Magic In the Blood

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 mix, 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.