Precinct 13

by Tate Hallaway

  Considering that the only other job I had for the day was trying to figure out what the hell I was going to do with a dead animal carcass, I didn’t mind tagging along. The thought of spending alone time in close quarters with Jones didn’t particularly thrill me, however.

  The meeting wrapped up quickly after that. Nothing was said about that last item on the board, so I asked Jack as we filed out of the room. “What’s with the dragon?”

  He shrugged. “No one knows. It could have just been a flyover.”

  A uniform I didn’t recognize added, “The ID was shaky, but it’s the right time of year for migration. I think the boss is just being cautious, since cattle got mauled.”

  I stared at him blankly.

  He had the slightest hint of a paunch and a cherubic face the color of windswept sandstone. His hair was slickly black, and I thought he might be either Latino or Native American. “Dragons are responsible for ten percent of all unsolved cattle-rustling cases. The number is especially high during peak migration times.”

  “Oh,” I said, because what else could I say?

  “This is Denis. He’s our George,” Jack explained, with a nod at the uniform, who instantly offered his hand.

  “Our George?”

  “As in saint,” Jack added, as if that made things clearer.

  “Oh, as in Saint George and the Dragon?” I asked, as a dim connection formed in my brain. Denis smiled in acknowledgment. The hand I shook was calloused, but the grip lighter than I’d expected. “You slay dragons?”

  He started. I let his hand go, uncertain if he’d been shocked by my question or my tattoo. “Ah, no,” he said quickly. “I’m actually not sure that’s possible. Technically, I’ve been trained to combat them—just hold my own, really—and to speak their language, but it’d be a dark day if I had to go up against one of those bastards.”

  Jack added, “Think of Denis’s job like a hostage negotiator. Every unit is required to have someone trained in it, but you hope like hell you never have to use it, you know?”

  “Sure,” I said in response. Though I really wanted to know from Denis: “Have you ever seen a dragon?”

  “Only in books, I’m afraid,” he said, tucking his hands behind his back. He dropped his eyes a bit, as though he was embarrassed by the fact.

  “They’re extraordinarily rare,” Jack said, as though in Denis’s defense. “There’s probably less than a half dozen known to still exist.”

  “And one just flew over Pierre, South Dakota,” I said.

  “Exactly,” Denis agreed.

  Jack and I were literally standing by the watercooler when I heard Jones’s approach. He continued to bark out orders. I turned around in time to watch him stop by the desk of the woman I’d seen playing the strange game of solitaire yesterday. “Beth,” he said. “Cast every chart, bone, and tea leaf you can think of. I want to know what the hell cosmic convergence is causing all this activity right now.”

  She got to it as Jones barreled toward us.

  I’d barely put my water down when he said, “Alex, let’s go.”

  I swallowed back a “Yes, sir!” but found myself snapping to attention, despite myself. Jack cupped his hand in front of his mouth and whispered, “Good luck,” as I hustled after Jones.

  This time I got to sit in the front of the squad car, like a big girl. I buckled myself in. The dash was an array of fascinating buttons and screens, along with all the usual controls for heat and such. I wondered which switch controlled the siren and the flashing lights. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed the Refocus had not been replaced yet. I ran my fingers over the spot where Stone had poked her finger through the bulletproof glass. When Jones climbed in, I turned around quickly.

  “How are you settling in with the team?” he asked, after starting up the engine.

  “I’m not really sure,” I admitted. Especially considering how much you seem to hate all my suggestions.

  The police radio crackled with noises from Dispatch. Apparently, somewhere in the normal world there had been a dispute between two truckers at the Dunkin’ Donuts.

  “I should be in the morgue, not the field,” I said in all honesty.

  Jones nodded thoughtfully. I glanced over at him. He drove casually, with one arm resting on the window, the other draped over the wheel. He’d set his cap in the space between us, and the sun shone reddish through brown hair. I thought he looked tired, but it may just have been the way the light brought out every line on his weathered face. “We need a lab rat among those in the know, the magical community.”

