Magic In the Blood

Chapter Three

Before I’d taken more than three steps across the lobby, a man’s voice called out. “Hey, Tita!”

Detective Love, who, if you believed his stories, had a mama from Samoa and a daddy who was a Scottish pirate, strolled my way. Love was six foot three if he was an inch, and almost as wide. His dark wavy hair fell down to ox-thick shoulders as broad as a city bus. He wore a bright blue button-down shirt and tan pants, a combination that made me think of sand and sky on a distant, sunnier shore.

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.

I took another drink of coffee to cover my pause. Pike. First I’d talk to him, find out what the old Hound knew. Then I’d drag his stubborn hide down here to the police to make sure he was protected from Trager right along with me. If I was getting whisked out of town by the cops, Pike was coming with me.

“So, just in case you need protection,” Love continued, “we want you to meet a few people on the MERC force. You have time now, yah?”

“I guess.”

“Good. Come on this way.”

He stood, filling the free space in the room, and I stood too because even with the door propped open, the room suddenly felt much too small for the three of us. I stepped aside so Mr. Island Warmth could walk past me, and then grabbed my coat and exited the room right behind him. Payne followed, a blade of dark shadow on our heels.

Love led us through the maze of cubicles again, and the tightness in my chest squeezed harder. Getting out of that room hadn’t done much good for my claustrophobia. Even here it seemed too small for so many people, and so many desks, and so many walls. There wasn’t enough air.

I gritted my teeth and thought calm thoughts about big open fields and big open oceans and big open skies, where there was plenty of room and plenty of open and plenty of me breathing slowly and smoothly and not hyperventilating like a moron.

Then we were out into the lobby, into high ceilings and echoes and room to breathe, and no more hyperventilation. A hall to the left took us to another door that was card-locked and also had a hell of a Diversion glyph on it. Most people probably wouldn’t even see the door with that big of a Diversion operating. Behind the door was a stairwell. We went down at least two flights, the only sound the squeak of Love’s right sneaker, the clomping of my boots, and the ghostly hush of Payne’s sensible loafers.

Love stopped on a landing and turned toward a wall with a peeling paint job. It smelled strange here, a weird blend of hot epoxy and dill. Love pulled a card out of his pocket and held it waist high-as if there were some sort of scanner embedded in the flaking paint.

And look at that, there was.

A laser read his card, and then he fingered the motions to a glyph, which I couldn’t see since he was wide enough to block his hand and most of the stairwell from my view. He unlocked the Diversion glyph, and the wall with a crappy paint job became a wall with a door.

“Buckle up, Beckstrom,” he said as he stepped through the open door. “You must be this tall to ride the ride.”

I strolled into the room. Payne stepped in and locked the door behind us. I smelled the burnt epoxy stink of the Diversion spell snapping back into place as the door closed. Someone was doing a lot to keep this room beneath people’s notice.

For good reason. The room was large, windowless, and crammed full of so much magic and magical equipment, I literally felt it like a punch to the gut. An ant-bite rashy tingle washed over my skin and made me want to scratch every inch of my body.

As if that weren’t enough, magic twisted inside me, pushing against my bones, my muscles, my skin. My ears started ringing and the edges of my vision shaded. I took a deep breath and cleared my mind of the panic that was coming on fast. Panic was bad. Panic would make me lose control of the magic inside me.

I am calm. Calm as a river. Calm as blue sky. I held still, intent on my own breathing. Inhale, exhale. I did not need to lose control of the magic inside me right here in front of the police. They’d have me locked up in a glyph-warded room faster than I could say hocus-pocus.

That is, if I didn’t burn the whole place down first.

I am a river, river, river.

“You okay?” Love asked.

“Good,” I lied. I even put on a smile. It must have been close to convincing. He nodded. Magic inside me twisted, pushed to get out, to be used, licking hot along the whorls of color from my shoulder to my fingertips, cooling each band on my left hand and arm. It begged to be used. It would be so easy to draw on magic and cast it-not that I even knew what I’d cast it for. And then I’d pay the price.

No way.

Magic turned again, pushed at my skin. I did nothing. Nothing. And magic slowly ebbed.

Go, me.

“So here’s where a lot of it takes place.” Love waved his hand, gesturing at the room as a whole. I had no idea what he was talking about.

