Precinct 13

by Tate Hallaway

It was my first time in a police car without handcuffs. I still felt a bit like a criminal since Devon slouched in the seat beside me, looking particularly sullen and trapped.

  Our first stop, thankfully, was to drive through the Starbucks.

  I tend to judge people by the coffee they drink. Stone got the house blend, black. Plain coffee for a plain Jane: That suited what I’d seen of her personality so far. Devon got a double-shot energy drink, which grossed me out, but didn’t seem out of character in the least. Jones, on the other hand, got a skinny, white-chocolate peppermint mocha, surprising me utterly. Admittedly, I considered Starbucks fairly awful as chain coffee went, and, in my opinion, the only way to drink it was with tons of added sugar and milk. Still, peppermint—that was pretty fluffy for a dude. I decided there was more to Jones than met the eye.

  I got a regular latte, which probably made me seem a little mundane. It was a feint. The truth is that, given the right circumstances, I could be downright pretentious about my coffee. In Chicago, Valentine and I preferred our local, independently owned coffee shop, which was the sort of place where the baristas routinely won the Midwest Regional Championship. I didn’t want these guys to know that about me yet, however. Besides, it was hard to be a coffee snob in Pierre, where my choices were so limited.

  Stone had to get out and open our door to pass us our drinks. Once she strapped herself back in, we headed down the street. Jones seemed to be in cruise mode. He drove slowly with one hand on the wheel and the other taking sips of his froufrou drink. Occasionally a pedestrian would give that small-town nod, and he’d reply with the fingers-off-the-wheel salute.

  Next to me, Devon chugged his disgusting energy drink.

  “Late night?” I asked, and then instantly felt stupid. The guy was supposed to be some kind of vampire after all.

  He grimaced as he sucked the last drop from the bottle. “It’s my time of the month.”

  “Yeah, Devon gets really sensitive about a week before the full moon,” Jones said in a very ha-ha tone from the front seat. Stone hit him on the arm. He nearly spilled his peppermint mocha. “What was that for?”

  “Fifty-one percent of the human race gets a little sensitive once a month, often in tune with the phases of the moon. It’s not a joke.”

  “I guess not.” Jones spared his partner a meaningful look, but then returned his attention to the road. He seemed just on the verge of muttering something about females under his breath, but he clamped his mouth shut.

  Devon tucked the empty bottle under the seat casually. When he caught me watching him, he put a finger to his lips and mouthed, “Payback.”

  I wasn’t sure if Jones was such a neat freak that finding litter in his squad car would piss him off sufficiently, or if Devon hoped some criminal would find the container and use it to bludgeon Jones. Considering the empty was about three inches high and plastic, I didn’t think it would do much harm. I said nothing.

  We continued our slow meander around Pierre’s downtown. Just when I wondered whether we were going to spend the rest of the day aimlessly driving, Jones turned the wheel sharply. “There she is,” he said.

  Devon slid into me as we rounded the corner and pulled up to the curb. With some luck, I managed not to dump my latte on his head. I heard the front door slam as Jones jumped out of the car. I could see him setting a brisk pace, as if hurrying to catch up to someone.

  Stone rescued Devon and me from the locked backseat. After the warm stuffiness of the cramped squad car, the crisp air felt good on my cheeks. My breath misted as I arched my back in a stretch.

  We were in an industrial part of town. Unadorned business incubators sat in long rows, surrounded by parking lots. A railroad track split the block. Just beyond the intersection, a train car, spattered with bright graffiti, sat abandoned and desolate.

  Near a large Dumpster, I saw Jones talking to a woman in a dirty parka with wild gray hair. I thought I recognized her as the homeless woman on the park bench near the capitol from earlier this morning. She had the same duct tape–patched parka and frizzy, matted hair at any rate. “Who’s that?” I asked Stone.

  “Nana Spider,” Stone said. “She’s a civitas veneficus.”

  “What’s a civitas veneficus?” I asked.

  “Anyone who uses city magic,” she said. “Most civitas veneficum are soothsayers. They use various methods to foresee the future or read the signs. They also tend to be hermits, choosing to live in the urban wild.”

