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  stop—”

  “Try this. Just stop,” he said. “The Atlanta Police Department does not want a registered freelance magician nosing around this case. Especially not if you’re going to help by stirring up a hornet’s nest in the local werehouse and then not even telling us where you were—”

  “I tried to tell you before,” I said sharply, “I was not there to stir up a hornet’s nest.”

  “Then what were you doing?”

  “Trying to get help for Cinnamon,” I said, and the line stayed silent. “She hadn’t changed since she was poisoned … and apparently that shit builds up. She turned early, and I didn’t know where else to take her. I don’t have a radar for evil graffiti. Being there to help was blind luck.”

  Rand was silent, so I pressed my case. “Cinnamon’s safe because I took her there, and our werekin friend is alive because I was at the right place at the right time. If you don’t like blind luck, call it dumb luck. Did you really want me to let that boy die, Uncle Andy?”

  “No,” Rand said. “No, I’m sorry. The attack’s clearly related to the one on Revenance, so I assumed it was a reaction to you poking around. I didn’t realize it was a coincidence—which actually makes our problem worse. I shouldn’t have hung up on you—”

  “No, you shouldn’t have,” I said, starting up the car as the light turned green. I was silent for a moment, just driving, then said, “Not before you got the whole story.”

  “Look, the DA freaked when she found out you’d been at the crime scene. We can’t have you connected to the investigation in any way, or we can kiss a conviction goodbye.”

  “No way,” I said.

  “No way, no how—no investigating,” Rand said. “You’ve got to promise me that you’ll stay out of this—or you might end up attached to the investigation as a suspect.”

  “Uncle Andy,” I said. “Are you … threatening me?”

  “No, I’m trying to make you see how serious this is,” Rand said. His voice was so stern and important I could almost see his expression. “You have to promise me, Kotie—”

  “Oh, please,” I said. I automatically crossed my fingers, then glared at them. I was not going to play this game. “Cross my heart and hope to die? Detective Andre Rand, don’t you think we’re both a bit old for this? This thing murdered a friend, attacked another and almost killed me. I want to help you get this guy. These guys. Whoever it is.”

  Rand was silent for a minute. “Fine,” he said. “I love you like a daughter, but I promise you that if you stick your nose back into this I will have you up on obstruction charges.”

  “Andre—”

  “I mean it, Dakota,” Rand said. “Butt. The Hell. Out.”

  And he hung up, leaving me and the blue bomb sailing into Midtown in near silence. Once Midtown Atlanta had been a graveyard of half-filled mid-height office buildings and closed hotels, but now it was having a comeback, with new buildings in brick and stone with nary a bit of graffiti on a one of them, except for a mural, clearly commissioned.

  It was new, fresh, vibrant—yet sterile: even though the cars on West Peachtree’s wide one-way expanse held enough people to make a crowd, I felt alone. Sometimes I missed riding my Vespa. No matter how comfy my Prius was, it left me disconnected from my environment.

  Then the phone rang, and I blooped it through without thinking. “Dakota Frost,” I groused. “Best magical tattooist in the Southeast—”

  “You won’t get many customers with that tone,” the caller said.

  “Philip!” I said, smiling with pleasure. “It’s so good to hear your voice.”

  “Good to hear yours too, Dakota,” Special Agent Philip Davidson said. You could still hear the warmth, even through the Bluetooth. I wanted to see his face: his wavy brown hair, his cute little goatee, the blue-gray eyes he always hid behind dark glasses. I was glad he couldn’t see me, cheeks red with guilt. I waited a second too long to keep the conversation going, and Philip caught that. “Is everything all right?”

  “Yes,” I said, abruptly, turning onto West Peachtree. “Damnit, no, things aren’t all right. One of my friends, Revenance, was just killed.”

  “Rand told me—I’m so sorry. He also mentioned you witnessed a second attack,” Philip said, slipping into his smooth-but-not-accusatory tone of disapproval that made me feel as big as a bug. “But that you refused to divulge its location because it was ‘Edgeworld’ business.”

