Lighter, but still present, were the smells of burnt blackberry, licorice, the chemical taint of formaldehyde, a burn of copper, and more. Strawberries, candy sweet, like bubble gum and booze. Tomi’s scents.
Holy crap. I followed my nose, heading toward the stink of fear, pain, and death.
A hedge of bushes overgrown by ivy and tangled, dry blackberry vines filled the space beneath a small copse of trees.
I peered into the shadows there. I didn’t even have to wait for my eyes to adjust to the low light to know what was spread out beneath the trees: the remains of an animal, maybe a dog or a small deer. There wasn’t enough of it left to tell. There was, however, a lot of blood.
Fresh enough, everything was still wet, and the flies hadn’t found it yet.
Hells.
“Tomi?” I called. There was no answer and no movement in those shadows. I inhaled again. Her scent was faint. She had certainly been here, but she was not here now.
I let go of the Enhancement and backed away until I could breathe clean air.
The wind lifted, reluctant and lazy, and I smelled warm cedar and lemons, soured by sweat and booze. Davy Silvers, a Hound and Tomi’s ex-boyfriend, was here somewhere. Upwind, which was where he would be if he wanted me to notice him.
I scanned the park, finally spotted him leaning against a tree closer to the street. He had on a rain jacket with the hood up. He wasn’t looking my way, but he wasn’t trying to hide either.
After that bender at Pike’s wake yesterday, I was impressed he was walking. But, damn, that boy needed to stop following me.
I walked back up to the gazebo. Stotts pocketed the phone.
“She’s on her way,” he said. “Want to fill me in on that?” He nodded toward the circle of ash.
“I’m not really sure what kind of spell it was,” I started. Something was niggling at the back of my mind. I frowned, thinking. Then it came to me. I’d just pulled on magic, cast an Enhancement so I could smell out traces of magic in the air, and I had not seen the Veiled, had not been touched by the Veiled, had not been hurt by the Veiled. Not one painful burning fingertip bruise.
That was the first time I’d pulled on magic and hadn’t had to fight them off since I’d first seen my dad’s ghost several weeks ago. What did that mean?
A smug satisfaction filled my mind.
You’re still protecting me from them, aren’t you?
I asked my dad.
We can work together, daughter
, he coaxed.
We could help each other through these trials. My knowledge, your power.
“Allie?” A hand landed on my upper arm, and I literally jumped.
Stotts raised his eyebrows. “Are you still with me?” he asked.
I blinked a few times, clearing my mind. Talking to my dad was a bad idea. Too distracting, for one thing. For another, I had the very bad feeling that given the chance and my own inattention, Dad could actually Influence me to do what he wanted. From inside my head.
A chill ran down my shoulders and arms, and I shuddered.
“Okay,” Stotts said, “why don’t you come over here and sit down?”
I let him lead me over to the bench that ringed the outer edge of the gazebo’s covered area. He probably thought I’d set an immediate Disbursement, and was bearing the price of using magic already. That wasn’t true, but the truth—that I was dealing with the growing horror of my father living in my mind—wasn’t something I cared to share with him. He’d take me in for a psych review.
And who had the time for that?
“Do you need some water?” he asked. “Some pain killers?”
I looked up at him. In the blue-gray light, his skin took on a dusky forest look, his thick black lashes almost covering his eyes as he squinted from the low glare, giving him lines that etched the knowledge of pain on his face. Even scruffy from not shaving, his eyes a little bloodshot and yellow from lack of sleep, and his hair messed up and wet, he looked worried for me. And willing to serve and protect, just like every nice, cursed magic police officer should be. I found myself thinking Nola could do a lot worse than be with him.
Then I pushed that thought away because, really, did a girl need more than a thousand things to worry about all at once?
“I’m just a little cold is all,” I said. “That spell isn’t anything I’ve ever seen before.” Hey, that was the truth. Go me. Maybe I’d just tell Stotts everything I knew, including the whole secret society of the Authority with their secret magical spells, secret magical tests, and weird-ass secret magical backstabbing, and let him figure it all out.
My dad fidgeted and fluttered in my head, like a bird in a box. He obviously did not like that idea.
Then stop trying to Influence me
, I thought at him.
Or so help me, I will spill it all.
The hot wash of surprise flashed over my face—his surprise, not mine. And while I wanted to gag a little that his emotions had actually triggered a physical reaction in my body, I was too angry to stop yelling at him now.
What, don’t think I can play with the big boys? I am not going to play your game by your rules. This is my game now.
Silence. And I mean a dead, empty silence. If my dad was still in my head, I could not feel him. Not one leathery spec of him.
Good.
Stotts was waiting, looking between me and the treed area where I assumed Davy Silvers still lingered. It begged the question of why Davy was following me so obviously. He had proved he was a very, very good Hound and knew how to stay unseen when he wanted to.
But before I dealt with Davy, I needed to finish with Stotts.
“I did get a feel for what the spell might have been used for,” I said.
“Okay,” he encouraged.
“I think whoever cast that spell used a disk to access and carry the magic. There was no trail left behind, so I can’t trace it back—the magic did not come from the cisterns or networked conduits. I couldn’t make out the signature.”
“Because of the disk, or because you don’t know the caster?”
“I don’t know. I’m thinking mostly because of the disk.” I looked past him at the black circle of ash spread across the concrete gazebo floor. The ring of fragile crow-feather ash reflected blue and green in the low light. “It could be I just haven’t ever Hounded or studied the caster.”
