Precinct 13 (31 page)

“Next time I hold on to it,” Jones said.

“No next time for me, thank you,” I said, handing it over. The dancing lights dimmed to pale streaks before disappearing entirely. I didn’t even want to go back if it meant returning to the dark place where my worst nightmares had come true.

I shivered. It was colder now than it had been at Jones’s house. I supposed that was because it was the day the cows got mutilated—two nights ago?—and not tonight at all. Snow drifted down in lazy, light flakes onto the field. Cows lowed in the pasture on the other side of the barn.

“We’re not going to be able to see much from here,” I noted. A light on the side of the building cast a bright yellow spotlight on the barn door. Snow glittered in the beam. It was difficult to see much in the night beyond, and the structure of the outbuilding blocked most of our view of the highway and the field where the cows roamed, anyway. With a heavy sigh, I muttered, “This is great.”

Jones didn’t take my disappointment personally. With a shrug, he said, “This is where it ended up. I’m just glad we seem to be here at the right time and the right place.”

“And I don’t suppose we can just walk over there?”

“Nope,” he said. “We have to stay inside the lines until it’s time to go back.”

I shoved my hands into my coat pockets and shifted from
foot to foot to try to stay warm. The hay had grown up to our toes already. I strained to see or hear anything beyond the barn. “How long until something happens?”

Jones didn’t check his watch, but instead looked at his feet. “Do you remember how tall the hay was?”

Almost knee-high. The stalks shimmied as they grew, like images of stop-motion. I estimated it wouldn’t be longer than ten minutes. “Will…whatever attacks the cattle be able to see us?”

Jones shook his head. “Not from here.”

“I guess that’s some comfort.”

“What are you expecting?” His breath wafted from his lips like smoke.

A dragon? Some other flying mythical beast? “I’m not sure,” I said. I held my hand up with my fingers pressed together firmly and mimed hitting something straight down. “What’s taller than a cow and has a long, flat paw that could go like this?”

A small bulldozer, like a Bobcat, chugged down the highway. I saw the bucket at the same time Jones remarked, “That.”

I was glad I couldn’t see the action when I heard the first sickening crunch. I distracted myself by asking Jones, “A bulldozer! Why didn’t we see the treads?”

“The ground is frozen solid, and it’s snowing. Besides, Olson had his tractor all over this place.”

“So, what do we do now?” I asked, wincing at the sounds coming from beyond the barn.

Jones pointed to the hay, which had nearly reached knee-high. “Go back,” he said.

I shook my head. “I can’t.”

Jones nodded. “There really is no other way. If it’s any consolation, you already did this.”

“What?”

“We’re the ones who made this fairy ring in the first place,” Jones said. With a little rueful laugh, “Just like my mother said. I was the only fairy here.”

“But, I just, the Night Mare or whatever, I don’t think I can take it.”

“That’s what I’m saying. We already made it home safely. Look at the hay. If we hadn’t left, it would have kept growing. We have to go back this way.” He withdrew the vial from where he’d stashed it. Uncorking the top, he put his thumb over the opening. He spun around. As he did, he lifted his finger. Salt sprayed out. When it hit the edges of the fairy ring, sparks flashed, as bright as lightning.

The salt burned through the magic in a second. Jones grabbed my hand and stepped over the edge.

And we fell into utter blackness, as dark as unconsciousness.

This time I clung on tightly to Jones. My fingernails dug into the flesh his palm.

Out of the darkness came a horse. It was huge. Its mane was silken black. As it galloped, stars twinkled along its haunches. Eyes like red-hot pokers bored into my soul, trying to tease out my greatest fear.

I crushed Jones’s fingers in a death grip, but no voices came. No one tried to convince me that my life here was a fraud and that, in reality, I was huddled in some corner in a padded room mumbling to myself.

The night horse thundered past. As the clatter of the hooves receded, I thought I heard: “Are you sure?”

My stomach clenched as laughter reverberated in the emptiness, but I held on. We seemed to flip head over heels in the zero gravity of fairy space. Passing through something gauzy, like a curtain of cobwebs, we stumbled into Jones’s lawn. More practiced at this, Jones turned his tumble into a graceful roll. Partly propelled by his momentum before he let my hand go, but mostly due to my own clumsiness, I tripped over my own feet and went facedown.

