Blood Rock Read online

  “Wasn’t ‘magical assault with intent to kill’ already a crime?” I said, cradling Cinnamon against me. She was crying. I hadn’t realized how much she liked Revy. “I’m sorry, baby—”

  “I liked him,” Cinnamon said bitterly. “The fang was nice to me—”

  I drew a breath. “Rand,” I said. “There was someone else on the scene, a short little prick with baggy pants, a skateboard, and a huge-ass hat—”

  “I-I saw him too,” Cinnamon said suddenly. “When I went to get the pole. Sittin’ on a wall, watchin’ it all, grinning with some nasty ol’ silver grill on his teeth—”

  “So?” McGough said, eyes sharp. “What do you think that had to do with this?”

  “I saw him right when the wind picked up,” I said.

  “I caught that too,” Gibbs said. “Just a glimpse, but I definitely saw the guy—and as soon as I looked, the wind snapped like a bitch and near ripped the tarp out of my hands.”

  “Can’t be a coincidence,” I said. “He may have been magically enhancing the wind—”

  “Oh, hell. Thanks, Frost. We’ll search the area,” McGough said, motioning to an officer. “First things first, though—this is a crime scene now. I need you to wait by your car—”

  “I wasn’t done,” I snapped. “He was pretty far off. At first I thought he was trying to watch from a safe distance, but I surveyed the ley line crossings a few years back and one goes through the Cemetery right where he was standing. He could be a technical practitioner rather than a bloodline witch, which might affect his choice of escape routes—”

  “Oh, hell, we’ve got one who thinks she can be helpful,” McGough said, putting his hand to his to his brow. “Rand, get your pet witch and her pet cat out of my crime scene—”

  “Now just a minute,” I began hotly. “You can’t just—”

  “He can’t, but I can,” Rand said. “It’s my crime scene now.” McGough twitched and frowned, looking less like Mr. Wizard and more like an angry garden gnome, and Rand just raised an eyebrow at him. “Are you going to be a dick about this?”

  McGough raised his little hands. “No, no, Homicide gets first crack at a body.”

  “Thank you. I’ve called ident, but the Black Hats obviously can have the scene when the coroner pronounces,” Rand said. “Look, Dakota, seriously, McGough’s not trying to be a dick, we just need to get you physically off the crime scene. If you could wait by the car—”

  “Not until he apologizes.”

  “What, about the pet witch crack?” McGough said, laughing. “Look, babe, if your skin’s that thin you shouldn’t have scribbled all over it—”

  “To Cinnamon,” I said coldly.

  McGough looked down at my daughter. “Hey, little lady,” he said, a little of the kindly wizard creeping back into his features. “Sorry I called you a cat—”

  “I am a cat,” Cinnamon said, hissing. “but don’t be calling me a pet.”

  McGough stared blankly at her a moment, then forced the twinkle back into his eyes. “Sorry, little lady,” he said, “I was just kidding around—”

  Cinnamon smiled, then suddenly barked, “Fucking toad—”

  “Cinnamon!” I said.

  “What?” she said, looking away. “See how he likes bein’ called a name.”

  McGough straightened. “Rand,” he said. “I ain’t trying to tell you your job, but clear the site—and take some separate statements before they’re completely cross-contaminated.”

  “I know, I know,” Rand said, running his hand over his bald head. “I’ll take care of it. You get on the warrant for me. I don’t want this fucked up, not for any reason—”

  “Why do you need a warrant?” I said, as Rand began herding us away from our improvised tent and the foul black smoke billowing out of it. “We all saw—”

  “That was a public safety operation. This is a crime scene,” Rand said. “Technically we could get by on the permission of Oakland Cemetery—”

  “What aren’t you tellin’ us?” Cinnamon said, stopping so suddenly I ran into her.

  “Cinnamon, Dakota,” Rand said, motioning to a sandy-haired female officer. “I’m … going to need to split you two up for a minute. Just long enough to take the statements.”

  “Fuck that—” I began, then put my hand to my head. “Let me guess, it’s—”

  “Just standard procedure,” Rand finished for me, staring at me and Cinnamon cautiously. Then he grinned. “You’re not going to be a pain about this, are you, Kotie?”