He did not step forward. The room stretched back farther than I could see, but as though I were looking through a fishbowl, I could not focus enough to actually make out the back wall. They had heavy Diversions in the room, probably some Glamour or Illusion, keeping my eyes believing what they wanted me to believe.

There could be an entire three-ring circus back there, elephants and all, and I wouldn’t see it through those spells. It was the most effective magical version of a one-way mirror I’d ever seen.

“All what takes place?” I asked.

Love pointed to my left. “Watching the city for magical crimes. Over there we have surveillance equipment in the most heavily populated areas of the city.” He pointed to my right. “Over there we have a magic-blocked holding cell, and back there”-he pointed at the fuzzy end of the room-“are restrooms.” He smiled.

Restrooms. Right.

“Okay, so you’re equipped to detect magic and crimes dealing with magic. Why show me?”

“Because, Ms. Beckstrom,” a new but familiar voice said from the fuzzy side of the room, “we need your permission to let us keep you safe.”

Paul Stotts, my bus buddy, appeared like, you know… magic, out of a thick fog that was the other side of the room. Well, well. He really was a cop. Let the show begin.

From Love and Payne’s body language, I figured he must be the boss here and maybe not a very well-liked man. Something about him made them uncomfortable. Something I just wasn’t getting.

Three people walked up behind him. Of the two men, one looked like an aging hippie gone bald with a pigtail of hair at the nape of his neck, and the other was about four feet tall and sandy-haired. He gave off a clean-cut accountant vibe. The woman was heavy and looked like she’d just come in from working as both fry cook and bouncer at a truck stop. They were all dressed in street clothes. Like everything else in the room, their scents were overpowered by the strong smell of magic.

“This is part of the team from Magical Enforcement Response Corps,” Stotts went on. “Officers Garnet”-the hippie nodded-“Julian”-the accountant smiled-“and Richards.” The woman held up one hand. “They have all been specially trained in magical abuse investigation, control, and regulation.”

“Nice to meet you all.”

Stotts walked forward. The rest of the MERC team went back to the fuzzier side of the room, chatting quietly amongst themselves where I could not hear what they said.

“I asked Detectives Love and Payne to bring you here after you gave your statement so you would better understand the lengths we will go to make sure you are safe.”

There it was again, people thinking I was in danger. “Are you telling me I need you to look after me?” I did not like people telling me I couldn’t handle myself or my life. Hells, I’d been mauled by my father’s ghost just this morning and managed to come out of that okay.

“Not at all,” he said smooth and nice-like. “I am asking for your help.”

Well. I had not expected that. My witty retort about not needing bodyguards or babysitters died on my lips.

“Excuse me?”

“We’d like to hire you to Hound a case we’re working on.”

“Why me?”

“It involves magic.”

If he had said it involved juggling ostriches, I wouldn’t have been more confused. All Hounding jobs involved magic. He wasn’t smiling, but I could tell he was enjoying himself. I gave him a dirty look and tried again. “Why not hire Martin Pike or one of the other Hounds who contract with the police?”

“We think you would be the best person for the job.”

Okay, there was more behind that. They wanted to either keep an eye on me, keep me in the city, or what? Maybe all the other Hounds were busy. Maybe I was being called in for a second opinion. That happened a lot-using several Hounds on one job to make sure the results were the same.

And here’s the deal: I hadn’t done any Hounding jobs for weeks. If I was ever going to make a living at it again, I needed to stop being afraid of what might happen if I lost control of the magic inside me and take the damn job. Plus, I needed the money.

“You know my rates?” I asked.

He nodded.

“Then okay. I’ll take the job. What is it? Where is it? Who is it?”

“Before I get into those things, we need your permission to tag you.”

“What?” I said a little too loudly. “No. Absolutely not.” Tags were the polite way to tell someone they were going to be under constant police surveillance. Spied on. Wired. Well, wireless. Magic had brought some amazing advancements into the spy biz too. Which would also mean someone was going to have to Proxy the price of the magic used to follow me around.

There was no way in hell I was going to let someone spy on me.

Stotts looked like he’d expected that. He rubbed at the edge of his jaw.

“Ms. Beckstrom,” he said, all business now, “because of the volatile nature of this case, the police feel it would be in your best interest for us to know where you are and who is with you at all times while you are on the job. We will be able to respond much faster to any threat, whether it be a common crime or magically based. We will be able to keep you safe. It would be a smart move on your part to let us do this for you, and you would also be doing the MERC a favor.”

“By giving you permission to spy on me?”

