Philip and I fetched Cinnamon, Spleen and Rand and brought them up to the observation room. We stood there behind the mirrored glass, watching the sandy-haired asshole I'd met in the elevator on my last visit helping Jinx set up a scanner and some other equipment.

  "I won't lie to you," I said, putting my hands on Cinnamon's shoulders. "This is nasty."

  "You gots nothing to scare me," she said, half petulant, half eager. "I sees plenty of guts at the werehouse-and they crawls back to their owners. Can you tops that?"

  "In gore, no," I said. "In horror… yes."

  Cinnamon fell quiet. "Then why be showing it to me?"

  "I need you to take a message to the Marquis," I said, and she tensed. "And I need him to un
derstand how important it is. He won't trust me, but-"

  "Oh, good luck getting him to listen to me," she said, ears twitching. Phil's nostrils twitched as well, looking at her, as if somehow her presence in his observation room was violating some commandment. But he said nothing, and eventually Cinnamon sighed. "Alright, I'll do it. I can handle anything you squares shows me."

  Philip opened the door.

  "No, I need version 6.1 of the Emacspeak extensions," Jack was muttering into his cell phone, tapping a key on his giant slab of a laptop. "Put it in the 'cygwin/opt' folder. You know, if you had a real computer, girlie, we'd already have this done."

  "Don't listen to the bad man, dear," Jinx said, stroking her laptop, then pulling out a USB key and lifting it for Jack to take. "I think this key is yours. Hello, Dakota."

  "Oh, hey, chickie," Jack said, taking the key and plugging it into his laptop. They'd set up a scanner and were clearly about to start work on the lid; best get this over with before they got started. "Thanks for that tip on the webcam-"

  "If we could interrupt for a minute," I said, standing behind Cinnamon, my hands on her shoulders for support. "I'd like to show our guests what we're dealing with."

  Jack's face grew grim, stony, and without a word he moved aside, exposing the evidence tray. Cinnamon whirled, burying her head against my chest, but turned enough just so she could keep one eye fixed on it, as if it might leap up and bite her. Clearly her time at the werehouse hadn't left her as hard boiled as she had pretended, and somehow that made me feel better.

  "What's in the tray?" Spleen asked, hiding behind the safety of the mirrored glass. His voice cracked a little. "What's in the fucking tray?"

  "If this is too much you don't have to-" I began, squeezing her shoulders.

  "No. No, I can do this," Cinnamon said, turning back slowly.

  She stepped forward, and I walked behind her, not crowding her, but just letting my arms rest on her shoulders and stepping only when she stepped. Finally we stood over the evidence tray, looking down at the wooden lid. It was even more pathetic, now looking at that piece of a person wrapped round the board like a seatcover.

  "That-that's horrible," Cinnamon said. "Why are you showing me this?"

  "Someone ripped this off a person while they were alive," I said, and Cinnamon swallowed. "They've done it before. They take tattoos-magical tattoos-and only on the full moon. And we think he's here, now, in Atlanta."

  Cinnamon took a deep breath, then shuddered. "That smell-"

  "So you, and me, and the Marquis, and all our clients-we're all targets," I said. "That's why I wanted you to see it, and Jinx to inspect it thoroughly. I want you to warn him, and then he can call Jinx to confirm that what we're saying is true."

  "But then you'll wants the Marquis to talk to your boooyfriend," Cinnamon mocked, but her heart clearly wasn't in it. "But he won't even talk to you. He doesn't deal well with the outside."

  "He doesn't have to," Philip said. "I've worked the Edgeworld for years. All he needs to do is keep his people safe, and feed us any leads he gets through Dakota or Jinx."

  "Will you tell him?" I asked. "Will you tell him to watch out, to keep his people safe?"

  "But, but what can we do?" Cinnamon stammered. "The wearer of that

  … she, she, she was a were, a werecat, I can smell it!" Balducci raised an eyebrow, staring at Philip, then me. "If, if they could take her out-under the moon-"

  "We are not going to let that happen," Phil said, stepping forward to touch her shoulder. "I'm tracking this man, but my first priority is stopping him from taking anyone else."

  "Don't worry Cinnamon," I said, patting the head of a werecat who could rip my throat out as easily as she could sneeze. "I won't let anyone hurt you."

  20. Off the Beaten Track

  "Calaphase?" Savannah asked incredulously, smile growing so wide you could see her fangs. "You meant Caiaphas."

  "I know, I know," Calaphase said, leaning back in his chair with a similarly toothy grin. "But what am I, a Bible scholar? I thought I'd made it up."

  It had taken over an hour for Jinx to walk Jack the Jackass through what he'd need to do to scan the… evidence… into formats she could use, once APD and the DEI got permission to release the files to her. By the time they were done, it was after nine-making options for the handoff of our werecat cargo quite limited. Finally I'd settled on Manuel's Tavern, a grand old liberal pub northwest of Little Five just past the Freedom Parkway, and had coerced Savannah and her crew to show up to provide us protection in case things turned nasty.

  But instead of a vampire/werewolf showdown, we were all now gathered round one of the Tavern's huge circular wooden tables, sharing beers and trading stories in the huge raftered tavern, like King Arthur's knights on their day off.

