tired, and would probably get yourself killed if you tried to do either.”
He shook his head. “You just can’t give a guy a compliment, can you?”
It wasn’t a promise. But it was all I had time to get out of him.
I left the keys in the ignition and got out of the car. I still wore the void stone necklace. I couldn’t take it off and leave it with Davy. If he touched it, he would know it was a kind of magic unavailable to the common user, and then he’d start digging for answers. Luckily, I could cast magic while wearing the stone-it just made it a little more difficult.
The wind was stronger here, funneled by the buildings, and cold enough I was glad I’d worn my heavier coat. I pulled up my hood and made quick work of the sidewalk. Stotts stood at the end of the block, looking my way.
“Hey,” I said when I got close enough. “Show me where you need me.”
Stotts was a good-looking man. Latino heritage gave him soft eyes, heavy lashes and eyebrows, and an easy smile that had caught my friend Nola’s heart and not let go.
So far, their long-distance relationship was working. But she lived three hundred miles away on a farm, and he was a detective. Stotts had gone out and visited her for a week, but other than that, it was all about the phone.
Well, that and the computer. Nola had finally given in and had a computer with Internet access installed in her old farmhouse. Love. It finds a way to make a person want to change.
Tonight Stotts was wearing what I usually saw him in-a trench and scarf, slacks, nice shoes. No hat.
Even before he said anything, I knew something bad had happened here. Something wrong. Really wrong. I’d felt this before. But I couldn’t remember where.
“Over here.” He started down one of the paths beneath the old elm and gingko trees. “That Davy Silvers with you?”
“Yes. He followed me to a business meeting. When I got your call, I made him let me use his car.”
“Hmm. Any other Hounds out here?”
I shook my head. “I didn’t even know Davy was following me. And Bea didn’t say she was going to be here tonight. Are you sure she was Hounding?”
“Someone was throwing magic around.”
He didn’t have to point to where Bea had been hurt. I could feel it, taste it on the air.
Stotts didn’t give me any more information. And he wouldn’t. Police never wanted to influence a Hound’s initial response and reaction to a magical-crime site. So I didn’t waste my time asking him any more questions.
I cleared my mind, mentally singing my little “Miss Mary Mack, Mack, Mack” song to settle my racing thoughts. Magic pressed in on my head, a heaviness, like the air was thickening for the storm. It wasn’t my dad, and didn’t seem to be coming from the void stone.
Weird.
I set a Disbursement, my latest favorite-muscle aches-and then traced the glyphs for Sight, Smell, Taste.
Magic within me stuttered, like a smooth stone rubbing across my skin. It didn’t hurt, but it wasn’t comfortable either. I inhaled, exhaled, and urged magic up through my bones, my muscles, my blood. Magic stretched out slowly, thick, heavy. I traced the glyphs again, more to keep my concentration while I waited for magic to respond than out of need to redraw the spell. The heaviness in my head, in the magic, suddenly lifted and magic flooded through me. Too fast. Too much. Too hot.
The glyphs caught fire, wild jeweled colors of raw, deadly magic, licking down my arms, into my fingertips searing the glyphs into the night air.
Magic is fast. Too fast to see. But I wasn’t the only one who saw it.
Stotts lifted his hand and traced a dampening spell-I think Smother or maybe Cancel.
“Wait,” I said. But it was too late. He threw his spell at my spell.
There is a reason why people don’t walk around throwing spells at each other, or getting into wizards’ duels like you see in the movies. Every user casts magic differently from other users. Like handwriting, magic follows the form each user casts for it. When two forms clash, you never know if they will blend, extinguish, or go up like a barrel of gunpowder in a bonfire.
Right now, I was betting on the gunpowder thing. I didn’t have control of the magic pouring out of me. I was a leaky powder keg, and Stotts’s spell was a tossed match.
I clapped my hands, breaking the flow of magic. Yes, it stung. No, it didn’t knock me unconscious. Thank you, training sessions.
Stotts’s spell slammed into mine.
There was a terrific flash-a blast of green lightning-but no sound. Magic clashed and sucked all sound out of the air, leaving behind painful silence.
I inhaled, exhaled.
And then the night was just the night again. No thickness in the air from the encroaching storm, no strangely heavy magic. The night filled with sounds of traffic and, somewhere farther off, a train. I could smell the damp pavement and trees again.
“Allie?” Stotts said. “You’re burned.”
Wrong. I was angry.
“What the hell?” I wiped at the sweat running down the edge of my temple. I was suddenly very, very hot, and very, very cold. “Never get in the way when I cast magic. If you want me to Hound for you, you stay the hell out of my way and let me get the job done. You could have contaminated the entire scene.” Or blown up the block. Or killed us.
I was yelling, or at least I thought I was. The other sounds, things like city traffic and air noise, still seemed rather distant now that I thought about it, like someone had shoved cotton in my ears.
Apparently angry, screaming women weren’t something that fazed Detective Stotts.
“You were burning,” he said calmly. He looked over my shoulder. “Call an ambulance.” Stotts sounded a lot farther away than he should. Didn’t matter. I was good at reading lips. The person behind me whom he was talking to, probably a cop, might have responded. I couldn’t tell.
“I’m fine.”
Stotts gave me a look that could melt the hinges off the doors to hell. “You are burned. And bleeding.”
“I’m Hounding.”
“No. You’re not.”
I took a step and Stotts grabbed my arm. Strong. He was a police officer, after all.
“You are dismissed from this case.” He made sure to stand in front of me so I could see his lips moving. He was not a happy man. “I’ll find another Hound to take the job.”
Someone stepped into my range of vision. I hadn’t heard Davy coming-ears-but he was close enough I heard him say, “I’ll do it.”
I scowled. Hounding for Stotts wasn’t always a hard job. But Davy wasn’t kidding when he said the man was cursed. A lot-too damn many-Hounds had died working cases for the detective.
“You’re injured,” I said to Davy.
He raised his eyebrows. “I had a headache a while ago. I’m good now.”
Liar.
“No,” I said.
Stotts let go of my arm. “That would be fine. Allie, step back.”
I didn’t step back, but I didn’t move forward. Davy followed Stotts closer to the center of the park, stopped, traced a glyph in the air, and then pulled magic up from the network of conduits and lines that ran beneath the streets.
Easy. Like he’d been doing this all his life. Magic answered him, did exactly as it should-followed the lines of the glyph and gave him Sight and Taste and Smell. He paced a large circuit around a couple benches and trees, the wide half circle of brick steps just south of us. Nothing else in the park except the ashes of the old spell that I could only guess still lingered there.
My hands itched and stung, like I’d slapped them against stone. I wanted to cast magic so badly, it hurt.