  “In other words, homeless,” Devon piped up from where he leaned against the hood of the car.

  “By choice,” Stone insisted, quietly.

  He arched his eyebrow as if he begged to differ, but he continued, “It’s also the only use of power that’s been officially designated neutral—neither natural nor unnatural.”

  Officially? I wondered who decided that sort of thing, the “Ministry of Magic”? I felt far too silly to ask that, however. I looked around at the concrete. There wasn’t a tree in sight. A piece of litter, a torn plastic shopping bag, got caught in an updraft and spiraled lazily into the air.

  “You see,” Devon said, his eyes following the bag’s strange, slow-motion dance. “The bag is plastic, the essence of something unnatural, fake. But it’s the wind that moves it, plays with it.”

  The bag dropped suddenly to the ground when the breeze shifted. There was something eerie about it, that was certain. But was it magic? Jack had told me that I’d been seeing magic my whole life, but had been told not to talk about it. In effect, I’d been trained not to see, not to believe.

  The bag skittered along the ground. Like some kind of strange, urban animal, it scooted behind the corner of the building, out of sight.

  I decided there was definitely something creepy and weird about all this. I would keep an open mind.

  The three of us had been hanging back, giving Jones and Nana room to talk. All at once, Jones turned in our direction and beckoned us closer. “Nana’s going to read the entrails.”

  We gathered around the Dumpster expectantly. Nana cut a striking figure in her puffy down coat. Her skinny legs stuck out beneath the filthy gray ball like the stick on cotton candy. She wore clingy, black leggings that accented her knobby knees, and disappeared into mismatched boots: one cowboy-style, the other a fake fur–covered Ugg.

  I held the lid of my latte close to my nose to ward off the rather ripe combination of the garbage and Nana. We stood in a loose circle, with the two uniformed cops on either side of the old woman.

  Devon, who stood between Stone and me, shoved his hands in his pants pockets. It was the first time I noticed that he was the only one of us without a coat. He only had on his college sweatshirt. I shivered on his behalf and took a warming sip of my drink.

  Nana seemed to have commandeered Jones’s peppermint mocha, as she was taking large gulps of it as she crouched over her army pack. She was digging through it, looking for something. All the while she was muttering to herself. I only caught the odd word: “maleficium,” “water lily,” and “highway patrol.”

  Finally, she pulled out a single tennis shoe. After downing the last of the coffee, she handed the cup back to Jones. He looked at it for a second, as though disappointed to have sacrificed all of it, and then tossed it over his shoulder into the Dumpster.

  Nana smoothed a matted lock away from her face and held the shoe out before us with great reverence. It was a large, white running shoe, looked like it might be a man’s by the size of it. It looked huge in her thin, bony fingers. It was a Nike; I recognized the black swoosh.

  Nana’s body started to sway, though somehow she kept the shoe held out in front of her, perfectly still. The movement was mesmerizing, and I found myself moving unconsciously to the same rhythm. She began to speak. Instead of a spooky, echoing voice, she croaked: “Okay, Great Powers, so where’d the guy go, huh?”

  I, for one, was disappointed at the lack of rhyming.

  She threw the shoe into the middle of our circle. It hit the asphalt w
ith an unceremonious thunk. Everyone’s eyes were wide, even Devon’s, as we waited for something to happen.

  The shoe lay there.

  No one said anything for the longest time. The wind hissed around the edges of the building and through the empty parking lot. I started to wonder if I’d missed something. I glanced around the circle. Everyone waited.

  Then, apparently responding to some silent cue, Nana shuffled over to look down at the shoe. She circled this way, then that. She bent closely and seemed to study the laces, in particular.

  From the squat, she squinted up at Jones and scratched her chin with long, ragged fingernails. “The signs aren’t clear,” she said. “All I see is that he was close to me this morning.”

  I accidentally inhaled some latte in my surprise. “It’s true,” I said excitedly, around hacking the coffee. “I found the toe tag near the capitol. Nana was there on a bench, only I didn’t know it was her. I almost went to ask her if she’d seen anyone, but I thought she didn’t want to be disturbed.”