  Spleen had left us to go take the Nazi flash back to Wulf, so Calaphase and Revenance were the sole representatives of the werehouse, styling in cool, long-tailed biker jackets that quickly helped them scoop up two would-be paramours for the night from the bar. Savannah and Darkrose sat next to them with easy familiarity, in matching biker jackets and turtlenecks that screamed "lesbian couple." Next to them sat Doug, who was surprisingly cleancut without his puppy mask, with dark wavy hair and piercing eyes that he simply couldn't take off of Jinx, who sat next to him, smiling, staring straight ahead but occasionally leaning towards him to whisper confidentially. Cinnamon sat between Jinx and me… which, not coincidentally, put me and Savannah about as far apart across the table as we could get.

  "I don't get it," Cinnamon said. "Who's Caiaphas? And why's a vampire lord in the Bible?" Savannah spit up her Bloody Mary and Cinnamon hissed at her. "Don't you be funning me-" "Went up my nose," Savannah said.

  "Caiaphas wasn't a vampire. He was the high priest who tried Jesus," I said. I got some surprised looks and shrugged. "Bible Bowl, eighth grade champion. Why ever did you pick-"

  "I have no idea," Calaphase said, smiling at the girl leaning on his shoulder. "Like I said, thought I'd made it up. I only found out months later when a new recruit-"

  "Present." Revenance raised his hand. "-asked, 'Aren't you spelling Caiaphas wrong?'" "To which Cal says, 'Don't worry, it's easy to get a screen name for a misspelling!' "

  Calaphase shrugged. "Started a tradition-now the whole clan does that with our vampire names-"

  "Wait, wait," I said. "Don't tell me the big bad vampire biker gang picks their names based on how easy it is to get a Gmail account?"

  "But it is easier if it's a made-up word," Calaphase protested. "Consider it an intelligence test. Who's going to take seriously a vampire named BloodSucker17?"

  "Or AtlantaNosferatu2," Savannah said, grinning. "What?" Darkrose said, putting her drink down. "Oi! That's my screen name-"

  "Can I get you guys anything else?" the waitress said. Annie was a blackhaired punkish girl who kept checking out my tats-and from the way she also kept checking out Revenance and Doug, it was safe to assume I had a potential customer and not a suitor on my hands.

  "I'll have a Guinness," Jinx said. A boy at the table beside us looked over when she said that, raising a Guinness of his own. His eye fell on me, on my tats, and he smiled; I responded with a polite bob of my Sprite, but filed him away in the "suitor" category. He was with a group, and turned back to his conversations.

  "I'll have one too," Cinnamon said, grinning wickedly. "And I'll see your ID's," Annie said. Clearly she'd been around the waitress block enough to spot a fake ID, because she tossed

  Cinnamon's back without a word-but then she handed Jinx's ID back too. "I don't think so."

  "Hey," Cinnamon said.

  "Gee, thanks," Jinx said in shock.

  "Don't be surprised," I told Jinx. "In that getup you look about twelve. Annie, I met orange-hair yesterday," I said, pointing at the outraged little werecat, "but her I've known since grade school. Jinx is twenty-six."

  "I can vouch for that," Savannah said. "I've known her since kindergarten."

  T
he waitress frowned. "All right, but I'd better not see you slipping that kitten a sip. Honey, can I get you another Sprite?"

  "Fine," Cinnamon said, slumping over the table. "Rub it in-"

  I leaned back in my chair, laughing, and bumped into Guinness- boy behind me. His eyes caught mine and lit up briefly, but he rolled back into his story without missing a beat-something about how a spilled Guinness had led to a bar flight in Colorado and a bit of kung- fu fighting.

  "So," Jinx said, drawing my attention back to our own table just as she was putting her Guinness down, "on the note of old friends getting together… it's really good to see you two together again." Both Savannah and I spluttered, and Jinx raised her gloved hand. "I meant, at the same time."

  I stared at the table, at the Sprite, then slowly looked up at Savannah, who was doing the same hunched, guilty thing. "Yeah," I said.

  "Me too," Savannah said.

  "So… can we stop the 'friends having to choose sides thing'. .. Dakota?"

  I looked sharply at Jinx. I wanted to say something. But she was right. "Sure," I said.

  "Well, if this is about to become domestic," Calaphase said, scooting back his chair.

  "Wait. There is one more thing."

  "Shoot," Calaphase said.

  "I have a message for the Marquis," I said, putting my hand on Cinnamon's shoulder. "I've given it to Cinnamon but… I'd like you to make sure that he and the Bear King get it."

  Calaphase scowled. "Ladies," he said, cocking his head at his and Revenance's new squeezes. "Could you excuse us for a minute?"

  "Oh, hon, do you have to?" the girl on his arm said.

  "I'm fraid I do, Cheri," Calaphase said. "Wait by the bar, if you would."

  After the girls walked away, I said: "Tell them what you saw, Cinnamon."

  She stared at her Sprite. "A fucking wooden lid with somebody's tattooed skin nailed to it."

  "Holy crap," Revenance said. I didn't think a vampire could get any paler, but somehow he managed it. "How did-"

  "The Feds say there's a serial killer skinning the tattooed," I said. "I believe them."