  “That I did,” I said. Philip Davidson and the Department of Extraordinary Investigations had definite ideas on how to treat Edgeworlders, and respecting Edgeworld privacy was about the last thing on their list. “Like I told Rand, it isn’t my place to divulge their secrets.”

  “Dakota,” Philip said, voice softening. “I’m not calling to bust your nuts. Rand also told me you were there to help Cinnamon. She hadn’t changed in a few months, had she? Jesus. And that was your first time dealing with it too. That must have been very difficult for you both.”

  “You have no idea,” I said, glancing back at my torn rear seats. As my head turned back, the car in front of me pulled away, the car behind honked, and I cursed, “All right, all right, I’m going!” and hooked onto 5th Street into Georgia Tech’s new campus village.

  “What are you doing, Dakota?” Philip asked.

  “I’m on the last of my rounds of ‘would you deliver the bad news for me, Dakota’ that Rand and her Highness the ‘Lady Saffron’ dumped in my fucking lap,” I snapped. “I’m going to go break the news about Revenance to yet another friend, and while they’re getting over that, I planned to start interrogating them about some weird fucking shit I saw while I was pulling Cinnamon’s childhood sweetheart out of a magic graffiti tag that was eating him alive.”

  “Cinnamon had a childhood sweetheart? From how you’ve described the werehouse—”

  “Oh, maybe I’m romanticizing it, but I could tell they had some relationship—and don’t change the subject,” I said. “I’m being serious here. One dead, three missing. Do you really want me to stop? If so, where do you want me to draw the fucking line, Philip? After I saved a kid’s life, but before I find out what we need to stop this shit from killing anyone else?”

  “What’s wrong, Dakota?” Philip asked. “I mean, what’s really wrong?”

  I’m having dinner with a vampire when I’m supposed to be dating you.

  “You’re never here, Philip,” I said. “I haven’t seen you since November.”

  “December 4th,” Philip said. “It was a Monday.”

  “It was fifteen minutes for breakfast at the Flying Biscuit before you rode off to the airport. Which puts our last real date, what, a month ago today?”

  “I’ve been busy,” Philip said. “I can’t fly down to Atlanta every week.”

  “But you won’t let me come up and see you in Virginia,” I responded, which was true. “Philip, I haven’t even heard from you since … since before Christmas.”

  “You’ve found someone, haven’t you,” Philip said.

  “Damnit!” I said, screeching to a stop as the light in front of me turned red. “No, Philip, someone found me. Someone just asked me out to dinner, and it’s making me feel guilty. Happy now? Why, why, why do I always have to be the guy in the relationship?”

  Crickets chirped. It was that silent on Phillip’s end. After a long pause he finally answered. “Oh. I should have seen this one coming, huh? A girl. And you.”

  I laughed. I could see how he jumped to the wrong conclusion,. “Sorry, Philip,” I said. “You don’t get off that easy. You can’t blame this one on the other team. I do still like boys. I just like ones that are here, at least once in a while.”

  There was a second silence over the line, as cars streamed down the broad lanes of Spring Street before me, narrowly missing Tech students bolting through the traffic as they darted from the restaurants and bookstore and back again. Finally Philip spoke.

  “All right, Dakota,” he said. “You have your date, if that’s what y
ou want.”

  He sounded crushed. “Hey, Philip,” I said softly. “That’s not what I meant—”

  “No, you’re right,” he said. “I’m never there, and that’s not fair to you. Take your friend to dinner, and that’s OK, but if you’re still … interested, I’m willing to give us another shot next time I make it down there. If things are as bad as Rand said … well, it won’t be long.”

  “I’m sorry, Philip,” I said.

  “I am too,” he said. “And sorry about the ‘investigating this on your own’ crack. We really appreciated you helping us track the tattoo killer last year, but please, please, please wait until we bring the problems to you instead of making trouble on your own. I worry about you, Dakota. You’re a … a valuable resource, and I’d hate to lose you. Take care.”

  “I’d hate to lose you too, Philip,” I said, but my headset blooped and my brain put the words “valuable resource” on an endless loop.

  He was already gone. He’d called his girlfriend a valuable resource and hung up.

