I followed his gaze to see a trim young Japanese man striding towards us in a neat, pinstriped suit. He surveyed the officers, the huddle of survivors around my car, and then me and Philip, and then stepped up and said, “So, Agent Davidson, I take it you have secured the scene.”
“Yes, Assistant Director Namura,” Philip said. “There’s the issue of-”
“Not quite,” I said, folding my arms again. “There’s the small matter of the warrant, not to mention the illegal surveillance you had to be doing to follow me here.”
“And you must be Dakota Frost,” Namura said, black eyes inspecting me with amused displeasure. “Are you aware it is illegal to practice magic in Georgia without a license?”
“I’m a licensed magical tattooist,” I said. “Licensed to ‘ink magical marks and perform related tattooing magic.’ Just because people don’t understand what tattoo magic can do… ”
But Namura closed his eyes suddenly, and you could see them working back and forth rapidly beneath his lids, like he was scanning something. “Yes, yes of course,” he said, voice almost bored as he withdrew something from his coat pocket. “That will do.”
“What, aren’t you going to claim to be offended?” I asked, staring at what I guessed was a warrant in his hand. “To make a case that I’m skirting the law-”
“The point of the law is that you have training to use magic and know how to handle magical materials safely,” he said, unfolding the papers. “Clearly you have training, and if your skin is the spellcasting material, there’s no danger of it falling into the wrong hands.”
“Don’t be too sure of that,” Philip and I said simultaneously.
The man raised an eyebrow, then held the letter out. “Our warrant, Miss Frost.”
I took it. I’d never seen a Federal warrant before; I had no idea what they looked like. I hadn’t even known they were issued by the U.S. District Court. For all I knew they’d made this up at Kinko’s-but it looked official, and I took careful note of the most important details:
Takashi Namura and any Authorized Officer of the United States,. .. having trumped up the necessary evidence and waved around the scary word ‘werewolf’, are hereby authorized to roust the nearby werehouse for… concealed on the person or property Un-Licensed Lycan-thropic (sic) Housing Facility.
“You see this is a no-knock warrant,” Namura said. “This conversation is a courtesy.”
“As long as everyone’s talking, no-one’s shooting or biting,” I said quietly.
“My apologies,” he said, more quietly. “I saw you take a shotgun blast and not strike back. Most impressive. On behalf of my men, thank you for trying to defuse the situation.”
“Maybe I did that a little for them,” I said, “but mostly it was for my daughter.”
He glanced at her, then closed his eyes again, letting them flicker behind his lids. Then he opened them, nodded, and turned to his men. “Where are the sirens? Where is our police backup, the ambulances, the fire trucks? There are injured people there. Why are you not helping them?”
The agents jerked at the sound of his voice, like he’d cracked a whip; yet he had barely raised his voice, and you could tell nothing from his face. Even Philip twitched, but Namura said, “Stay with this group. I don’t want to lose them, even if they aren’t the fish we hoped to catch.”
“All this wasn’t a response to the fire,” I said, understanding growing in my mind. “It couldn’t have been. You were going to roust the werehouse anyway.”
“This,” Namura said, “is the inevitable fallout of the attack you partially reported earlier. You called in attempted murder by magic, but didn’t give us enough information to perform a proper investigation. We had to follow up. You should know that.”
“Of course,” I said. “No good deed goes unpunished.”
“Maybe,” Namura said, turning to survey the fire, the swarming agents. “But, now that we are here, know that ‘rousting’ the werehouse is going to take a back seat to responding to the fire. In the end, the safety of these… well, these people is our first duty.”
“All right,” I said heavily. “On that note… we couldn’t get everyone out.”
“There’s always a further complication,” Namura said, striding off towards his men, motioning to one of them. “We’ll send rescue crews in everywhere we can-”
“Have them watch out,” I said. “I have strong reason to believe this was a magic fire.”
Namura scowled. “We’ll want to question you,” he said. “Don’t go anywhere.”
We all stood there in uncomfortable silence, not wanting to look at each other. Philip remained damnably quiet. I expected my big bad vampire beau to bust out with some creepy bullshit to knock his human rival off guard, but Calaphase looked actually embarrassed. Every time he looked like he wanted to say something, he just bit it off and kept quiet.
I certainly wasn’t going to say anything
In minutes there were sirens in the distance, followed by police cars, ambulances, and three or four fire trucks. The firemen made short work of what was left of the blaze and stopped a fire that was left in the woods. Only the tag itself kept “burning,” but it was no longer real fire: it was just colored streamers of magic that only looked like flame, slowly weakening.
Namura summoned me back to the tag to explain to the firemen how to set up a magic circle. They nodded, but I don’t think they were really listening. They just kept their eyes on the tag hoping that the magic would fade on its own without them having to deal with it.
“Oh, hell, it’s you,” cursed a familiar voice, and I turned to see a dwarf Columbo wannabe stomping up to me-McGough from the Black Hats magical crime squad.
“It is indeed me,” I said, smiling back at him, surprised to realize I liked the guy. Something about having been through this before put us on the same team. He radiated calm, thought on his feet and the look he gave Namura’s team spoke volumes. I was betting he didn’t like Namura’s tactics any more than I did. “And how the hell are you?”
“I was fine until I saw you, you tattooed witch,” he said, trying to suppress a smile: apparently he liked me too. He leaned back and stared at the slow rainbow fire leaking out of the top of the whitewash. “What kind of mess have you gotten yourself into this time?”
“I didn’t get myself into anything, you little toad,” I said, holding up my hands. “This was Cinnamon’s home. She was having a bad change, and we came here for help. Then all hell broke loose.”
“Yeah, yeah, likely story,” McGough said, still staring, his wrinkled little face lit up by the strobing light like he was standing on a dance floor. “Before anyone from the D.A.’s office shows up and tells me to lock you in the clink, any ideas?”
“Oh, I’ve got ideas,” I said, reaching out and touching the whitewash. A bit of it came off on my finger, and I held it up to him. “Under this shit is the mural that attacked T… the werekin I reported. The other werekin painted it over before I could take pictures, but it was definitely by the same tagger, or more likely, crew of taggers that killed Revenance.”
“Oh, shit, don’t tell me it’s a crew,” he said, raising a hand to scratch the back of his neck. “Don’t you tell me that. How are we going to track them now?”
“Different hands, but the same style,” I said. “Also, we noticed some wind effects, like when we tried to save Revenance. I think at least one tagger was within eyesight, helping fan the flames. I wouldn’t be surprised if they set the fire as revenge for whitewashing the tag.”
“I’d believe it, the jerks,” McGough said, nodding. Then he smiled. “Alright, go back and wait with the civvies before someone notices you’re over here. Last thing I need is some idiot D.A. trying to force your foot into a ‘misuse of magic’ slipper.”
“Namura asked me to come over here,” I said. “You don’t really think-”
“-people look for their keys under the lamplight because it’s where they can see without having to think to hard?” McGough said bitterly. “Yeah I do, just like I think a DA tired of chasing her tail might decide you’re guilty because you’re always around. Now get out of my crime scene before someone decides to pick you up and see if you’re the key to a promotion and new Lexus. Shoo! I might need you later.”
I went. But, OK, I had to admit it: I really was starting to like the little toad.
But when I got back to my car, the pit fell out of my stomach. The Mercedes had returned, bringing Saffron and Darkrose. A tanned, ripped Native American man was there too, the human form of Lord Buckhead, the fae Master of the Hunt and patron of the werehouse. Saffron, Buckhead and Calaphase were arguing with Namura, who looked unhappy. But none of them moved to stop the officers arresting Gettyson, Fischer and half a dozen other
