I wanted to tell him about the Night Mare, but with Robert in the room with wide, curious eyes, it would have to wait.
“Bulldozers.” Valentine sounded disappointed. “Nothing more interesting?”
“Nope,” I said. “Just bulldozers.”
“Who would kill a cow with a bulldozer?” Robert wanted to know. “That’s awful.”
Given that I could still remember the sound of shattering skulls, I had to agree. “That’s the only real question we have left: ‘Who done it?’ ”
The boys plied me with leftover crumble and ice cream, and we stayed up another hour or so talking over the merits of elves versus orcs. Somewhere around one thirty, I crawled into bed with Valentine.
When we had snuggled under the comforter, I held him tightly against my body. Into his ear, I whispered, “Tell me you’re real.”
His fingertips brushed my ribs, causing a quiver all the way down through the core of my body. He smiled at my response. “Is this real enough for you?”
“Not nearly enough.” To show him what I needed, I tightened my grip until my fingernails left marks in his skin.
“Ah, I see,” he said. “Then I’ll have to show you a lot more.”
I’d just fallen asleep when the phone rang. Nearly falling out of bed, I dug in through my pants pocket to find it. The caller ID told me it was Jack. I answered, “What’s happened?”
“Breakout,” he said. “Someone sprung Brooklyn.”
“Boyd,” I whispered.
Beside me, Valentine murmured a sleepy, “Wha…?”
“There’s an APB out for her,” Jack said. “There’s not much you can really do, but I thought I should warn you. Who knows what she’s up to, but she might be coming your way.”
I hardly had a chance to thank him when the bedroom door snapped back on its hinges and a bolt of magic shot out, aimed directly at my chest.
TWENTY-FOUR
In a blur of inhuman speed, Valentine moved to block the blast. It hit him in the face so hard that he was knocked backward. Dazed, he fell against me, pinning me under his weight.
“Bind the dragon, quickly!” Brooklyn screeched. “If I hold him unconscious for too long he’ll begin to transform.”
She didn’t try to keep her voice down, so I could only assume that Robert was under some kind of spell. At least I hoped that was all they’d done to him.
Without the lights on, it was difficult to see anything more than the shape of the man who came scurrying in to do her bidding. He carried a loop of some material that let off a faint, bluish glow.
I clutched Valentine protectively, at least as best as I could with both my hands stuck underneath him.
The man hesitated at our bedside, uncertain what to do with my obstruction.
“Oh, just tie them both up!” Brooklyn shouted. “If he gets too big I’ll have to let him go anyway.”
Beneath my fingers, I felt Valentine’s flesh begin to harden into scales. The springs of the bed squeaked as his body expanded slowly. Underneath him, I felt my body being squeezed.
As the man climbed onto the bed and bent over us, it was impossible not to identify Brooklyn’s minion in the magical glow of the wiry rope. “Boyd!” I shouted in horror. “I knew it! But why?”
Kneeling over us, he threaded the cable under Valentine’s arm. Boyd looped it around Val’s neck. I tried to push him and bite at him, but Valentine’s body had me well pinioned.
In his semiconscious state, Valentine hissed as the rope’s strange material contacted his skin. I smelled the sickening odor of burning flesh.
“No! You’re hurting him,” I shouted, struggling to get loose. I was able to shimmy an arm out from under Valentine’s waist and bat frantically at Boyd. Tucking the wiry rope against his body, he pulled duct tape from his jacket pocket. He tore a piece from the end and slapped it over my mouth.
“No swearing,” Boyd admonished.
The tape was sticky, but also gritty like it had sat in the trunk of someone’s car too long.
I slapped him uselessly in frustration. Unfortunately, he took the opportunity to catch my wrist in a tight knot. Boyd yanked my arm down so that it was lashed against Valentine’s stomach. Then he took the coil, dropped it down over the edge of the bed. I wondered what he hoped to accomplish with that, until I saw it come flying over the other side. Magic had looped it around the underside of the bed.
