The Better Part of Darkness

school, so they’d gone to my place.

My pulse leapt. What was the one thing a kid kept on her most of the time, the one thing she kept her belongings in besides her locker? Her backpack. Bingo. And I knew exactly where that was. In the backseat of my Tahoe. When I dropped her and Em off at school the previous morning, she’d been so unusually hyper and distracted about her new Betsey Johnson handbag that it was no wonder she’d forgotten to grab her worn-out old backpack. And probably by the time Amanda realized it, she was already on her way to bliss city. The drug could’ve been coursing through her system from the moment she got into my car, and with Amanda in a coma there was no way to know for sure.

The backpack had to be it.

I got a refill on the sweet tea and then sat back down, waiting for Hank. Will was probably having a fit by now, wondering what the hell was going on with the break-ins at the house and school. I dialed his cell and then hung up before the call went through. I couldn’t explain everything to him now. He had to have seen the news, heard all the details from Hank. Bryn would probably fill him in, too, when he arrived to pick up Em.

Instead, I called Bryn at Hodgepodge and spoke briefly to her and then Emma, just to make sure Emma was okay. She couldn’t have sounded more normal or more excited that school had been cancelled and she got to spend the day with her dad. Ah, the joys of being a kid.

A horn honked outside. I turned in the booth to see Hank’s sleek Mercedes dart into an empty spot at the curb. Grabbing Bryn’s bag, I scooted from the booth with my tea, chucked the cookie wrapper, and then hobbled to the car.

All I wanted was to sink into the soft leather seat and close my eyes.

“Whoa,” Hank said as I plopped awkwardly into the seat, shoved the Styrofoam cup into the cup holder, and shut the door, “what the hell happened to you?”

I yanked down the visor mirror. Half of my twist was out, my hair long and tangled on one side and up on the other. A few scratches marred my left cheek and jaw, and my mascara was smudged. Bloody skin peeked from a large tear in the left shoulder of Bryn’s sweater. “Long story.”

He turned down the radio. “Aren’t they always?”

After I filled him in on the political rally and subsequent limo ride from hell, Hank took a good five minutes to yell at me. Again. I was really getting sick of his holier-than-thou attitude. We were cops. What did he expect? But I cut him some slack and didn’t argue back. He’d been torn in half when I’d died, and his sudden protectiveness stemmed from never wanting to go through that again. I couldn’t blame him.

“So you think Cassius Mott has something to do with this?”

“Don’t you? It fits. And I have a hunch Mott Tech isn’t far behind. Haven’t figured out how Mynogan and the jinn fit yet, but they do. I know they do.”

“Well, while you were rolling out of limos, I finally got an ID on the third jinn that attacked you and Auggie,” he said. “Guess who was signing his paycheck?”

I knew the answer to that.

“Yeah. The CPP,” Hank said.

“So Mott and the CPP could be partners, manufacturing the ash, and they’re using the jinn to distribute it. It’d be a good way to fund their campaign. And maybe Cass wants his own money, to get out from under Titus.”

“Eh, too weak. The jinn could’ve attacked you on their own, Charlie. It might have had nothing to do with the CPP. Plus the only evidence we’ve got is Auggie pointing the finger at Veritas, and Mynogan happened to be there when we went to take a look. And why would the CPP need to create a drug trade to fund their campaign when they have some of the richest nobles in the universe as members? The jinn or Cass could be solely responsible for this whole operation.”

“Thank you, counselor.” My cell phone rang again. I didn’t recognize the number. “Madigan,” I answered.

“Detective.” Titus Mott’s voice breathed relief into the phone. I held the mouthpiece and leaned over to whisper his name to Hank. “I was hoping you’d have time to come back to the lab.”

“For the physical?”

A long pause followed, and my skin tingled.

“I’ve remembered more details about your death … details I think you need to know. Will you come?”

Goose bumps spread like waves down my arms and legs. I swallowed. “Sure. When?”

“This evening, tonight … I’ll be here until morning. Come anytime.”

“All right,” I said, trying to sound casual even as warning bells were going off in my head. “This evening then.”

Mott mumbled a quick good-bye. I closed the phone and turned to Hank. “He’s scared. Spooked, like Auggie was.”

“I’m coming with you,” Hank said before I could argue. “If Cass is working with the CPP and they are responsible for the ash, Titus could be, too … I mean, they are brothers. It might be a setup, Charlie. If they are involved, they already know you’re on to them, especially after your little limo ride. You’re not going alone. We’ll go in, I’ll take off the voice-mod, and we’ll get to the bottom of this.”

I turned in the seat. “Yeah, and you know it’s against the law to do that. We’d need an interrogation warrant for you to use your voice. Civil rights, remember? You go in there and question the head of the CPP and the best- known scientist since Einstein, and we’ll have the biggest lawsuit on our hands the department has ever seen.”

Sirens couldn’t just go around making people follow commands or talk against their will. It had taken years of legislature to create laws and restrictions to protect everyone from the individual powers of the off-worlders. And law enforcement, especially, had to be careful. Use a siren’s power before you had an interrogation warrant securely in hand, and it’d make everything a suspect said, criminal or not, inadmissible in court.

“Since when did you go all procedural?” Hank glanced in his rearview mirror before switching lanes.

“Since nailing the people who put Amanda in the hospital and made me enemy number one is a promise I made to my kid and myself. I’m not going to screw it up. If they’re responsible, they won’t walk free on a technicality.”

“Unless we take a mage with us. I’ll make them talk, and he’ll make them forget we were ever there.”

“If only,” I said, knowing neither one of us would go that far.

We both had suggested going off the book a time or two, and, yeah, we’d taken a lot of leeway with police procedure, but never anything that would let a suspect off the hook.

“Since we’re on the subject of you,” he said carefully, “I heard you’re thinking about giving Will another chance.”

Immediately I realized where he’d gotten his information. Emma.

This morning in the bathroom I told her I’d think about it. Now my mistake was glaringly obvious. I’d given her hope without meaning to, without considering my words and how she’d take them.

The air in the Mercedes turned tense. I swiped the tea and took a long drink.

“Is it true then?”

“I don’t know. Will’s been clean ever since that night. He’s done the twelve-step program for black crafting addiction and still attends meetings. He’s even sponsoring a new member. Who knows … maybe in the future …” I fiddled with the straw in my tea. Why did I feel like a kid suddenly in trouble, like I had to explain myself? “Everyone is guilty of bad judgment once in—”

“Bad judgment? I think it was a little more than bad judgment, Charlie! Wagering your marriage, black crafting, basically leading a whole other life in secret … Every time he lied about where he was going and what he was doing, it was premeditated. You almost died because of him. Doesn’t that matter to you?”

“Of course it does; why the hell do you think I divorced him? Jesus, Hank. Will went through a decade of black crafting addiction. That’s what addiction does, it ruins lives, takes lives, destroys everything …” Old memories grabbed hold of my heart and the never-ending reservoir of hurt closed my throat. Hank didn’t have a clue what it was like to have your entire world pulled out from under you, to grieve for the loss of the fucking fairy tale you thought you had. Fuck Hank. He didn’t know what it was like to love someone the