Magic in the Blood (3 page)

No. I’d find a traditional way to throw his ass back in jail. Some way that he wouldn’t be able to plea or bribe his way out of.

I’d be at the police station in just a few minutes. Enough time to calm my pounding heart and regain my cool.

Tall buildings slid through the branches of trees that lined the streets as the bus continued into downtown. At the next stop, a man wearing a ski hat, a gray trench coat, and a black scarf walked up the two stairs and paused to scan the bus like he was looking for someone. He had a newspaper folded under his arm. The brown paper cup in his hand sent out the scent of coffee like strains of music from a caffeine angel’s harp.

He paid, glanced again at the mostly full seats, and caught me looking at him. Okay, I was really looking to make sure he wasn’t carrying a gun, but still, he caught my glance.

Here is something else that’s weird about me. I do not look away when people catch me staring at them. I’d spent too many years staring down my father even though I hadn’t ever won. My father had a deep need to control people—his only daughter perhaps most of all. Still, it taught me not to back down from confrontation.

The man with the coffee smiled, just the slightest curve of his lips, and walked my way. He didn’t look away either, and I found myself staring into a pair of eyes the color of winter honey. He had a square face with heavy brows and eyes framed by very dark lashes. I didn’t think he’d shaved this morning, and it looked good on him.

“This seat taken?” he asked.

What was it with me and strange men today?

“Yes.”

He frowned, looked toward the front of the bus. No other empty seats. But instead of pushing it, which would have gotten him a broken nose because no one was screwing with me again, he took a couple steps forward. He switched his cup into his left hand so his right hand was free to hold the overhead bar. With the newspaper pinned under his arm, he took a sip of coffee.

I sniffed him out, searching for a hint of Trager’s French cologne. Instead of Trager’s overpowering scent, this man’s cologne—sandalwood and sweet oranges—mixed with the fragrance of coffee. A delicious combination made more delicious because he didn’t smell like Trager, didn’t smell like the goons, the guns, or the danger that had suddenly pushed its way into my morning.

My gut said he was just a regular guy.

Well, Regular Guy would just have to ride the bus on his regular feet.

We rode awhile in silence, me looking out the window across the aisle, keeping him in my peripheral vision, him looking ahead. He took a sip from his cup, and the smell was sweet torture.

At the next stoplight, he let go of the bar and extended his right hand. “Paul Stotts,” he said.

I did not shake his hand. “Good for you.”

“I know you,” he said. “Allie Beckstrom, right?”

I did a quick search through my memories. I didn’t remember him, but instinct told me he wasn’t as Regular Guy as he appeared to be. “How long have you been following me?”

“Hmm,” he said around a swallow of coffee. “Just today.”

He didn’t hold himself like a Hound, didn’t have that desperate look of a Hound, and was wearing too much cologne to be a Hound. He also didn’t look or smell like he was into blood magic or drugs, so maybe he wasn’t a part of Trager’s game. But with Trager’s “my people are everywhere” speech ringing in my head, I did not want to chance it.

“Police,” he said. “Detective Stotts.”

Oh. I hadn’t expected that.

“Police? Where were you two stops back?”

“Waiting for the bus. Why?”

I hesitated. Did I really want to go into this in public? Just because the goons got off the bus with Trager didn’t mean someone else wasn’t here acting as his ears. If Trager had any brains—and I had to assume he did, since he had not only created the largest blood-and-drugs cartel in the city, but he had also pulled a get-out-of-jail-free card—he would have left someone behind to watch me and report back.

Hells, for all I knew Stotts could be his guy.

I rubbed at my forehead with the tips of my gloves. “Never mind. Are you here to make sure I get to the station?”

He glanced at me and then away. “Well, we didn’t want to leave anything to chance.”

He had no idea how chancy it had been. Still, that was interesting. I’d never had police protection or escort. At least, I didn’t remember having it. So far, I wasn’t all that impressed.

“Didn’t think I could manage it on my own?”

He smiled, that soft curve of his mouth. Okay, this close, I noticed that his bone structure had a Latino influence: arched cheekbones, square jawline, but soft eyes and lips. A very nice combination.

Yes, I looked at his left hand. Saw the wedding ring. Can’t blame me for being curious.

“We thought it might be better if you had an escort.” And I could tell by the tone of his voice, and the rhythm of his heart, that he was telling the truth.

