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.
“Thanks.” I strolled through the doorway and took a deep breath on the other side. The prickly ant-bite rashy tingle I’d felt from the moment I stepped into that room eased up. I didn’t care who was watching-I scrubbed at my right shoulder and down my arm, trying to relieve the ghostly itch.
Love came through the doorway, and Payne followed and locked it all up again so that it looked like a wall full of bad paint. That was a hell of a spell. Really masterfully cast. If I had the time, I would totally want to Hound it and see how it was made.
“You think that was smart?” Love asked.
“What? Taking the job?”
“Not the job,” Love said. “You’re a good Hound. I mean going into it without being tagged.”
“Do you know which investigation he’s hiring me for?”
“Classified,” Payne said. “MERC doesn’t have to share files with city police.”
“Okay,” I said. I didn’t know that, but it wasn’t what I had asked. “Has he told you what the job is?”
“No,” Love said. “But Stotts doesn’t tag every Hound he uses. Just the ones who might be in danger working his cases.”
“Like who?”
“Piller.”
“I don’t know a Hound named Piller.”
“ ’Cause he died six years ago,” Love said. “Hounding for Stotts.”
“Listen,” I said. “Hounding is risky-with or without the police or MERC involved. One death in six years isn’t enough to make me let people spy on me.”
“Sixteen,” Payne said.
“What?”
“Sixteen Hounds have died in the last six years. All of them were working for Stotts.”
Whoa. That was suddenly a whole different thing. How could I not know about that?
I could not know about that because Hounds are insular, solitary, suspicious people who didn’t talk to one another, didn’t help one another, and didn’t want to be around one another for any reason. Not even to talk about their own dead.
“Is he making them walk through fire or something?”
Payne scowled, and I had the feeling she wasn’t in the mood for a smart-ass.
Luckily, Love answered me instead.
“It’s like bad luck, yah?” He walked up the stairwell, his shoe squeaking. “When it comes to Stotts, he’s got more bad luck than good. Bad magic, bad cases, bad survival odds. He’s cursed.”
“Is that supposed to scare me?” I asked. “Maybe you don’t know the kind of men I’ve dated. Or-oh, here- did you ever meet my dad? How about all those fabulous women he married? Cursed doesn’t even begin to cover
