Fuck.
“So, what you in for?”
I looked up. One of the tough chicks had detached from her klatch and come to tower over me. She was a fattie Bettie Paige, butch but not lesbian, with a devil-may-care, I’m-gonna-getcha grin in her eye—almost like she wanted to pick a fight. A big bruiser with a lot of muscle under the fat, she was maybe three hundred pounds, and a couple inches shy of six feet tall.
I slowly stood up.
I like being tall. I enjoyed watching her face as my eyes met hers—then rose four inches above them. I relished watching the confidence drain from her as she realized I wasn’t just tall, but muscular, tattooed, and edgy. And just when she realized she was showing weakness, bucked up and tried to screw in her courage, I dropped the bombshell.
“Murder,” I said.
“What?” she said, eyes flicking up to mine in fear. Then her smile quirked up, like she’d found another weakness. “But I betcha didn’t do it, right?”
“Wrong,” I said coolly. “I waxed that murderous son of a bitch before he had a chance to stick his diseased prick in me. Waxed him good.”
That threw her, but she gamely recovered her smile. “Oh, hey, you’re all right,” she said. “I-I mean, good for you. Was he your pimp?”
“No, he was a serial killer who skinned women alive, raped them, then killed them.” I mean, he was, really. I don’t need to dress that shit up. In fact it was easy to lather it on. “Murdered one of my friends right in front of my face. Any other fucking questions?”
“Holy fucking shit,” she said.
“And what are you in for?” I said.
“I, uh, led a ‘squat in’” she said, embarrassed, as if it was somehow better to be in for murder—but wait a minute. A squat in? I stared at her more closely—she looked familiar. “I got a whole crew sitting tight to protest their evictions, but I found out you can’t fight City Hall.”
“You with the Candlestick Twenty? The renters the city is trying to kick out? Now you’re all right,” I said brightly. “So how did you end up in Fulton?”
“They got me for fraud,” she said, now even more embarrassed.
“Fraud?” I said.
“Look,” she said, “we were basically squatters. Our landlord burned half a mill in repairs trying to save his occupancy permit, but the city revoked it anyway. So genius here decides, let’s move people in and use critical mass to force the city to change. But all I did was get screwed.”
“Let me guess,” I said. “The yahoos you moved in didn’t want to pay rent.”
“Worse,” she said. “When I tried to get ’em to pay up, one of ’em ratted me for subletting the place without a permit, and some shmuck in the DA’s office used it to scoop me up.”
“Atlanta is just filled with schmucks in the DA’s office these days,” I said. Apparently werekin weren’t the only people chewed up by the gears once the machines started rolling.
“Yeah, well, I don’t think they would have tried it if we were still in the news, but the media got bored. They always want to have their new story,” she said bitterly. Then she shifted. “So, anyway … your tattoos are awesome. Who did them?”
I blinked. Then laughed. “Is that why you came to talk to me?” I said. “I did.”
“You did?” she said, eyes widening.
“Except for this one, this one, and this little design right here,” I said, holding up my right hand and showing one of Kring/L’s designs. “These were by one of my colleagues at the Rogue Unicorn, but the rest were by yours truly, Dakota Frost, best magical tattooist in the Southeast.”
Her eyes lit up a little more, scanning my tattoos, now seeing the movement. “Wow,” she said. “I mean, wow. When you said magic—oh, wow.”
“You know, I’m relieved,” I said, flexing my wrist so the gems embedded in the vines sparkled a little. “I thought you were coming over to try and kick my ass.”
She shrugged, a little nervously. “Sorry I butched up. I was afraid to talk to you.”
“You were afraid to talk to me?” I asked. Maybe Rand had a point about me being a tattooed freak—I loved them so much I forgot they could scare other people.
“I mean, I dunno, I’ve never been in Fulton, and you look like you gave as good as you got,” she said. At my puzzled look, she indicated the bandages on my cheeks, arm, and shoulder. “Looks like the cops beat the shit out of you when you were arrested.”