Again.

At least I didn’t drop into any cow manure. My coat and the knees of my jeans were grass stained. Wet seeped in everywhere, but I lay there, hugging the ground. I would have kissed it, but Jones was already giving me a funny look.

“You want some hot chocolate or something?” he asked. When I stayed on the lawn, unmoving, he offered: “Or a hot toddy?”

I’d never had a hot toddy before in my life, but I knew it had alcohol in it. “That sounds awesome.”

Jones invited me into his kitchen. He put a battered teakettle on the gas stove. I took a seat on the stool near the island counter. The walls were a cream color that the yellow overhead light made soft and inviting. Herbs grew in a box near the window, and a philodendron flowed over the top of the refrigerator. He didn’t have a lot of kitsch or other decorations, but the room felt homey.

“This is nice,” I said. It seemed much less like something from a magazine, and I wondered if this was Jones’s favorite space.

“Thanks.” He set two mugs on the counter. Brown with bright white streaks, they were handcrafted and sturdylooking.
From a bottom drawer Jones pulled out a bottle of whiskey and splashed a bit into each cup. After digging around on the spice rack, he added a clove and a stick of cinnamon. “This will settle your nerves.”

I started to protest that my nerves were fine, but my teeth chattered. I was still trembling from our trip through the fairy ring. I wanted reassurances that I wasn’t dreaming all this from some psych ward. I knew Jones would give them to me, but I was afraid I’d start wondering if it was all just the rationalizations of my own insanity. So, I focused on something sure to distract. “I’m sorry about, well, the resignation and everything.”

The teakettle whistled, and he took it off the burner. He poured the boiling water into the mugs with the whiskey and spices. He shrugged. “I brought it on myself. I suppose if I wasn’t such an asshole, people wouldn’t be in such a hurry to get rid of me.”

“I think people like you more than you realize.” At least more than I realized. I didn’t know what else to say, so I added, “Two cases closed. That must feel good.”

He pushed the mug in my direction. “I guess. I still feel like we’re missing something critical in the necromancer case, but I can’t put my finger on it.”

“Do you think it’s something to do with Boyd?” I wrapped my hands around the pottery, letting it warm my fingers. The hot whiskey and cloves had an almost medicinal scent, but I took a cautious sip. It was powerful enough to clear my sinuses. It burned down my throat, and settled like an ember in my stomach.

Jones watched my reaction to the drink and then said, “Boyd? He was on the team?”

Now I was sure there was something strange going on
with Boyd. “Yes,” I said, taking another swig of the toddy. It went down a little smoother, though I coughed a bit when the powerful liquid hit the back of my throat. “Everyone keeps forgetting he was, but I have an e-mail from him.”

“Oh, yes,” he said, as though uninterested. He seemed to search for something at the bottom of his mug for a few moments. Then, his eyes returned to me. “All right then, who do you think was driving that bulldozer that took out Olson’s cattle?”

I wondered at the sudden switch in topic, but I rolled with it for now. “I think it’s one of two possibilities. Either it’s a disgruntled neighbor, or it was the rancher himself.”

“For the insurance money?”

“Right.” I finished off my drink, careful to leave the clove bud at the bottom.

“I’m sure Peterson’s already on that,” he said, reaching for where his phone was plugged into the charger. “But I’ll text him a reminder.”

“It’s going to be hard to stay out of precinct business, isn’t it?”

His thumbs paused over the keyboard. He shut the phone and set it back down. “Hell yeah.”

Jones and I left his house at the same time. When I asked him where he was off to at this hour, he told me that he planned to deliver some coffee and donuts to whoever was on duty guarding Stone’s body.

There was an awkward moment of silence that hung between us, as a thousand different responses spiraled through my mind. Eventually, I just said, “That’s nice.”

“Don’t get high and mighty on me,” he said warningly. We were standing on his stoop, while he finished locking up. “I’ve known Stone a lot longer than you.”

The alcohol fueled my audacity. “And yet you would let her die?”

“I would,” he said, his eyes flashing. “I don’t think there’s anything she’d want more than to go out a hero, honorably. If she comes back a soulless automaton, I will see it as my duty to take her out. Stone wouldn’t want to live that way.”

