Frost Moon (16 page)

18. IN THE EXTRAORDINARY DEPARTMENT

“This is a bad fucking idea,” Spleen said, bumping down Lullwater towards Ponce.

“Language, Mister Spleen,” Jinx said beside him in the front seat.

I grinned. She rarely turned her head unless she was talking directly to you, so I could just barely see her wrinkle her nose from my perch behind Spleen—but I knew the expression. Cinnamon, beside me, was alternately peering at Jinx wide-eyed, sniffing at Spleen and diving back into her audio book—she’d eventually put the headphones down around her neck, which she said she could hear just fine, even though she had it turned so low I could hear nothing.

“So where are we going?” Cinnamon said. “To see your boooyfriend?”

“You have a boyfriend now?” Jinx asked.

“Not really,” I said. Hey, one could hope, but—”Cinnamon is referring to my contact with the Feds, Philip Davidson. He’s working with Andre Rand, trying to get APD Homicide up to speed on the case.”

“What fucking—excuse my French, Jinxy, what the F case is this?” Spleen said.

“I can’t comment on an ongoing investigation,” I said with a smile.

“Then why the F am I here?” he asked.

“Because I can’t fit the two of them on the back of my Vespa,” I responded. “And I have my reasons for asking you and Cinnamon to come.”

“So, Cinnamon,” Jinx said. “Like the book?”

“ER-A-GONNNN,” the werecat said, grinning. “ER-A-GONNNN.”

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Jinx said, folding her hands atop her laptop bag. “I like hanging out with you, Dakota. I get to meet all the most interesting people.”

“Wait until you get a load of this one,” I said.

We pulled into City Hall East and parked. Andre Rand was waiting for us at the entrance, but I waved him off and turned to the trio.

“Maybe I should just wait here, you know, like in the car,” Spleen said. “I mean, what if they try to disappear you? Maybe someone should just hang back and—”

“We won’t need to make a getaway,” I said. “And, trust me, you don’t want to be a suspicious-looking person sitting in a police parking lot.”

“You’re saying I’m suspicious looking?” Spleen said, twisting round so his good eye could get a look at me round his long, ratlike nose.

“No, I’m saying that anyone sitting in a police parking lot at seven-thirty at night acting like a getway man is
bound
to look suspicious,” I said. “But look, we do need to have a few ground rules going in. Cinnamon, come back from Alagaesia for a minute.”

When she stopped the CD, everyone was looking at me.

“First: no-one mentions Wulf, or the Marquis, or any other Edgeworlder,” I said. “They’re so skittish they won’t even meet with
me,
so we’re not going to rat them to the Feds.”

“We’re going to go see the
Feds?”
Spleen said, half sitting up in his seat. “Oh, hell—”

“Spleen,” I said. “You haven’t done anything wrong. You don’t have anything to worry about from these people here.”

“So we gots something
else
to worry about?” Cinnamon said, eyeing me warily.

“Second, Cinnamon and Spleen are going to wait with Andre Rand,” I said, pointing at him. “He’s my dad’s old partner, and I trust him. I’ve told him you’re ‘edgy’ and that if you get scared, or even just uncomfortable, for
any
reason, you’re just going to leave—no arguments. He knows to call a cab for me and Jinx.”

“We’re not scared,” Cinnamon said, jutting her jaw.

“Speak for yourself, tiger,” Spleen said.
“You
can soak up lead bullets.”

“Third… I have a little negotiating to do with Philip. And if it goes well.”

“You
wants to get down his
paants,”
Cinnamon said.

“
—if
it goes well, Rand’s going to escort you back so Philip can brief you.”

“About what?” Spleen said, his one good eye gone surprisingly wide.

“I can’t talk about an ongoing investigation,” I said, “but maybe Philip can.”

After a moment, I nodded roughly, and got out of the car. I guided Jinx, and Spleen shepherded Cinnamon. Andre Rand met us and ushered us in through the metal detectors, with as little verbal comment about our guests as possible. I’d briefed him about Cinnamon—who was now ignoring us all, engrossed again in the audio world of Alagaesia—but still he raised his eyebrows at me.

Rand took us to floor six and beeped us in to the long corridor divided between Atlanta Homicide on the left and “Federal Magic” on the right. Breaking the law with magic turned a local felony into a federal crime—but you needed that local conviction to make it stick, so the magical Feds tended to be friendly with the locals. I’d never heard of the relationship being this tight, but it figures it would be that way in Atlanta, where there was more magic—and misuse—than anywhere else.

Rand stopped at the end of the hall, knocking at the door to the Fed offices, to summon Philip, I assumed. While we waited beside him, I took a good look at the agency’s logo, etched into the office’s frosted glass wall. The seal bore an eagle carrying a lightning bolt, and around the rim were the words DEPARTMENT OF EXTRAORDINARY INVESTIGATIONS. I found myself wishing I could see inside, see where Philip worked—and looked back, surprised to see Rand holding the door open to the Federal offices. Grinning, I led Jinx inside.

The DEI reception room was small but surprisingly stylish, with fresh-off-the-stands issues of hip magazines neatly arranged on a granite-topped end-table sitting between two comfy chairs. An array of paranormal-themed posters curled around the walls, including an honest-to-gosh X-Files “I WANT TO BELIEVE” poster next to an official-looking one that said “DEI: A CENTURY AND A HALF OF SERVICE, 1856-2006.”

But as we filed in, we weren’t looking at the posters. All our eyes were drawn to the granite-topped reception desk—and Philip, resting a hip on it casually, like a shot out of GQ.

“Homina,” Cinnamon said.

“I like his cologne,” Jinx said, her hand on my wrist giving a brief squeeze.

“Miss Frost, thank you for coming,” he said, winking at me. Then his gaze took in Jinx’s cane, Cinnamon’s headphones, and Spleen’s one-good-eye fidgeting, and he actually seemed at a bit of a loss. “So,” he began, one hand brushing his dark, evil-Spock beard, “I, uh—”

“Special Agent Philip Davidson,” I said, “please meet Skye ‘Jinx’ Anderson, my graphomancer. She’s graciously agreed to come down to get this process started, and my… associates were kind enough to give us a ride.”

“I’ll wait out here, if that’s OK. OK? OK,” Spleen said, fidgeting harder, looking around the office, trying not to stare at the single heavy black door that went out of reception and into the back. “You know, to watch her.” He nodded at Cinnamon, who growled.

“Y’all do that,” I said, pecking Rand on the cheek. “I owe you one, ‘Uncle Andy.’”

Phil ushered us through yet another big heavy door with a big knobbly lock. “Your cat friend,” he said in a low voice. “That’s not makeup—”

“Drop it,” I said. “She has it hard enough as it is.”

Philip conducted us through a clean, well-lit group of offices paralleling Atlanta Homicide, and then through a darkened observation room into the same evidence room where I’d first seen… ‘it.’ The cadaverous man was gone, but wiry-haired old Balducci was there, scowling, leaning back from the evidence tray before him like it might bite him.

“Miss Frost, good to see you again,” he said, obviously not pleased to see me again at all. “Agent Davidson, I’m still not sure this is a good idea.”

“We need all the help we can get,” Philip said. “Miss Anderson, if—”

He paused, and I turned. Jinx was frozen in the door. “Jinx, are you all right?”

She stood for a moment, then took a deep breath. “Yes, yes, I’m fine,” she said, slowly stepping forward into the room. “So. It is here.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Well,” she said. “Show me.”

Balducci raised his eyebrows but said nothing as I pulled out a chair for her and guided her into it. I started to reach for the tray, but Jinx held up her hand.

“I can tell where it is,” she said, a bit sharp. “Could I have a little room?”

Balducci’s chair squeaked back as he popped to his feet, and suddenly he, Philip and I were in three corners of the room, all far from Jinx. I looked over at Balducci, then Phil. They were just as uncomfortable and sickened by the lid as I was.

Then Jinx reached for the lid—and
screamed.

19. HOT ELECTRIC SHOCK

I felt a hot electric shock ripple through my tattoos and fell back against the wall. Jinx jerked her hand back, tumbling out of her chair, knocking it sideways onto the floor—and screaming, screaming the whole time in repeated, high pitched, full-voiced wails.

Balducci clutched himself, reaching for his heart. After a shocked moment, both Phil and I stepped forward just as Jinx’s screams subsided.

“Jinx,” I said, reaching for her. “Are you—”

“Don’t touch me!” she snapped, holding out her hand, and I recoiled from the blind glare burning out from those spooky geode eyes. “Don’t help me.”

We stood back as she collected herself and straightened her glasses. She groped blindly for the chair, found it, and righted it. With one hand she lifted herself up and brushed herself off, still keeping that fixed-head stare that was so very Jinx. After a moment she bent, collected her cane, and sat down primly at the table, folding her hands in her lap before sighing.

“My, my,” she said. “Quite a shocker you have there. May I continue?”

“Uh…” Balducci said, staring at Phil, who nodded. “Yeah.”

She reached out a hand abruptly and put her whole palm across the lid, screaming instantly like she was pressing her hand on a hot stove. Her other hand tightened on her cane, and she twisted in her seat and screwed her face up until she stopped screaming.

“Not
the first clear images I wanted to see after twenty years of darkness,” she said, voice ragged and angry and very un-Jinx.
“Not
what I wanted to see
at all”

“What did you see?” Phil said.

“Impressions, really,” Jinx said. “A woman, mid-twenties, blond, naked. A sort of circular tattoo. Cut from her flesh with an
athame
, a ritual magic dagger—”

I looked at Balducci, who was holding his hand over his mouth cautiously, skeptically, following every word. Up till now Jinx had not told us anything she couldn’t have gotten from me, a cold-reading trick typical of most of the charlatans claiming to be psychics. I couldn’t blame him for being skeptical—

“And then—dear goddess!—he poured
salt
on the wound—”

She shoved the lid away, and Phil and Balducci looked at each other and raised their eyebrows. “The psychic record ends there. I’m pretty sure the salt was to sever any remaining magical connection to the living host.” She lowered her head. “I can’t say for certain, but I got a
very
strong impression that dagger wanted to end the ritual in her heart.”

“That’s… consistent,” Philip said.

“That’s fucking
amazing
is what it is,” Balducci said.

“Language, Officer Balducci,” Jinx said calmly. “I’m afraid that touching the lid is quite… aversive… to a sensitive such as myself. With your permission, I’d like to encircle it before I begin my examination. It might serve to dampen some of the ‘vibes.’”

“That… that wasn’t the examination?” Balducci said.

“No,” she said. “That was a side effect.”

“Miss Anderson is a graphomancer,” Philip said. “She’s here to analyze the tattoo and give us her thoughts on why the killer may have wanted it.”

Jinx had pulled out what looked like a small makeup case from her shoulder bag and was feeling the table. “May I draw on this?” she asked, retrieving a piece of chalk from the case.

Balduci let out his breath. “Sure. Why the hell not?”

“Language, Officer Balducci,” Jinx said, drawing a wide circle around the evidence tray. “I’m only doing this because I’m trying to help.”

“Uh, Philip,” I said. “There was that matter of my… other associates—”

“Davidson,” Balducci warned. “I appreciate you bringing APD in on this, but you’re—
we’re
letting out a
lot
of information about this case to a
lot
of people—”

“Current thinking,” Philip said, ushering me towards the observation room to talk but speaking to Balducci, “is that if you have a known victim category, you alert them. That it’s better to prevent more crimes than to nail the perpetrator.”

Balducci threw up his hands.

Philip joined me in the observation room, and the door closed with a sudden
click.

There, alone together in the near darkness, I forgot what we were going to talk about. We stared at each other for a moment, his grey eyes glinting with reflected light from the window on room beyond, his strong physique outlined by the soft glow of the monitors. I drew a breath, and his eyes lit up and sparkled at me, hungry and alive.

We closed the gap. His hand touched my waist, my hand touched his cheek, my head bent down, our lips almost touched— and then, just as abruptly, we pulled apart.

“Whoa,” Phillip said, reddening. “I’m, uh, sorry, Miss Frost—”

“Me too,” I echoed, feeling my face flush with embarrassment as well. “I—”

“I
assure
you I didn’t call you in here for that,” Philip said, stiffening.

“I didn’t mind,” I blurted out, then raised my hands as he raised his eyebrow. “Wait, I didn’t mean it like that. I assure
you
, I stopped moving that fast back in college. I meant, I don’t interpret this as any kind of harassment, Special Agent Philip Davidson.”

“That’s a relief,” he said, staring at the hand that had touched my waist like it was a foreign thing. Then his mouth quirked up in a wry smile. “Inappropriate touching!”

I choked off a laugh. “Maybe inappropriate,” I said, “but… still, I didn’t mind.”

Philip glanced up at me, and his smile warmed. “Even more of a relief.”

Suddenly a bright wave of color splashed into the observation room. “Whoa,” Philip said again, hopping back from the window as Jinx whirled her cane above her head with an odd, doublehanded motion, drawing a bright circle of light in the air like a giant halo. After a moment, the rainbow faded, an echo glittering across an elaborate magic circle she’d inscribed over the table. Despite myself, I leaned toward the window and looked at it: effective, but exhaustingly filigreed. I’d swear half of it wasn’t necessary, done just for tradition—or because Jinx wanted to be ‘extra special safe.’ Trust a Wiccan to overthink everything.