Cat Adams - The Isis Collar

Terrance, breathing hard from the run, pulled handcuffs from a holster on his belt. His skin was at least two shades darker than that of the man under me as he slapped the first cuff against the caster’s wrist. “Good thing you did that. You don’t want to even know what that curse would have done.”

He was probably right. I kept my weight on the guy until the cuffs were on and then got to my feet. “Stay with him until the other cops get here. I need to find out what he did inside the building. I heard a small explosion coming from the basement a few minutes ago.”

“Don’t be an idiot, Graves. Let us take care of it. I’ll call for reinforcements; they’ll be here—”

“Too late,” I completed. “They don’t even know they need to be here yet. Call it in, but I have to keep getting those kids out. That’s the important thing. I’ll see what caused the explosion.”

He let out an exasperated sigh as he pulled the other mage to his feet. “Then let me go. If it’s another spell, you can’t disarm it. If it’s a bomb … well, you don’t have authority to do that, either. There could be chemicals or toxins, and I’ve trained with them. Stay with the prisoner; I’ll go.”

I shook my head and finished picking up the charms I’d dropped when we tumbled. “I also don’t have authority to keep a prisoner in custody. Remember that most of the cops around here don’t like me. They’d love an excuse to lock me behind bars for the rest of my life.” It was a painful truth to admit. There were cops—people I’d gone drinking with, shared stories with—who now wanted me dead or locked up because a master vampire tried to turn me. They considered me evil, despite the fact I could stand in a church, wear holy items, and walk in the daylight. And since the “Zoo,” otherwise known as the California State Facility for Criminally Magical Beings, had been reduced to a wide piece of glass in the desert by a massive explosion, they’d have to find somewhere else to put me—probably somewhere far worse. No, thanks. I’d rather take my chances with whatever I found inside the school. “As for chemicals, I’ll stand a better chance than you. Vampires heal faster.”

Harris winced at my crack about his fellow officers, but he didn’t bother trying to deny it and I didn’t give him the chance to argue. I just sprinted back toward the building. He could either leave the prisoner and follow me, or stay where he was.

I really wanted to know what was going on in that basement, and call me crazy, but I figured the quickest route to find the trouble was to backtrack the crook. So I slipped into the building using the basement window that he’d left so conveniently open and took a look around.

I’d expected to find myself in a furnace room, maybe a closet. Instead, I was standing in a music storage room. A beat-up old upright piano was tucked into a corner and a host of noisemaking implements like triangles, kazoos, and tiny brass cymbals were stored in stacked and labeled clear plastic totes. A battered metal file cabinet had drawers marked with the names of various instruments.

I stopped, stilling my breathing, extending all of my senses to the max. I’ve developed quite the sensitivity to magic with my other predator senses. There are some less happy vamp side effects as well, but I didn’t have time to think about those right now. I wanted to find whatever it was the bad guy had been up to.

Nothing. At least not in this room. Crap. I moved toward the still-open door, listening as hard as I could.

The alarm was a distant rumble below the thick concrete slab above that all the older buildings in town have. The school on top had been scraped and rebuilt when I was a kid, but the foundation and main-floor slab are probably a century old. Either the lower rooms didn’t have bells or they’d been disabled. That’s how I was able to hear the distinct sounds of someone fiddling with something. The noise was similar to when I’m having the oil changed in my car. Fabric rustling, the tink of different metals meeting, the squeak/scrape of screws or bolts turning under force. Subtle but noticeable.

I took off my heels and crept down the hall in nylon-clad feet, staying on my toes so there was little sound and varying my steps so it was hard to determine the source. A hiss of air behind me made me turn. My Colt 1911 was in my hand and pointed at the hiss before I even remembered moving.

Harris was there, gun likewise drawn, but his was carefully pointed at the floor as he stared down my barrel. I opened my mouth to ask him what the hell he was doing there, but he responded by raising one finger to his lips, so I mouthed the words, Where’s the prisoner?

A quirky smile pulled at one side of Harris’s mouth. He motioned his hands together in front, wrists touching like handcuffs, and then showed a long, straight vertical line and mouthed, Flagpole.

I grinned. Good move. I knew the guys on the hex squad were assigned magical handcuffs and they had some way of knowing whose cuffs they were when another officer came upon a cuffed prisoner. I don’t know the science or metaphysics of it. I should probably ask some of the cops I know someday.

I let Harris slip ahead of me to take point. I had no way of knowing whether he was lying. I didn’t think so, but having him in front of me meant I could keep an eye on him. Never a bad thing.

We walked down the hallway, checking the storage rooms for potential danger. I was sure we’d checked them all. Except … we hadn’t. We got to the end of the hall and I realized that while my eyes saw four doors on either side, my internal count said we’d only checked seven rooms. I frowned and that made Harris frown, too. He shrugged and motioned to my worried face with a What’s up? expression.

I didn’t know if he’d understand, but I mouthed the words one through eight as I pointed to each door. He nodded. Then I pointed to both of us, made walking motions with my fingers, and extended five fingers and then two so I didn’t have to lower the Colt.

His brow furrowed and he thought for a moment. Then he had the same realization as me and he mouthed, We missed one.

I nodded while realizing I didn’t know which one. Spell? I mouthed again.

Now his jaw set and I realized he was angry. He nodded and closed his eyes briefly. I could feel his magic swell out in a wave that crawled along my body like bugs. I wanted to flinch or scratch but didn’t dare take my attention off the hallway.

For a long moment, I did move my eyes to watch Harris’s face while he searched. Alex once told me that for every expression we see a person make, there are a dozen or more micro-expressions we don’t. It’s one of the first things an interrogator is trained to look for, because they’re nearly impossible to fake. A twitch of the lip, a wrinkle over the bridge of the nose, even an eye flick away from the questioner—they’re all indications of guilt or innocence.

Admittedly, I’m not well trained in such things, but from all indications, Harris was frustrated and annoyed. Whether with himself, me, or the person we were searching for I didn’t know. Harris leaned toward me until his lips were right next to my left ear. My peripheral vision revealed he was carefully keeping his 9mm pointed low and away from me. “I’m going to walk back and touch every door. See which one I miss.” His words were so low and soft that without the vamp senses I would have missed them entirely.

I nodded and he moved away from me, crouching low enough that he couldn’t be seen through the reinforced windows in the doors. I mouthed the words one through seven as he touched, but my mind said eight —the exact reverse of earlier. At the end of the hall, he looked at me with a question on his face. I just frowned, shook my head, and raised five and two again.