“By helping us find the criminal we’re looking for.”

“If I find whoever is doing whatever, I will report it to you. I don’t need to be tagged. As a matter of fact, tagging me might interfere with my ability to Hound.” For one thing, I wouldn’t be able to get the stink of their spell off me, and that would make me trackable to more people than just the police.

Magic twisted in me, pressed up, out, wanting to be used. My right arm itched, stung. I held still and held Stotts’ gaze. I forced my thoughts to quiet, settle, become smooth like glass. He couldn’t make me do this. That was also against the law.

Magic pushed, so I let it pour up from where it was held in deep natural cisterns beneath the city, into my feet, bones, body, rushing up my right side, webbing out beneath my skin, then like a loop, a battery, let it flow out of my left hand’s fingers to fall back into the ground again.

I knew no one could see the magic flowing into me. Magic is fast, invisible to the naked eye. Which was why Hounds were needed to trace back the burnt remains of spells.

And all the time that we stood there glaring at each other, I didn’t draw on it, didn’t mutter one mantra or wiggle so much as a single pinkie.

I was a frickin’ poster child of self-control today.

And this poster child was done with the stare down.

“Good-bye, Detective Stotts. Thanks for the offer.” I turned and headed to the door. Got there too. Payne had her hand on the handle and turned it for me.

“Okay,” Stotts said.

I looked over my shoulder. “Okay what?”

“Okay, we won’t tag you, although I’m strongly against it. Will you still take the job?”

I thought he’d put up more of a fight about the whole tagging thing. Still, the money would be good, and I would be back on my feet, Hounding again. I liked that idea. “Yes.”

“Good.” He walked over to me. “I’ll take you out to the site tonight.”

This was the part I didn’t like about Hounding for the cops. To not contaminate evidence or influence a Hound’s opinion in any way, the cops kept you in the dark until you were actually on the job.

“Can it wait that long?” Spells got cold pretty fast, which was why so many Hounds were on call for the police.

“For what you’re looking for, yes. Can you be back here by five?”

I paused like I was thinking that out. It was an old habit. My social calendar hadn’t been booked in years. Oh, wait. I actually did have a dinner planned with Violet. Hounding usually left me pretty tired, even more so if it involved something the police were interested in. Like dead bodies.

I’d have to call Violet and reschedule. I nodded. “I can do that.”

“Then meet me here,” Stotts said.

“Right here?” I pointed at the floor.

“Outside.”

“All right. See you then.”

Love, who had been silent through this, cleared his throat. “ ’Kay, then. Anything else, Detective Stotts?” he asked.

“That’s it. Thanks for coming by, Ms. Beckstrom.” He didn’t offer to shake my hand, which I thought was pretty smart of him. I was not going to carry around the scent of the cop who was sending me in on a job. Just because Hounds worked for the police didn’t mean they didn’t work for anyone else. And I was getting the feeling there might be people in town other than the police who were interested in keeping an eye on me.

“I’ll see you in a few hours,” I said. I turned just as Payne unlocked the Diversion spell.

I looked at Love. The big guy didn’t seem worried, but he wasn’t his happy self either. He nodded and pointed at the door. I followed his cue. Payne leaned against the open door, scowling like normal.

“Thanks.” I strolled through the doorway and took a deep breath on the other side. The prickly ant-bite rashy tingle I’d felt from the moment I stepped into that room eased up. I didn’t care who was watching-I scrubbed at my right shoulder and down my arm, trying to relieve the ghostly itch.

Love came through the doorway, and Payne followed and locked it all up again so that it looked like a wall full of bad paint. That was a hell of a spell. Really masterfully cast. If I had the time, I would totally want to Hound it and see how it was made.

“You think that was smart?” Love asked.

“What? Taking the job?”

“Not the job,” Love said. “You’re a good Hound. I mean going into it without being tagged.”

“Do you know which investigation he’s hiring me for?”

“Classified,” Payne said. “MERC doesn’t have to share files with city police.”

“Okay,” I said. I didn’t know that, but it wasn’t what I had asked. “Has he told you what the job is?”

“No,” Love said. “But Stotts doesn’t tag every Hound he uses. Just the ones who might be in danger working his cases.”

“Like who?”

“Piller.”

“I don’t know a Hound named Piller.”

“ ’Cause he died six years ago,” Love said. “Hounding for Stotts.”

