Magic in the Blood (4 page)

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.

I gritted my teeth and thought calm thoughts about big open fields and big open oceans and big open skies, where there was plenty of room and plenty of open and plenty of me breathing slowly and smoothly and not hyperventilating like a moron.

Then we were out into the lobby, into high ceilings and echoes and room to breathe, and no more hyperventilation. A hall to the left took us to another door that was card-locked and also had a hell of a Diversion glyph on it. Most people probably wouldn’t even see the door with that big of a Diversion operating. Behind the door was a stairwell. We went down at least two flights, the only sound the squeak of Love’s right sneaker, the clomping of my boots, and the ghostly hush of Payne’s sensible loafers.

Love stopped on a landing and turned toward a wall with a peeling paint job. It smelled strange here, a weird blend of hot epoxy and dill. Love pulled a card out of his pocket and held it waist high—as if there were some sort of scanner embedded in the flaking paint.

And look at that, there was.

A laser read his card, and then he fingered the motions to a glyph, which I couldn’t see since he was wide enough to block his hand and most of the stairwell from my view. He unlocked the Diversion glyph, and the wall with a crappy paint job became a wall with a door.

“Buckle up, Beckstrom,” he said as he stepped through the open door. “You must be this tall to ride the ride.”

I strolled into the room. Payne stepped in and locked the door behind us. I smelled the burnt epoxy stink of the Diversion spell snapping back into place as the door closed. Someone was doing a lot to keep this room beneath people’s notice.

For good reason. The room was large, windowless, and crammed full of so much magic and magical equipment, I literally felt it like a punch to the gut. An ant-bite rashy tingle washed over my skin and made me want to scratch every inch of my body.

As if that weren’t enough, magic twisted inside me, pushing against my bones, my muscles, my skin. My ears started ringing and the edges of my vision shaded. I took a deep breath and cleared my mind of the panic that was coming on fast. Panic was bad. Panic would make me lose control of the magic inside me.

I am calm. Calm as a river. Calm as blue sky.
I held still, intent on my own breathing. Inhale, exhale. I did not need to lose control of the magic inside me right here in front of the police. They’d have me locked up in a glyph-warded room faster than I could say hocus-pocus.

That is, if I didn’t burn the whole place down first.

I am a river, river, river.

“You okay?” Love asked.

“Good,” I lied. I even put on a smile. It must have been close to convincing. He nodded. Magic inside me twisted, pushed to get out, to be used, licking hot along the whorls of color from my shoulder to my fingertips, cooling each band on my left hand and arm. It begged to be used. It would be so easy to draw on magic and cast it—not that I even knew what I’d cast it for. And then I’d pay the price.

No way.

Magic turned again, pushed at my skin. I did nothing. Nothing. And magic slowly ebbed.

Go, me.

“So here’s where a lot of it takes place.” Love waved his hand, gesturing at the room as a whole. I had no idea what he was talking about.

He did not step forward. The room stretched back farther than I could see, but as though I were looking through a fishbowl, I could not focus enough to actually make out the back wall. They had heavy Diversions in the room, probably some Glamour or Illusion, keeping my eyes believing what they wanted me to believe.

There could be an entire three-ring circus back there, elephants and all, and I wouldn’t see it through those spells. It was the most effective magical version of a one-way mirror I’d ever seen.

“All what takes place?” I asked.

Love pointed to my left. “Watching the city for magical crimes. Over there we have surveillance equipment in the most heavily populated areas of the city.” He pointed to my right. “Over there we have a magic-blocked holding cell, and back there”—he pointed at the fuzzy end of the room—“are restrooms.” He smiled.

Restrooms. Right.

“Okay, so you’re equipped to detect magic and crimes dealing with magic. Why show me?”

“Because, Ms. Beckstrom,” a new but familiar voice said from the fuzzy side of the room, “we need your permission to let us keep you safe.”

Paul Stotts, my bus buddy, appeared like, you know . . . magic, out of a thick fog that was the other side of the room. Well, well. He really was a cop. Let the show begin.

From Love and Payne’s body language, I figured he must be the boss here and maybe not a very well-liked man. Something about him made them uncomfortable. Something I just wasn’t getting.

Three people walked up behind him. Of the two men, one looked like an aging hippie gone bald with a pigtail of hair at the nape of his neck, and the other was about four feet tall and sandy-haired. He gave off a clean-cut accountant vibe. The woman was heavy and looked like she’d just come in from working as both fry cook and bouncer at a truck stop. They were all dressed in street clothes. Like everything else in the room, their scents were overpowered by the strong smell of magic.

“This is part of the team from Magical Enforcement Response Corps,” Stotts went on. “Officers Garnet”—the hippie nodded—“Julian”—the accountant smiled—“and Richards.” The woman held up one hand. “They have all been specially trained in magical abuse investigation, control, and regulation.”

“Nice to meet you all.”

Stotts walked forward. The rest of the MERC team went back to the fuzzier side of the room, chatting quietly amongst themselves where I could not hear what they said.

“I asked Detectives Love and Payne to bring you here after you gave your statement so you would better understand the lengths we will go to make sure you are safe.”

There it was again, people thinking I was in danger. “Are you telling me I need you to look after me?” I did not like people telling me I couldn’t handle myself or my life. Hells, I’d been mauled by my father’s ghost just this morning and managed to come out of that okay.