  Damnit! Damnit! Damnit! This was not what I wanted. A dalliance with a vampire had just cut me off from a man who was both my boyfriend and my spook contact, and said dalliance hadn’t even happened yet. And protecting the werehouse’s privacy had alienated Uncle Andy.

  Maybe Philip was right; things were already blowing up in my face.

  Was I getting sucked in too deep?

  But then I saw Revy’s face, burned up like paper. No one did that to my friends. And no matter how much I liked Philip, he was first and foremost a monster fighter, not one of their guardians. And no matter how much I trusted Uncle Andy, he had to work within the law. Not on the Edge, where I lived. Someone had to protect these people—someone who understood them.

  The light turned green, the car behind me honked, and I gunned the blue bomb over the 5th Street Bridge into Georgia Tech proper.

  “Fine,” I said. “My own damn investigation it is.”

  Nuclear Wizardry

  A great chasm of asphalt cuts across the heart of Atlanta—river-wide, canyon-deep, and filled with a current of cars faster than any rapids: the Downtown Connector. The Connector had contained Georgia Tech’s growth for decades, until finally a spray of new buildings had burst over the recently completed 5th Street Bridge.

  As I crossed the bridge, I saw Tech shift from shiny glass towers to aging red brick. Winding through the campus was like traveling back in architectural time, from the 90s to the 80s to the 70s … next stop, the 1950s, and one of the oldest buildings on the campus: the Georgia Tech Nuclear Research Center.

  The NRC was two cubical buildings guarding a squat ribbed tower, ugly and alien, that once housed the reactor. Now decommissioned, the NRC held something different, and perhaps more dangerous: the very first laboratory in the country studying the Physics of Magic.

  In a pebble-floored, low-chaired lobby, I signed in an ancient log book that looked like it really did date from the 1950s. As I put the pen back into its tiny, conical holder, Annette, the lab secretary, asked, “Is everything all right, Kotie? You look flushed.”

  I frowned, trying not to take it out on her: Annette was all pink hair and bubblegum, so sickeningly sweet you wanted to punch her in the nose—but she really was the nice sort, even though she dressed in poufy florals that even Catherine Fremont would have punked up a bit.

  “I just had an argument,” I said. “Nothing important.”

  “Sorry to hear it,” she said, picking up the phone. “Don’t worry, you’ll find someone.”

  “How did you … ” I began. “Am I really that transparent?”

  “Yes, she’s here,” Annette said, hitting the buzzer. “Doug and Jinx are in the tower.”

  “I remember the way,” I said, opening the heavy metal door. “And thanks.”

  “Remember, there are lots of fish in the sea,” she chimed sweetly.

  “Thanks,” I said, as the door clanged shut behind me.

  The chilled, dark metal corridor felt cramped as a submarine, but soon opened into a cavernous vault big enough to hold a house. I wondered the chamber had held in its heyday, when these idiots had thought to contain nuclear death smack dab in the middle of a crowded college campus at the center of the Southeast’s largest city. But now the vault was almost hollow, a birdcage of cranes and catwalks over a huge single-cut slab of polished marble inscribed with the largest magic circle in the country.

  A darkhaired, cleancut man in a Georgia Tech sweatshirt was adjusting some equipment in the center of the circle. At a console outside the ring, a young, gothy, bonneted woman in an exaggerated Victorian outfit read numbers out loud to the thin air. Doug and Jinx.

  Doug saw me and smiled, a wicked twinkle belying his clean cut look—which didn’t fool me anyway: the first time I’d met him, he’d been wearing leather puppy gear. Jinx, on the other hand, never changed her style to suit the circumstances. I don’t think I’d seen her wear anything less elaborate since … before she went blind. Today, however, she had a new accessory.

  “Dakota?” she asked of the air, even as she turned towards me, eyes hidden behind her dark glasses. Her hand shot out, delicate black lace glove now adorned with a new sparkle—a gleaming diamond ring. “Guess what? We’re getting married!”

  Oh, how wonderful for them. “That’s great,” I said, with forced cheeriness, reaching to take her hand. It wasn’t a large rock, since they were both graduate students, but still—how wonderful for them. Really.