“What? No, the cops were princes. I got these bruises fighting magic graffiti, on a totally unrelated case,” I said, shaking my head and staring out at the bars. When had I started thinking of my life in terms of cases? And thinking of Cally as a case? God. The really sad thing was, it was a different case. My life was fucked up. “This is all some crazy misunderstanding. I reported the killing, when it happened, but somehow it got fucked up in the DA’s office … ”
I trailed off when I saw her face. She’d gone white.
“Fighting … magic … graffiti,” she said thickly.
“You know what I’m talking about?” I said, and she nodded. “You’ve seen it?”
“Yeah,” she said, swallowing. “At the Candlesticks. And these new tags are nasty.”
“Can you show me?” I asked. “I mean, when we get out of here?”
“No way,” she said, backing off. “One of them fucked up a friend—”
“And killed four of mine,” I said, taking her arm to stop her. “Wait, please. I need to see a live tag. I’ve been fighting it for weeks,”
“Frost!” a voice snarled. “Let go of her and step up to the grate!”
A Likely Story
I looked over to see a pair of officers standing at the grate, frowning. I took my hand away and raised my hands placatingly to the guards.
“I don’t want any trouble,” I said. “We were just talking.”
“A likely story,” the officer said. “Now step up to the grate!”
I stepped to the door, glancing back at my cellmate. “I meant what I said,” I said quietly, as the guard opened the door to the cell. “I need to see a live tag—”
“We usually paint over it,” she said, “but … yeah, I can find some.”
“If you can find any when you get out, call the Rogue Unicorn in Little Five,” I said, as the guards started to take me away. “Ask for Dakota Frost.”
“All right,” she said. “Hey, my friends call me Ranger.”
“See you on the outside, Ranger,” I said.
One of the guards snorted.
My first expectation was that my right wrist would end up handcuffed to a steel ring in a metal table in some dull grey cop-show interrogation room complete with mirrored glass, where some charmingly idiosyncratic investigator would come use personality-flaw judo to eke out a confession that not only had I killed Christopher Valentine, but also John F. Kennedy.
Instead, the guards took me to a vampire trauma nurse, following up on the bite mark they’d seen when I was bandaged. He took samples from my bite wound, dressed it up with a garlic derivative, then dressed me down about safe sex with vampires and “bite safety,” while at the same time reassuring me it was very unlikely I’d turn from just one bite, especially if the vampire in question was dead.
Jesus. I hadn’t even thought of that: I just didn’t want to give blood. I knew Darkrose had a long-lived human servant … but Saffron had been turned quickly. How many bites did it take? Slowly it sank in. I hadn’t just dodged becoming a vampire’s servant, I’d dodged becoming a vampire. But right now I wished I had become a vampire, rather than having watched him die.
A dark-haired, chocolate-skinned woman in a trim business suit strode through the door carrying a large manila folder. The black eyes behind her thin rectangular glasses found me and sized me up. Then she motioned briskly and the officer guarding me left without a word. The woman sat down across from me, opened the folder, and scanned it in silence.
She was fascinating: I noticed slight purple highlights in her otherwi
se businesslike haircut, and I found myself wondering whether she was black, Hispanic or Middle Eastern. Then she glanced up from the folder and stared straight into my eyes.
“Assistant District Attorney Paulina Ross,” she said, eyes flickering over my hair and bandages before zeroing back on my eyes. “I’m told you haven’t lawyered up, Ms. Frost.”
“They’re on their way,” I admitted. Her eyes had no distinct pupils and irises, just cold blackness, and I found it difficult to meet her gaze. “But I can’t imagine how they can help. I cooperated with the police fully the first time. Heck, I reported the death of Mirabilus—”
“Of Christopher Valentine,” she said, voice halfway between correction and clarification. “Only you identify him as Mirabilus.”
“It was his stage name,” I said coldly. “I’m sure ten minutes with Wikipedia would—”
“I meant—” she said, then cut herself off. Her eyes studied me for a moment, then she continued, “Only your story has Valentine claiming that Valentine was not his real name.”