  “No, we’ve been around the block,” I said. The female officer smiled at us, through a dozen little white tape bandages on her face, and I nodded at Cinnamon to go with her.

  Rand walked over to his cruiser, sat down on the hood, and motioned for me to join him. I did, and for a few minutes we just watched the swarm of police activity. I folded my arms over my chest: I was still trembling with adrenaline and the crisp air felt good against my hot skin.

  After a few moments, instead of working the case, Rand surprised me by touching a sore spot. “Look, Kotie … you are going to see your Dad, aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” I snapped. “This Saturday, in fact.” Then I softened. “Look, I know Dad and I don’t get along … but you’re right. He deserves to meet his granddaughter.”

  “Yeah,” Rand said, and then fell silent.

  Instinctively, I looked for and found Cinnamon, talking with Officer Lee next to a distant grave. But ultimately my eyes were drawn back to that horrible smoke, now just trailing wisps. Revenance was gone, burned up before our eyes, and I couldn’t believe it. “We saw it. You really need to go through all this?” I asked sadly. “A warrant, separating the witnesses—”

  “Absolutely,” Rand said grimly. “A robber opened up on your Dad and me in a crowded store, but the evidence—spent casings, slugs, even the gun with prints—got thrown out because we didn’t get the shopkeeper’s permission to search. Another case went sour when two witnesses convinced each other a house’s blinds were up when the cruiser’s camera showed them down.”

  “And them?” I said, motioning to the officers milling about. “Aren’t they witnesses too?”

  Rand looked up sharply, seeing McGough yelling at an officer who had peeked under the tarp. “This is a fucking mess. You shouldn’t have been here. He shouldn’t have been here—”

  “Who is the little toad?”

  “Head of Magical Crimes Investigation, the Black Hats,” Rand said, still staring. “Homicide normally calls them after whatever’s gone down.”

  “Come to think of it, Revy wasn’t—” I began, then stopped. I didn’t want to say Revy wasn’t already dead out loud; my mind hadn’t wrapped around that yet. But my question remained: “So … why was Homicide here?”

  “To get you,” Rand said simply, and I leaned back to stare at him. “You attracted a lot of attention with your little stunt at the Masquerade a couple of months back, and I owe McGough a favor, so … when he couldn’t handle this, he called me, and I called you.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “Now I know how a marker feels—called in.”

  “I’m sorry,” Rand said. “If I’d known that fang … that Revenance wasn’t going to make it, I wouldn’t have called you. This is why McGough suddenly turned into a dick. Having someone with magical training at the scene of a magical crime creates a horrible mess.”

  “Why?” I asked. “Seems like you’d want the knowledge—”

  “If we ever do catch the guy,” Rand said grimly, “his lawyer will argue you did it.”

  “What?” I said. “Me? How? You called me after it was already started—”

  “People don’t understand magic,” Rand said. “Anything sounds plausible. If they can’t pin it on you, they’ll try McGough next, and he couldn’t even do a card trick—”

  “The largest School of Magic in North America is five miles from here,” I said. “Emory University—a billion dollar endowment, my alma mater? Maybe you’ve heard of it? Ther
e are plenty of expert witnesses you can get who can explain magic.”

  “Not to a jury,” Rand said. “Not so they’d understand. And defense lawyers know it. And the only thing that scares juries more than a wizard on the loose is a cop with a wand.”

  I sighed. I just wanted to create art, to fill the finest canvases on Earth with marks of beauty. Ours is a great world, full of magic and wonders, and yet there I sat, mourning a friend, my skin still tingling with stray mana from the spell that had killed him.

  “Why,” I asked, “do people have to go fuck everything up?”

  And then McGough was yelling at Horscht, who was … holding a spray can.

