looked like they were from McDonald’s. After what seemed like forever my name was called, officers scooped me up again, and I was searched, examined, and even bandaged-a sharp-eyed cop had noticed wounds I’d gotten during the fight with Zipperface, perhaps when Calaphase threw me through the boards. After an officious nurse patched up my face, neck and hands, I returned to the pinball machine. Given what I was in for, at first I thought they might put me in some special cell designed to hold magicians, but I just ended up in a bland white holding cell with peeling paint, wedged in with a dozen other female prisoners.
I swallowed, trying not to show fear. There were druggies and drunks, clean-cut young women and well-worn older ladies. A small gaggle of tough-looking chicks were talking in one corner, glancing at me, but I actually found one rail-thin, ghost-pale woman more intimidating than any of the others, as she stared at me unblinking with cold black eyes. I found a seat, leaned against the outer bars, and stared out into the hallway of the jail, thinking just one thought.
Fuck.
“So, what you in for?”
I looked up. One of the tough chicks had detached from her klatch and come to tower over me. She was a fattie Bettie Paige, butch but not lesbian, with a devil-may-care, I’m-gonna-getcha grin in her eye-almost like she wanted to pick a fight. A big bruiser with a lot of muscle under the fat, she was maybe three hundred pounds, and a couple inches shy of six feet tall.
I slowly stood up.
I like being tall. I enjoyed watching her face as my eyes met hers-then rose four inches above them. I relished watching the confidence drain from her as she realized I wasn’t just tall, but muscular, tattooed, and edgy. And just when she realized she was showing weakness, bucked up and tried to screw in her courage, I dropped the bombshell.
“Murder,” I said.
“What?” she said, eyes flicking up to mine in fear. Then her smile quirked up, like she’d found another weakness. “But I betcha didn’t do it, right?”
“Wrong,” I said coolly. “I waxed that murderous son of a bitch before he had a chance to stick his diseased prick in me. Waxed him good.”
That threw her, but she gamely recovered her smile. “Oh, hey, you’re all right,” she said. “I-I mean, good for you. Was he your pimp?”
“No, he was a serial killer who skinned women alive, raped them, then killed them.” I mean, he was, really. I don’t need to dress that shit up. In fact it was easy to lather it on. “Murdered one of my friends right in front of my face. Any other fucking questions?”
“Holy fucking shit,” she said.
“And what are you in for?” I said.
“I, uh, led a ‘squat in’” she said, embarrassed, as if it was somehow better to be in for murder-but wait a minute. A squat in? I stared at her more closely-she looked familiar. “I got a whole crew sitting tight to protest their evictions, but I found out you can’t fight City Hall.”
“You with the Candlestick Twenty? The renters the city is trying to kick out? Now you’re all right,” I said brightly. “So how did you end up in Fulton?”
“They got me for fraud,” she said, now even more embarrassed.
“ Fraud? ” I said.
“Look,” she said, “we were basically squatters. Our landlord burned half a mill in repairs trying to save his occupancy permit, but the city revoked it anyway. So genius here decides, let’s move people in and use critical mass to force the city to change. But all I did was get screwed.”
“Let me guess,” I said. “The yahoos you moved in didn’t want to pay rent.”
“Worse,” she said. “When I tried to get ’em to pay up, one of ’em ratted me for subletting the place without a permit, and some shmuck in the DA’s office used it to scoop me up.”
“Atlanta is just filled with schmucks in the DA’s office these days,” I said. Apparently werekin weren’t the only people chewed up by the gears once the machines started rolling.
“Yeah, well, I don’t think they would have tried it if we were still in the news, but the media got bored. They always want to have their new story,” she said bitterly. Then she shifted. “So, anyway.. . your tattoos are awesome. Who did them?”
I blinked. Then laughed. “Is that why you came to talk to me?” I said. “ I did.”
“ You did?” she said, eyes widening.
“Except for this one, this one, and this little design right here,” I said, holding up my right hand and showing one of Kring/L’s designs. “These were by one of my colleagues at the Rogue Unicorn, but the rest were by yours truly, Dakota Frost, best magical tattooist in the Southeast.”
Her eyes lit up a little more, scanning my tattoos, now seeing the movement. “Wow,” she said. “I mean, wow. When you said magic-oh, wow.”
“You know, I’m relieved,” I said, flexing my wrist so the gems embedded in the vines sparkled a little. “I thought you were coming over to try and kick my ass.”
She shrugged, a little nervously. “Sorry I butched up. I was afraid to talk to you.”
“ You were afraid to talk to me? ” I asked. Maybe Rand had a point about me being a tattooed freak-I loved them so much I forgot they could scare other people.
“I mean, I dunno, I’ve never been in Fulton, and you look like you gave as good as you got,” she said. At my puzzled look, she indicated the bandages on my cheeks, arm, and shoulder. “Looks like the cops beat the shit out of you when you were arrested.”
“What? No, the cops were princes. I got these bruises fighting magic graffiti, on a totally unrelated case,” I said, shaking my head and staring out at the bars. When had I started thinking of my life in terms of cases? And thinking of Cally as a case? God. The really sad thing was, it was a different case. My life was fucked up. “This is all some crazy misunderstanding. I reported the killing, when it happened, but somehow it got fucked up in the DA’s office… ”
I trailed off when I saw her face. She’d gone white.
“Fighting… magic… graffiti,” she said thickly.
“You know what I’m talking about?” I said, and she nodded. “You’ve seen it?”
“Yeah,” she said, swallowing. “At the Candlesticks. And these new tags are nasty. ”
“Can you show me?” I asked. “I mean, when we get out of here?”
“No way,” she said, backing off. “One of them fucked up a friend-”
“And killed four of mine,” I said, taking her arm to stop her. “Wait, please. I need to see a live tag. I’ve been fighting it for weeks,”
“Frost!” a voice snarled. “Let go of her and step up to the grate!”
A Likely Story
I looked over to see a pair of officers standing at the grate, frowning. I took my hand away and raised my hands placatingly to the guards.
“I don’t want any trouble,” I said. “We were just talking.”
“A likely story,” the officer said. “Now step up to the grate!”
I stepped to the door, glancing back at my cellmate. “I meant what I said,” I said quietly, as the guard opened the door to the cell. “I need to see a live tag-”
“We usually paint over it,” she said, “but… yeah, I can find some.”
“If you can find any when you get out, call the Rogue Unicorn in Little Five,” I said, as the guards started to take me away. “Ask for Dakota Frost.”
“All right,” she said. “Hey, my friends call me Ranger.”
“See you on the outside, Ranger,” I said.
One of the guards snorted.
My first expectation was that my right wrist would end up handcuffed to a steel ring in a metal table in some dull grey cop-show interrogation room complete with mirrored glass, where some charmingly idiosyncratic investigator would come use personality-flaw judo to eke out a confession that not only had I killed Christopher Valentine, but also John F. Kennedy.
Instead, the guards took me to a vampire trauma nurse, following up on the bite mark they’d seen when I