So it was a friendly gesture. The police were looking out for me, not against me.

“How thoughtful.”

He took a drink of coffee, nodded. “You haven’t exactly been living on easy street lately. Pegged for murder, shot, chased, nearly killed by wild storm magic.”

“And the coma,” I said.

He nodded. “It just seemed like the odds of you getting to the station unscathed were pretty low.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” I drawled.

“Could be worse,” he said.

The bus pulled to another stop, and I caught a glimpse of the police station through the rain-pebbled window. This was our stop.

“Worse?”

“Decker could have been on duty.”

I winced. Officer Decker and I did not get along. Not since the time I’d Hounded a drug deal back to his brother’s girlfriend and found out I’d been mistaken. It was his brother, not the girlfriend, who was dealing and Offloading the price of magic onto a retirement home. It had been my testimony that put his brother in jail. Since then I mostly tried to avoid Decker.

Detective Stotts stepped backward and waited for me to take the place in front of him.

“Aren’t you chivalrous?” I asked as I stepped into the aisle.

“No,” he said from close behind me. “Just trying to keep my eye on you.”

“Get in line,” I muttered. Actually, I appreciated his honesty. I would appreciate it even more as soon as I confirmed he really was a police officer.

I checked the people still sitting on the bus as I shuffled down the aisle. One woman, who I thought had been asleep, lifted her head and opened her eyes to watch me go by. She smelled like sweet, sweet cherries. Blood magic. One of Trager’s people, watching, listening.

I couldn’t get off the bus and out into the freezing rain fast enough. I tucked my head and jogged toward the station doors, too many threats too early in the morning making me want to run.

But I knew better than that. One, it would exhaust me. Two, whoever was still watching me would know how spooked I really was. Instead of going faster, I slowed my pace, my boots slapping through dark puddles. I strode past the concrete blast barriers and up the steps to the front door of the police department. Other people milled along the stairs with me, too many people and too many scents for me to know which of them was part of Trager.

I pushed through the doors and expected Stotts to be right there with me, but once I made it to the lobby and wiped the rain off my face, I realized he wasn’t there. My police escort was gone, like a ghost in the wind.

Tita
, I’d learned, meant tough girl. Love had called me that since the Hounding job I’d done that put Lon Trager in jail.

“Why’d you have to make it in on time?” he asked with a wide, white smile. “Now I owe Payne ten dollars.”

“You should know better than to take bets against me,” I said.

He laughed. “Yah, yah. Come on this way.”

He started off toward his office, and I fell into step next to him, absorbing the sunlight good humor he radiated. “There’s coffee, right?”

“Oh, yah. Coffee’s onolisicious today.” He glanced over his shoulder and rolled his eyes.

So much for coffee.

“You like the new apartment?” he asked as we left the lobby behind us for a maze of cubicles and desks. “I heard you moved away from the river.”

“I like it okay. It’s better than the Fair Lead.”

“Yah, yah. That place’s a pit. Don’t know why you stayed there so long.” He opened a door to the small office he and his partner shared. He lumbered around the desk to the right and sat. Payne was not in the room.

“It was cheap.” I pulled off my coat and hung it on the coatrack that leaned against the file cabinet. With me and Love in the office, I was fast running out of breathing space.

Think calm thoughts
, I told myself. There was plenty of room for me, plenty of room for Love, and plenty of room for lots and lots and lots of air.

“You okay?” Love asked.

I nodded and took the seat in front of the desk. “Small spaces.” I shrugged like it was no big deal.

He raised his eyebrows. “Want me to open the door?”

“No. I’m good.”

He gave me a considering look. I (of course) met his gaze straight on.

“Okay,” he finally said. He pulled a file folder off of a stack to his left, opened it, and tapped his computer keyboard. “Right.” He looked over at me and gave me a nod. “You ready for this?”

“Sure.”

He pulled out a tape recorder and turned it on and then held it close to his mouth while he said his name, the date, and some other things I wasn’t paying attention to. What I was paying attention to were the pictures on the wall. Him towering over a group of kids at a school, him and a police dog. And one of him and his dark, lean partner, Lia Payne. Other than that, the walls were off-white cracked plaster.

