by Devon Monk
Hells, for all I knew Stotts could be his guy.
I rubbed at my forehead with the tips of my gloves. “Never mind. Are you here to make sure I get to the station?”
He glanced at me and then away. “Well, we didn’t want to leave anything to chance.”
He had no idea how chancy it had been. Still, that was interesting. I’d never had police protection or escort. At least, I didn’t remember having it. So far, I wasn’t all that impressed.
“Didn’t think I could manage it on my own?”
He smiled, that soft curve of his mouth. Okay, this close, I noticed that his bone structure had a Latino influence: arched cheekbones, square jawline, but soft eyes and lips. A very nice combination.
Yes, I looked at his left hand. Saw the wedding ring. Can’t blame me for being curious.
“We thought it might be better if you had an escort.” And I could tell by the tone of his voice, and the rhythm of his heart, that he was telling the truth.
So it was a friendly gesture. The police were looking out for me, not against me.
“How thoughtful.”
He took a drink of coffee, nodded. “You haven’t exactly been living on easy street lately. Pegged for murder, shot, chased, nearly killed by wild storm magic.”
“And the coma,” I said.
He nodded. “It just seemed like the odds of you getting to the station unscathed were pretty low.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” I drawled.
“Could be worse,” he said.
The bus pulled to another stop, and I caught a glimpse of the police station through the rain-pebbled window. This was our stop.
“Worse?”
“Decker could have been on duty.”
I winced. Officer Decker and I did not get along. Not since the time I’d Hounded a drug deal back to his brother’s girlfriend and found out I’d been mistaken. It was his brother, not the girlfriend, who was dealing and Offloading the price of magic onto a retirement home. It had been my testimony that put his brother in jail. Since then I mostly tried to avoid Decker.
Detective Stotts stepped backward and waited for me to take the place in front of him.
“Aren’t you chivalrous?” I asked as I stepped into the aisle.
“No,” he said from close behind me. “Just trying to keep my eye on you.”
“Get in line,” I muttered. Actually, I appreciated his honesty. I would appreciate it even more as soon as I confirmed he really was a police officer.
I checked the people still sitting on the bus as I shuffled down the aisle. One woman, who I thought had been asleep, lifted her head and opened her eyes to watch me go by. She smelled like sweet, sweet cherries. Blood magic. One of Trager’s people, watching, listening.
I couldn’t get off the bus and out into the freezing rain fast enough. I tucked my head and jogged toward the station doors, too many threats too early in the morning making me want to run.
But I knew better than that. One, it would exhaust me. Two, whoever was still watching me would know how spooked I really was. Instead of going faster, I slowed my pace, my boots slapping through dark puddles. I strode past the concrete blast barriers and up the steps to the front door of the police department. Other people milled along the stairs with me, too many people and too many scents for me to know which of them was part of Trager.
I pushed through the doors and expected Stotts to be right there with me, but once I made it to the lobby and wiped the rain off my face, I realized he wasn’t there. My police escort was gone, like a ghost in the wind.
Chapter Three
Before I’d taken more than three steps across the lobby, a man’s voice called out. “Hey, Tita!”
Detective Love, who, if you believed his stories, had a mama from Samoa and a daddy who was a Scottish pirate, strolled my way. Love was six foot three if he was an inch, and almost as wide. His dark wavy hair fell down to ox-thick shoulders as broad as a city bus. He wore a bright blue button-down shirt and tan pants, a combination that made me think of sand and sky on a distant, sunnier shore.
Tita, I’d learned, meant tough girl. Love had called me that since the Hounding job I’d done that put Lon Trager in jail.
“Why’d you have to make it in on time?” he asked with a wide, white smile. “Now I owe Payne ten dollars.”
“You should know better than to take bets against me,” I said.
He laughed. “Yah, yah. Come on this way.”
He started off toward his office, and I fell into step next to him, absorbing the sunlight good humor he radiated. “There’s coffee, right?”
“Oh, yah. Coffee’s onolisicious today.” He glanced over his shoulder and rolled his eyes.
So much for coffee.
“You like the new apartment?” he asked as we left the lobby behind us for a maze of cubicles and desks. “I heard you moved away from the river.”
“I like it okay. It’s better than the Fair Lead.”
“Yah, yah. That place’s a pit. Don’t know why you stayed there so long.” He opened a door to the small office he and his partner shared. He lumbered around the desk to the right and sat. Payne was not in the room.
“It was cheap.” I pulled off my coat and hung it on the coatrack that leaned against the file cabinet. With me and Love in the office, I was fast running out of breathing space.
Think calm thoughts, I told myself. There was plenty of room for me, plenty of room for Love, and plenty of room for lots and lots and lots of air.
“You okay?” Love asked.
I nodded and took the seat in front of the desk. “Small spaces.” I shrugged like it was no big deal.
He raised his eyebrows. “Want me to open the door?”
“No. I’m good.”
He gave me a considering look. I (of course) met his gaze straight on.
“Okay,” he finally said. He pulled a file folder off of a stack to his left, opened it, and tapped his computer keyboard. “Right.” He looked over at me and gave me a nod. “You ready for this?”
