Authors: Anthony Francis
“Are you free tomorrow night?” I said suddenly.
“Yes,” he said. “No—damnit, yes. I will have to return to the werehouse, but I can take a break around dinnertime. I’ll meet you at the restaurant. You’ll feel safer.”
“I’ll feel safer or
you’ll
feel safer?” I asked, tugging the ring on my collar. “I know I’m safe around a vampire, unless you want a ‘Lady Saffron’ garlic enema. Don’t trust yourself?”
“Oh, I trust myself completely,” Calaphase said, staring straight at me. “No matter how good the dish looks, I know the stew tastes better if you let it simmer.”
Calaphase’s phone rang, more werehouse business, and while he spoke I excused myself with a nervous wave, hopped in the blue bomb and fled out into the dark. My brain was buzzing: finish the paperwork for the Clairmont Academy, buy Cinnamon’s books, get the Prius fixed up, find a good lawyer to handle the adoption and the Valentine Foundation’s missing payments, and,
oh, yeah
, track down a graffiti killer. There were a thousand things to do.
But mostly my brain was buzzing with the obvious: I was having dinner with a vampire. Oh, man. How did that happen? And why was I so jazzed about it? My palms were almost as damp on the wheel as they had been when Cinnamon had been ready to rip my head off.
I tried to force myself to relax.
So I was having dinner with a vampire. What’s the worst that could happen?
“You want me to
what?
” I said, bringing the Prius to a screeching stop.
“Stop what you’re doing and
stay out of this
,” Rand ordered through my Bluetooth headset. I’d called him back, just as Calaphase had asked … but bringing him back on board was proving to be difficult. Rand wasn’t going down without a fight. “This investigation is getting hairy. Having a loose cannon is going to complicate things.”
“But I’ve already started,” I said, and I had. I’d not yet found anything on magical graffiti, but I had found a little on magical pigments and a lot about regular graffiti. Now that I was primed for it, I was seeing graffiti everywhere—on walls, on street signs, even on the street itself. It was hard not to get lost in the raw folk beauty of graffiti, but already I was starting to notice patterns, possibly crews, and even the occasional magic mark, and was convinced we could catch this guy. “In fact, it’s hard to see how I could
stop—”
“Try this. Just
stop
,” he said. “The Atlanta Police Department does
not
want a registered freelance magician nosing around this case. Especially not if you’re going to help by stirring up a hornet’s nest in the local werehouse and then not even telling us where you were—”
“I tried to tell you before,” I said sharply, “I was
not
there to stir up a hornet’s nest.”
“Then what
were
you doing?”
“Trying to get help for Cinnamon,” I said, and the line stayed silent. “She hadn’t changed since she was poisoned … and apparently that shit builds up. She turned early, and I didn’t know where else to take her. I don’t have a radar for evil graffiti. Being there to help was blind luck.”
Rand was silent, so I pressed my case. “Cinnamon’s safe because I took her there, and our werekin friend is alive because I was at the right place at the right time. If you don’t like blind luck, call it dumb luck. Did you really want me to let that boy die, Uncle Andy?”
“No,” Rand said. “No, I’m sorry. The attack’s clearly related to the one on Revenance, so I assumed it was a reaction to you poking around. I didn’t realize it was a coincidence—which actually makes our problem worse. I shouldn’t have hung up on you—”
“No, you shouldn’t have,” I said, starting up the car as the light turned green. I was silent for a moment, just driving, then said, “Not before you got the whole story.”
“Look, the DA freaked when she found out you’d been at the crime scene. We can’t have you connected to the investigation
in any way
, or we can kiss a conviction goodbye.”
“No way,” I said.
“No way, no how—no investigating,” Rand said. “You’ve got to promise me that you’ll stay out of this—or you might end up attached to the investigation as a suspect.”
“Uncle Andy,” I said. “Are you … threatening me?”
“No, I’m trying to make you see how serious this is,” Rand said. His voice was so stern and important I could almost see his expression. “You have to promise me, Kotie—”
“Oh, please,” I said. I automatically crossed my fingers, then glared at them. I was not going to play this game. “Cross my heart and hope to die? Detective Andre Rand, don’t you think we’re both a bit old for this? This thing murdered a friend, attacked another and almost killed me. I want to help you get this guy. These guys. Whoever it is.”
Rand was silent for a minute. “Fine,” he said. “I love you like a daughter, but I promise you that if you stick your nose back into this I will have you up on obstruction charges.”
“Andre—”
“I mean it, Dakota,” Rand said. “Butt. The Hell. Out.”
And he hung up, leaving me and the blue bomb sailing into Midtown in near silence. Once Midtown Atlanta had been a graveyard of half-filled mid-height office buildings and closed hotels, but now it was having a comeback, with new buildings in brick and stone with nary a bit of graffiti on a one of them, except for a mural, clearly commissioned.
It was new, fresh, vibrant—yet sterile: even though the cars on West Peachtree’s wide one-way expanse held enough people to make a crowd, I felt alone. Sometimes I missed riding my Vespa. No matter how comfy my Prius was, it left me disconnected from my environment.
Then the phone rang, and I blooped it through without thinking. “Dakota Frost,” I groused. “Best magical tattooist in the Southeast—”
“You won’t get many customers with
that
tone,” the caller said.
“Philip!” I said, smiling with pleasure. “It’s so good to hear your voice.”
“Good to hear yours too, Dakota,” Special Agent Philip Davidson said. You could still hear the warmth, even through the Bluetooth. I wanted to see his face: his wavy brown hair, his cute little goatee, the blue-gray eyes he always hid behind dark glasses. I was glad he couldn’t see me, cheeks red with guilt. I waited a second too long to keep the conversation going, and Philip caught that. “Is everything all right?”