  “So I’m it, huh?”

  “You can go back to your basement once we catch the bad guy. For now, it will be good for you to get a feel for how our operation works.”

  I shrugged. So far I wasn’t sure it was working at all. I didn’t think I could tell him that, though, so I sat back and looked out the window. At least the patrol car had a functioning heater.

  We rolled past a corner grocery store. The light flashed OPEN in red neon. A hand-lettered sign advertised that they specialized in preparing pheasant meat. Bison was also on sale, apparently.

  “You might want to tell me about that demon you met,” he said, as we passed under the bright lights of a gas station. “Jack said you’re worried about someone you left behind. Your father? That you need me to contact the Chicago Bureau?”

  How strange to think there’d been a shadow magical organization in my hometown all the while I’d been force-fed antipsychotics and mandatory therapy sessions to transform real demons into inner ones. “My dad,” I said, feeling like I was giving him the title of some bad teenage horror movie, “married a demon.”

  “Sumerian, Egyptian, or Judeo-Christian?”

  “I have no idea,” I said. I wasn’t used to being taken seriously on this subject, and it was hard not to default to my usual self-deprecating, deflecting jokes or comments. Normally, I’d start talking now about why the doctors said I’d had the break—about my mother’s lingering illness and untimely death and how Father’s marriage had come too soon in my grieving process.

  Jones spared me a look. He was frowning, as usual, but I thought it held a slight edge of concern. “It would help any extraction team if they knew what they were up against. There are a few easy tells. Wings, for instance. Do you remember wings?”

  So much of those days had become an indistinct fog. “Reptilian eyes. I think they were my stepmother’s, anyway.”

  That clearly stumped him. “Are you sure she was a demon?”

  “Of course not,” I snapped. I hadn’t meant for that to come out so hard, so I added, “I mean, that’s how I ended up in a psych ward.”

  Jones rubbed his forehead, and gave me a sympathetic grimace. “It’s not necessary that we know. Anything you can remember would help, though.”

  I chewed on my lip. I’d worked so long and so hard trying to forget all of this, it was hard to remember how it had all started. What had I seen? I had a dim memory of walking in on them, in the middle of sex, which would have been traumatic enough at my tender age, but she’d looked at me, smiled with such a possessive, wicked expression…“A forked tongue,” I said. “Horns?”

  “But no wings?”

  I shook my head. I couldn’t remember.

  “She might be an ifrit,” Jones said.

  He turned the wheel as we pulled into the driveway of an average-looking house. He turned off the engine, and shifted in his seat to look me in the eye.

  “I assume your father never turned into an animal,” he continued.

  I shook my head. My dad had been a jackass, in my opinion, but I was sure that wasn’t what Jones meant.

  He said, “That rules out an Egyptian ifrit, which is good news. Ifrit, generally, are pretty minor as these things go. Shoot me an e-mail with his address and any other details you can remember. We’ll get a team to make sure he’s in no trouble. I assume Jack told you that it could just be…uh, interspecies romance.”

  I just n
odded, because I didn’t trust myself to speak without spitting or making inappropriate noises.

  Jones looked out at the house. It was a two-story built of yellow brick. By far the tallest of those on the block, it had the feeling of having been an original farmhouse that the city had built around. Despite that, it was cheerful. Painted wooden flower boxes, though still empty from the previous winter, looked well cared for, as did the burlap-covered shrubbery. The trim around the windows and roofline had been painted green, and I could see white lace curtains through the glass.

  Though it was impossible through the closed windows and the distance, I swore I smelled freshly baking bread.

  “Homey,” I noted, as we got out of the car.

  “Watch yourself,” Jones said, putting on his cap and adjusting his gun belt. “Don’t take anything offered, not even her hand.”

  “Seriously? I can’t even shake hands?”

