Some Kind of Magic

by R. Cooper

  Ray had never seen that sort of behavior from her kind before. His days on the beat had involved breaking up fights between people jealous over fairies and stalking them when the fairy had moved on to someone else. Admittedly, he never saw anyone at their finest moments when he was arresting them or taking their statements, but this protective devotion was still new.

  “I haven’t seen him in years, but yes, he has a key.” Miss Conti was absently clutching at Nasreen’s shoulder. “Oh, oh, Nasreen, he could have killed you! Oh, I’m so sorry. I can’t—” She broke there, barely holding back a sob and seemingly unaware that her hand was in Nasreen’s hair, petting it down and tangling it at the same time.

  “If you’d di—” She couldn’t finish that thought, either, but looked up with round, wet eyes, and Penn busied herself folding up the picture so Nasreen wouldn’t see it and tactfully giving the women their space.

  But it seemed to be enough to make Miss Conti recall herself again, and she stared hard at the floor, composing herself before pulling her hand from Nasreen’s hair. Penn looked back up at them. Nasreen stared at Audrey, glancing once to Ray as though he had done something he should apologize for. He blinked.

  “Does your ex know about Nasreen… working here at night?” Penn clearly knew the answer. Miss Conti gave Penn a long look, trying to judge that pause, but shook her head.

  “Does he frighten you, Audrey?” Nasreen’s wings snapped, the sound startling in the silence that had fallen. Miss Conti turned to stare at her, too, her face turning red before she whispered, “No.”

  “But he… he drinks…. It’s why we…. That was all years ago. I don’t understand.”

  “We think he initially came in to grab that hundred you kept under the register, nothing more.” And that was all Ray was going to say at this time.

  “When was the last time you saw him, and do you have his address?” Penn stayed just as firm, and Ray watched Miss Conti shake her head, try to say that she didn’t know. She’d changed her name after the divorce, hadn’t seen him since.

  “Tell me, and I will handle it,” Nasreen offered, and Ray bit back a growl. Enough slipped out to make Miss Conti stare at him.

  “Miss Conti, trust me. Trust us.”

  She blinked then looked at Nasreen. “Cal did say we should.”

  “Cal.” Ray let out a strangled sound and focused on Penn’s soothing, calming voice. She wasn’t looking at him. It was almost worse than being mocked, seeing that same display of tact again but aimed at him.

  “We’ll have to come back here when you reopen. I’m really curious now. Your shop seems lovely. And before I forget,”—as though Penn would ever—“what’s the last address you have on your ex-husband?”

  “I… I don’t. I didn’t even know he was in town, but yes, come by. What’s your favorite candy? We can make it for you.” Miss Conti seemed ready to faint. Nasreen was only too happy to hold her up. There was another moment, a charmed, enchanted moment, though no magic was at work, and Ray flicked a glance to Penn.

  But Penn persisted, ignoring a not-very-fierce fairy glare and getting more information, the ex-husband’s full name, Warren Perretti, and the names of some friends of his. Ray watched Audrey lean on Nasreen, until she finally recalled herself and pulled away with a blush. Nasreen’s confusion stung the air like spilled vodka.

  Ray scratched his nose. There was so much want around them that he was warm all over. He was amazed that even Penn couldn’t smell it. That Miss Conti couldn’t, when it was directed so strongly at her.

  Perhaps she did, but she wouldn’t look directly at Nasreen, for all that she was leaning on her, and her cheeks were rose tinted.

  “Well, thank you, and we’ll be back with more information. And be careful, just in case he comes back.” Penn put away her notebook with the new leads in it and offered them both smiles. Ray nodded, too, staring hard at Audrey—Miss Conti—before turning to leave.

  Resisting a fairy’s attention was no easy thing. He almost said it as they got in the car, but Penn beat him to it.

  “Wow, I bet that was like looking in a mirror, huh, Ray,” she suggested, making him scowl at her.

  “Shut up,” he answered bluntly, and rolled down the window. He hated the heat of the day, but it was easy to imagine someone else basking in the light. Then he took another sip of coffee just to inhale the lingering warm scent.