Which meant it had to be someone from outside the Northwest. Hounds do not just run around sniffing magical signatures and immediately know who they come from. There is a lot of study that goes into it, and books and books and electronic slides of recorded signatures to go through. As a matter of fact, every citizen is required to register a state-Proxied spell cast with city hall—much like applying for a gun license or having your fingerprints added to the record—so every magical signature was, theoretically, on record.
I had studied every signature in the Northwest, and thousands more beyond that. Plus, I’d spent years on the street actually applying my knowledge, and building my own list of quirks and signatures. And yes, I kept notes.
I was good at things when I put my mind to it. After I failed business magic in college, I threw myself into Hounding.
Obsession doesn’t always work against a person, you know.
“I think the spell was a form of Conversion.”
“Huh,” he said, thinking that over. I didn’t blame him. Conversion was a spell most often used in medical procedures. It was a central part of the Siphon glyphs, which were vital to draining away magic-induced pain and wounds. But out here, in a gazebo, the idea of using Conversion didn’t make a lot of sense.
“Could you tell what the spell was cast for? Or who it was for?”
I shook my head. “But over there in the bushes might be another good place to look for clues. I think I smelled a Hound, Tomi Nowlan, in the area. Did you have her look at this site before me?”
“No.”
Well, crap. Sorry, Tomi. But Stotts was a police officer. The law. And if some kind of mutated man was still out on the street, eating larger and larger animals, I figured it was good to let the law know about it before anyone, including Tomi, got hurt, if she was indeed mixed up in this.
He walked off, and returned in a short time. He didn’t look happy, but he didn’t look nearly half as sick as I felt.
“What do you know about that?” he asked.
“There was another animal, smaller, a dog, torn apart like that in an alley near my house.”
“It was reported last night. Were you the one who reported it?”
“No. But I saw it. I was going out on a date. And the car was parked close to the alley. I thought I heard something, so I went back there. Zayvion was with me. He reported it.”
I didn’t know how much of this kind of magic he knew about, or how much of this the Authority wanted to keep under wraps. Since I didn’t know what I could or could not say, I stuck with the truth. It was easier that way.
“I think there was magic involved. It smelled exactly like that mess over there.”
“Do you know if the disks are involved in that?” he asked. “Was there a ring of ash left behind?”
I thought about it. “Not that I could see. It was dark. And foggy.”
He strolled to the edge of the gazebo railing next to me and my bench and leaned his forearms against the wooden edge, staring out at the rain.
“Looks to me like some sort of Drain or Siphon was worked on it. Sucking all the life out before mangling the body.” His eyes narrowed at the corners. “Maybe someone screwing around with blood magic who thinks they’re a goddamn vampire.”
“So you’ve seen this sort of thing before?”
He nodded. “Do you think this might have anything to do with Mr. Silvers out there?”
It surprised me he knew Davy, but of course he did. Davy was one of Pike’s Hounds. Or had been one of Pike’s Hounds. And Pike kept Stotts informed on who was working in the city.
“I don’t know.”
“Do you know why he’s here?” Stotts asked.
“He has some sort of idea that I need someone to follow me around and look after me.”
Stotts chuckled. “Why do you suppose that is?”
“Ha-ha.” I tucked my chin down into my coat collar. The temperature had dropped with the rain, and holding still was making me cold. I wished I’d brought some coffee.
“So do you like having a bodyguard?” Stotts asked like it didn’t matter what I answered, which meant, of course, it did.
“No.”
He glanced over at me. “Huh.”
“Why would I want someone to watch every move I make? I got a lifetime of that being the infamous Daniel Beckstrom’s daughter.”
“Not your thing?”
“Not even close to my thing.”
“Do you need me to tell Silvers to back off?”
I opened my mouth, shut it fast. I had not expected that. Stotts pulling the cop card on my behalf. For some reason it always felt like Stotts and I weren’t quite on the same side. But with just that one statement I realized he’d be willing to step in and help me, just because it was the right thing, the lawful thing, to do.
“No,” I finally said. “I’ll talk to him. He’s a good kid doing what he thinks is right.”
“Stalking?”
“It’s not like that. Pike decided too many Hounds were being hurt Hounding without a safety net. He set up a buddy system. One person Hounds, and another Hound volunteers to stay back and keeps an eye on things. Calls the police if something goes wrong, but otherwise doesn’t get involved.”
“When did you tell him you were taking this job?”
“I didn’t. He has a lot of free time on his hands and is too curious for his own good.”
Stotts turned and leaned his back against the railing, his arms crossed over his chest. If Davy could hear us, and he might be able to—Hounds were known for having acute hearing—with Stotts’ back turned, it would make it harder to hear, and impossible to read lips.
“I don’t like outside eyes on my cases.”
“I’ll talk to him about it,” I said again. I stood and started pacing, trying to warm up. When was Violet going to get here?
“Good.” Stotts watched me pace from one side of the gazebo to the other. Neither of us looked over at the circle of ashes, as if we wanted to avoid it as long as possible.
“I’d like to continue working with you,” he said. “Just you. I’d like this to be a more permanent partnership.”
I stopped halfway to the railing, and looked back at him. “What?”
“I’d like to formalize this. You working with me. For me. Make it something more along the lines of what I had with Martin Pike.”
“Are you offering me a job?”
“Yes. A trial period, anyway. On call. Contracted to Hound exclusively for the MERC. Monthly stipend. Proxy service. Interested?”
“Let me think about it,” I said. “Is there anyone else in the running for the job?”