I flushed. I could understand his point, but I wasn’t finished arguing by far. “Why do you hate the unnatural so much? If you were more open to it, you would never have gotten into trouble with your girlfriend. She would have nothing to blackmail you with.”

He turned sharply and put a finger in my face. “It’s personal.”

His hand had dropped and balled into a tight fist. I didn’t think he’d really hit me, but I could tell that it was a struggle. I put my hands up, as if in surrender. As I walked to my car I could only think that some unnatural must have really fucked him over.

Maybe it was his mom.

I wondered what visions the Night Mare gave him.

I came home to discover my roommate flirting outrageously with my boyfriend. They were sitting at the kitchen table. The house smelled of baked apples and cinnamon. Robert had made his famous apple crumble without me!

“I was just telling Valentine he’d make an awesome dragon,” Robert said as I was hanging up my coat.

I nearly choked. “What?”

“In
ElfWars
,” Robert said. “I was just telling him how great the game is.”

“I’d rather be an orc,” Valentine said.

“You’re far too intelligent and elegant to be an orc,” Robert insisted. “If you really don’t want to be a dragon, I could see you as an elf.”

Valentine made a face. “Elves remind me too much of fairy. Speaking of, how was your date with the little prince, Alex?”

Robert looked shocked and offended so before I answered, I said, “He’s talking about the ones with pixie wings, Robert.” I pulled up a chair and sat down. “Things with Jones went okay, I guess. We’ve determined that the cows were killed by a bulldozer. Then we got into a fight about Stone.”

I wanted to tell him about the Night Mare, but with Robert in the room with wide, curious eyes, it would have to wait.

“Bulldozers.” Valentine sounded disappointed. “Nothing more interesting?”

“Nope,” I said. “Just bulldozers.”

“Who would kill a cow with a bulldozer?” Robert wanted to know. “That’s awful.”

Given that I could still remember the sound of shattering skulls, I had to agree. “That’s the only real question we have left: ‘Who done it?’ ”

The boys plied me with leftover crumble and ice cream, and we stayed up another hour or so talking over the merits of elves versus orcs. Somewhere around one thirty, I crawled into bed with Valentine.

When we had snuggled under the comforter, I held him tightly against my body. Into his ear, I whispered, “Tell me you’re real.”

His fingertips brushed my ribs, causing a quiver all the way down through the core of my body. He smiled at my response. “Is this real enough for you?”

“Not nearly enough.” To show him what I needed, I tightened my grip until my fingernails left marks in his skin.

“Ah, I see,” he said. “Then I’ll have to show you a lot more.”

I’d just fallen asleep when the phone rang. Nearly falling out of bed, I dug in through my pants pocket to find it. The caller ID told me it was Jack. I answered, “What’s happened?”

“Breakout,” he said. “Someone sprung Brooklyn.”

“Boyd,” I whispered.

Beside me, Valentine murmured a sleepy, “Wha…?”

“There’s an APB out for her,” Jack said. “There’s not much you can really do, but I thought I should warn you. Who knows what she’s up to, but she might be coming your way.”

I hardly had a chance to thank him when the bedroom door snapped back on its hinges and a bolt of magic shot out, aimed directly at my chest.

In a blur of inhuman speed, Valentine moved to block the blast. It hit him in the face so hard that he was knocked backward. Dazed, he fell against me, pinning me under his weight.

“Bind the dragon, quickly!” Brooklyn screeched. “If I hold him unconscious for too long he’ll begin to transform.”

She didn’t try to keep her voice down, so I could only assume that Robert was under some kind of spell. At least I hoped that was all they’d done to him.

Without the lights on, it was difficult to see anything more than the shape of the man who came scurrying in to do her bidding. He carried a loop of some material that let off a faint, bluish glow.

I clutched Valentine protectively, at least as best as I could with both my hands stuck underneath him.

The man hesitated at our bedside, uncertain what to do with my obstruction.

“Oh, just tie them both up!” Brooklyn shouted. “If he gets too big I’ll have to let him go anyway.”

Beneath my fingers, I felt Valentine’s flesh begin to harden into scales. The springs of the bed squeaked as his body expanded slowly. Underneath him, I felt my body being squeezed.

As the man climbed onto the bed and bent over us, it was impossible not to identify Brooklyn’s minion in the magical glow of the wiry rope. “Boyd!” I shouted in horror. “I knew it! But why?”