There was something odd about the walls, a cool dampness that emanated from them. I looked closer. Those weren’t cracks in the plaster. They were very fine, very subtle Blocking spells, placed there by adding lead and glass to the paint or plaster and then drawing out the glyphs with Intent. Pulling a magic fast one in here would rebound back on the caster. The glyphs seemed strange to me, since I didn’t remember ever noticing them when I’d come in to talk with Love before. I wondered if they’d created the spells recently, or maybe if they’d done it because of my spectacular meltdown a few months ago.

Magic shifted in me, stretched so hard I had to take a deep breath to make room for it. I hoped Love didn’t notice.

The door opened and Detective Payne walked in, three coffee cups in her hand. The door stayed slightly ajar behind her, offering a tantalizing glimpse of the space behond it.

“Hello, Allie. I knew you’d make it. No sugar, right?”

She handed the coffee over my shoulder and I smiled up at her. The woman never smiled, but I liked her anyway. Clear, efficient, and not afraid to make hard choices on a moment’s notice. She must have a soft side since I knew she had a couple of kids at home that her husband took care of during the day.

And, hey, she remembered how I liked my coffee.

“Right. Thanks.” I took a drink and shuddered. It was really and truly horrible, but it was hot and caffeinated, and I was desperate. I held my breath and went for another gulp.

She gave Love his coffee, which smelled like powdered hot cocoa mix, and held her hand out to him.

“Pay up.”

Love sighed and shifted his weight to access his wallet in his back pocket. “Fine. Fine.” He sifted through a couple bills. “We said five, right?”

“Twenty.”

“Ten.” He slapped a bill in her hand. “You tired of robbing me yet?”

“Just look at it as my way of keeping that superhero collection of yours under control.”

“Superhero?” I asked. “Which one?”

“Deadpool,” Love said.

“Who?”

“See?” Payne said. “No one even knows him.”

Love just shook his head. “He’ll be bigger than Batman, I’m telling you. People love him.”

Payne drank her coffee and gave him a level stare. “People love Batman because he’s a good guy.”

“Really? You read him?”

She blinked a couple times like that was the stupidest thing she’d heard all day. “I don’t read comics.”

“See how she is?” Love shook his head sadly. “No heart for the art.”

I took another drink of my coffee. Winced at the horror of it. “I think it’s the coffee. It could make anyone mean.”

Payne did not smile, but her eyes twinkled. She pocketed the cash and sat at her desk. “Yah,” Love said, “That’s why I drink the cocoa. Keeps me sweet.”

Payne just raised one eyebrow.

Love thumbed the recorder back on. “State your name, please.”

I did so. Love took a nice, noisy slurp of his cocoa and wrote something down on the yellow legal pad in front of him. Then he asked me to state where I was the day my father died and to tell him what happened in as much detail as possible.

So I did. The entire statement didn’t take longer than fifteen minutes. I’d Hounded for Mama Rossitto a hit that was killing a five-year-old out in St. Johns. I thought the magical Offload was my father’s signature and had taken a cab to my dad’s office, where I told him I was advising Mama to contact the police and then sue my father for illegal Offloading practices.

I told Love my dad denied that he or his company had Offloaded on the kid. I told Love I stabbed my dad’s finger—and my own—with a straight pin and worked a blood magic Truth spell at his request. Even under the influence of Truth, my father had told me he and his company were not involved with the Offload.

“Were you angry?” Payne, who was also taking notes at her desk, asked.

Okay, here’s where I realized it might have been smart to have an attorney come in with me. Hells, how stupid could I be?

Still, honesty was the best policy, right?

“Yes, I was angry. I thought my father had Offloaded a huge magical price onto a five-year-old kid and that the kid was dying.”

“Was that the only reason you went to see your father that day?” Love asked.

I knew what he was getting at. I’d managed to avoid seeing my dad for seven years before I’d gone storming into his office. And on the one day I did go see him, he was killed. It was a pretty hard coincidence to swallow.

“That was the only reason.”

Love nodded. “Did you see anyone else while you were there?”

“His receptionist. I . . . uh . . . cast Influence on her so she would show me into my dad’s office without making me wait.”

Love’s eyebrows went up. Influence came naturally to my family. With a smile and just the barest whisper of magic, a Beckstrom could make almost anyone do almost anything. Still, any spell cast legally on another human being had to be done with their consent. That was a damn hard thing to actually enforce, but the spirit of the law ruled in magic-related cases.

Cases like murder.

“Did you Influence anyone else in the building?” Love asked.

“No.”