  He slammed the cup back down when Penn snickered.

  AFTER running down leads, last known addresses, and friends all day, they’d learned that Warren Perretti was in town again and staying with people while he “got his life back together.” Casually attempting to steal a hundred dollars from his ex-wife and then nearly killing someone didn’t count toward that in Ray’s book, but he’d thanked them for the information anyway, before he and Penn had taken a break to go home and get some sleep.

  He’d needed and had finally gotten some real rest, but today he still felt like he was wiping sparkles off his face, though he knew that it wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be possible.

  That belief had lasted until he’d been scrubbing his jaw in a quiet moment, and Penn had walked up, spit in her hand, and wiped at his face with the rough tenderness of a mama wolf licking a cub clean. He’d swatted her away and ignored her smirk for the next hour. And he could still smell her spit on him.

  That morning they’d found Perretti’s current, temporary address: a friend’s guest room in an apartment downtown, though the man himself hadn’t been there. Sniffing around discreetly, with permission, had confirmed the drinking problem and led them to a pile of half-used matchbooks, all from the same bar. Everything else in the tiny space had smelled like hair product and regret.

  There weren’t any bloodied clothes. Ray figured they’d been tossed. Penn had ordered all the shoes to be taken for comparison to the shoe prints they had anyway.

  Then they’d headed out to the bar to ask the bartender to call them if he showed up again. The stench of a lie had been all over the man when he’d agreed and taken Ray’s card.

  “So… stake it out?” Penn had whispered the second they were out of the bar, and now they were in the car, roasting in the evening sun and watching the bar’s entrance. Ray hated the sun. He always felt too big in his clothes, but the sun made him feel too hot as well. He preferred the night, or the woods, which were always dark even in midday.

  Despite the ease with which she tanned, Penn wasn’t much of a fan of sunlight, either. She had been running through her supply of bottled water with alarming speed.

  The first hour of their stakeout had been spent debating when to show a photo lineup to Nasreen, just to be sure, though he and Penn had both voted for talking to the guy first. So they were waiting to talk to Perretti. He tried not to think about undone paperwork on his desk. Or the calls he had to make. Or the lunch he could have eaten.

  He also tried not to think of putting Nasreen through a trial and was just hoping she would forget her plans for revenge and whatever those entailed.

  Thinking of fairy tradition, trying to imagine one, if they had any, and what they might be to survive the generations of long-lived partiers, had led him to daydreaming—always dangerous at the station, with a larger audience, because of where his thoughts always went.

  Thankfully, as predicted, Penn’s mother had called before he’d embarrassed himself, and Penn had still been on the phone when Ray came back from getting them both snacks and more water, so he got to listen to Penn dealing with the mass of guilt being dumped on her—always entertaining. Without meaning to pry, he could hear both sides of the conversation, which Penn knew, and she glared at him the entire time.

  It was nice to hear her get lectured once in a while, though the subject was just as familiar to him. How could she have left home? How could she live among the humans, and how could she choose a cop’s life of all things? Didn’t she know the city was dangerous?

  Ray had met Penn’s mother. He’d never met a more terrifying woman. S
he was by far more frightening than anything else he’d ever encountered. And he wasn’t just saying that as a man and her potential prey.

  “Ah, mom guilt,” he said, when Penn finally hung up after reminding her mother for the hundredth time that she was at work. She sagged back in her seat and gave an irritated sigh, but Ray understood. Sometimes tradition was a heavy thing. It was why he’d left home. But he’d made this city his home now. It was his. His mother had at least understood that.

  Anyway, Penn was the best. Whatever her reasons for leaving the sea, he couldn’t ask for a better partner. “Want to talk about it?” He offered anyway, amused by her snapped refusal.

  “Want to talk about why Perretti would come back to attack Nasreen again?” she tossed back, eyeing him carefully.

  Ray suppressed a twitch. “Because he saw that spun sugar display, and he knew what it was. What it meant.”