  “Dakota?” Jinx said—and pulled down her glasses slightly. I looked up, expecting her spooky geode eyes—and saw instead spooky black snowflakes gleaming within her formerly clouded marbles. “Oh, Dakota, what’s wrong?”

  Damnit. I had forgotten she could partially see now, some positive fallout from a magical injury last year. I forced a smile. “Nothing, just a bad day,” I said, casting about for something else to talk about. “Look, I’m sorry I haven’t coughed up your fee from the tattooing contest … ”

  “When the Valentine Foundation pays you, you can pay me, but, really, Dakota,” she said reprovingly. “That’s the worst attempt to change the subject ever. All I can see is a blurry spot, but even I can tell that smile is fake. It’s not just a bad day. What’s wrong?”

  “It’s nothing,” I said. And then I remembered what I had come for, and forgot all about Philip. “Actually, you’re right,” I said gently. “It is something. Jinx, I have some bad news.”

  Doug and Jinx sat in shock at the break table as I told them about Revy, about the attack on Tully, and about the other vampire disappearances that were almost certainly connected. Jinx, the best graphomancer I knew, agreed to tackle the graffiti without a second thought.

  “I know the literature on decorative marks quite well,” she said primly. “But I’ll need more than a description to build a model of how it’s working. I need good digital photographs, and hopefully video, thirty seconds or a full sequence if your camera will last that long.”

  “I know,” I said, speaking up to compensate for the sudden whine of the air conditioning. “I’m supposed to take pictures tomorrow at the werehouse when I go pick up Cinnamon.”

  “Why is Cinnamon at the werehouse?” Jinx asked, brow furrowing. She didn’t bother to speak up at all. “I thought you were trying to rescue her out of there.”

  “It’s a long story,” I said. And potentially embarrassing. My daughter might not want her mother telling people she had trouble controlling her changes. “I’ll let her tell it, if she wants to. But I have a question for you, Doug. The first tag was powerful, but didn’t do anything I haven’t seen a tattoo or any normal spell do. The second one, however, did something unusual—”

  A crack like thunder rang through the dome, and I flinched back from a flash like controlled lightning. “Jeez!” I said, raising an arm, seeing goose bumps ripple up as stray mana flooded out through the room. “What the hell are you guys doing?”

  “Testing a theory of magical capacitance,�
�� Doug said. “Lenora, give us some warning next time!”

  “Why? Nothing is going to happen,” said a brown-haired woman, stepping out of a control booth—and then blithely stepping over the glowing outer ring of the magic circle as if the sea of energies it contained couldn’t turn her into a pumpkin. She used tongs to extract a metal disc from the equipment at the center of the circle, stomped back over to us, and tossed the disc on the desk. “Yet another failure.”

  Inside the metal ring was a pinkish membrane with a gridlike test pattern at its center. I stared at it with growing horror. “Don’t tell me that’s real human skin.”

  “Of course it’s real,” Lenora said, “you can see it with your own two eyes—”

  “Down, Lenora,” Doug said, holding the membrane up to the light. “Yes, Dakota, it’s human skin, but not from a human. It’s grown on a synthetic matrix in the Biotech building—they’re hoping to use it on burn patients. Dang—it looks exactly like it did before.”

  “My point exactly,” Lenora replied. “I don’t care what mana flux you use, you’re not going to get any accumulation in a single layer. There’s no such thing as ‘tattoo magic.’”

  I raised an eyebrow. “So what is it that I do for a living then, chop liver?”

  “Oh, so you’re the Dakota Frost that got him on this wild goose chase,” Lenora said. “It was bad enough when he started dating the witch and eating granola—”

  “Lenora!” Jinx said, putting her gloved fingers to her breast in mock shock. “After all the wonderful spells I’ve shown you … ”

  “Which are supposed to do what, exactly?” Lenora asked, smirking.

  “I don’t know in particular, Scully,” I said, cracking my neck, “but if you can’t get them to work, don’t blame Jinx. Start closer to home, like with yourself.”

  “Down, Dakota. I need a Scully to keep me honest,” Doug said, handing the disc back to her. “Please photograph it and run another control. So, Dakota,” Doug said, pulling out a tan gridded notebook and writing a few lines, “what did the graffiti do that was so unusual?”