  Nana’s pale green-tinged eyes turned to inspect me. They were deep set, but sharp. “Yes, this morning,” she agreed. “I was communing with the ghosts.” She frowned to herself and dug in her ear. “But to have missed the presence of not one, but two magicals? I must be losing my touch.”

  Jones cleared his throat. “What about the shoe?”

  “I need more than it can give me. Time for the big guns.” Nana pulled a fast-food ketchup packet from her coat pocket. She threw it on the ground. In a flash, she lifted her foot and stomped on it. Ketchup spattered explosively.

  Devon jumped back as if he was hit. “Jesus, watch where you’re splashing that stuff.”

  Nana paid no attention to Devon, except as she followed the trail of gooey mess to his pants leg. He’d started to shake it off when she grabbed the cuff of his jeans.

  “Don’t,” she hissed. “You’ll mess with the signs.”

  He froze, balanced awkwardly on one foot. She grasped the denim in her clawlike grip. She was hunkered down so tightly, her parka looked like a big gray boulder that had sprouted a frizzled mat of hair.

  I thought, by the way he was squirming, Devon was going to fall over onto his butt.

  “Okay, okay,” she said. “This is better. The bad guy has gone home to roost. With a sibling or other family member or a mouse. And there’s something about moons or lovers.”

  “Oh,” Devon said, jerking his foot from her grasp finally. “That’s probably for me.”

  She gave him a squinty inspection. Standing slowly, she glared up into his face. Nana stood only as tall as his sternum, but she had twice the presence. He twitched nervously until she finally demanded: “Werewolf or vampire?”

  “Er, both, ma’am,” he said.

  “Eh, it probably was for you.” She shrugged, turning away. The circle began to break up. Jones helped Nana shoulder her army bag. I noticed him slip a twenty into her palm.

  Stone, meanwhile, looked like she really wanted to clean up the ketchup packet, but Jones shook his head when she made a move to pick it up. She backed off, and instead came over to offer Devon a wet wipe for the ketchup on his jeans.

  He accepted the wipe gratefully. Putting a hand on my shoulder to steady himself, he said, “It’s where they come from, you know.”

  “What?”

  “Weird abandoned shoes. You’ve always wondered, right? How did that get there and why is there only one? Well, now you know.”

  He let go of me, and walked over to toss the wad into the Dumpster. I looked at the shoe, looking a lot like the other strange, single shoes I’d seen in gutters and lying at the side of the road in Chicago. When he came back over, I had to ask, “What about the pairs strung over wires?”

  “Thrown by civitas veneficus dowsers,” he said. “They mark crossroads or warn of danger. I really don’t know how to tell the difference, so if I see some, I usually avoid that part of town entirely.”

  Nana waved good-bye and hobbled off to wherever she had been headed. I watched her slow progress down the street. When she passed the edge of the building, the plastic bag shot out. It rustled and tumbled along behind her heels like a faithful dog.

  “Okay, we have a lead,” Jones said, shepherding us back to the squad. “Let’s roll, people.”

  Maybe it was the fact that I’d finished my latte and I finally felt fully caffeinated, but I had a small quibble with Jones’s assessment. “What lead is that, exactly?”

  He had the car door open and was halfway in. His tight expression made it clear that he wasn’t used to someone questioning his decisions or authority. “The necromancer is with a sibling or other family member. Didn’t you hear Nana?”

  I had, but I’d noticed something else as well. “She also said he could be with a mouse.”

  “I’m sure it will all make sense in time.”

  I cleared my throat. “And she read Devon’s fate in those spatters, so how do we know she’s tracking the necromancer?”

  Stone, who was opening the back door for Devon, paused to give her partner a meaningful look.

  The muscles in Jones’s jaw flexed, as he asked, “What do you suggest we do?”

  “Can we go back to his apartment? I’d like to take a look around since I missed it this morning. We could look for an address book or something that would give us a clue what family members he’s still in touch with. And a mouse? Did she mean a computer one or a furry one? He could have contacts on his laptop, if it’s still there.”

  “It’s not a bad idea,” Stone said quietly.