Boyd coiled more rope around Valentine. He tied his wrists to the bedposts and his legs to the baseboard. Trapped beneath him, I felt Val’s transformation slow and reverse as if he were trying to shrink away from the pain.
In my mind, I was cursing up a blue streak. Apparently, my superpowers only worked when I could speak out loud.
“How fitting,” Brooklyn said. She leaned her hip against the doorway, casually. “The two lovers bound together. Perhaps we can make it look like a crime of passion.”
Boyd stopped his wicked, random tying long enough to glance up angrily. “A coverup? No. We need to leave a giant, rotting dragon corpse in the middle of town. How else are we going to achieve the singularity?”
“It’s more important to dispose of these two.”
“No, that’s not what I signed up for.”
Valentine groaned, waking. He thrashed, his backside grinding into my hips. His head hit mine, and the old, curled edge of the tape caught in his hair. I felt the glue bond peel up a little, but his hair ripped before the tape gave way.
The pain must have roused Valentine because he let out an earsplitting roar. The windows rattled.
The sound shocked Boyd off balance and nearly deafened me. But it also gave me an idea.
“Damn it,” Brooklyn cursed in surprise, pushing herself upright. “I’ve never tried to bind a dragon before. He’s stronger than I expected. Finish quickly, so I can close the spell.”
While Boyd scrambled to his feet, I stuck my cheek up against the short hairs at the back of Valentine’s head. The moment I felt the tape catch, I turned my head sharply. The seal ripped from my mouth.
The pain made the swearing come naturally.
I tried, however, to imagine not hurting Valentine. The last time I let loose one of my swear bombs, I cut down everything in my path indiscriminately. Though I was never very good at visualization, I tried to imagine a bubble of protection around him.
His roar, on the other hand, made me suspect my attempts had failed. Ice crystals fogged the room. Lacy lines expanded across the glass panes of the window.
When I watched my magic skitter through the air, spiking along the frost, like an electrical current, I wondered if, instead, Valentine roared to help focus my magical blast. As the magic zipped through the icy air, it seemed to grow in size and potency.
All of a sudden, a discharging zap rang out as Boyd and Brooklyn collapsed. Valentine fell back against me, knocking the air from my lungs.
The magical wire still held fast.
For a moment, I wondered if all I’d managed to do was knock everyone out again. I’d be stuck here at the mercy of whoever woke up first.
Valentine moaned softly. “I’m going to have a bald spot.”
The tape still stuck to one side of my mouth. “I’m going to have a nice square welt on either side of my mouth.”
“I guess we’re even. Just once, though, I’d like to rescue you,” he said.
“I wouldn’t have been able to do it without you. Or your hair, anyway.”
“Nice.” He rolled slightly, and I yelped as he pressed my numb arm farther into the bed. “Sorry,” he muttered. “I’m trying to undo this. We’ve got to get loose before your chronically late cavalry arrives.”
I’d just pulled on some sweats when Jack pounded frantically at the door. Unfortunately, Robert got to it before I could. He flung the door open, irritated, only to be greeted by several uniformed police officers and Jack, in a black Matrix-style trench coat and Yoda-ear hat.
“Police,” Jack said, showing a badge I hadn’t known he p
ossessed.
Sarah Jane came swooping in, frantically cawing. She swept past Robert, who let out a nervous little scream. The bird was noticeably relieved when she saw me. She flew happy circles around the living room before perching on the back of the dining room chair.
“Oh, thank God you’re okay,” Jack said, barreling past the stunned Robert to catch me up in his arms. He was cold from the outside, but I hugged him tightly in return.
Valentine came out into the living room. Jack let me go almost guiltily. Valentine was wearing jeans and a pair of gardening gloves of Robert’s. Bright red swollen marks crisscrossed his chest wherever the cord had touched it. “They’re in the bedroom,” Valentine told the uniformed cops. He stripped off the gloves and set them on the doily-topped end table. His wrists were nearly bloody with welts.
