black smoke billowing out of it. “We all saw-”
“ That was a public safety operation. This is a crime scene,” Rand said. “Technically we could get by on the permission of Oakland Cemetery-”
“What aren’t you tellin’ us?” Cinnamon said, stopping so suddenly I ran into her.
“Cinnamon, Dakota,” Rand said, motioning to a sandy-haired female officer. “I’m… going to need to split you two up for a minute. Just long enough to take the statements.”
“Fuck that-” I began, then put my hand to my head. “Let me guess, it’s-”
“Just standard procedure,” Rand finished for me, staring at me and Cinnamon cautiously. Then he grinned. “You’re not going to be a pain about this, are you, Kotie?”
“No, we’ve been around the block,” I said. The female officer smiled at us, through a dozen little white tape bandages on her face, and I nodded at Cinnamon to go with her.
Rand walked over to his cruiser, sat down on the hood, and motioned for me to join him. I did, and for a few minutes we just watched the swarm of police activity. I folded my arms over my chest: I was still trembling with adrenaline and the crisp air felt good against my hot skin.
After a few moments, instead of working the case, Rand surprised me by touching a sore spot. “Look, Kotie… you are going to see your Dad, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” I snapped. “This Saturday, in fact.” Then I softened. “Look, I know Dad and I don’t get along… but you’re right. He deserves to meet his granddaughter.”
“Yeah,” Rand said, and then fell silent.
Instinctively, I looked for and found Cinnamon, talking with Officer Lee next to a distant grave. But ultimately my eyes were drawn back to that horrible smoke, now just trailing wisps. Revenance was gone, burned up before our eyes, and I couldn’t believe it. “We saw it. You really need to go through all this?” I asked sadly. “A warrant, separating the witnesses-”
“Absolutely,” Rand said grimly. “A robber opened up on your Dad and me in a crowded store, but the evidence-spent casings, slugs, even the gun with prints-got thrown out because we didn’t get the shopkeeper’s permission to search. Another case went sour when two witnesses convinced each other a house’s blinds were up when the cruiser’s camera showed them down.”
“And them?” I said, motioning to the officers milling about. “Aren’t they witnesses too?”
Rand looked up sharply, seeing McGough yelling at an officer who had peeked under the tarp. “This is a fucking mess. You shouldn’t have been here. He shouldn’t have been here-”
“Who is the little toad?”
“Head of Magical Crimes Investigation, the Black Hats,” Rand said, still staring. “Homicide normally calls them after whatever’s gone down.”
“Come to think of it, Revy wasn’t-” I began, then stopped. I didn’t want to say Revy wasn’t already dead out loud; my mind hadn’t wrapped around that yet. But my question remained: “So… why was Homicide here?”
“To get you,” Rand said simply, and I leaned back to stare at him. “You attracted a lot of attention with your little stunt at the Masquerade a couple of months back, and I owe McGough a favor, so.. . when he couldn’t handle this, he called me, and I called you.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Now I know how a marker feels-called in.”
“I’m sorry,” Rand said. “If I’d known that fang… that Revenance wasn’t going to make it, I wouldn’t have called you. This is why McGough suddenly turned into a dick. Having someone with magical training at the scene of a magical crime creates a horrible mess.”
“Why?” I asked. “Seems like you’d want the knowledge-”
“If we ever do catch the guy,” Rand said grimly, “his lawyer will argue you did it.”
“ What? ” I said. “ Me? How? You called me after it was already started-”
“People don’t understand magic,” Rand said. “ Anything sounds plausible. If they can’t pin it on you, they’ll try McGough next, and he couldn’t even do a card trick-”
“The largest School of Magic in North America is five miles from here,” I said. “Emory University-a billion dollar endowment, my alma mater? Maybe you’ve heard of it? There are plenty of expert witnesses you can get who can explain magic.”
“Not to a jury,” Rand said. “Not so they’d understand. And defense lawyers know it. And the only thing that scares juries more than a wizard on the loose is a cop with a wand.”
I sighed. I just wanted to create art, to fill the finest canvases on Earth with marks of beauty. Ours is a great world, full of magic and wonders, and yet there I sat, mourning a friend, my skin still tingling with stray mana from the spell that had killed him.
“Why,” I asked, “do people have to go fuck everything up?”
And then McGough was yelling at Horscht, who was… holding a spray can.
“Oh, hell,” Rand said, rising-and I followed. “This is why we clear first responders-”
“What do you mean, put it down?” Horscht said, jerking the can back from McGough protectively, making the little gnome even madder. “This, this is evidence-”
“But where did you get it?” McGough barked. “Did you take a picture? Did you make some notes? Did you bother to use a glove or a baggie before getting your stupid paws on it-”
“No, I didn’t have one,” Horscht said, jerking it back, but I noticed he was holding it with a piece of paper so his fingerprints wouldn’t get on it. “And you don’t either. I came to get an evidence bag. This is important. He had to use this to spray the tag-”
“It wasn’t spray painted,” I said, cocking my head back at the mess that was left of the tag. “Hard to tell now, after all that fire and water, but it had to be infused oil chalk.”
McGough looked over at me sharply, then back at the tag. “You’re right,” he said slowly, “he couldn’t have… or could he-”
“Horscht, put it down before McGruff the Crime Dog bursts a blood vessel,” I said. “I’m sure he wants to fingerprint it, even though the killer couldn’t have used it to make this mark-”
“I get the point, I shouldn’t have touched it,” Horscht said, staring down at the can, a plain white affair with a larger-than normal top and glittery gold oozing down one of its sides. “But I did take a picture, and I do remember where I got it-in the yard where we found the basketball goal. These crime scene guys, they think they’re so sharp but they miss stuff-”
At that crack, McGough, who had calmed down as Horscht explained himself, suddenly glared at Rand, who scowled back at him. I remembered the ‘first responders’ crack. Oh, great. I’d just blundered onto some internal rivalry in the APD. Joy.
“-and I thought this was evidence,” he was saying. “Why are you so sure that it isn’t?”
“Fair question,” I said, “but Home Depot doesn’t sell spray cans filled with a thousand bucks of magical pigment, and even if they did you wouldn’t want to spray a magical mark-”
“Why not?” Horscht said, shaking the can experimentally. “I mean-”
“NO!” yelled McGough, but it was too late. Horscht squeezed the top, and a screaming blaze of golden flame erupted as the magical inkmagical ink, oh shit! -reacted against the stray mana floating through the air. He flinched and screamed, dropping the can, which skittered across the pavement, propelled for a moment by an elaborate trail of fire.
Like a fat number six made of yellow and orange sparkles, the fireball folded in on itself and curled lazily up into the sky, taking the trail with it, coiling off into the clouds. Horscht was still screaming, chest and face covered in glowing wildstyle flames, but I grabbed him, flexed my hand over his face and chest, generating enough mana to pull the ink out of his skin before it could set and do damage. The sparkling stuff began attacking my skin now, a thousand pricking ants, but I just shook my hand until it dissipated into a cloud of colorful, acrid dust.
“Damnation, Horscht,” Rand said, steadying him. “You’d think you’d never been on a crime scene before. What were you thinking?”
“I don’t know, sir,” Horscht said, scared. “I’m sorry, sir-”
“You can’t play around with this shit,” I said. “Magic is really dangerous.”
“Cut him a break, he showed us all up,” McGough said. “Sorry I went off on you, Horscht. This is the best piece of evidence yet.”
We all stared at him in shock. McGough’s bluster was gone, replaced with a quiet seriousness. He’d put on a rubber glove and picked up the can, turning it so I could see an air valve sticking out of its neck, like you see on