  “Oh, hell,” Rand said, rising—and I followed. “This is why we clear first responders—”

  “What do you mean, put it down?” Horscht said, jerking the can back from McGough protectively, making the little gnome even madder. “This, this is evidence—”

  “But where did you get it?” McGough barked. “Did you take a picture? Did you make some notes? Did you bother to use a glove or a baggie before getting your stupid paws on it—”

  “No, I didn’t have one,” Horscht said, jerking it back, but I noticed he was holding it with a piece of paper so his fingerprints wouldn’t get on it. “And you don’t either. I came to get an evidence bag. This is important. He had to use this to spray the tag—”

  “It wasn’t spray painted,” I said, cocking my head back at the mess that was left of the tag. “Hard to tell now, after all that fire and water, but it had to be infused oil chalk.”

  McGough looked over at me sharply, then back at the tag. “You’re right,” he said slowly, “he couldn’t have … or could he—”

  “Horscht, put it down before McGruff the Crime Dog bursts a blood vessel,” I said. “I’m sure he wants to fingerprint it, even though the killer couldn’t have used it to make this mark—”

  “I get the point, I shouldn’t have touched it,” Horscht said, staring down at the can, a plain white affair with a larger-than normal top and glittery gold oozing down one of its sides. “But I did take a picture, and I do remember where I got it—in the yard where we found the basketball goal. These crime scene guys, they think they’re so sharp but they miss stuff—”

  At that crack, McGough, who had calmed down as Horscht explained himself, suddenly glared at Rand, who scowled back at him. I remembered the ‘first responders’ crack. Oh, great. I’d just blundered onto some internal rivalry in the APD. Joy.

  “—and I thought this was evidence,” he was saying. “Why are you so sure that it isn’t?”

  “Fair question,” I said, “but Home Depot doesn’t sell spray cans filled with a thousand bucks of magical pigment, and even if they did you wouldn’t want to spray a magical mark—”

  “Why not?” Horscht said, shaking the can experimentally. “I mean—”

  “NO!” yelled McGough, but it was too late. Horscht squeezed the top, and a screaming blaze of golden flame erupted as the magical ink—magical ink, oh shit!—reacted against the stray mana floating through the air. He flinched and screamed, dropping the can, which skittered across the pavement, propelled for a moment by an elaborate trail of fire.

  Like a fat number six made of yellow and orange sparkles, the fireball folded in on itself and curled lazily up into the sky, taking the trail with it, coiling off into the clouds. Horscht was still screaming, chest and face covered in glowing wildstyle flames, but I grabbed him, flexed my hand over his face and chest, generating enough mana to pull the ink out of his skin before it could set and do damage. The sparkling stuff began attacking my skin now, a thousand pricking ants, but I just shook my hand until it dissipated into a cloud of colorful, acrid dust.

  “Damnation, Horscht,” Rand said, steadying him. “You’d think you’d never been on a crime scene before. What were you thinking?”

  “I don’t know, sir,” Horscht said, scared. “I’m sorry, sir—”

  “You can’t play around with this shit,” I said. “Magic is really dangerous.”

  “Cut him a break, he showed us all up,” McGough said. “Sorry I went off on you, Horscht. This is the best piece of evidence yet.”

  We all stared at him in shock. McGough’s bluster was gone, replaced with a quiet seriousness. He’d put on a rubber glove and picked up the can, turning it so I could see an air valve sticking out of its neck, like you see on bicycle tires—a rechargeable spray can.

  “Hell, Frost,” he said, “I sure wish you hadn’t been wrong about this.”

  I stared at it. “Me too,” I said. “I’d never heard of magical marks this powerful before today, and if someone has learned to spray paint them …”

  “ … we have a big problem,” McGough finished.

  Sticky and Sweet

  Gibbs questioned me, and it didn’t take long—he was polite, efficient, and to the point. “That does it,” he said, putting a few finishing touches on the statement. “Anything to add?”

  “No, but I do have a question,” I said, shivering, hands on my scraped knees, staring down at my jeans shorts. “Can I get my clothes back, or are they evidence now too?”

  “I’m having them dry cleaned,” Gibbs said, deadpan.

  “What?” I said, then blinked as he grinned. “Oh, very funny.”

  “Sign this, and I’ll fetch your things so you can get dressed,” Gibbs said, handing me his clipboard. “Just to warn you, they’ll probably want you at the station later.”