  “Do you think Audrey knows? I think she does.” Penn was matter-of-fact. Her sidelong look at him, however, was more teasing. “I just don’t know why she hasn’t taken what Nasreen is clearly offering.”

  Ray watched the street. He didn’t have to think about it. “Because she’s a fairy,” he answered without turning, and then good old Warren showed up. Dropping the subject, they both got out to follow him inside and coolly invite him to ride downtown with them.

  THE video footage, and the fact that Perretti still had the key on him, was enough for a warrant for his DNA and to arrest him. An ID from Nasreen couldn’t hurt, but when Penn had called Miss Conti to share the news, Nasreen hadn’t been with her.

  It was going to be difficult to get Nasreen involved with the legal system now that the arrest had been made. There was nothing pleasant about trials, other than sending a scumbag to jail of course, but Ray didn’t expect others to share his interests or to be as invested in keeping his city safe.

  There was only one fairy—half-fairy—whom Ray had seen regularly deal with the legal system, and it was… something… to see him in a shirt and tie, trying to stay still for cross-examination. It was also something to watch him win over a jury with his charm before tearing a clumsy defense to pieces with that disarmingly quick mind and that smile.

  But Ray wanted this case to be airtight, for both their sakes, and since once they’d taken his DNA Perretti had been smart enough to ask for a lawyer, they were going to need Nasreen’s ID.

  Lawyers. Smug bastard criminals always had smug bastard criminal defense attorneys. Though a night in lockup with no booze might knock some of that attitude right out of Perretti. He had actually seemed fairly terrified at the thought of jail. If he hadn’t almost beaten someone to death, Ray might have taken pity on him. Instead Ray had followed him down to Booking to make absolutely sure everything was done properly so the man couldn’t weasel out later on a technicality, and then had come back to the bullpen to find Penn had called it a night.

  There were other detectives milling around, and he stopped to chat for a few minutes, picking up news with ease. It was the way information traveled through the station. There’d been a shooting—drug related—but the imp murder case was wrapping up. That bit of gossip earned Ray a few sly looks, though he didn’t say anything about it one way or the other.

  A few of the uniformed officers showed up then too, and even they had already heard about Ray’s case due to the inevitable chain of gossip. Ross even offered his sympathies.

  “Defense attorneys.” Ray shook his head. Everyone had a right to them, but it was always the people least deserving of such protections that seemed to get them.

  Ray spent a few more minutes complaining about overpriced, slick defense attorneys with some of the other guys, because every cop had a story about a lawyer looking for some loophole or letting a criminal back out on the streets. Though at least in this case there was absolutely no way this guy was getting back out any time soon.

  The thought made him flash his teeth, which these days hardly ever scared anyone in the department, or they’d gotten better at hiding it. But they had work to do, and there was a steak calling Ray’s name. He was going to eat and then go to bed, if he could make it there.

  But once he was home and fed he was too exhausted to fight the fantasy that always popped up when he was alone. Fantasy, daydream, wish, all of those things, but mostly it was a memory. The dream was in changing the ending.

  Aguirre had just wrapped up a case involving an imp. The scent of powdered sugar and sprinkled donuts had been tucked away into his clothes. He’d also been full of funny stories about the magic consultants he’d worked with, genuinely funny stories, not the kind that the department’s sensitivity training told them they weren’t supposed to tell and especially not around Ray. They knew better now than to talk like that in front of him.

  It was like Aguirre and Cal had gotten along, like the other detective maybe even counted Cal as a friend now, or more than a friend. Ray closed his eyes, licked at his canines. The scent of sprinkles floated back to him, and he sighed, not quite shifting but wanting to, so he could imagine his head on someone’s knee as he fell asleep, what it might have been like if he hadn’t told Cal to leave.

  HE WOKE early to the sound of his phone ringing. It was Penn; they had another case. Her voice was grim.

  Despite sleeping all night, Ray was still tired, because it hadn’t been the kind of rest that he needed. Unfortunately, there was only one way to get that, so he’d stumbled in after drinking too much coffee, stiff from sleeping on the couch and hungry once again.

