by DAVID B. COE
I wasn’t insane yet; Namid still held out some hope that with time, and with hard work, I could learn enough about casting to mitigate the effect of the phasings and perhaps put off what I had always assumed was my inevitable descent into madness. But flirting with lunacy, even if just for a few nights, still terrified me. I spent those nights alone. Always.
I wanted to believe that I had no choice in the matter. Even as a weremyste loses control of his mind, he also loses control of his magic, the power of which is augmented by the phasing. In other words, at those times when I’m least able to rein in my runecrafting, it’s most likely to boil over, endangering anyone who’s near me. Still, during our years together on the force, Kona had offered many times to stay with me and keep me from hurting myself or others. Last month, Billie had done the same; it occurred to me that she might have intended to again this month. For all I knew, that was why she wanted to see me.
I would tell her exactly what I had told Kona repeatedly: “I’m afraid I’ll hurt you.”
But both Kona and Billie were too smart to be fooled by that, even if I was content to go on deceiving myself.
What I really should have said to them was, “I’m ashamed to let you see me this way.”
I had seen my father at his worst, on days when he was far, far less lucid than he had been today. I knew what moon-induced madness looked like; it was ugly, messy, humiliating. I didn’t want to share it with anyone. I could barely stand to see it in my old man, much less in myself.
So I drove back into Mesa, to Solana’s, the little burrito place Billie and I had gone to so many times that it was fast becoming “our place.” And along the way, I tried to find the words to refuse the offer I knew was coming.
She was already seated when I got there. The lunch rush had started, but I assumed she had ordered for me; I always got the same thing: chicken and black beans, extra guac and pico, no sour cream.
Reaching the table, I stooped and kissed her lightly on the lips. Then I sat.
“You ordered?”
She nodded. “And paid. That’s two in a row. You owe me.”
In spite of everything, I smiled, glad to see her, happy to be distracted from my dad.
Billie and I had met less than two months ago, while I was working on the Blind Angel murder case, and we hadn’t exactly hit it off at first. She was a journalist, the owner of a blog site called Castle’s Village. As a cop, I had developed a healthy distrust of journalists, and the first time or two we spoke I had Billie pegged as a typical reporter: nosy, ruthless, interested in nothing but the story, and completely unconcerned with those who got in her way as she went after it.
I was wrong. She was smart as hell, and, yes, she could be relentless in her pursuit of a story. But she cared more about getting it right than getting it first, and I had seen her go to incredible lengths to double and triple-check her facts before posting an article to her site. She was also warm, funny, and caring. She had these amazing emerald green eyes, and ringlets of brown hair that cascaded over her shoulders and back. And, most remarkably, she seemed to like me every bit as much as I liked her, which was quite a lot.
Watching me watch her, she took my hand, concern furrowing her brow.
“What’s the matter?”
“What makes you think something’s the matter?”
She gave me her “Are you really that stupid?” look. “You have a lousy poker face, Fearsson. I’ve told you that.” She leaned in, her arms resting on the table. “Is it something with your case?” she asked in a conspiratorial whisper.
That was another thing I liked about Billie: She considered my work exotic and exciting, even when I was doing nothing more than tracking down the Mark Darbys of the world.
“No. The case is solved. In fact, I need to get my check from Mister Felder when we’re done with lunch.”
“Wow, Fearsson. That took you all of one week. I’m impressed.”
“It was ten days,” I told her. “And that matters because I get paid by the day.” I waved off the compliment. “Anyway, I wasn’t exactly dealing with a criminal mastermind.” I took a long breath, my gaze dropping to our interlaced fingers. “It’s my dad. He’s not doing so well.”
She frowned. “I’m sorry. Something specific or . . . ?” She trailed off, allowed herself a small self-conscious smile, even as her brow remained creased. “I’m not sure how to ask the question.”
“I know what you mean. And I don’t really have an answer. It seems different to me. Worse than it’s been. But the doctors tell me it’s part of the normal downward spiral.”
She winced, reminding me of my dad. “Not what you want to hear.”
“Not at all.”
Before I could say more, my phone buzzed. I pulled it from the pocket of my bomber and checked the incoming number. Kona, at 620, which is what we called Phoenix Police headquarters in downtown Phoenix.
I flipped open the phone—yes, I still have a flip phone. “Hey, partner. What’s up?”
“Justis, I am having a day. You busy right now?”
“I’m having lunch with Billie.”
“Tell her ‘Hi’ from me. How soon can you get away?”
“Seriously?” I said. “You want me to tell her ‘Hi,’ and then you want to know how quickly I can ditch her?”
“Pretty much,” Kona said, seeming to find little humor in the situation. “I’ve got a dead body here, and I think I need for you to take a look at it, if you know what I mean.”
“You think he was killed with magic?” I asked, my voice dropping to a whisper.
“Yup. So how soon can you be here?”
“Where are you?”
“I’m at the airport, terminal three. And that’s the other thing you ought to know. We think there was a bomb on this guy’s plane.”
