was bandaged. He took samples from my bite wound, dressed it up with a garlic derivative, then dressed me down about safe sex with vampires and “bite safety,” while at the same time reassuring me it was very unlikely I’d turn from just one bite, especially if the vampire in question was dead.
Jesus. I hadn’t even thought of that: I just didn’t want to give blood. I knew Darkrose had a long-lived human servant… but Saffron had been turned quickly. How many bites did it take? Slowly it sank in. I hadn’t just dodged becoming a vampire’s servant, I’d dodged becoming a vampire. But right now I wished I had become a vampire, rather than having watched him die.
A dark-haired, chocolate-skinned woman in a trim business suit strode through the door carrying a large manila folder. The black eyes behind her thin rectangular glasses found me and sized me up. Then she motioned briskly and the officer guarding me left without a word. The woman sat down across from me, opened the folder, and scanned it in silence.
She was fascinating: I noticed slight purple highlights in her otherwise businesslike haircut, and I found myself wondering whether she was black, Hispanic or Middle Eastern. Then she glanced up from the folder and stared straight into my eyes.
“Assistant District Attorney Paulina Ross,” she said, eyes flickering over my hair and bandages before zeroing back on my eyes. “I’m told you haven’t lawyered up, Ms. Frost.”
“They’re on their way,” I admitted. Her eyes had no distinct pupils and irises, just cold blackness, and I found it difficult to meet her gaze. “But I can’t imagine how they can help. I cooperated with the police fully the first time. Heck, I reported the death of Mirabilus-”
“Of Christopher Valentine,” she said, voice halfway between correction and clarification. “Only you identify him as Mirabilus.”
“It was his stage name,” I said coldly. “I’m sure ten minutes with Wikipedia would-”
“I meant-” she said, then cut herself off. Her eyes studied me for a moment, then she continued, “Only your story has Valentine claiming that Valentine was not his real name.”
“What he called himself isn’t relevant,” I said, now getting angry. “He was going to rape me and kill me, and his cold clammy hand on my ass spoke for itself.”
“In your story,” she said. “He can’t tell us his side of the story. But his dead body, killed by your magic, speaks volumes.”
My jaw clenched. “And what about the fingerprints on the knife that killed my friend?” I said. “Don’t they have a voice?”
“They say that an old man fought off a werewolf,” she responded, and then, clearing her throat, “That an old man with a Jewish mother fought off a fugitive Nazi war criminal who’d transformed into a monster and already murdered six other Jewish people that night.”
“I hadn’t known-why are you telling me this?” I said, confused. “If you want to get me, shouldn’t you be playing your cards close to the chest?”
“Prosecutors shouldn’t hide anything. It all has to come out in discovery,” Ross said, still pinning me with those dark eyes. “But this is the last chance we will have to speak without an intermediary. I had to give you the chance to tell me the truth.”
“I told the truth at the time, ” I said. “I was defending myself from a serial killer.”
“Only your testimony ties him to that crime,” Ross interrupted. “The man was a national treasure. He took a bullet for you in front of live witnesses. And you killed him. With magic-”
The door burst open.
“This interview is over,” a thin, hawk-nosed man said, sweeping into the room with Helen Yao close at his heels. The man looked young, but his temples were graying, and he was wearing a suit that looked as expensive as Philip’s helicopter. “I’m ashamed of you, Miss Ross, interrogating a witness without counsel.”
“She didn’t request I wait for you,” Ross said, followed slowly by, “Counselor Lee.”
The man I now recognized as Damien Lee, the more prominent partner of Ellis and Lee, glanced at me sharply. “She didn’t?” he said. “How interesting. Helen.”
Helen twitched, then opened her briefcase and pulled out some forms. “I have here-”
“Oh, give it,” Ross said, motioning for the papers and scanning them quickly. Suddenly she held the papers out and stared at them, incredulous. “Now that’s a very interesting gambit, Counselor.” Next she stared at me with those piercing eyes. “We can resume this later.”
“We’re done here. Let’s go,” Lee said. He turned, then paused and turned back, staring at me dumbfounded in my chair, actually putting his hands on his hips. “Unless… you want to spend the night in jail, Miss Frost?”
There was surprisingly little paperwork to be handled. They just ran me through an exit room, clicked a few buttons on the computer to mark me released, and returned my effects. As I walked out of the processing room, Lee and Yao scooped me up and began ushering me out.
“Isn’t there a side door?” Helen asked.
“For people the DA wants to keep under a lid,” Lee said, punching numbers into a cell phone. “As for us, we take our chances. Barker, it’s Lee. You ready? We’re coming out.”
“What’s going on?” I said, confused-but with a definite sinking feeling that things were about to get worse. Lee started walking, holding out his hand to indicate the hall, and I quickly followed, Helen falling in on my right. “Why the cloak and dagger-”
“Miss Frost,” Lee said, glancing at me hurriedly, “we’ve got to hurry before news gets out. Barker’s pulling up in a black limo. When we go out those doors, we’ll run straight down to it. Don’t stop for anything.”
And then we reached the outer doors, Lee and Yao opened them for me, and I stepped outside… into a sea of flashbulbs and microphones.
The media had their new story, and I was it.
An Unusual Stratagem
I admit it: I’m an exhibitionist. I love attention. I walk around with a deathhawk every day and with my long, tattooed arms bare nine months out of the year. And it’s for a purpose. No, really! Just a month or two ago, I would have relished the chance to stand before a crowd of reporters: think of the business it would bring into the shop.
But now all I could think of was Cinnamon, and how hard it would make our case.
The questions of the reporters were a dull roar, the flashbulbs scattered shots of lightning. Did you kill Christopher Valentine? FOOM. Did you use magic? FOOM. Did you use your tattoos? FOOM. Is tattoo magic dangerous? FOOM. FOOM. FOOM.
In a daze, I followed my lawyers, who fended off reporters with practiced ease. They’d clearly put thought into it. Lee took the left with his arms spread wide, soaking up questions like a sponge, dodging, deflecting, denying. Yao took the right, nonchalantly swinging her briefcase wide, between them clearing a path for me to walk unimpeded.
But they hadn’t counted on my height, and even with me scrunched down, Lee wasn’t a tall enough man. When he stepped down the next set of risers, one of the reporters shoved her microphone straight into my face and shouted, “Is it true that you’ve confessed to the murder?”
“Miss Frost,” Lee said, trying to interpose himself between me and the mike, “has always fully cooperated with the police, but has not confessed to anything, much less murder.”
“But in November you claimed to have killed him,” the reporter pressed, still talking directly to me as we tried to press past her. “In your testimony-”
“Miss Frost’s testimony has been misrepresented-” Lee said, trying to come between us.
“So she was lying?” the reporter said, talking over him. “Were you lying, Miss Frost?”
I stopped on the steps, glaring into space. Lee looked back in alarm and reached to grab my arm, but it was too late. The reporter shoved her mike in my face again and asked, “Don’t you feel any remorse for killing a man who saved your life?”
My nostrils flared. Valentine had staged that shooting.
“No, I don’t,” I snapped, and the reporter’s eyes gleamed.
