David Coe - Spell Blind

“No, I guess not.”

“We have to find this guy, Kona.”

“Sounds like you’re well on your way to doing that.”

“Yeah, if he doesn’t kill me first. He nearly had me last night. I’m lucky I’m not lying in the OME with Robby and Antoine.”

“How’d you fight him off?” Kona asked.

“I had help.”

That took her a minute. Her eyes lit up. “You mean. .? He helped you?”

“First time for everything, right? He’s taking this seriously.”

Kona exhaled through pursed lips. “I guess.”

“Hey!” I said, alarm bells going off in my head. I looked from Billie to Kona. “Did you make sure you were off the record before you started talking to her?”

Before Kona could answer, Billie scowled at me. “That’s not fair, Fearsson!”

“No, it’s not,” Kona added. “ She told me we were off the record.”

I winced, then rubbed a hand over my brow. “I’m sorry, Billie. I had a long night.”

Her expression didn’t change, but after a few seconds she nodded.

Kona took my arm and led me a few steps away from Billie. “Listen,” she said. “Along those lines, she was asking me some questions while we were waiting for you.”

“What kind of questions?”

“She wanted to know if you’d ever spoken to me about magic.”

Not surprising. “What did you tell her?”

“Well, I wasn’t sure what to say. So I told her that you had, but that you were subject to occasional psychotic episodes, and you’d probably have forgotten all about it by now.”

I stared at her. After a minute she started to laugh, as did Billie.

“What did you tell her, Kona?”

“She told me that you had,” Billie said, walking over to us. “And she said that as weird as it sounded to her at first, she’d come to believe you.” She shrugged. “So I’m wondering if I shouldn’t do the same thing. I haven’t made up my mind yet, but that’s how I’m leaning.”

“I like this one, Justis. Don’t screw it up.”

I had to laugh. “Thanks for the advice.”

“I gotta go,” Kona said. “You look terrible. Get some sleep, all right?”

“Yeah, I’ll try.”

We held each other’s gazes for a few seconds. “I’ll swing by your place after my shift ends,” she said. An old ritual tied to the phasings.

“Thanks. See you then.”

Kona smiled at Billie. “Nice to meet you.”

“You, too.”

Billie and I faced each other. After a few awkward seconds, Billie said, “She’s great.”

I nodded. “She was a good partner. Listen, I’m sorry about what I said. I was out of line.”

She shrugged. “You had a rough night.”

“Not that rough. I should have known better.”

“Come on,” she said. “Let’s get you out of here. I know you miss being a cop, and hanging out around the city jail probably isn’t the best cure for that.”

Smart woman.

We started walking to Billie’s car, which was parked in a municipal lot nearby.

“You missing work on account of me?” I asked.

“No. I wrote something last night that I scheduled to post this afternoon. I have the day free.”

“Lucky for me, huh?”

“How are you feeling?”

“Tired mostly. A little sore from last night.”

“Well, Kona’s right. You should get some sleep.”

We reached her car, got in, and she drove me to Tempe. My car was still there outside Robby Sommer’s house. The place was deserted, but the police had left a strip of yellow crime-scene tape across his front door. Billie stared at it now; I could tell she was troubled.

“Who was he?” she asked.

“A drug dealer. He was also Claudia Deegan’s boyfriend for a short while.”

She nodded, shuddered. “How do you get used to this?”

“Who says I’m used to it?”

She turned to me. “Sorry. I just thought. . I don’t know. You don’t seem upset.”

“I’m not sure it’s the same thing. I’m not going to mourn the loss of Robby Sommer. I don’t think the world’s that worse off without him. But you never get used to seeing people die, and I have every intention of finding the guy who killed him.”

“You think it’s the same person who killed Claudia? You think the Blind Angel Killer did it?”

I hesitated, but only for a second. “Yes. And I think he nearly killed me.”

“Did he. .?” She pointed at Robby’s house. “Was this person killed. .?”

“With magic?”

She nodded again.

“Yeah, I’m sure he was.”

“This is getting weirder and weirder.”

“Yes, it is. You know, I really need to get out of the city for a little while, to clear my head. You want to come with me.”

“You need to sleep.”

I shook my head. “I can’t. I slept a little in the jail, and. . I’ll sleep tonight.” That was a lie, but the rest was true.

Concern creased her forehead. “You’re tired.”

“The desert will help. It always does.”

Billie continued to gaze at me for a few seconds more. Then she surprised me. “All right.”

I smiled. “Good. I need to stop at my office first, then we can drive back out to the monument if you like.”

She shook her head. “No, I want to meet your father.”

That was the last thing I’d expected her to say. “My father? Billie, that’s. . I usually go to his place on Tuesdays.”

“So this week you’ll see him twice.”

I let out a breathless laugh, shook my head, frowned. Boy, she’d caught me off guard. It had been years since I’d taken anyone out to my dad’s place. Kona had come with me once, several years ago, and that had gone well. But still, taking Billie to meet him seemed. . risky in some way.

“What I told you last night was true,” I said. “He has these episodes. There’s no telling what state he’ll be in when we get there.”

“Is he dangerous?”

“Of course not,” I said without hesitation.

She shrugged. “Then I’ll deal with it.”

I didn’t know her very well, yet. But I could tell when she had made up her mind.

“All right,” I said, getting out of the car. “I need to stop by my office first. Follow me?”

We parked around the corner from the office and I led Billie inside.

“Wow, Fearsson,” she said, turning a slow circle in the middle of the room. “I’m impressed.”

Wood floors and a fancy coffee machine will do that, I guess.

I keep a fresh set of clothes at the office, just in case. I grabbed these now, and changed in the bathroom. Then I checked the answering machine. I had only two calls-the first was from an insurance company I’d worked for the month before. I’d quit because they were trying to deny a claim I’d told them to pay. Now they were threatening legal action if I didn’t resume work on the case.

I glanced at Billie, and she grimaced.

“You get a lot of messages like that?” she asked.

“Not too many,” I said. I erased that one and played the next.

“Fearsson?” said a voice on the machine, sounding young and scared. “You there, dog? I know we said eleven, but. . but we gotta do it sooner. I’m in trouble here, man. Real trouble. I’ll be at my place. Come as you soon as you can.”

“Who was that?” Billie asked.

“That was Antoine Mirdoux.”

“Mirdoux,” she said, her forehead creasing. “You mentioned him to Kona. Isn’t he-?”

“He’s dead. He was killed last night.”

I checked the time on the message. It had come in right around the time I was talking to Kenny Moore in Robo’s. I wondered again if Antoine had been trying to set me up, if maybe Red had been trying to lure me into Mountain View and had only resorted to attacking me in the bar when that didn’t work. Had he killed Antoine because the kid had failed him? Had he been so angry after failing to kill me that he took it out on ’Toine?