CHAPTER 4
Billie and I had decided early on in our relationship that we were permanently off the record as far as her reporting was concerned. She wouldn’t try to get stories out of any of my investigations. It was an easy agreement to reach, because few of my usual cases—really none of them—involved anything that would interest her readers.
But our arrangement became a bit more complicated when I was called in to help out the Phoenix Police Department. Those investigations were far more intriguing, and thus just the sort of thing she would want to cover. We had met during one such case, and it had involved sorcery, one of the state’s most prominent politicians, and a serial killer whose crimes were as sensational as they were gruesome. Now the PPD needed my help again, and the case appeared to involve magic, murder, and perhaps an attempted act of terrorism.
Billie studied me as I finished my call with Kona, green eyes narrowing, the expression on her lovely face shrewd, knowing.
“What was that?” she asked, as I put away my phone.
“Kona needs my help.”
“I gathered that much. With what?”
I sighed, holding her gaze, a smile creeping over my face.
“What?” she demanded, her voice rising, though she was trying not to laugh.
“We should get our food to go,” I said. “I need to get to the airport, and I would suggest you do the same, though obviously we have to drive separately.”
Her eyes widened. “Fearsson, are you giving me a tip?”
“I’m doing no such thing. I’m simply saying that you might find it useful to make your way to the airport.”
She grabbed her computer bag. “I’m going now. I’ll eat later.”
“If you go now, Kona will know how you found out and I won’t ever be able to help you out again.”
She twisted her mouth, and for an instant I could imagine her as a kid, pondering some scheme that was going to land her in big trouble. She must have been cute as a button. A handful, but cute as a button.
“At least wait for the food,” I said.
“All right.” She hung the bag over the back of her chair again. “What did Kona tell you?”
; “This dessert menu has some interesting things on it,” I said, reaching for one of the folded cardboard menus sitting on the table by the salt and pepper shakers and bottles of hot sauce. “We should come here for dinner one night.”
“Fine,” she said, her expression sharpening. “I’ll find out on my own.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
“Tell me about your case. The one you solved.”
“There’s not that much to tell,” I said, still reading about the desserts. “Though it did end strangely. The guy I caught took a couple of shots at me. He should have hit me, but he didn’t. It almost seemed like someone cast a spell to save my life.”
When she didn’t respond, I set the menu aside. She was staring at me, her face as white as our napkins. I guess it should have occurred to me sooner that I might be better off keeping those details to myself.
“You almost got shot again?”
Crap.
“Yeah. But I’m fine. Like I said, someone was watching out for me.”
“Someone, but not you.”
I’d long imagined that it would be nice to have someone in my life who cared about what happened to me, who wanted to be certain each evening that I was safe at home. Turns out, the imagined version is easier to deal with than the real thing. It’s not that I didn’t appreciate Billie’s concern, but I also didn’t want her worrying about me all the time.
“I’d taken all the precautions I could, but I . . . messed up. It was an accident, the kind of thing that happens once in a blue moon. I stumbled over something and let the guy know I was there before I was ready to disarm him.”
“And he shot at you.”
“He missed.”
The waitress arrived with our food.
“I’m very sorry,” I said to her. “Something’s come up, and we need these to go.”
She forced a smile, muttered a less-than-heartfelt “No problem,” and took the plates away again.
Billie continued to stare at me, her cheeks ashen except for bright red spots high on each one.
“Fearsson—”
“Billie, this is what I do. If I was still a cop, I’d be on the streets every day, taking more chances than I do now.”
“If you were still a cop, you’d have a partner watching out for you. You wouldn’t have been alone with this guy.”
The problem with getting involved with someone smart was that she was right more often than not, and way more often than I was. I shrugged, conceding the point.
“You say that magic saved you?” she asked, lowering her voice.
I nodded, wishing I’d had the good sense to keep quiet when the chance presented itself.
“But not your own.”
“That’s right.”
“Was it Namid?”
We hadn’t been together for long, and at the beginning I had tried to keep from her the fact that I could cast spells, the fact that I was subject to the phasings and was slowly going mad. And even after I told her, she was slow to believe it all and slower still to accept that she could be part of my strange life. But she had come around far sooner than I’d had any right to hope. Her ability to make that simple leap, to guess that Namid had been the one to save me, was evidence of how far she and I had come in little more than two months.
“That was my first thought, too. But no, it wasn’t him. I don’t know who it was.”
“That frightens me even more than someone shooting at you.”
I thought about asking her why, but realized I didn’t have to. Some nameless magical entity or entities keeping me alive for reasons unknown? Yeah, I didn’t like the sound of that either. If they could save my life, they could take it, and since I didn’t know why they’d intervened in the first place, there was always the danger that I would disappoint them, or piss them off in some way.
The waitress came back with a couple of take-out boxes, which she placed on the table.
“Anything else?”
“No, thank you,” I said.
She walked away. Billie ignored the food.
“I’ll be careful,” I told her. At her raised eyebrow, I added, “More careful than I’ve been.”
“I like you, Fearsson. I’d rather you didn’t get yourself killed.”
I heard in what she said an odd echo of Namid’s words from the previous night, and another shudder went through me. I covered it with a shrug and a nod. “I appreciate that.”