“Not at all,” he said smooth and nice-like. “I am asking for your help.”

Well. I had not expected that. My witty retort about not needing bodyguards or babysitters died on my lips.

“Excuse me?”

“We’d like to hire you to Hound a case we’re working on.”

“Why me?”

“It involves magic.”

If he had said it involved juggling ostriches, I wouldn’t have been more confused. All Hounding jobs involved magic. He wasn’t smiling, but I could tell he was enjoying himself. I gave him a dirty look and tried again. “Why not hire Martin Pike or one of the other Hounds who contract with the police?”

“We think you would be the best person for the job.”

Okay, there was more behind that. They wanted to either keep an eye on me, keep me in the city, or what? Maybe all the other Hounds were busy. Maybe I was being called in for a second opinion. That happened a lot—using several Hounds on one job to make sure the results were the same.

And here’s the deal: I hadn’t done any Hounding jobs for weeks. If I was ever going to make a living at it again, I needed to stop being afraid of what might happen if I lost control of the magic inside me and take the damn job. Plus, I needed the money.

“You know my rates?” I asked.

He nodded.

“Then okay. I’ll take the job. What is it? Where is it? Who is it?”

“Before I get into those things, we need your permission to tag you.”

“What?” I said a little too loudly. “No. Absolutely not.” Tags were the polite way to tell someone they were going to be under constant police surveillance. Spied on. Wired. Well, wireless. Magic had brought some amazing advancements into the spy biz too. Which would also mean someone was going to have to Proxy the price of the magic used to follow me around.

There was no way in hell I was going to let someone spy on me.

Stotts looked like he’d expected that. He rubbed at the edge of his jaw.

“Ms. Beckstrom,” he said, all business now, “because of the volatile nature of this case, the police feel it would be in your best interest for us to know where you are and who is with you at all times while you are on the job. We will be able to respond much faster to any threat, whether it be a common crime or magically based. We will be able to keep you safe. It would be a smart move on your part to let us do this for you, and you would also be doing the MERC a favor.”

“By giving you permission to spy on me?”

“By helping us find the criminal we’re looking for.”

“If I find whoever is doing whatever, I will report it to you. I don’t need to be tagged. As a matter of fact, tagging me might interfere with my ability to Hound.” For one thing, I wouldn’t be able to get the stink of their spell off me, and that would make me trackable to more people than just the police.

Magic twisted in me, pressed up, out, wanting to be used. My right arm itched, stung. I held still and held Stotts’ gaze. I forced my thoughts to quiet, settle, become smooth like glass. He couldn’t make me do this. That was also against the law.

Magic pushed, so I let it pour up from where it was held in deep natural cisterns beneath the city, into my feet, bones, body, rushing up my right side, webbing out beneath my skin, then like a loop, a battery, let it flow out of my left hand’s fingers to fall back into the ground again.

I knew no one could see the magic flowing into me. Magic is fast, invisible to the naked eye. Which was why Hounds were needed to trace back the burnt remains of spells.

And all the time that we stood there glaring at each other, I didn’t draw on it, didn’t mutter one mantra or wiggle so much as a single pinkie.

I was a frickin’ poster child of self-control today.

And this poster child was done with the stare down.

“Good-bye, Detective Stotts. Thanks for the offer.” I turned and headed to the door. Got there too. Payne had her hand on the handle and turned it for me.

“Okay,” Stotts said.

I looked over my shoulder. “Okay what?”

“Okay, we won’t tag you, although I’m strongly against it. Will you still take the job?”

I thought he’d put up more of a fight about the whole tagging thing. Still, the money would be good, and I would be back on my feet, Hounding again. I liked that idea. “Yes.”

“Good.” He walked over to me. “I’ll take you out to the site tonight.”

This was the part I didn’t like about Hounding for the cops. To not contaminate evidence or influence a Hound’s opinion in any way, the cops kept you in the dark until you were actually on the job.

“Can it wait that long?” Spells got cold pretty fast, which was why so many Hounds were on call for the police.

“For what you’re looking for, yes. Can you be back here by five?”

I paused like I was thinking that out. It was an old habit. My social calendar hadn’t been booked in years. Oh, wait. I actually did have a dinner planned with Violet. Hounding usually left me pretty tired, even more so if it involved something the police were interested in. Like dead bodies.

I’d have to call Violet and reschedule. I nodded. “I can do that.”

“Then meet me here,” Stotts said.

“Right here?” I pointed at the floor.

“Outside.”

“All right. See you then.”

Love, who had been silent through this, cleared his throat. “ ’Kay, then. Anything else, Detective Stotts?” he asked.

“That’s it. Thanks for coming by, Ms. Beckstrom.” He didn’t offer to shake my hand, which I thought was pretty smart of him. I was not going to carry around the scent of the cop who was sending me in on a job. Just because Hounds worked for the police didn’t mean they didn’t work for anyone else. And I was getting the feeling there might be people in town other than the police who were interested in keeping an eye on me.

“I’ll see you in a few hours,” I said. I turned just as Payne unlocked the Diversion spell.

I looked at Love. The big guy didn’t seem worried, but he wasn’t his happy self either. He nodded and pointed at the door. I followed his cue. Payne leaned against the open door, scowling like normal.