“Who?” demanded Robert.
“We had some intruders,” Valentine said. “But it’s okay now.”
“Oh my God!” Robert’s hands flew to his mouth. “I slept through it?”
“It all happened pretty fast,” I said. I led Robert over to the couch and sat him down.
He put his head in his hands. “Things like this aren’t supposed to happen here,” he said.
“Yet they always do,” I muttered quietly to myself. I patted Robert on the back reassuringly. “I know,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
The uniforms dragged out Brooklyn and Boyd. They were still unconscious. Valentine had wrapped the glowing cable around their wrists and ankles. One of the cops looked at the material. “Dragon’s bane?”
Her companion gave her a little nudge in the direction of where Robert sat, dazed, on the couch.
“Oh,” she said. “Er, good job subduing the villains, but next time you should leave fighting crime to the experts.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Valentine said on script.
We didn’t sleep at all for the rest of the night. Instead, we made Robert tea and inspected the window that Brooklyn and Boyd had broken in order to gain access to the back door. “I never heard glass break,” I remarked to Valentine.
Robert insisted on cleaning up right away, and fetched a dustbin from the pantry. He swept the shards into a pile.
Valentine leaned in. “Magic muzzle. It prevents human ears from perceiving sound. It’s what woke me.”
“Then they must have known you’d be ready. Brooklyn probably never intended to hit me with that blast.”
“No, she knew I’d protect you instinctively.”
“Instinct again,” I muttered. Just once I wanted him to defend me because he wanted to, or…loved me.
“It’s a good thing,” he said, nuzzling my neck. “Don’t knock it.”
I shrugged out from his attention to help Robert with the trash bag. When I came back, Valentine went off to the garage to find a suitable piece of wood. He returned muttering about how he’d never seen such a clean and organized garage in his life. We didn’t get much of a chance to talk about anything important until the window was boarded. Robert had finally fallen asleep on the couch, shock having worn off.
Valentine was in the kitchen, wrapping his wrists with medical gauze.
“Let me do that,” I said, when he fumbled with the tape. “It’s over now, finally. I suppose you can go back to…wherever dragons go.”
I didn’t look at him, afraid to give away my emotions. I knew it was smarter not to get attached to him, but I couldn’t help it. I didn’t want him to go anywhere, but I didn’t know how to ask him to stay.
“Dragons go where they want,” he said quietly.
I looked up then, and was surprised to find him staring intently at me. I couldn’t read his face, so I asked, “And where do you want to be?”
“With you.”
I started on his other wrist without looking up again. I could only control my voice at a bare whisper, “For real or because of instinct?”
“Instinct doesn’t keep me here. You do.”
Tears sparked in the corners of my eyes. “I do?”
His kiss was firm on my trembling lips. “You do.”
Peterson ran a very different morning meeting. I’d settled into my usual spot near the back, a large mocha in hand as an antidote for my fuzzy head, just as he asked everyone to bow their heads for a moment of silence in honor of Stone. “The rabbi arrived early this morning,” he explained. “Let’s pray for the best possible outcome.”
I normally wasn’t much for prayer, but I did silently hope that Stone not only had a soul, but that it had waited around long enough to be revived by the rabbi. My gritty eyes appreciated the few seconds of relief that being closed afforded.
“What are you even doing here?” Jack asked in a whisper.
“I wanted to see this through to the end,” I said, opening my eyes reluctantly. Besides, I had left Valentine sleeping.
Peterson asked everyone to also keep Jones and Boyd in their hearts. He said that our brothers in uniform deserved our concern, especially when they were led down the wrong paths.
I was beginning to feel like I was in church. I rubbed my eye, and leaned toward Jack. “Was Peterson a preacher in a past life?”
“Ask Beth, she’s the reincarnation expert.”
I laughed. “Of course.”
After a few more platitudes about loyalty and duty, Peterson finally got around to the business at hand. Pointing to the last remaining case, he told the gathered group, “After the evidence gathered last night by Spense and Alex, we’re turning this case over to the ordinarium cops.”
