Alex’s cubicle was in the far back corner of the room, near the fire escape and only three steps away from both the copier and the coffee machine. She’d personalized the space a little with a Far Side calendar and a framed photo of her with Vicki. The suit she wore, charcoal gray, with a red silk blouse, was the same in both the photo and real life. The woman, however, had changed. She looked older, grimmer, and much more tired. She gestured for me to take the visitor’s chair and poured me a cup of black coffee without bothering to ask.
“Alex?” I made her name a question.
She lowered herself into her chair. Taking a sip of her coffee, she sighed. “So, do you want the good news, the bad news, or the seriously weird shit?”
“It’s been a rough couple of days. Start with the good news.”
She nodded and smiled. “Love your hair. That cut looks really good on you.”
“Thanks.” My tone was dry. Not that I didn’t appreciate the compliment, but I was pretty sure we weren’t here to discuss grooming.
“The bad news: we found what was left of your car.” She opened the center drawer of her desk, pulled out a little metal plate, and tossed it onto the desk in front of me. “Sorry,” she said as I stared at my Miata’s VIN stamped into the ID plate.
“Damn it!” I wasn’t surprised, but I was disappointed. I’d hoped … well, never mind what I’d hoped. I’d liked that car. I’d had it for years. Now I was going to have to find something else and probably have some huge car payment to deal with. And, God help me, I was going to have to deal with yet another insurance claim. Tears stung my eyes, but I blinked them back. I was not going to cry, damn it. I was not. I was alive. I wasn’t horribly scarred. I had my friends and my freedom. I’d get another car. “And the weird news?”
“I got an anonymous tip a few minutes ago. Someone said that if I wanted to find some stolen magical artifacts, I should go to this address.” She pulled a slip of paper from the still-open drawer. “Now, while lots of artifacts go missing, I’m not the one to get calls about them. Not my department. But since you’re missing a couple of things, I thought maybe I’d go check this out … and that you might like to ride along.”
I jumped to my feet.
“Don’t get your hopes up, Graves. It could be nothing.”
Too late for the warning. I was hoping like crazy. My knives and my siren ring are my most prized possessions—and they are such heavy-duty magical artifacts that there was no way I could replace them. I don’t have that kind of money.
Still, Alex was smiling as she rose from her chair. Leaning over the cubicle partition, she told the coworker in the next stall, “I’m taking my lunch break. I’ll be back in an hour.”
He gave a nod of acknowledgment and kept talking on the phone.
* * *
The address was down in the warehouse district. The area was familiar. It’s off the beaten track, not well patrolled, and not all that busy. Most of the manufacturing has moved elsewhere, so there are a lot of vacant buildings; their For Lease signs are barely readable under the graffiti. The street was echoingly empty and bits of trash blew across the road like modern tumbleweeds. More than one bad guy has established a home base in this warren, with the result that the whole neighborhood just had a bad vibe. Even in broad daylight a chill ran up my spine that had nothing to do with the AC in Alex’s car.
Alex pulled her car to the curb. Unfastening her seat belt, she reached between the seats to retrieve her bulletproof vest. As she put it on, she asked me, “That jacket of yours spelled?”
“Yes.” In fact, I was probably safer wearing my blazer than she would be in her vest. I don’t cut corners on protection, and Isaac Levy does terrific work.
“Yeah, well, you still stay behind me,” Alex ordered as we got out of the car.
“Gladly,” I agreed. “But I don’t suppose you have a spare gun?”
Grumbling, she reached down, pulled a Derringer from an ankle holster, and passed it to me.
She led the way up a set of cracked concrete steps up to a loading dock and a metal door marked DELIVERIES in peeling white paint. The door was unlocked and partially open. Alex stopped outside. She drew her weapon, holding it next to her right leg as she called, “Police. Open up!” and swung her arm to pound on the door.
When her fist made contact, the door swung easily back—too easily. Somebody had spelled it to open at a touch.
I smelled blood, sweat, piss, and fear. My vampire senses heightened and I could hear the squeals of rodents and soft gasping noises that reminded me of the way it sounded when someone tried to scream without drawing a deep breath. My teeth lengthened, saliva filling my mouth.
Now was so not the time to go to the bat side. I concentrated, beating down that part of my nature by pure force of will.
Alex gave a hiss of displeasure. “You can sense magic, right?” she asked me.
“Yeah.”