“Listen,” I said. “Hounding is risky-with or without the police or MERC involved. One death in six years isn’t enough to make me let people spy on me.”

“Sixteen,” Payne said.

“What?”

“Sixteen Hounds have died in the last six years. All of them were working for Stotts.”

Whoa. That was suddenly a whole different thing. How could I not know about that?

I could not know about that because Hounds are insular, solitary, suspicious people who didn’t talk to one another, didn’t help one another, and didn’t want to be around one another for any reason. Not even to talk about their own dead.

“Is he making them walk through fire or something?”

Payne scowled, and I had the feeling she wasn’t in the mood for a smart-ass.

Luckily, Love answered me instead.

“It’s like bad luck, yah?” He walked up the stairwell, his shoe squeaking. “When it comes to Stotts, he’s got more bad luck than good. Bad magic, bad cases, bad survival odds. He’s cursed.”

“Is that supposed to scare me?” I asked. “Maybe you don’t know the kind of men I’ve dated. Or-oh, here-did you ever meet my dad? How about all those fabulous women he married? Cursed doesn’t even begin to cover my life.”

Love grunted and called me some name in Hawaiian I didn’t understand.

I followed him up the stairs. “I’m not going to let him spy on me,” I said. “Do you know what being tagged would do for my business? People won’t hire me if they think the police are watching me. A girl has to make rent.”

“Thought you had your daddy’s fortune,” Love said.

“Well, don’t believe everything you read.” The fact was I did have some money from his estate, but there were so many legal complications and roadblocks to me actually getting my inheritance, I was still living pretty much month to month. And on top of that, I had some hefty guilt about using money my dad had earned by twisting, manipulating, and destroying lives.

Call me a softy.

“Hard to collect a paycheck when you’re dead,” Payne said quietly behind me.

“Fine.” I stopped walking. Both of them stopped too and looked at me. “Tell me what I’m getting into and convince me it’s worth getting tagged and ruining my reputation.”

Payne crossed her arms over her chest and leaned one shoulder against the wall. “Stotts gets involved in some heavy stuff. Dark magics.”

“Like blood magic?” I asked, resisting the urge to rub at the scars on my left shoulder. Those scars had been the result of some cranked-up gutter trash jumping me with a blood magic spell and a knife a few months ago. “I can handle that.”

She shook her head. “Not just blood and drugs, Allie.”

“How about giving me some specifics?”

She just gave me a hard look and said nothing.

Great.

“I’m a big girl. I know how to take care of myself.”

“Yah, Tita, we know.” Love didn’t sound convinced.

Nice. Where was the love when a girl needed it?

“You have a cell we can reach you at?” He started up the stairs again, and Payne and I fell into step behind him.

“I did,” I said over the echo of our footsteps. “I will. I’m getting it replaced today.” Again, I thought. Ever since I’d turned into a walking receptacle for magic, cell phones worked for about a day, and then the battery burned out and the wires fused, or melted, or just quit working. It made me a little jumpy about other things failing-like elevators, or, hells, car engines. But so far it was just the cell phones and wireless connections that went belly-up on me.

“That’d be good,” he said. “Make sure you call in and give us the number, okay?”

“Sure.”

“And you have your will in order, right?” he asked.

“Ha-ha. Funny.”

He looked down over his shoulder and gave me a wide smile. “Naw, we won’t let anything happen to you. This job will be a piece of cake. You help Stotts this once, walk away alive, and maybe find some other way to make rent, yah?”

“I like Hounding. It’s what I do best.”

Love reached the top of the stairs and paused before carding open the door. “You can be strong as you like, Tita, be the best Hound there is, and still get your ass kicked in this town.”

“I know,” I said. “I’ll call you when I get a new phone. Promise.”

Love smiled, and it was all sunshine and breezy beaches again. “That’s all we ask.” He slid his card through the reader, unwove the Diversion spell-this one much smaller than the one on the bottom floor-and opened the door for me.

I walked out into the brighter fluorescent-lit hall, the smells of too many people coming in out of the rain, the sounds of too many people in too small a space closing in on me. I needed fresh air. Now would be good.

“See you soon,” I said to Love and Payne.

“Be careful,” Love said.

I intended to do just that. Which meant I needed food and a decent cup of coffee to keep my strength up. I knew the perfect place to get both-Get Mugged.

I pulled my scarf closer around my nose and chin. Time to leave the secret police, magical crimes, and cursed dead Hounds behind me. At least for as long as I could.