other for a moment, his grey eyes glinting with reflected light from the window on room beyond, his strong physique outlined by the soft glow of the monitors. I drew a breath, and his eyes lit up and sparkled at me, hungry and alive.
We closed the gap. His hand touched my waist, my hand touched his cheek, my head bent down, our lips almost touched- and then, just as abruptly, we pulled apart.
'Whoa,' Phillip said, reddening. 'I'm, uh, sorry, Miss Frost-'
'Me too,' I echoed, feeling my face flush with embarrassment as well. 'I-'
'I assure you I didn't call you in here for that,' Philip said, stiffening.
'I didn't mind,' I blurted out, then raised my hands as he raised his eyebrow. 'Wait, I didn't mean it like that. I assure you, I stopped moving that fast back in college. I meant, I don't interpret this as any kind of harassment, Special Agent Philip Davidson.'
'That's a relief,' he said, staring at the hand that had touched my waist like it was a foreign thing. Then his mouth quirked up in a wry smile. 'Inappropriate touching!'
I choked off a laugh. 'Maybe inappropriate,' I said, 'but… still, I didn't mind.'
Philip glanced up at me, and his smile warmed. 'Even more of a relief.'
Suddenly a bright wave of color splashed into the observation room. 'Whoa,' Philip said again, hopping back from the window as Jinx whirled her cane above her head with an odd, doublehanded motion, drawing a bright circle of light in the air like a giant halo. After a moment, the rainbow faded, an echo glittering across an elaborate magic circle she'd inscribed over the table. Despite myself, I leaned toward the window and looked at it: effective, but exhaustingly filigreed. I'd swear half of it wasn't necessary, done just for tradition-or because Jinx wanted to be 'extra special safe.' Trust a Wiccan to overthink everything.
'She's the real deal,' Philip said beside me, staring through the glass.
'Yes,' I said. 'Did you really doubt-'
'After all the shit I've seen?' Philip said, shaking his head. 'But not doubting something and seeing it in the flesh are two different things.'
Which reminded me of our little plan. 'Speaking of seeing it in the flesh… let's get the others in here so that Cinnamon can get a look at the lid.'
'Are you sure we want to do this?' he said, not directly meeting my eye, scratching behind his neck. 'Your friend, she's a were, but she's young. And magically tattooed. And, I repeat, a were. If I had my druthers she wouldn't be out in the open like this at all-'
'And what's the alternative? Send her back to the werehouse?'
'We have safe houses,' Philip said thoughtfully. 'Keep her safe from prying eyes-'
I let out a breath and glared at him. Maybe Banner was right. Philip was a spook with his very own black helicopter. What was he doing to me, making me lose my judgment like this? 'You just met her and you're already thinking of disappearing her?'
'I didn't say that,' Philip said. 'Just… I hate to see people get hurt.'
'Me too,' I said. 'But you don't know these people. They'll barely listen to me. They sure won't listen to you. We need a big splashy show that will make the threat clear.'
'Well, this will do it,' Philip said, nodding toward the box lid. 'What's wrong?'
'What's Balducci saying?' I asked. Balducci was now reading from a document while Jinx worked, and she was responding- almost like he was interrogating her.
I threw the door open.
'And your employment?' Balducci was asking, taking notes on a form.
'I'm a teaching assistant at Emory University's Harris School of Magic,' she said, leaning over the lid without touching it, glasses off, spooky geode eyes flickering back and forth over the tattoo. 'I also do contract programming for Wolfram Research.'
'What's with the fifth degree?' I asked. 'Jinx is not a suspect-'
'Background check,' Balducci said, not looking up. 'We gotta check her out before we release any evidence to her. It's a requirement.'
'It's all right, Dakota,' she said, leaning her right eye close and waving her head back and forth. 'You two have fun in there?'
I reddened. 'We, uh-'
'We were… negotiating,' Philip said.
'Mmm, hmm,' Jinx said, sitting back down. 'Officer Balducci, I can roughly tell that this is a 'vessel,' a kind of magical capacitor but
… I'm basically blind. It's like looking at it through shower glass. To really give you answers, I need to scan it and run it through my software.'
Balducci flipped through the form briefly. 'It'll take a couple of days to get approval for that.'
'We are under some time pressure,' Phil said. 'Any initial thoughts you may have can help. Couldn't we scan it into one of the DEI computers so Jinx can 'look' at it there?'
'Not unless you've got Mathematica with the Emacspeak extensions installed,' Jinx said smugly. 'And I very much doubt you have someone who could install that, much less-'
Balducci leaned back thoughtfully and then picked up the phone. 'I. T? This is Balducci. Tell me, you still got Jack Conway still working back there?'
'Jack the jerk? Wonderful,' I said, letting out my breath. 'I'll go get Cinnamon,'
'I'll escort you,' Philip said, leaning away from the wall.
And so Philip and I fetched Cinnamon, Spleen and Rand and brought them up to the observation room. We stood there behind the mirrored glass, watching the sandy-haired asshole I'd met in the elevator on my last visit helping Jinx set up a scanner and some other equipment.
'I won't lie to you,' I said, putting my hands on Cinnamon's shoulders. 'This is nasty.'
'You gots nothing to scare me,' she said, half petulant, half eager. 'I sees plenty of guts at the werehouse- and they crawls back to their owners. Can you tops that?'
'In gore, no,' I said. 'In horror… yes.'
Cinnamon fell quiet. 'Then why be showing it to me?'
'I need you to take a message to the Marquis,' I said, and she tensed. 'And I need him to understand how important it is. He won't trust me, but-'
'Oh, good luck getting him to listen to me,' she said, ears twitching. Phil's nostrils twitched as well, looking at her, as if somehow her presence in his observation room was violating some commandment. But he said nothing, and eventually Cinnamon sighed. 'Alright, I'll do it. I can handle anything you squares shows me.'
Philip opened the door.
'No, I need version 6.1 of the Emacspeak extensions,' Jack was muttering into his cell phone, tapping a key on his giant slab of a laptop. 'Put it in the 'cygwin/opt' folder. You know, if you had a real computer, girlie, we'd already have this done.'
'Don't listen to the bad man, dear,' Jinx said, stroking her laptop, then pulling out a USB key and lifting it for Jack to take. 'I think this key is yours. Hello, Dakota.'
'Oh, hey, chickie,' Jack said, taking the key and plugging it into his laptop. They'd set up a scanner and were clearly about to start work on the lid; best get this over with before they got started. 'Thanks for that tip on the webcam-'
'If we could interrupt for a minute,' I said, standing behind Cinnamon, my hands on her shoulders for support. 'I'd like to show our guests what we're dealing with.'
Jack's face grew grim, stony, and without a word he moved aside, exposing the evidence tray. Cinnamon whirled, burying her head against my chest, but turned enough just so she could keep one eye fixed on it, as if it might leap up and bite her. Clearly her time at the werehouse hadn't left her as hard boiled as she had pretended, and somehow that made me feel better.
'What's in the tray?' Spleen asked, hiding behind the safety of the mirrored glass. His voice cracked a little. 'What's in the fucking tray?'
'If this is too much you don't have to-' I began, squeezing her shoulders.
'No. No, I can do this,' Cinnamon said, turning back slowly.
She stepped forward, and I walked behind her, not crowding her, but just letting my arms rest on her