“Yes,” I said, abruptly, turning onto West Peachtree. “Damnit, no, things aren’t all right. One of my friends, Revenance, was just killed.”
“Rand told me—I’m so sorry. He
also
mentioned you witnessed a second attack,” Philip said, slipping into his smooth-but-not-accusatory tone of disapproval that made me feel as big as a bug. “But that you refused to divulge its location because it was ‘Edgeworld’ business.”
“That I did,” I said. Philip Davidson and the Department of Extraordinary Investigations had definite ideas on how to treat Edgeworlders, and respecting Edgeworld privacy was about the last thing on their list. “Like I told Rand, it isn’t my place to divulge their secrets.”
“Dakota,” Philip said, voice softening. “I’m not calling to bust your nuts. Rand
also
told me you were there to help Cinnamon. She hadn’t changed in a few months, had she? Jesus. And that was your first time dealing with it too. That must have been very difficult for you both.”
“You have no idea,” I said, glancing back at my torn rear seats. As my head turned back, the car in front of me pulled away, the car behind honked, and I cursed, “All right,
all right,
I’m going!” and hooked onto 5
th
Street into Georgia Tech’s new campus village.
“What are you doing, Dakota?” Philip asked.
“I’m on the last of my rounds of ‘would you deliver the bad news for me, Dakota’ that Rand and her Highness the ‘Lady Saffron’ dumped in my fucking lap,” I snapped. “I’m going to go break the news about Revenance to yet another friend, and while they’re getting over that, I planned to start interrogating them about some weird fucking shit I saw while I was pulling Cinnamon’s childhood sweetheart out of a magic graffiti tag that was eating him alive.”
“
Cinnamon
had a childhood sweetheart? From how you’ve described the werehouse—”
“Oh, maybe I’m romanticizing it, but I could tell they had
some
relationship—and don’t change the subject,” I said. “I’m being serious here. One dead, three missing. Do you really want me to stop? If so, where do you want me to draw the fucking line, Philip? After I saved a kid’s life, but before I find out what we need to stop this shit from killing anyone else?”
“What’s wrong, Dakota?” Philip asked. “I mean, what’s
really
wrong?”
I’m having dinner with a vampire when I’m supposed to be dating you.
“You’re never here, Philip,” I said. “I haven’t seen you since November.”
“December 4
th
,” Philip said. “It was a Monday.”
“It was fifteen minutes for breakfast at the Flying Biscuit before you rode off to the airport. Which puts our last real date, what, a month ago today?”
“I’ve been busy,” Philip said. “I can’t fly down to Atlanta every week.”
“But you won’t
let
me come up and see you in Virginia,” I responded, which was true. “Philip, I haven’t even heard from you since … since before Christmas.”
“You’ve found someone, haven’t you,” Philip said.
“Damnit!” I said, screeching to a stop as the light in front of me turned red. “No, Philip, someone found me. Someone just asked me out to dinner, and it’s making me feel guilty. Happy now? Why, why, why do I always have to be the
guy
in the relationship?”
Crickets chirped. It was that silent on Phillip’s end. After a long pause he finally answered. “Oh. I should have seen this one coming, huh? A girl. And you.”
I laughed. I could see how he jumped to the wrong conclusion,. “Sorry, Philip,” I said. “You don’t get off that easy. You can’t blame this one on the other team. I do still like boys. I just like ones that are here, at least once in a while.”
There was a second silence over the line, as cars streamed down the broad lanes of Spring Street before me, narrowly missing Tech students bolting through the traffic as they darted from the restaurants and bookstore and back again. Finally Philip spoke.
“All right, Dakota,” he said. “You have your date, if that’s what you want.”
He sounded crushed. “Hey, Philip,” I said softly. “That’s not what I meant—”
“No, you’re right,” he said. “I’m never there, and that’s not fair to you. Take your friend to dinner, and that’s OK, but if you’re still … interested, I’m willing to give us another shot next time I make it down there. If things are as bad as Rand said … well, it won’t be long.”
“I’m sorry, Philip,” I said.
“I am too,” he said. “And sorry about the ‘investigating this on your own’ crack. We really appreciated you helping us track the tattoo killer last year, but please, please,
please
wait until we bring the problems to you instead of making trouble on your own. I worry about you, Dakota. You’re a … a valuable resource, and I’d hate to lose you. Take care.”
“I’d hate to lose you too, Philip,” I said, but my headset
blooped
and my brain put the words “valuable resource” on an endless loop.
He was already gone. He’d called his girlfriend a valuable resource and hung up.
Damnit! Damnit! Damnit!
This was
not
what I wanted. A dalliance with a vampire had just cut me off from a man who was both my boyfriend and my spook contact, and said dalliance hadn’t even happened yet. And protecting the werehouse’s privacy had alienated Uncle Andy.
Maybe Philip was right; things were already blowing up in my face.
Was I getting sucked in too deep?
But then I saw Revy’s face, burned up like paper. No one did that to my friends. And no matter how much I liked Philip, he was first and foremost a monster fighter, not one of their guardians. And no matter how much I trusted Uncle Andy, he had to work within the law. Not on the Edge, where I lived.
Someone
had to protect these people—someone who
understood
them.
The light turned green, the car behind me honked, and I gunned the blue bomb over the 5
th
Street Bridge into Georgia Tech proper.
“
Fine,
” I said. “My
own
damn investigation it is.”