  “Just don’t. It could be considered accepting an offer of friendship. I’m not even going to introduce you. The less attention you attract from the fairy folk, the better.” He pulled a small vial from a snap pocket on his belt and handed it to me. It had white crystals inside that looked a lot like—“Salt,” he said. “If she invites us in be sure to sprinkle it over the threshold. If we don’t break the circle, the next time we step outside it might be a hundred years gone.”

  “Christ,” I muttered, following him up the curved cobblestone walk to the front steps. The place looked innocent enough, but I gripped the vial inside my fist. As we got closer, I suddenly noticed how odd it was that the door was bright purple. It was the only part of the house painted so garishly. How I hadn’t noticed it instantly was a mystery. Jones rang the bell.

  A kindly-looking older woman opened the door after the third buzz. She wore a green and blue plaid shawl over her bent shoulders, and white curls cascaded loosely down her back. Her eyes were rheumy and her irises were such a pale color that I thought she was blind at first. She had a large nose, and I half expected a stereotypical hairy wart at the tip. But her smile was warm and gentle, and when she saw Jones, she said, “Ah, Spenser, mo bhilis. To what do I owe this pleasure?”

  Jones doffed his hat, and gave a short bow. “Not pleasure, I’m afraid, ma’am, but business.”

  “Bah,” she said, batting her hand at him. “That’s always been your problem, son. Not nearly enough pleasure.” She toddled away, back into the interior of the house, leaving the door open in invitation.

  Jones jerked his head at the threshold, and I sprinkled a clear line of salt. At least I hoped it was clear. There wasn’t a lot of salt in the tiny container, and it came out faster than I expected. He seemed satisfied, at any rate, and entered.

  I shoved the empty vial into my jeans pocket. Then I followed, taking one step through.

  Suddenly, I was surrounded by a circle of ancient, gnarled oak trees. Fern fronds brushed my calf, and my boot crunched on freshly fallen leaves. The air smelled of forest in late autumn. I looked up to blue sky. A check behind showed a sliver of…space, through which I could see the concrete steps and the patrol car parked in the drive.

  As if of its own accord, my hand, the tattooed one, reached back and gripped the door frame. One foot was inside, but my other heel seemed stuck as though the salt were glue instead.

  Acorns were thick on the ground; I could hear them popping under Jones’s boots as he walked toward a giant, moss-covered boulder in the center of the grove. A shaft of light seemed to fall on the woman perched on its rounded peak. She was breathtakingly gorgeous, with a riot of inky black curls and a formfitting green dress trimmed with the same plaid as the old woman’s shawl. She lounged seductively, her head resting against one hand, the other toying with some bit of greenery. Through thick lashes, she gazed down at us from her vantage point.

  Jones couldn’t have looked more out of place in his police uniform, but he stood erect and at attention at the foot of the standing rock. He held his hat in one hand, and the other rested casually on the holster of his gun. I thought, though, that in this verdant setting, the frown lines of his face smoothed and he seemed more handsome.

  “State your business with fairy, half-breed.” Though full of insult, the woman’s voice was like some familiar music from my childhood, and I felt a strange compulsion to step closer to hear it better. I started forward, but my hand wouldn’t release its death grip, and I jerked to a stop.

  “I beg your indulgence, my lady, but I must know if any of your people were in my territory last night?”

  She sneered most delicately. “Only one.”

  “May I know for what purpose?”

  “You may,” she said. She lay back and stretched with a supple, feline grace in the sun.

  Jones waited for a long moment as she stared at the sky saying nothing. I thought she may have fallen asleep. Finally, he asked, “What was it?”

  “Surely you know your own mind, Spenser, mo bhilis.”

  “Me? Are you saying I was the only fairy in Pierre?”

  She never turned to look at him, just spoke up at the sky. “Be grateful, half-breed, that I count you among my people at all.”

  Spenser’s lips grew thin, and his body tensed. The muscle of his jaw worked furiously. Stiffly, he sketched a bow and backed toward me slowly. “My lady,” he said through gritted teeth.

  She waved a casual dismissal, gracefully rude.

