Yeah, I get the signature from that blood. It’s like afingerprint, because every mage leaves a trace of himself in the spell. It’slike the marks on a slug or shell-casing that tie to one pistol out ofmillions, a wisp of carpet yarn — the things our non-magical forensiccolleagues track down. The textbooks say nobody has figured out how to wearpsychic gloves. But I also get . . . other . . . thingsfrom that blood. Things that show up in my nightmares, ten years after.
Anyway, I’m in private practice now. I don’t do criminalstuff. I end up tracing the black pubic hair a blond wife finds on herred-haired husband’s Jockey shorts. The answers become someone else’s problem —like the first thing I had to tell her was the hair came from a man.
That one clenched her jaw and paid my bill. Some of them don’t,but wizards don’t use collection agencies.
Don’t ask questions if you don’t want to live with theanswers. If people need a bottom line, that’s the moral of this little Aesop’sfable. It applies to me as much as it does to anyone else.
One of the old-school crime novel writers, the hard-boileddetective sort, used to say that when the story started to slow down on him, he’dsend in a guy with a gun. Either that, or a classy dame who spelled trouble forany man who caught her eye. In this case, I got both. In one package. That’show it started.
Like I said, I’d been sitting in my office one afternoon, feetup on my desk, just around the November darkness when you change the clocks anhour back for standard time and suddenly it seems like the sun set just afteryou got back from lunch. That’s gloomy enough without the weather adding to thedarkness, not actually settling down to rain but just mixed drizzle and spit,but I had my pipe lit and could sit there blowing smoke rings without anybodybitching. I didn’t have anybody at home to gripe when I came in stinking likean autumn bonfire, either.
And the place was quiet, restful, not just the quiet of a half-emptybuilding and the rare car three floors down on a back street, but that Faradaycage I mentioned earlier, copper screening behind the plaster and laminatedinto the glass and even the old varnished oak of the doors and wainscot, alllapped and soldered and grounded. I didn’t have to filter out any psychicstatic hissing in my brain, half-heard thoughts and half-felt emotions.
You only find that shielding in the older buildings or insecure government installations these days — it’s expensive and people don’tworry as much about magic eavesdropping in business anymore, now that we’ve gota handle on tracking and prosecuting magical crime. Or like to think we do.
I’d just about finished my pipe and was sitting there, mindingmy own business and enjoying the quiet, and Nef Cash walked in. She didn’tknock, of course, just barged right in, who the hell knocks on an office door.I hadn’t heard her coming down the hall — partly the shielding, but she alwaysmoved with that silent deadly grace I’ve already mentioned.
Classy, like I said, but hard athlete classy rather than moviestar looks, like she ran marathons on the weekend. Which she did — finishedahead of a couple of world-class women in last year’s Boston. Cash justshrugged and said they went out too fast, trying to break a rival. Brokethemselves, instead.
She knew her pace and kept to it and ate them alive onHeartbreak Hill. That’s your short-form description of Detective SergeantNefertiti Cash. And she probably carried her backup .22 auto and badge in hershorts or her sports bra when she ran. Cops are always supposed to carry, evenoff-duty.
She was on-duty now. Her face said so. So did the knife-edgecreased blue-gray state trooper uniform and Smokey Bear hat. She wore the same “ProfessionalRegulation and Enforcement” patch as when we’d worked cases a few years back,same 9mm high-capacity Smith on her belt along with the Mace and the radio andthe cuffs and four spare magazines of ammo. I’m supposed to notice details.
I should have stood up like a gentleman. An attractive youngwoman walks into your office, even if you’ve known her for years, a gentlemanstands up to greet her. Instead, I lifted one eyebrow and frowned. DetectiveSergeant Cash, in my office, wearing her duty face, two years after I’dretired, added up to trouble.
She just stood there and looked around and shook her head. Ididn’t need her sympathy. I’m what and where I am out of choice, not chance,years and years of choices taken with my eyes open. Some things didn’t turn outthe way they could have, should have, but you live with the dice the way theyfall.
Then the cop focused on me. I’d think of her as Nef, off-dutyat the corner bar. Right now, she washer uniform.
“You got an hour? Something I’d like you to see, need youropinion.”
“State going to pay?” Silly question. The state was goingthrough its annual budget crunch, actually shut down “non-essential” officesfor a day or two the previous month. Like hell her unit had spare bucks for myhourly rate. I wouldn’t be surprised if she had to buy gas out-of-pocket forher cruiser.
She just grinned at me, white teeth against that walnut skin.She knew that I knew that she knew . . .
Oh, what the hell. I grabbed my fedora from the rack by thedoor and shrugged into the gray Burberry — both gifts from Maggie, both stillcarrying the faint buzz of her touch. She’d said they made me look like adetective. Sometimes asked me to wear them and nothing else. . . .
To hell with that. Wet day, they kept the water off. And Ineeded a hat. That bald spot grew larger every