“What he called himself isn’t relevant,” I said, now getting angry. “He was going to rape me and kill me, and his cold clammy hand on my ass spoke for itself.”
“In your story,” she said. “He can’t tell us his side of the story. But his dead body, killed by your magic, speaks volumes.”
My jaw clenched. “And what about the fingerprints on the knife that killed my friend?” I said. “Don’t they have a voice?”
“They say that an old man fought off a werewolf,” she responded, and then, clearing her throat, “That an old man with a Jewish mother fought off a fugitive Nazi war criminal who’d transformed into a monster and already murdered six other Jewish people that night.”
“I hadn’t known—why are you telling me this?” I said, confused. “If you want to get me, shouldn’t you be playing your cards close to the chest?”
“Prosecutors shouldn’t hide anything. It all has to come out in discovery,” Ross said, still pinning me with those dark eyes. “But this is the last chance we will have to speak without an intermediary. I had to give you the chance to tell me the truth.”
“I told the truth at the time,” I said. “I was defending myself from a serial killer.”
“Only your testimony ties him to that crime,” Ross interrupted. “The man was a national treasure. He took a bullet for you in front of live witnesses. And you killed him. With magic—”
The door burst open.
“This interview is over,” a thin, hawk-nosed man said, sweeping into the room with Helen Yao close at his heels. The man looked young, but his temples were graying, and he was wearing a suit that looked as expensive as Philip’s helicopter. “I’m ashamed of you, Miss Ross, interrogating a witness without counsel.”
“She didn’t request I wait for you,” Ross said, followed slowly by, “Counselor Lee.”
The man I now recognized as Damien Lee, the more prominent partner of Ellis and Lee, glanced at me sharply. “She didn’t?” he said. “How interesting. Helen.”
Helen twitched, then opened her briefcase and pulled out some forms. “I have here—”
“Oh, give it,” Ross said, motioning for the papers and scanning them quickly. Suddenly she held the papers out and stared at them, incredulous. “Now that’s a very interesting gambit, Counselor.” Next she stared at me with those piercing eyes. “We can resume this later.”
“We’re done here. Let’s go,” Lee said. He turned, then paused and turned back, staring at me dumbfounded in my chair, actually putting his hands on his hips. “Unless … you want to spend the night in jail, Miss Frost?”
There was surprisingly little paperwork to be handled. They just ran me through an exit room, clicked a few buttons on the computer to mark me released, and returned my effects. As I walked out of the processing room, Lee and Yao scooped me up and began ushering me out.
“Isn’t there a side door?” Helen asked.
“For people the DA wants to keep under a lid,” Lee said, punching numbers into a cell phone. “As for us, we take our chances. Barker, it’s Lee. You ready? We’re coming out.”
“What’s going on?” I said, confused—but with a definite sinking feeling that things were about to get worse. Lee started walking, holding out his hand to indicate the hall, and I quickly followed, Helen falling in on my right. “Why the cloak and dagger—”
“Miss Frost,” Lee said, glancing at me hurriedly, “we’ve got to hurry before news gets out. Barker’s pulling up in a black limo. When we go out those doors, we’ll run straight down to it. Don’t stop for anything.”
And then we reached the outer doors, Lee and Yao opened them for me, and I stepped outside … into a sea of flashbulbs and microphones.
The media had their new story, and I was it.
An Unusual Stratagem
I admit it: I’m an exhibitionist. I love attention. I walk around with a deathhawk every day and with my long, tattooed arms bare nine months out of the year. And it’s for a purpose. No, really! Just a month or two ago, I would have relished the chance to stand before a crowd of reporters: think of the business it would bring into the shop.
But now all I could think of was Cinnamon, and how hard it would make our case.
The questions of the reporters were a dull roar, the flashbulbs scattered shots of lightning. Did you kill Christopher Valentine? FOOM. Did you use magic? FOOM. Did you use your tattoos? FOOM. Is tattoo magic dangerous? FOOM. FOOM. FOOM.