  I sighed and looked over the form. It summed up my morning in a few short lines: school shopping with daughter (with name and address of my alibi), police summons (with time of call noted), and failure to prevent magical attack (which resulted in watching friend die.)

  As awkward and painful a morning as I could imagine. I signed the statement and looked up to see Officer Lee leading Cinnamon back to me. They were smiling and laughing, but then Cinnamon cussed and tossed her head angrily, as if poked with a cattle prod. Lee took it in stride, but she looked up at me, not angry, just—eyes filled with immense pity.

  “Thanks, Officer,” I said, holding my arms out to Cinnamon, who leapt upon me and squeezed her arms around me in a breath-defying hug. “I appreciate it.”

  “Not a problem,” Lee said. “Your daughter is very observant. And colorful.”

  Cinnamon snorted and twitched her head, but smiled back at Lee.

  Gibbs brought my clothes from his squad car and I gratefully grabbed my turtleneck—I was now freezing. I pulled it on, chanting, “Brr, brr, brr—”

  “Get some fur,” Cinnamon sang.

  “—no thank you,” I finished, as my head popped out.

  Rand was just looking at us, one hand in his pocket, suit frayed but soul unperturbed, a snapshot of a black GQ Kojak right after a fight with a horde of zombies. It was so good to see him back on his game, even after all that horror. “You guys sure are sickeningly sweet.”

  I forced a smile—Cinnamon could get me goofing, but Revy’s death still weighed in my mind. “Just standard procedure,” I said at last, slipping on my leather chaps. “Are we done?”

  “For now,” Rand said. “But, look, we all saw what went down—but not even McGough can explain it, and he’s seen more weird shit than you and me put together. He’s already asked me to pull in the DEI’s experts, and I’ll guess Philip will want you looking into it too.”

  “Fine, that’s all I need, another excuse to talk to Philip,” I said, slipping on my vestcoat. Philip Davidson was my contact at the DEI, the Department of Extraordinary Investigations. We were dating, whenever he could make it to Atlanta. It was an odd match—he was politically right of Attila the Hun and I was an uber-treehugger—but he still drove a Prius when he wasn’t riding to my rescue in a cool black helicopter. “I’ll give my favorite bod in the spook squad a ring.”

  “Also, there’s another thing,” Rand said, kneading his brow. “Dakota, I know this is going to be difficult for you but … could you please inform the Consulat
e?”

  My smile faded. “The … Vampire Consulate?” I asked, though I knew exactly which consulate he meant. “Why me? I mean, shouldn’t the police do that job?”

  Rand’s face flickered a bit—ah, you caught me—but he persisted, nodding at the collar about my throat. “Normally, yes … but since you were their representative on site …”

  I tugged at my stainless steel collar. It was lined with neoprene to make it comfortable, but it wasn’t coming off. “I’m not their ‘representative,’ I’m just … under their protection.”

  “Whatever,” Rand said. “Dakota … could you break the news to Savannah? I know Revenance was a mutual friend, and she’d probably appreciate hearing it from you.”

  I stared at him. “You suck.”

  “That’s her you’re thinking of,” Rand said, “and to be honest, I find it a bit creepy to think that a girl I once bounced on my knee now drinks blood. Will you tell her?”

  “Yes,” I said, scowling, dialing the next school on my cell. “After our appointment—”

  “Hello, Clairmont Academy,” a female voice over the phone answered.

  “Hello, this is Dakota Frost,” I said. “We had an appointment for noon.”

  “Oh, yes, well,” the woman said, spluttering a little. “Things are filling up.”

  “I know you have a full schedule,” I said, watching Cinnamon’s eyes grow wide. “I’m sorry, but we were detained by the police—”

  “Got caught speeding?” the woman said, suddenly conspiratorial. “You should give yourself more time to get places, you know. I heard this article in the AJC … ”

  She nattered on a bit. I didn’t really know how to deal with that, and frankly I didn’t want to. “Look, I’m sorry, I wasn’t speeding,” I said quietly. “One of our friends just got attacked—”