  Not a bad idea? It sounded like routine police work to me, and I only had a crumby degree in forensic science.

  Precinct 13 must have some seriously weird protocols, if this was business as usual. I waited to see how Jones would react.

  “Fine,” Jones said finally. Dropping into his seat, he shut the car door hard. It wasn’t quite a slam, but it had a very similar quality.

  When I ducked under Stone’s arm to slip into my own seat, she said, “It’s a good suggestion. He’ll be all right.”

  Despite Stone’s assurances, it was a tense ride to the necromancer’s apartment building. In particular, Devon seemed to revel in Jones’s discomfort. He leaned right up against the bulletproof Plexiglas and said, “Real police work…are you sure you remember how to do this sort of thing, Spense?”

  My ears pricked up. So I wasn’t the only one who thought maybe Jones had gotten sloppy.

  At Jones’s growled response, Devon tipped his head back and laughed wickedly. At that angle, his canines were noticeably pronounced.

  Stone turned around and pointed a finger at Devon. With a deliberate motion, she tapped the glass. It cracked with a pop, like a bullet. Both Devon and I flattened ourselves against the backrest in surprise. “Holy crap!” Devon shouted.

  I stared in horror at the spot where a finger-sized dent bowed out the safety glass. A spiderweb of cracks spread out around it.

  What kind of strength would you need to be able to do something like that? And she’d done it so casually.

  Jones, whose lips twitched with a suppressed smile, said, “Damn it, Stone. That’s the third one I’m going to have to get replaced.”

  “Sorry, boss,” she said, though clearly without any remorse.

  “Someday, Golem, someone’s going to wipe that word right off your forehead,” Devon sneered.

  She just smiled at him and said, “I’d like to see you try, noshech kariot.”

  Devon’s eyes narrowed. It was clear he’d been insulted, but the confusion about what exactly she’d called him rippled across his face. “Oh yeah? Well, same to you.”

  Stone laughed and turned her back to him. The mark her finger left in the glass remained, hanging there ominously.

  I looked at Stone with renewed interest. What the hell was a “golem?” The only Gollum I knew was a creepy, cave-dwelling hobbit with an invisibility ring. Stone certainly didn’t look like that creature from The Lord of the Rings,
and he always seemed sort of scrawny and weak. Stone was clearly as powerful as her name.

  No one had much to say after that. I desperately wanted to know more about Stone, but it was clear that this was not the time to ask. Pulling my phone out, I Googled “gollum,” but all I got were pictures and articles about the movie version. Perhaps I was spelling it wrong?

  I didn’t have a chance to try alternate spellings because we’d arrived.

  Before getting out, Jones turned around to admonish Devon. “You kids need to play nice now. Or I’ll have to separate you.”

  “She started it,” Devon muttered.

  Stone opened the door for me. I watched her carefully as I stepped out into the parking lot. She smiled at me as I moved to let Devon out. Stone did a little fake-out of slamming the door on him, and he pulled his feet back with lightning-fast speed. When he looked horrified, she gave him a halfhearted apologetic look. “Truce?” she asked.

  “Yeah, okay, sure,” he said nervously.

  The place the necromancer lived was a duplex. The house was constructed of white stucco and broad wooden beams—sort of Tudor, but an uninspired version that was little more than a square with a pointed roof. If I had to guess, I would have said it was built in the thirties or early forties. The sidewalk looked as though it hadn’t been shoveled all winter. The only pathway was a narrow melted footpath, a mess of sand and salt. We walked, single file, to the cracked and uneven steps.

  There were piles of yellowing newspapers in front of one door, and a mailbox crammed to overflowing with mail. Yellow tape had been placed in an X over the door; it was covered with the words CRIME SCENE and NO TRESPASSING.

  Stone pulled a key from her pocket and fitted it into the lock. She pushed the door open with a jerk. The air that escaped smelled stale, with the tinge of cat urine.

  Inside, going off to the left, was a set of stairs. They were fashioned of wood, but like the exterior, not terribly fancy or ornate. We headed up to the landing, single file, with Stone and Jones in the lead.

  Devon trailed behind me, keeping as much distance between himself and Stone as possible.