In a daze, I followed my lawyers, who fended off reporters with practiced ease. They’d clearly put thought into it. Lee took the left with his arms spread wide, soaking up questions like a sponge, dodging, deflecting, denying. Yao took the right, nonchalantly swinging her briefcase wide, between them clearing a path for me to walk unimpeded.
But they hadn’t counted on my height, and even with me scrunched down, Lee wasn’t a tall enough man. When he stepped down the next set of risers, one of the reporters shoved her microphone straight into my face and shouted, “Is it true that you’ve confessed to the murder?”
“Miss Frost,” Lee said, trying to interpose himself between me and the mike, “has always fully cooperated with the police, but has not confessed to anything, much less murder.”
“But in November you claimed to have killed him,” the reporter pressed, still talking directly to me as we tried to press past her. “In your testimony—”
“Miss Frost’s testimony has been misrepresented—” Lee said, trying to come between us.
“So she was lying?” the reporter said, talking over him. “Were you lying, Miss Frost?”
I stopped on the steps, glaring into space. Lee looked back in alarm and reached to grab my arm, but it was too late. The reporter shoved her mike in my face again and asked, “Don’t you feel any remorse for killing a man who saved your life?”
My nostrils flared. Valentine had staged that shooting.
“No, I don’t,” I snapped, and the reporter’s eyes gleamed.
Lee twitched violently. “Miss Frost,” he said loudly, “doesn’t mean to imply—”
“That she killed him?” the reporter asked. “You are saying that you killed him?”
Lee raised his arms, shouting something, but was drowned out as the reporters surged in. Flashbulbs flashed. Cameras pressed inwards. As Lee and Yao tried to fend them off, I got angrier and angrier. I wanted to belt out that yes, I had killed him, and no, I wasn’t sorry. And it was true. But saying it would torpedo any chance I had of getting Cinnamon back.
Finally I could stand it no more. I straightened up, looked out over Lee and Yao, and picked out a reporter standing on the steps just beyond them. I made direct eye contact, and he shoved his microphone over Lee’s head and into my face. I leaned in and spoke clearly.
“Everyone, please, step back, you’re obstructing the stair.”
Then I walked straight forward between Lee and Yao, gently moving the reporter aside with my hand as I passed. I heard scr
ambling and splutters behind me, but I just kept moving and hopped right into the open door of the limo. Moments later, Lee and Yao followed.
“Drive,” Lee said, slamming the door. He settled into the backwards-facing seat opposite me. “Damn. That was a hell of a trick.”
“I used to date a musician,” I said. “She taught me a few tricks about working crowds.”
Helen covered her face as Lee choked a little. “She … ah … well,” he said. Then he recovered. “Still, let me do the talking from now on. You can’t go around torpedoing yourself—”
“Have you been briefed?” I said. “Was I not completely honest with the police?”
“We had been hoping to quash that testimony,” Lee said, now openly glaring. “We can’t claim that your confession was coerced if you’re going around corroborating—”
“My confession wasn’t coerced,” I said. “So your argument was going to be that the jury should trust me now because I was lying before?”
“Trust won’t have anything to do with it—we’re going get as much evidence thrown out as we can and argue self-defense, but without you testifying,” Lee said. “Innocent people look terrible on the stand, but the unrepentant look worse—”
“I-didn’t-do-anything-wrong,” I said, gritting my teeth.
“So you think,” Lee said. “But you don’t seem to have realized that your own approval of your actions is meaningless if a prosecutor disagrees—and she can convince a jury.”
“But Valentine was a serial killer.”
“He was never arrested and prosecuted,” Lee said. “He just died, by your hands, via magic—and Paulina Ross just loves making examples of people who kill with magic.”
I leaned back in the limo as Lee went on. I wondered how much this was going to cost me. Surely they weren’t going to take a criminal defense on spec the way they had done with the lawsuit by the Valentine Foundation. Then the bigger problem came back to me.
“What is this going to do to my custody case?” I said. “It can’t look good.”
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