smooth-but-not-accusatory tone of disapproval that made me feel as big as a bug. “But that you refused to divulge its location because it was ‘Edgeworld’ business.”
“That I did,” I said. Philip Davidson and the Department of Extraordinary Investigations had definite ideas on how to treat Edgeworlders, and respecting Edgeworld privacy was about the last thing on their list. “Like I told Rand, it isn’t my place to divulge their secrets.”
“Dakota,” Philip said, voice softening. “I’m not calling to bust your nuts. Rand also told me you were there to help Cinnamon. She hadn’t changed in a few months, had she? Jesus. And that was your first time dealing with it too. That must have been very difficult for you both.”
“You have no idea,” I said, glancing back at my torn rear seats. As my head turned back, the car in front of me pulled away, the car behind honked, and I cursed, “All right, all right, I’m going!” and hooked onto 5 ^th Street into Georgia Tech’s new campus village.
“What are you doing, Dakota?” Philip asked.
“I’m on the last of my rounds of ‘would you deliver the bad news for me, Dakota’ that Rand and her Highness the ‘Lady Saffron’ dumped in my fucking lap,” I snapped. “I’m going to go break the news about Revenance to yet another friend, and while they’re getting over that, I planned to start interrogating them about some weird fucking shit I saw while I was pulling Cinnamon’s childhood sweetheart out of a magic graffiti tag that was eating him alive.”
“ Cinnamon had a childhood sweetheart? From how you’ve described the werehouse-”
“Oh, maybe I’m romanticizing it, but I could tell they had some relationship-and don’t change the subject,” I said. “I’m being serious here. One dead, three missing. Do you really want me to stop? If so, where do you want me to draw the fucking line, Philip? After I saved a kid’s life, but before I find out what we need to stop this shit from killing anyone else?”
“What’s wrong, Dakota?” Philip asked. “I mean, what’s really wrong?”
I’m having dinner with a vampire when I’m supposed to be dating you.
“You’re never here, Philip,” I said. “I haven’t seen you since November.”
“December 4 ^th,” Philip said. “It was a Monday.”
“It was fifteen minutes for breakfast at the Flying Biscuit before you rode off to the airport. Which puts our last real date, what, a month ago today?”
“I’ve been busy,” Philip said. “I can’t fly down to Atlanta every week.”
“But you won’t let me come up and see you in Virginia,” I responded, which was true. “Philip, I haven’t even heard from you since… since before Christmas.”
“You’ve found someone, haven’t you,” Philip said.
“Damnit!” I said, screeching to a stop as the light in front of me turned red. “No, Philip, someone found me. Someone just asked me out to dinner, and it’s making me feel guilty. Happy now? Why, why, why do I always have to be the guy in the relationship?”
Crickets chirped. It was that silent on Phillip’s end. After a long pause he finally answered. “Oh. I should have seen this one coming, huh? A girl. And you.”
I laughed. I could see how he jumped to the wrong conclusion,. “Sorry, Philip,” I said. “You don’t get off that easy. You can’t blame this one on the other team. I do still like boys. I just like ones that are here, at least once in a while.”
There was a second silence over the line, as cars streamed down the broad lanes of Spring Street before me, narrowly missing Tech students bolting through the traffic as they darted from the restaurants and bookstore and back again. Finally Philip spoke.
“All right, Dakota,” he said. “You have your date, if that’s what you want.”
He sounded crushed. “Hey, Philip,” I said softly. “That’s not what I meant-”
“No, you’re right,” he said. “I’m never there, and that’s not fair to you. Take your friend to dinner, and that’s OK, but if you’re still
… interested, I’m willing to give us another shot next time I make it down there. If things are as bad as Rand said… well, it won’t be long.”
“I’m sorry, Philip,” I said.
“I am too,” he said. “And sorry about the ‘investigating this on your own’ crack. We really appreciated you helping us track the tattoo killer last year, but please, please, please wait until we bring the problems to you instead of making trouble on your own. I worry about you, Dakota. You’re a… a valuable resource, and I’d hate to lose you. Take care.”
“I’d hate to lose you too, Philip,” I said, but my headset blooped and my brain put the words “valuable resource” on an endless loop.
He was already gone. He’d called his girlfriend a valuable resource and hung up.
Damnit! Damnit! Damnit! This was not what I wanted. A dalliance with a vampire had just cut me off from a man who was both my boyfriend and my spook contact, and said dalliance hadn’t even happened yet. And protecting the werehouse’s privacy had alienated Uncle Andy.
Maybe Philip was right; things were already blowing up in my face.
Was I getting sucked in too deep?
But then I saw Revy’s face, burned up like paper. No one did that to my friends. And no matter how much I liked Philip, he was first and foremost a monster fighter, not one of their guardians. And no matter how much I trusted Uncle Andy, he had to work within the law. Not on the Edge, where I lived. Someone had to protect these people-someone who understood them.
The light turned green, the car behind me honked, and I gunned the blue bomb over the 5 ^th Street Bridge into Georgia Tech proper.
“ Fine, ” I said. “My own damn investigation it is.”
Nuclear Wizardry
A great chasm of asphalt cuts across the heart of Atlanta-river-wide, canyon-deep, and filled with a current of cars faster than any rapids: the Downtown Connector. The Connector had contained Georgia Tech’s growth for decades, until finally a spray of new buildings had burst over the recently completed 5 ^th Street Bridge.
As I crossed the bridge, I saw Tech shift from shiny glass towers to aging red brick. Winding through the campus was like traveling back in architectural time, from the 90s to the 80s to the 70s… next stop, the 1950s, and one of the oldest buildings on the campus: the Georgia Tech Nuclear Research Center.
The NRC was two cubical buildings guarding a squat ribbed tower, ugly and alien, that once housed the reactor. Now decommissioned, the NRC held something different, and perhaps more dangerous: the very first laboratory in the country studying the Physics of Magic.
In a pebble-floored, low-chaired lobby, I signed in an ancient log book that looked like it really did date from the 1950s. As I put the pen back into its tiny, conical holder, Annette, the lab secretary, asked, “Is everything all right, Kotie? You look flushed.”
I frowned, trying not to take it out on her: Annette was all pink hair and bubblegum, so sickeningly sweet you wanted to punch her in the nose-but she really was the nice sort, even though she dressed in poufy florals that even Catherine Fremont would have punked up a bit.
“I just had an argument,” I said. “Nothing important.”
“Sorry to hear it,” she said, picking up the phone. “Don’t worry, you’ll find someone.”
“How did you… ” I began. “Am I really that transparent?”
“Yes, she’s here,” Annette said, hitting the buzzer. “Doug and Jinx are in the tower.”
“I remember the way,” I said, opening the heavy metal door. “And thanks.”
“Remember, there are lots of fish in the sea,” she chimed sweetly.
“Thanks,” I said, as the door clanged shut behind me.
The chilled, dark metal corridor felt cramped as a submarine, but soon opened into a cavernous vault big enough to hold a house. I wondered the chamber had held in its heyday, when these idiots had thought to contain nuclear death smack dab in the middle of a crowded college campus at the center of the Southeast’s largest city. But now the vault was almost hollow, a birdcage of cranes and catwalks over a huge single-cut slab of polished marble inscribed with the largest magic circle in the country.
A darkhaired, cleancut man in a Georgia Tech sweatshirt was adjusting some equipment in the center of the circle. At a console outside the ring, a young, gothy, bonneted woman in an exaggerated Victorian outfit read