“Sure.”
He pulled out a tape recorder and turned it on and then held it close to his mouth while he said his name, the date, and some other things I wasn’t paying attention to. What I was paying attention to were the pictures on the wall. Him towering over a group of kids at a school, him and a police dog. And one of him and his dark, lean partner, Lia Payne. Other than that, the walls were off-white cracked plaster.
There was something odd about the walls, a cool dampness that emanated from them. I looked closer. Those weren’t cracks in the plaster. They were very fine, very subtle Blocking spells, placed there by adding lead and glass to the paint or plaster and then drawing out the glyphs with Intent. Pulling a magic fast one in here would rebound back on the caster. The glyphs seemed strange to me, since I didn’t remember ever noticing them when I’d come in to talk with Love before. I wondered if they’d created the spells recently, or maybe if they’d done it because of my spectacular meltdown a few months ago.
Magic shifted in me, stretched so hard I had to take a deep breath to make room for it. I hoped Love didn’t notice.
The door opened and Detective Payne walked in, three coffee cups in her hand. The door stayed slightly ajar behind her, offering a tantalizing glimpse of the space behond it.
“Hello, Allie. I knew you’d make it. No sugar, right?”
She handed the coffee over my shoulder and I smiled up at her. The woman never smiled, but I liked her anyway. Clear, efficient, and not afraid to make hard choices on a moment’s notice. She must have a soft side since I knew she had a couple of kids at home that her husband took care of during the day.
And, hey, she remembered how I liked my coffee.
“Right. Thanks.” I took a drink and shuddered. It was really and truly horrible, but it was hot and caffeinated, and I was desperate. I held my breath and went for another gulp.
She gave Love his coffee, which smelled like powdered hot cocoa mi
x, and held her hand out to him.
“Pay up.”
Love sighed and shifted his weight to access his wallet in his back pocket. “Fine. Fine.” He sifted through a couple bills. “We said five, right?”
“Twenty.”
“Ten.” He slapped a bill in her hand. “You tired of robbing me yet?”
“Just look at it as my way of keeping that superhero collection of yours under control.”
“Superhero?” I asked. “Which one?”
“Deadpool,” Love said.
“Who?”
“See?” Payne said. “No one even knows him.”
Love just shook his head. “He’ll be bigger than Batman, I’m telling you. People love him.”
Payne drank her coffee and gave him a level stare. “People love Batman because he’s a good guy.”
“Really? You read him?”
She blinked a couple times like that was the stupidest thing she’d heard all day. “I don’t read comics.”
“See how she is?” Love shook his head sadly. “No heart for the art.”
I took another drink of my coffee. Winced at the horror of it. “I think it’s the coffee. It could make anyone mean.”
Payne did not smile, but her eyes twinkled. She pocketed the cash and sat at her desk. “Yah,” Love said, “That’s why I drink the cocoa. Keeps me sweet.”
Payne just raised one eyebrow.
Love thumbed the recorder back on. “State your name, please.”
I did so. Love took a nice, noisy slurp of his cocoa and wrote something down on the yellow legal pad in front of him. Then he asked me to state where I was the day my father died and to tell him what happened in as much detail as possible.
So I did. The entire statement didn’t take longer than fifteen minutes. I’d Hounded for Mama Rossitto a hit that was killing a five-year-old out in St. Johns. I thought the magical Offload was my father’s signature and had taken a cab to my dad’s office, where I told him I was advising Mama to contact the police and then sue my father for illegal Offloading practices.
I told Love my dad denied that he or his company had Offloaded on the kid. I told Love I stabbed my dad’s finger-and my own-with a straight pin and worked a blood magic Truth spell at his request. Even under the influence of Truth, my father had told me he and his company were not involved with the Offload.
“Were you angry?” Payne, who was also taking notes at her desk, asked.
Okay, here’s where I realized it might have been smart to have an attorney come in with me. Hells, how stupid could I be?
Still, honesty was the best policy, right?
“Yes, I was angry. I thought my father had Offloaded a huge magical price onto a five-year-old kid and that the kid was dying.”
“Was that the only reason you went to see your father that day?” Love asked.
I knew what he was getting at. I’d managed to avoid seeing my dad for seven years before I’d gone storming into his office. And on the one day I did go see him, he was killed. It was a pretty hard coincidence to swallow.
“That was the only reason.”
Love nodded. “Did you see anyone else while you were there?”
“His receptionist. I… uh… cast Influence on her so she would show me into my dad’s office without making me wait.”
Love’s eyebrows went up. Influence came naturally to my family. With a smile and just the barest whisper of magic, a Beckstrom could make almost anyone do almost anything. Still, any spell cast legally on another human being had to be done with their consent. That was a damn hard thing to actually enforce, but the spirit of the law ruled in magic-related cases.
Cases like murder.
“Did you Influence anyone else in the building?” Love asked.
“No.”
“So other than your father, his receptionist was the only other person you spoke to while in the building,” Love said.
“No. Zayvion Jones was there too.”
