“Try this. Just stop,” he said. “The Atlanta Police Department does not want a registered freelance magician nosing around this case. Especially not if you’re going to help by stirring up a hornet’s nest in the local werehouse and then not even telling us where you were-”
“I tried to tell you before,” I said sharply, “I was not there to stir up a hornet’s nest.”
“Then what were you doing?”
“Trying to get help for Cinnamon,” I said, and the line stayed silent. “She hadn’t changed since she was poisoned… and apparently that shit builds up. She turned early, and I didn’t know where else to take her. I don’t have a radar for evil graffiti. Being there to help was blind luck.”
Rand was silent, so I pressed my case. “Cinnamon’s safe because I took her there, and our werekin friend is alive because I was at the right place at the right time. If you don’t like blind luck, call it dumb luck. Did you really want me to let that boy die, Uncle Andy?”
“No,” Rand said. “No, I’m sorry. The attack’s clearly related to the one on Revenance, so I assumed it was a reaction to you poking around. I didn’t realize it was a coincidence-which actually makes our problem worse. I shouldn’t have hung up on you-”
“No, you shouldn’t have,” I said, starting up the car as the light turned green. I was silent for a moment, just driving, then said, “Not before you got the whole story.”
“Look, the DA freaked when she found out you’d been at the crime scene. We can’t have you connected to the investigation in any way, or we can kiss a conviction goodbye.”
“No way,” I said.
“No way, no how-no investigating,” Rand said. “You’ve got to promise me that you’ll stay out of this-or you might end up attached to the investigation as a suspect.”
“Uncle Andy,” I said. “Are you… threatening me?”
“No, I’m trying to make you see how serious this is,” Rand said. His voice was so stern and important I could almost see his expression. “You have to promise me, Kotie-”
“Oh, please,” I said. I automatically crossed my fingers, then glared at them. I was not going to play this game. “Cross my heart and hope to die? Detective Andre Rand, don’t you think we’re both a bit old for this? This thing murdered a friend, attacked another and almost killed me. I want to help you get this guy. These guys. