“Oh, crap,” I said. “Cops just love people who kill with magic.”
“Oh, crap, exactly,” Rand said. “With all the deaths and disappearances and suspicious fires we’ve had over the last month, everyone on the force is on edge. That’s why I decided to make sure I was the one who picked you up. I wanted you to arrive in one piece.”
“But,” I said, “Misuse of Magic? No one from the DEI said-Philip never said-”
“Your boyfriend can’t help you,” Rand said. His eyes were boring into me, staring at my neck. I reddened-he had to be looking at the bite marks. “Or is that your ex-boyfriend?”
“He is, in fact, my ex-boyfriend,” I said. “We split last week-”
“That’s a shame. You’re going to need all the help you can get,” Rand said. “The murder charge isn’t even the worst of your worries. Your use of magic is on the record.”
“So?” I said. “I was defending myself… ”
“But Misuse of Magic is still a crime-a Federal crime,” Rand said. “So the assistant DA is working with the U.S. Attorney to put you away for Felonious Misuse of Magic. The murder charge is just a way to get to her real agenda. If Ross can’t prove murder, she might go for felony manslaughter-and then the U.S. Attorney can still get you for Felonious Misuse.”
I found I was shivering on top of the churning. Misuse was a Federal charge. I’d spend a minimum of five years in Federal prison, become a felon, and lose the right to vote. Even if I ever did get out of jail, I’d never tattoo again. Not magic, not legally, not in the States.
Worst of all, I’d never get Cinnamon back.
“This sucks,” I said.
Rand opened his mouth, then closed it. “You’re telling me.”
“ I’m telling you? ” I asked. “ I was tied to that table, having to defend myself.”
“That wasn’t your fault, but why were you there in the first place?” Rand said, glaring at me. “What sequence of events led up with that? What crowd were you running with? What were you involved in? You may be in trouble, but I’m the one who has to tell my best friend that I can’t help his little girl, who regularly plays with fire and finally got burned. Speaking of which, stop showing up at magical fires. You’re a whisker away from being brought in for arson.”
I looked away. Only then did I notice the little details cropping up around us: billboards for lawyers, bail bondsman’s offices, and broken looking people. This was a part of downtown I avoided for good reason: we were pulling up in front of the Fulton County Jail. I swallowed.
“I-I don’t remember this,” I said. “I thought we were going to the Atlanta City Jail.”
“You haven’t been arrested in a while, have you?” Gibbs said. Apparently his virtual walk was over. “They’ve been sending state charges to Fulton for years.”
“I’ve never been up on a state charge before,” I countered. “Misdemeanors go to City-”
“Damn it, Kotie,” Rand exploded. “I bounced you on my knee! You had bows in your hair! It was bad enough that you became a tattooed freak with bite marks on your neck, but how did you fall so far that you know where they take you when you’re arrested?”
My mouth hung open. Rand was absolutely enraged. I didn’t want to set him off further-but he’d really stepped over the line there. No matter how much I didn’t want to piss him off, there was no way I could let that stand. Finally I spoke.
“Maybe I’ve done some bad things,” I said, “but defending myself is not one of them.”
Rand just sat there, steaming, until the car pulled to a stop. “I won’t be involved in the investigation,” he said tightly, stepping out as Gibbs opened his door. “Conflict of interest. But I’ll find a lawyer for you, save you a phone call-”
“I have a lawyer,” I said. “Helen Yao of Ellis and Lee.”
Rand froze at the door, eyes glaring back in at me.
“I had to,” I said. “They’re trying to take Cinnamon.”
Rand cursed, leaning his hands on his knees. “Helen Yao, of Ellis and Lee,” he said at last. “I’ll call her. You… you stay safe in there, Kotie.”
“I will,” I said, and then blurted, “Don’t tell my dad.”
Rand glared, then slammed the door.
Gibbs leaned in after Rand left. “Don’t take it too personal, girl,” he said. “He loves you like you were his own daughter.”
“I got that,” I said, shifting uncomfortably. It was nowhere near as fun to ride in handcuffs as I had first thought. “But it still hurts, because I didn’t do anything wrong. ”
“I know,” Gibbs said, rubbing his dark crewcut. “You ready?”
“As I’ll ever be,” I said.
And I let Gibbs help me out of the car-and put me in the pinball machine.
I really haven’t been arrested enough to feel comfortable with it, and all the procedures at Fulton County were different enough from Atlanta City to leave me completely disoriented. They shuffled me from room to room in a careful corral of one-way doors that left prisoners always at the mercy of a man behind a glass controlling the buzzer.
I was interviewed, photographed, fingerprinted, and then dumped in a massive waiting area with chairs that looked like they were from McDonald’s. After what seemed like forever my name was called, officers scooped me up again, and I was searched, examined, and even bandaged-a sharp-eyed cop had noticed wounds I’d gotten during the fight with Zipperface, perhaps when Calaphase threw me through the boards. After an officious nurse patched up my face, neck and hands, I returned to the pinball machine. Given what I was in for, at first I thought they might put me in some special cell designed to hold magicians, but I just ended up in a bland white holding cell with peeling paint, wedged in with a dozen other female prisoners.
I swallowed, trying not to show fear. There were druggies and drunks, clean-cut young women and well-worn older ladies. A small gaggle of tough-looking chicks were talking in one corner, glancing at me, but I actually found one rail-thin, ghost-pale woman more intimidating than any of the others, as she stared at me unblinking with cold black eyes. I found a seat, leaned against the outer bars, and stared out into the hallway of the jail, thinking just one thought.
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 famili
ar. “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 otherwise 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.”
Blood Rock s-2 Page 25