  He was always hungry. But it wasn’t that he was so starving that people had to leave him food to make sure he ate. He just had a larger appetite than humans. There had been no donut on his desk today in any case, and he and Penn had had to head out to their crime scene.

  Minutes later, Ray was wearing crime scene booties and staring down at a body. He scratched his nose.

  Around him, the forensics team had just started in on the room. It was an office, filled with law books that looked like they’d never been cracked and which smelled like dust and mold, which meant they probably never had been. Ray disliked books for show about as much as he disliked defense attorneys like the one dead on the floor, his body going one way, his head going another. But possibly the only thing he liked even less than high-priced defense attorneys setting free the scumbags he’d arrested, was murder of any kind.

  In his town. He almost let out a little growl and might have if it wouldn’t have frightened the CSU people. He’d had a hard enough time convincing people he was in control when he’d started in the force. He didn’t need to ruin it now.

  At the thought, he stopped rubbing his nose, though the oddly cool smell of death always left him feeling twitchy, and glanced around for Penn. He got a hint of the metallic, salty traces that had been lingering in the air too, entirely different from Penn’s naturally rich sea scent, and then saw her. She was interviewing the dead man’s secretary, calming her down with carful pats on the shoulder and jotting down her gulped words.

  Found him like that this morning, she sobbed. No sign of anything else out of place. Nothing odd had happened yesterday. Mr. Fielding had stayed late, but he did that sometimes with the clients that he knew made her uncomfortable.

  Thoughtful of him, Ray reflected, until he considered that the man had still been working to let those criminals back on the streets where they would have been free to make her as uncomfortable as they pleased. It reminded him of his own words last night as he’d let off some steam, and the comments of Ross and the others.

  He sighed. Penn met his gaze, and Ray realized that she knew he was eavesdropping again. He arched an eyebrow at her. He practically couldn’t help it. She knew that.

  It had been just under a half-moon last night, but his hearing and sense of smell were always sharp, even without a full moon. Of the two senses, he would have preferred just hearing, especially here, and wrinkled his nose, trying not to notice that one of the crime scene guys needed to brush his tee
th and was radiating his need for sleep.

  “Be sure to check the window for prints,” he called out, though he doubted there’d be any there. Not with everything else so neat and spotless. He was seriously starting to hate forensics shows for giving criminals ideas, but he focused back on Penn, the neat bun of blonde hair, the dark suit, and was unsurprised when she finished her interview and had the shaken woman escorted from the building. She was at his side the next second, as always, utterly indifferent to the way he towered over her and everyone else in the room.

  “Your nose is twitching,” she remarked, her eyes fathomless. He shrugged and straightened his tie.

  “It smells like a corpse in here. And coffee breath.” The techie jumped. “And something else… I don’t know.” He hated scent because it was impossible to describe to others, even other Beings. “Metal. Strength. Intense need. Horror. Damn it. I don’t know.”

  “Did you eat after I called this morning?” Penn immediately wanted to know, making him roll his eyes down at her. She held up her hands. “You this cranky means you’re hungry. Or tired. Or hungry and tired, because you’re in total denial about—”

  “Or that there’s been a murder,” Ray started to point out, only then he raised his head, inhaling for a long, long moment. His eyes closed.

  There was noise outside, just audible to him, but getting louder. Two voices, male, bickering playfully back and forth. Ross, along with the other uniform at the door, shifted, spiking with irritation. The voices got louder. So did Ross.

  “Don’t need any fairies prancing around in here,” he muttered, and Ray bit back a growl. Most cops had learned not to piss off the werewolf with that sort of talk. But of course Ross knew who it was, and in any event, the voices and the scent coming inevitably toward them—toward him—were well known to all of them. Too well known.

  “That’s enough, Ross.” He opened his eyes but didn’t turn to face the door. He was briefly grateful he was in a suit, at a crime scene, surrounded by people. It helped him to remember himself, as the urge to bliss out on the new scent was nearly overwhelming.