C.E. Murphy - Demon Hunts

Coyote, sotto voce but not very, said, "As opposed to how she usually is?" to Gary, who snorted laughter.

I hit them both with the pillow. "I don't know if you have any bright ideas, Ro, but I do." His eyebrows shot up skeptically, which I didn't think was very nice. Justified, maybe, but not very nice. "Soul retrieval happens in the Lower World, right? And it's dangerous for everybody. So we're going to want as much protection as we can get on every level."

He said, "Okay," in a dubious tone which suggested I was making sense but that he didn't quite believe I could be.

I got no respect. Fine. I was just going to have to be right. That would show him. "So we're going to want a power circle, and I think it needs to be drawn outside in the snow."

Coyote drew breath like he was going to argue, then let it out in a slow dismayed sound. "I think you're right."

"I think she better have some kinda good frostbite cure ready. Are you two nuts? It's ten degrees and fallin' out there, not to mention there's a man-eatin' monster roamin' around."

"I can handle the frostbite," I said with a blithe confidence I hadn't had a few hours ago. "And luring the man-eating monster out is kind of the point. Know anything about trapping demons in a power circle, Coyote? I figure if we limit its range of motion we're going to be in better shape than if it's able to run free. What happens if someone doesn't want his soul retrieved?"

"Ever tried picking two cats up out of a fight?"

"Er, no."

"Me either, but that's about what it sounds and looks like. Only the cats are as big as you are, in this case."

Whatever confidence I'd had turned tail and ran. "I definitely think a power circle is in order."

"You going to build it?"

I stood up, trying to look and sound like I knew what I was doing. "As a matter of fact, I am."

We tromped down to the hotel lobby armed for battle, which was to say bundled up like snowmen and Gary carting my drum in a pack over his shoulder. The lobby was deserted except for one floppy-haired desk attendant who raised his eyes despondently when we came in. "Checking out?"

I said, "Not even metaphorically," cheerfully, hoping to counter his Eeyore impression, but he looked at me with the emo gaze of a youth for whom all hope is gone. No sense of humor at all. I muttered, "Right, then," under my breath, and tried again. "We're just going out for a moonlight hike. We'll be back in a few hours. Why, have a lot of people left?"

"Everybody but the federal agents and you." The lobby wasn't deserted after all. Laurie Corvallis had been hidden in one of the chairs, its back to the front desk, but giving her a line of sight to the front door. She scooted the chair so she could see me, and so I could see her camera guy in the next chair beyond her. "Interesting decision," she said. "Going hiking out in the mountains in the middle of the night with a killer around."

"I'm an interesting person." I turned to the emo desk attendant. "I'll give you a hundred-dollar tip if you can keep her from following us."

Gary muttered, "Since when do you have a hundred bucks to be throwing around?" and I elbowed him. He grunted, but the kid missed it, his dull gaze lighting up as he looked at Corvallis.

She gave him one of her devastating barracuda smiles, and he shrank back behind the desk. "Sorry, ma'am, I can't stop the guests from coming and going."

"I can." Sara Buchanan—I had to stop thinking of her that way—came down the stairs in a thump of boots. "No one's going out there without my authorization. Joanne, one of my men didn't come back from the crime scene this afternoon."

"Shit."

"Shit? What does shit mean?"

I bit back a scatological explanation, pretty sure she wouldn't be amused. "It means he's probably dead. I'm sorry."

I had to hand it to her: she didn't even blink. "Probably?"

"Only one person's survived one of these attacks, and she…" Sudden hope seized my heart. The Sight flashed on, sending the whole room into surreal bright colors. Corvallis was about to fall out of her chair, she was so eager to hear what I had to say. Her aura stretched toward me like the borealis reaching for earth, like it would find the culmination of its being in touching me. Sara was tightly wound caution, afraid even to hope. Coyote blared with an unexpected combination of professionalism and awe, like he had a job to do but was a little overwhelmed. It was disconcerting to realize the awe was inspired by me. I was a mess, not somebody who should be able to impress a shaman with a whole lifetime's study behind him.

Gary, on the other hand, was his usual solid reliable eight-cylinder self. There was a fight out there and he was willing to take it on. I owed him more than I'd ever be able to express.

The desk attendant maintained his bored above-it-all expression, but his aura leaped and jumped with excitement. He didn't know what was going on, but he felt like he was a part of something big. I wanted to either pat him on the head or send him home to safety, maybe both, and fought back the snickering urge to do so. That wasn't in my bizarre job description.

Healing and protecting were, though, and everyone in the room except the desk attendant had traces of my magic lingering against their skin, just like Mandy Tiller had. I pressed my eyes closed, still able to See everyone in the room, and said, "Your guy, Sara. He was with us this afternoon?"

"We all were."

"Okay." I made myself meet her gaze. "Then maybe there's a very small chance he's still alive. He was there when I…" Corvallis was still leaning out of her chair, desperate to hear what could be heard. I said a word nice girls shouldn't know, then repeated it more loudly.

There was just no way this was going to end well. Short of clobbering her, which would get me up on assault charges, I couldn't see how to get rid of Corvallis. On the other hand, I had no doubt she would happily do a story on the Seattle Police Department's very own magic-using detective, and make me look like a complete fool.

Oddly enough, I didn't mind that. I was a believer these days, not because I particularly wanted to be, but because the world wouldn't have it any other way. The world, though, wasn't giving object lessons to most of its citizens. Even if Corvallis could be persuaded to do the most sympathetic possible story—which she wouldn't, because her point would be to make me look like an idiot, not to make herself look like a believer—I was going to come across as a complete kook. That was okay. I'd never wanted to make other people accept that magic was real. It was better if they just thought I was crazy. Hopefully the harmless kind of crazy, but crazy either way.

What I couldn't abide was the backlash Morrison would get. He couldn't come out of this alive. Either he knew he'd hired a detective who thought she worked magic, or he didn't. If he knew, I'd goddamned well better be the harmless kind of crazy, because otherwise my boss's neck was on the chopping block. And the truth was, people ended up dead around me a lot. Mostly they were bad guys, but not always. Marie D'Ambra and Henrietta Potter hadn't been bad guys. Neither had Colin Johannson, and Faye Kirkland had been…complicated. I knew the truth behind all of those stories, but on the surface, put those things together and I didn't look harmless at all.

And if Morrison didn't know he'd hired a dangerous detective who thought she could do magic, well, then, he was incompetent. Frankly, I'd prefer to force the world to believe in magic than to let them think my boss wasn't good at his job.

Sara folded her arms, waiting with impatience that wasn't so much ill-concealed as worn on her sleeve. She was my out: a federal agent in a country besieged with the Patriot Act. She could get Corvallis out of my hair, off my back, and out from under my feet, which was about as thorough a clichéd removal as I could come up with. And she would, too. Not because we were old high school buddies and not because she believed in magic, but because she wanted her man back, and if I said Corvallis couldn't be there or I couldn't get him back, Corvallis would be out on her ear faster than a fast thing.