  I would have stood in the door gaping at her beauty for the rest of my life, but Jones pushed past me angrily. He knocked me back into the bleak chill of Pierre. I blinked in the gray ugliness on the step, breathing hard, as if all the air had been pushed from my lungs. When he slammed the door shut, I could have cried out in pain.

  “Wha— Why?” was all I could manage.

  He was stomping down the crooked path toward the waiting squad car. “Fucking goddamn fairy.”

  My hand reached for the doorknob of the house, but somehow I knew if I opened it, it would be to doilies and rag rugs and old-fashioned furniture. The forest and all its splendor would be gone. With a heavy sigh, I joined Jones in the car.

  His hands were curled around the steering wheel so tightly that his knuckles showed white. “It’s got to be a lie or some tricky riddle,” he was saying. “That’s a fairy ring out at Olson’s place, I’d stake my life on it.”

  “She was so beautiful,” I said wistfully, looking longingly at the purple door. “Who was she?”

  “My mother,” Jones said. “Maeve, Queen of Fairy.”

  And I thought my family had problems. “Oh.”

  I would have said more, but at that moment my cell phone buzzed in my pocket. The number was local, but not one I recognized. I answered it anyway. “Hello?”

  “Connor? Alex Connor? This is Genevieve, your assistant. There’s a dead fucking cow in the morgue.”

  “It should just be dead,” I said casually. “If it’s doing something rude to the dead, I think you should send it back to the rancher and remove Mrs. Finnegan to somewhere safer.”

  “What?”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  THIRTEEN

  My assistant was a lot more frazzled than the last time I saw her. Gone were the Isabel Toledo shoes, the Vera Wang dress, and the matching high-class attitude. She met me at the door with a horrified, “Help me!” expression. Her polished nails dug into my sweater painfully as she dragged me into the room. “They had to put it on the floor! With a forklift! It has no goddamn face, for fucksake.”

  “I know,” I said. To her credit, my assistant seemed to have had the presence of mind to spread a tarp out on the floor upon which the cow now rested. She had also piled heaps of ice around the carcass. “This is good.” I indicated all she’d done—or, more likely, gotten someone else to do. “Thank you. But what were you doing here?”

  “I work here,” she said, her voice confused, but clearly affronted.

  “All of a sudden? You couldn’t be bothered when I checked in Mrs. Finnegan and…” I�
��d gotten out of the habit of referring to the other body as anything other than the necromancer. “…everything else. Why did you come in today?”

  She tried to keep up the offended look, but it faltered around the edges as she groped for an answer. “It’s…the second Tuesday of the month. I always come in then.”

  “Even when we’re not expecting anybody?”

  “I…come in to do routine paperwork,” she said.

  “The main office is upstairs,” I noted.

  “Yes, that’s where I was, until the call about the delivery came in,” she said. I might have been convinced she was telling the truth, except for her nervous glance at my corner desk. Following her gaze, I noticed the computer was on and opened to my autopsy report on the necromancer.

  I stalked over to the desk. With a punch of my fingers, I closed down the document. Thank God it had been the one for the upstairs office, not Precinct 13. “You were spying on me!”

  She drew herself up and glared at me over the body of the cow. “So what if I was. I’d heard they brought a guy in who had poisoned himself, but I can’t find his body anywhere. What did you do with it?”

  “Me? I—” I started to sputter out a defensive response, but stopped myself. I didn’t need to explain myself to her. The chief of police himself was the one who’d sent me to Precinct 13. He knew we had a missing body. If she was snooping, it wasn’t for him. “Are you still working for my predecessor?”

  Her face turned bright red, but she said, “I’m employed by the county.”

  “Officially. What about unofficially?” I asked, though I didn’t really need to hear her answer to know the truth. It seemed pretty clear. Still, she’d taken good care of the carcass. I pulled a pair of gloves from the box on my desk. “Listen, I’m ready to fire you on the spot. If you want to work for me, you could do me one more favor. Find me the name of a good veterinarian.”

  Her mouth opened and closed, reminding me of the koi in Precinct 13’s interrogation room.