“You feel any booby traps?”
“Nothing,” I said. “But I didn’t feel the spell on the door either.”
“Wow, that’s real helpful.” She edged around the door, moving carefully so as to have the best possible cover while still getting a look inside.
I couldn’t see anything but her back, but I was okay with that. If there was something worth seeing, she’d tell me.
Sure enough, she began swearing. Turning to me, eyes blazing, she said, “Go back to the car. Use the radio to call for backup and an ambulance.”
13
Of course I didn’t retreat straightaway. Instead, I leaned around Alex to get a look at what was inside—and immediately wished I hadn’t. Slugger lay naked in the center of the room, his hands pinned to the wooden floor by my knives. The blood had attracted rats, and while he wasn’t dead, he was a mess.
I threw up off the edge of the loading dock, then ran to the car to call for help as Alex went into the warehouse and started giving what first aid she could.
Slugger had been a thug and a potential rapist. He’d left me on the beach to burn. As I sat in Alex’s car, shivering and nauseated, I told myself he’d made his bed. It didn’t help. It had been obvious from my quick glance that Slugger had been there for hours before anyone had bothered to call Alex. The casual brutality of it was chilling. I thought of the man in the hologram—the one in charge. Presumably he was the one who had arranged to have this done.
“You okay?” I started—I hadn’t heard Alex approach. Not good. I must be a little bit shocky. I’d need to take care of that.
“Not really,” I admitted.
“Too much like what happened to you?”
“Yeah.” I hated to admit it, but it was the truth. As if from a distance I heard the slam of the ambulance doors.
“Do I need to take you back to the hospital?”
“No. I want to go home.” I wanted a hot bath. I felt like I’d never be clean again. I needed to brush my teeth. More important, even though food was the last thing I wanted, I needed to eat something. It must be close to lunchtime.
Oh, shit.
“What time is it?” I turned to Alex, a little panicked.
“Eleven fifty-three, why?”
“I have to call Bruno.”
She didn’t ask why, just retrieved the cell phone from her pocket and passed it to me. My fingers were shaking so badly that it took me three tries to dial the number.
He picked up on the first ring. “Celia, is that you?”
“Yeah.” I couldn’t say much more than that. All of a sudden my throat was tight. I wanted to be sick again, wanted to cry.
“Are you okay?” I could tell from his voice that he knew I wasn’t.
I searched my brain for what to tell him, but my mind couldn’t seem to focus. Finally I said, “You don’t need to look for my knives anymore.”
“Celie…” Alex grabbed the phone from my hand, so I didn’t hear the rest of what he said.
“Bruno, it’s Alex. Celia needs to go home now and get some rest. She probably shouldn’t be alone either, she’s a little shocky. I’ve got a crime scene to process. If I send her home with somebody, can you meet her there? If not, I’m sending her back to the hospital.”
“Where are you? I can come get her.”
“No, she needs to get away from here. The sooner the better. Can you meet her at her place in a half hour?”
“Yeah, I’m keyed into the security.”
“Good.”
I didn’t exactly sleep through the ride home, but I wasn’t alert enough to pay much attention to it. The cop, a guy I’d never met before and whose name I didn’t remember, was very nice, taking me through the drive-through at PharMart to buy nutrition shakes on the way to my place, and then waiting to make sure that Bruno had arrived and I wasn’t alone before leaving.
Bruno met me at the front door. He took one look at me, swept me up in his arms, and carried me off to bed. He tucked me in like you would a child, and went to run a hot bath. Only when I was in the tub and, finally, finally beginning to feel warm, did he ask what happened. I told him.
“Oh, fuck. Do you need me to call Gwen?”
“No. I’ll be okay. It was just—”
“Too much like what happened to you.” Gee, everybody was getting that. Of course it hadn’t exactly been subtle.
I nodded.
“Fine. You finish your bath. I’ll make you some tomato soup.” He left, pulling the door shut behind him.
I rinsed off and climbed out of the tub. Patting myself dry, I padded naked over to the full-length mirror. This was my first chance to look at all of myself since the day I’d been stretched out on the beach.
I looked … odd. My skin was fine, except for that weird lack-of-tattoo thing on my leg. I had little stubby lashes coming in, maybe an eighth of an inch long, but my eyebrows were still just stubble. The combination made me look like some sort of exotic lizard, especially with my new hairstyle.