We both stood, and I followed her out into the street. Once we were outside, she planted herself in front of me, and I thought she might say more. But instead she kissed me, her forehead furrowing as it had before.
“Call me later, okay? I want to know you’re all right.”
“I will.”
I watched her hurry off toward her car and then walked back to the Z-ster.
I was on the western edge of Mesa, a few blocks from where it gave way to Tempe. Sky Harbor Airport wasn’t far, and I made good time getting there. Once in the airport loops, however, the nightmares began. Navigating any airport can be a headache, but add in a murder and a bomb threat and all hell breaks loose. It took me close to forty-five minutes to get from the east entrance to the Terminal Three parking garage, and once there I had to argue with a uniformed cop for another ten minutes before I convinced him to call Kona so that she could authorize him to let me park and join her in the terminal.
Once inside, I saw that the place was crawling with cops, FBI, bomb-squad guys, TSA officers, and a few suits from Homeland Security. Kona met me in the food court and escorted me through the north security checkpoint. It was the first and no doubt the last time I would ever get my Glock through there without a question or even a quirked eyebrow.
“You took your time getting here,” she said, keeping her voice low. “I’ve had a helluva time putting off the guys from the coroner’s office, not to mention the Federal boys.”
“Sorry. You wouldn’t believe the traffic around the terminal.”
“Actually, I would.” She cast a glance my way. “Everything okay with Billie?”
“We’ll talk about that later.”
She led me toward the end of the gate area, past clusters of cops and agents. And as we walked, people paused in their conversations to stare at us.
Usually, Kona by herself was enough to draw gazes. She was tall and willowy, with dark eyes, the cheekbones of a fashion model, and short, tightly curled black hair. Her skin was the color of coffee, and she had a thousand-watt smile, though it wasn’t in evidence today. But as many people were watching me as her; fallout, no doubt, from the Blind Angel case.
“You’re a celebrity,” she said.
“I’m a curiosity. The disgraced cop who solved one last case.”
She gave a low snort of laughter.
“Hold it, Shaw!”
I knew that voice. We both stopped. Cole Hibbard, the commander of the police department’s Violent Crimes Bureau, was striding in our direction, his face ruddy beneath a shock of white hair. To say that Cole and I hated each other did an injustice to the depth of our animosity. He had once been my father’s best friend, a colleague in the department. When my dad’s mind went, Cole was the first to turn on him. When my mother and her lover were found dead, he was at the fore of those accusing my father of the murders. And years later, when I was on the force, struggling with the phasings and their effects on me, he was the one who pushed to have me fired and then forced me to resign in order to avoid that final disgrace.
“Who authorized you to call him in?” Hibbard asked, gesturing toward me but refusing even to glance in my direction.
“Sergeant Arroyo, sir.”
“Well, he didn’t clear it with me.”
“I’m sure he meant to, sir.”
“I don’t care what he meant to do—”
“Commander,” I broke in, “can I talk to you for a moment?”
Kona laid a hand on my arm. “Justis . . .”
“It’s all right,” I told her.
&n
bsp; I faced Hibbard again. He stared daggers at me, appearing unsure as to whether he should be pissed or amazed at my audacity.
“I won’t keep you long,” I said.
I thought he’d refuse, but after a few seconds he gave a single jerky nod, pivoted on his heel, and walked to a bank of windows nearby.
“This is a bad idea, Justis.”
“Maybe. It wouldn’t be my first.”
I joined Hibbard by the window and gazed out over the apron and runways. Planes had been pushed back from all of the terminal three gates. They sat on the sun-baked concrete, motionless, abandoned, heat waves rising from their fuselages. The other terminals hummed with activity, and even as I stood there a jet raced down the nearest runway, its nose angling upward.
“What the hell do you want?” Hibbard asked in a snarl.
“Believe it or not, Commander, I didn’t come here to embarrass you or cause problems.” I kept my voice low, even, the way I would if I were trying to calm a cornered dog. “I came to help.”
“We don’t need your help,” he said.
“The head of your lead homicide unit and your best homicide detective disagree with you.”
“Screw you.”
“You can send me away; we both know you have that authority. But for better or worse, I’m famous now—the former cop who brought down the Blind Angel Killer. If I leave, it’s going to raise questions. You’ll give your answers, I’ll give mine. How do you think that’s going to play?”
He said nothing. I had him, and we both knew that, too. In the weeks since I’d killed Cahors, a lot of people in Phoenix had been asking why I’d been forced to leave the department in the first place. More than a few had suggested that if they’d let me stay, the case might have been solved sooner and lives might have been saved, including that of Claudia Deegan, the daughter of Arizona’s senior U.S. Senator, and the Blind Angel’s final victim.
If Cole demanded that I leave the airport, and this case dragged on for more than a few days, he’d have real problems.
The truth was, I found the talk about me and my firing more embarrassing than gratifying. I took no satisfaction in seeing my former colleagues on the force second-guessed in this way, especially Kona. But I had slept better at night over the last month or two knowing that Cole had to have been squirming a little bit.