This time it was Detective Payne who gave me the weird look. She held so very still I realized she had the bones to make a lovely marble statue. Then she looked down at the pad of paper in her hands and wrote something.
But it was more than just the weird look that had me wondering what the big deal was about Zayvion. It was the sudden scent of surprise, lemon sour, and something else-a confusion of anger or maybe just worry-that radiated off of her. She knew Zayvion. Or knew something about him.
Wasn’t that interesting?
“Do you have contact information for Mr. Jones?” she asked.
“No. If I did know where he lived, I don’t now. I don’t have his phone number either.”
She nodded and went back to writing. News of my coma had been all the rage while I’d been sleeping it off. There probably wasn’t anyone in Portland who wasn’t up on the latest disaster in the Beckstrom family.
“Okay, then,” Love said. “That’s it. Thank you, Ms. Beckstrom.” He turned off the tape recorder and made another note on his paper. “So. You seen Zayvion Jones since then?” he asked without looking up at me.
“From what I can remember, I’ve talked to him once since I’ve been back.”
“How long ago?” He still wasn’t looking at me, still had his pen on the paper, and I was pretty sure he wasn’t actually writing anything, just going through the motions. No more sunshine and sandy beaches. Makani Love was nothing but rain-cold police procedure now.
My personal life was none of the police’s business. Except, of course, when it was.
Zayvion had been noticeably absent. It was possible he didn’t want to see me anymore. Possible he had changed his mind about us. I wouldn’t blame him. My life was full of complications. And so far, it didn’t look like it was getting less complicated anytime soon.
I had seen him this morning-on the street, watching the bus go by. Or at least I thought it was him. But maybe I was just seeing something, someone, I wanted to see in the rain and darkness.
“The last time I spoke to him was about two weeks ago, when I first got back to town.”
Love looked up from his paperwork. No smile this time. “If you do see Zayvion Jones, we’d appreciate knowing about it.”
“Why? Is he in trouble?”
“No. We just need him for some paperwork. Nothing serious.”
Right. It didn’t take a Hound to know he was lying.
“Okay,” I said. “Is that it? Can I leave now?”
Love looked over at Payne, and she closed the pad she’d been writing on.
“How much do you know about the Magical Enforcement Response Corps?” she asked.
I knew nothing-didn’t even know the police had a separate department to deal with magical crimes. I just thought some of the police officers were cross-trained to deal with magic, like Love and Payne. “Have we talked about it before?”
“No.”
“Then I don’t think I’ve heard of it.”
Love grunted and took another slurp of his coffee. “We don’t go out of the way to make the MERC public, yah?”
“So why tell me?”
They didn’t say anything. I looked between them, at Love’s wide, usually happy face, at Payne’s thin, perpetually scowling one.
“Is there a case you need my help with? A Hounding job or something?”
Love sat back a little, his chair groaning. “You’ve had some problems with magic, yah?”
Besides blowing my brains out with magic and doing a three-week coma? I thought. Besides these lovely colorful tattoos down my right arm and bands across my left? Besides carrying magic in me instead of just drawing on it from the stores beneath the city like sane people? Besides Trager stabbing my leg for a syringe full of my blood and the magic it contained, and of course, that freaky visit from my dad’s ghost this morning? No, no problems at all.
“Define problems,” I said.
“We want you to know you can call us-any of us-if something goes wrong again,” Love said. “The law is here to pr
otect you.”
“What makes you think I need protection?”
“In this city, everybody needs protection.” He smiled, but it was the grim look of a man who had seen the worst of what people could do-with and without magic.
Here was where I should lay my cards on the table and tell them about Lon Trager on the bus. I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. And it wasn’t some sort of Silence or Choke spell.
I hesitated because if I told them Lon Trager wanted Pike, I’d end up whisked out of town under police custody, thus killing any chance of me convincing Pike he should come to the police to make sure they could take care of Trager aboveboard and legally. I did not want Pike to go vigilante and get himself killed or thrown in jail.
And if the police didn’t rush me out of town, they might just tell me to take out a restraining order on Trager, which wouldn’t do me any good if one of his unrestrained “people” decided to kill me. Barring those two options, Love and Payne might decide instead to tail me 24/7, which I would hate. I don’t like people watching me.
I took another drink of coffee to cover my pause. Pike. First I’d talk to him, find out what the old Hound knew. Then I’d drag his stubborn hide down here to the police to make sure he was protected from Trager right along with me. If I was getting whisked out of town by the cops, Pike was coming with me.
“So, just in case you need protection,” Love continued, “we want you to meet a few people on the MERC force. You have time now, yah?”
“I guess.”
“Good. Come on this way.”
He stood, filling the free space in the room, and I stood too because even with the door propped open, the room suddenly felt much too small for the three of us. I stepped aside so Mr. Island Warmth could walk past me, and then grabbed my coat and exited the room right behind him. Payne followed, a blade of dark shadow on our heels.
Love led us through the maze of cubicles again, and the tightness in my chest squeezed harder. Getting out of that room hadn’t done much good for my claustrophobia. Even here it seemed too small for so many people, and so many desks, and so many walls. There wasn’t enough air.