“So other than your father, his receptionist was the only other person you spoke to while in the building,” Love said.

“No. Zayvion Jones was there too.”

This time it was Detective Payne who gave me the weird look. She held so very still I realized she had the bones to make a lovely marble statue. Then she looked down at the pad of paper in her hands and wrote something.

But it was more than just the weird look that had me wondering what the big deal was about Zayvion. It was the sudden scent of surprise, lemon sour, and something else—a confusion of anger or maybe just worry—that radiated off of her. She knew Zayvion. Or knew something about him.

Wasn’t that interesting?

“Do you have contact information for Mr. Jones?” she asked.

“No. If I did know where he lived, I don’t now. I don’t have his phone number either.”

She nodded and went back to writing. News of my coma had been all the rage while I’d been sleeping it off. There probably wasn’t anyone in Portland who wasn’t up on the latest disaster in the Beckstrom family.

“Okay, then,” Love said. “That’s it. Thank you, Ms. Beckstrom.” He turned off the tape recorder and made another note on his paper. “So. You seen Zayvion Jones since then?” he asked without looking up at me.

“From what I can remember, I’ve talked to him once since I’ve been back.”

“How long ago?” He still wasn’t looking at me, still had his pen on the paper, and I was pretty sure he wasn’t actually writing anything, just going through the motions. No more sunshine and sandy beaches. Makani Love was nothing but rain-cold police procedure now.

My personal life was none of the police’s business. Except, of course, when it was.

Zayvion had been noticeably absent. It was possible he didn’t want to see me anymore. Possible he had changed his mind about us. I wouldn’t blame him. My life was full of complications. And so far, it didn’t look like it was getting less complicated anytime soon.

I had seen him this morning—on the street, watching the bus go by. Or at least I thought it was him. But maybe I was just seeing something, someone, I wanted to see in the rain and darkness.

“The last time I spoke to him was about two weeks ago, when I first got back to town.”

Love looked up from his paperwork. No smile this time. “If you do see Zayvion Jones, we’d appreciate knowing about it.”

“Why? Is he in trouble?”

“No. We just need him for some paperwork. Nothing serious.”

Right. It didn’t take a Hound to know he was lying.

“Okay,” I said. “Is that it? Can I leave now?”

Love looked over at Payne, and she closed the pad she’d been writing on.

“How much do you know about the Magical Enforcement Response Corps?” she asked.

I knew nothing—didn’t even know the police had a separate department to deal with magical crimes. I just thought some of the police officers were cross-trained to deal with magic, like Love and Payne. “Have we talked about it before?”

“No.”

“Then I don’t think I’ve heard of it.”

Love grunted and took another slurp of his coffee. “We don’t go out of the way to make the MERC public, yah?”

“So why tell me?”

They didn’t say anything. I looked between them, at Love’s wide, usually happy face, at Payne’s thin, perpetually scowling one.

“Is there a case you need my help with? A Hounding job or something?”

Love sat back a little, his chair groaning. “You’ve had some problems with magic, yah?”

Besides blowing my brains out with magic and doing a three-week coma?
I thought.
Besides these lovely colorful tattoos down my right arm and bands across my left? Besides carrying magic in me instead of just drawing on it from the stores beneath the city like sane people? Besides Trager stabbing my leg for a syringe full of my blood and the magic it contained, and of course, that freaky visit from my dad’s ghost this morning? No, no problems at all.

“Define
problems
,” I said.

“We want you to know you can call us—any of us—if something goes wrong again,” Love said. “The law is here to protect you.”

“What makes you think I need protection?”

“In this city, everybody needs protection.” He smiled, but it was the grim look of a man who had seen the worst of what people could do—with and without magic.

Here was where I should lay my cards on the table and tell them about Lon Trager on the bus. I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. And it wasn’t some sort of Silence or Choke spell.

I hesitated because if I told them Lon Trager wanted Pike, I’d end up whisked out of town under police custody, thus killing any chance of me convincing Pike he should come to the police to make sure they could take care of Trager aboveboard and legally. I did not want Pike to go vigilante and get himself killed or thrown in jail.

And if the police didn’t rush me out of town, they might just tell me to take out a restraining order on Trager, which wouldn’t do me any good if one of his unrestrained “people” decided to kill me. Barring those two options, Love and Payne might decide instead to tail me 24/7, which I would hate. I don’t like people watching me.