The room was agog with questions and surprise.
One of the uniforms in back raised her hand. “What about the dancing lights? Isn’t that still our jurisdiction?”
“It was us,” I explained. I looked to Peterson to see if it was okay with him for me to tell the story. He gave me a nod, which I took to mean that I should go ahead. “Jones and I used the fairy ring to go back in time to see if we could tell what kind of creature killed the cows. Turns out, it was a Bobcat, like a bulldozing one, not a magical one.”
In fact, I was planning on heading back to the lab after the meeting for one final experiment with the cow’s head. I’d already made arrangements with the works department to borrow a Bobcat. All I needed to do was set up my cow simulation contraption. The chief of police had sounded pretty surprised by my request to cordon off part of the parking lot, but he’d agreed. I got the sense he thought the whole idea was kind of cool, very MythBusters. I wouldn’t be surprised if half the regular police department just happened to take their lunch break in the parking lot today.
The disappointment was palpable in the room. I could hear mutters of irritation about the normal cops taking our case from us.
Peterson gave a shout for us to settle down. “I know this stings, but it really is their case now. Hanson and I are still going to act as part of the investigation team since we did a lot of the legwork already. I have a feeling we’re going to discover that this was an irritated neighbor, but the list was long. Rancher Olson isn’t very well liked.”
He invited Hanson up to the front of the room, and we got a rundown on all the suspects. There were three likely culprits, including Olson himself. My money was on an inside job, honestly. It seemed to me that a neighboring rancher would stage a cattle-rustling con rather than something so brutal as cow bashing. I was glad to hear that theory floated around during the discussion.
I sipped my coffee and tried not to let my attention wander too much as Peterson wrapped up the thoughts on the case.
“How’s Valentine this morning?” Jack leaned in to ask.
“Oh.” I was a little surprised at Jack’s concern over his rival, but I said, “He’s sound asleep. I think he’s planning to hibernate until the welts heal.”
“He might,” Jack nodded, though I’d been facetious.
“Do dragons really do that?”
“Hibernate? Well, not in the scientific meaning of the word, but they are rather fond of sleeping—at least by repu
tation. I…er, I guess I thought you knew.”
“I know nothing about dragons,” I said. “Trust me.”
Jack looked as though he might say something else, but we were both distracted by a question that someone had raised in the back of the room. “What’s going to happen to Pete?”
I frowned. Who the hell was Pete?
To my confused expression, Jack answered, “Peter Boyd.”
We all turned to Peterson, expectant. He hooked his thumbs on his belt, and rocked on his feet a moment before answering. “I’m not exactly sure. I suspect there will be a trial.”
“Are you mad?” Jack asked.
All the heads in the room turned to glare at him.
“Oh, for oak’s sake,” he said. “If they’re Tinker Bellists, that’s exactly what they’re hoping for—a big circus trial.”
Peterson frowned sternly at Jack, but it didn’t have Jones’s gravitas. “There’s no way the media is going to get wind of any of this. A trial of their peers would mean magical folk. We may have to have a change in venue in order to find a magical judge, but the legal team is coordinating that. Rest assured, the precinct is very aware of the special circumstances surrounding this case.”
It was clear by his tone that was all there was to say on the subject and the meeting was adjourned.
Jack walked with me out the door. He looked a little like I suspected I did in my first days with Precinct 13—a little lost and at loose ends. So, I said to him, “I could use your help setting up one last cow experiment.”
He pointed to his chest like he couldn’t believe I meant him.
“Yes.” I smiled. “Come on.”
I insisted that I drive because my car had a working heater and radio. I could tell, however, that Jack was mildly unimpressed with the boring lack of character my modern vehicle exuded.
Once he’d buckled in and we were on the way to the courthouse, I asked, “You seem to know about this Tinker Bell Theorem, right?”
Precinct 13 Page 25
