“Okay, want to tell me what happened?”
“They tried to fry me and my bike. I wasn’t in a receptive mood.”
“Where are your friends.”
“Friends?”
“Unless you have talents I don’t know about, you had some help. Someone killed one of those men with magikal fire, and another one died from what looks like an electric shock.”
“I was going home alone, minding my own business. I don’t know where the good Samaritans came from. You might need to talk to my Uncle George about that.”
“I see.”
With a shrug, I said, “I didn’t ask for any help, but after those vamps ambushed me yesterday, I guess someone got protective.”
The ME came over. “The one on the grass over there is still alive. The EMTs are working on him, and they say he’ll probably live.”
Whittaker brightened like someone had given him a present. I glanced over my shoulder and saw three EMTs gathered around the guy I’d shot by the tree.
“I guess I should have aimed a little higher.”
Quinn’s eyebrows arched, then she gave me a quirky little grin. “He’ll live, but from the damage I saw, he’ll never forget you.”
“Most men I’ve danced with don’t,” I told her, and she laughed.
Forty minutes later, Osiris showed up. He drew Whittaker aside and they talked for a while, and then Osiris approached me. “Come on. My men will take your motorcycle to your house.”
“You can make your statement in the morning,” Whittaker said. “Come to my office when you get in.”
Osiris ushered me into his car and drove me home.
“Get a good night’s sleep,” he said when he dropped me off. “Come by when you get off work tomorrow, and hopefully our prisoners will have imparted some useful information by then.”
Chapter 34
The following morning, I inspected my bike and sadly concluded that it was a total loss. Only the saddle bags and the rear wheel were salvageable. I dreaded the conversation with the insurance company.
It took me an hour to check out my old bike and do some long-neglected maintenance on it, then I went in to take a shower and get ready for work. I also grabbed another magitek weapon, one designed to use in a mage battle.
The ride to the station was thankfully uneventful. My Findlay guardians didn’t even try to be discreet, two of them riding motorcycles with me, and a car following closely behind us. A car with two cops in it brought up the rear. All of that should have made me feel secure, but instead it gave me a massive dose of anxiety.
I gave my statement to Whittaker, who asked very few questions. He avoided asking an obvious one, which was what happened to the rest of the people involved in the battle. I figured his conversation with Osiris had either blunted or satisfied his curiosity. Where the Families were concerned, especially the Ten, the police usually let mages deal with their own problems unless invited.
The press wasn’t as easily influenced, however. The battle had been noisy, and media types had shown up at the scene before Osiris and I left. Mychal showed me a news feed that was running, and I was treated to a video of myself—hair and clothing askew, walking toward and getting into Osiris’s car. That made three appearances for me within a week.
“You’re a star,” Novak told me. “You’re all over social media.”
“Fantastic. Just what I always wanted.”
He grinned. “As far as I can tell, there are three major themes. Some people are saying that you’re an attention hound, and others are calling you a hero that the bad guys are afraid of, so they’re trying to take you out.”
“What’s the third one?”
“Guys who want to get in your pants or marry you.”
I rolled my eyes. “Any of them super wealthy?”
“I didn’t recognize any names in my brief scan. Do you want me to do a detailed analysis?”
I used my middle finger to express my opinion, and he thought my answer was wildly funny.
My call to the insurance company was as painful as I expected. They wanted a police report that proved I wasn’t the instigator of the incident and that my carelessness hadn’t contributed to the destruction of my bike. Whittaker said he would try to expedite the formal filing of the report.
Kirsten called and said the parts for her pump had arrived, so I took off work early to go by and fix it. Working with my hands and my magik to repair the pump was like meditation, and I felt a lot more relaxed when I finished.
“Thank you,” Kirsten said. “Are you going to be home for dinner?”
I shook my head. “I have to go out to Findlay.”
“Okay.” She flashed a wicked grin. “I have a date tonight, and I was going to go out after dinner, but I think I’ll call him up and tell him he needs to feed me.”
“Sounds like a plan. See you later, if you come home.”
She winked at me.
There wasn’t anything wrong with my old bike other than age. It just wasn’t as pretty or powerful as the new one. I told my guardians where we were going, and we rode out to Findlay House. To my relief, we managed to make the trip without any more attacks.
“Any luck?” I asked Osiris when I sat down in his office.
“Yes and no. Unfortunately, the one we really needed to talk to had two large holes in him and took all his secrets to his grave. The cops have his body, so if you can get hold of his phone, maybe we can learn something useful.”
“Okay, I’ll try.”
“We used a truthsayer and some drugs on the two we captured, and their stories match,” he continued. “They say they were hired by a demon. The thing is, the dead guy was the one who actually dealt with the demon.”
“So, we don’t know if he was lying or not, and if he wasn’t, we don’t know who the demon is.”
He gave me a sardonic grin. “I suspected you
