Devon Monk - Magic In the Blood

I shook my head and smiled.

“This is from the place on the corner. The good place.”

There were two places on the corner. One, a little mom-and-pop coffee shop that really did have good coffee. The other was a big corporate joint. I’d never much liked the corporation’s coffee-they seemed incapable of roasting beans without burning them.

I accepted the cup and took a drink. It was from the mom-and-pop shop. He had good taste in coffee. Well, he and I had at least one thing in common. “Thanks,” I said. “You know your beans. You must be from around here.”

“Portland?” he asked.

“The Northwest.”

He gestured toward the doors behind me, indicating we could start walking. “Seattle. Moved down to be with family when my mom lost her job. I was about sixteen. And you?”

We reached the sidewalk and strolled against the wind up the street.

“Here,” I said. “My dad’s business kept us in the city.” Honestly, it had been years since someone asked me where I grew up. My family name was almost synonymous with the Storm Rods and the lead and glass lines that conducted magic throughout the city.

He stopped next to a dark green sedan parked along the street. “This is mine. Are you ready?”

“It would be nice to know what the job is exactly.” He pressed a button on his key chain and unlocked the doors. “Go ahead and get in. I’ll tell you.”

I slid in the passenger’s side, grateful to be out of the wind and out of the open. My cheeks and nose felt stingy-hot, windburned. With my pale skin, I probably looked like a snowman with a head cold.

Detective Stotts’ car looked and smelled brand-new, with a light leather interior and several high-tech policelike things mounted under and out from the dashboard. The only ornamentation in it was a rosary with a small charm hanging from the rearview mirror. If you judged a man by his car, Paul Stotts was neat, paid attention to detail, and did his share of praying.

Who wouldn’t in his line of work?

He put his coffee in the holder, and I kept mine in my hands for added warmth through my gloves.

“I don’t know if you keep up on the news,” he said as he started the car.

“Not much,” I said. “I got used to avoiding the media in my teen years when I was rebelling against my father.”

“Just your teen years?” He turned on the blinker and eased the car into traffic.

Well, it looked like one of us kept up on the news. I shrugged. Let him figure it out.

“Does the job have something to do with the news?” I asked.

“It does. There have been a lot of disappearances on the northeast side of town. Mostly teen girls.”

“How many girls?”

“Between six and eight.”

“You don’t know for sure?”

“A lot of the girls were involved in gangs. Some might be runaways, skipping town on their own.”

“So I’m going to Hound places they were last seen?”

“Something like that.”

Okay, so at least I wouldn’t have to Hound any dead bodies. I was happy to leave the corpse sniffing to dimpled-and-bubbly Beatrice.

“And you think there was something magical about the girls’ disappearances?”

“I’ve had a couple Hounds sniff out the sites. It’s possible magic was used to either sedate the girls, harm the girls, or transfer the girls.”

“Possible? Magic is a pretty clear yes/no thing,” I said.

Hounds were experts at seeing, tracing, and smelling the difference between every kind of spell, even when the spells decay into ash. A good Hound could tell you where the spell came from to within a few yards of the caster. An excellent Hound studied signature variables and could tell you exactly who cast the spell by the “handwriting.” I knew there were excellent Hounds who worked for the police, including Pike.

Stotts just shook his head. “We want another opinion.”

“Does this have something to do with Lon Trager?”

He glanced over at me. “So you do keep up with some news.”

“Not really. I ran into Trager on the bus this morning.”

“Is that so?” Stotts looked calm, even his breathing was still normal, but the rest of his body language screamed at me. He was worried.

“He told me he and I could live and let live if I did him a favor. He wants me to bring Martin Pike to him by tomorrow midnight.”

“And you didn’t report it?”

“That’s what I’m doing now.”

He took a breath, let it out. “Do you know why he asked you to find Pike?”

“He hates Pike. Hates me too. Mentioned he’d be willing to kill me. Since he also mentioned that he has men everywhere, I figure he has the resources to find Pike. Pike and I don’t see each other much. So if I had to guess, I’d say Trager really wants both of us in the same room at the same time for some reason.

“You don’t look surprised,” I added. “Did you already know about this?”

“Lon Trager is a person of interest. We keep an eye on him.”

“That wasn’t exactly a yes,” I said.

“No,” he said. “It wasn’t. Have you talked to Pike?”

I nodded. “Today. Told him about Trager. He’s willing to cooperate with the police.”

“Interesting,” he said like it really was. “I don’t suppose you might know where we could find him.”

“Pike? He’s helping a friend on the east side of town do some house repair. I don’t know her name, but her son’s name is Anthony Bell.”

Stotts nodded and took a sip of coffee.

“Does the job tonight have something to do with Lon Trager?” I asked again.

“I’m not going to say anything more about it,” he said. “I don’t want to influence your opinion.”

Yeah, that’s usually the way the police played it.

“So,” I said. “I’ve heard people die when they Hound for you. They say you’re cursed.”

Stotts drove for several blocks in silence. He didn’t even reach over to take another drink of his coffee. It started raining, big, intermittent drops. He flicked the windshield wipers on low.

“The cases I deal with always involve magic being used to harm others,” he said. “There are risks when anyone Hounds for me. But I think my… reputation has been exaggerated.”

“Sixteen Hounds in six years?”

“People who Hound tend to live short lives. I think it’s from using magic so much and from not buying Proxies for relief from the pain. Most people who Hound use the money for drugs instead. So if you run the facts, you see I only hire experienced Hounds, which puts one mark against them-they’ve been using magic and probably drugs for a long time. And if you run the numbers you see a national average of twice that many Hounds who work for the police dying in that same amount of time.”

“Sounds like you’ve done a lot of thinking about this.”

“It’s clear the odds are against most Hounds who work for me before they begin to work for me.”

“So there is no curse?”

He picked up his coffee without looking at me. “I didn’t say that.” He turned a corner onto the bridge, and the rosary on his mirror swung in silent counterpoint.

The wind whipped up off of the river and blustered hard enough to rock Stotts’ car and throw rain that sounded like rocks against the windows. It was going to be miserable out there.

“I don’t suppose there’s any chance the girls were last seen indoors?” I asked.

“One of them,” Stotts said. “They all disappeared from the same general area-about a four-block radius. There are two places that are still hot. One’s on the street; the other is in a parking garage.”

“Well, at least one’s out of the rain.” I drank my coffee, letting the warmth and caffeine bolster my confidence and clear my mind. I could do this. I could go stand out in the rain with a cursed magic cop, Hound an old hit and not lose control of magic, and keep a lookout for Trager’s thugs. Oh, and Davy.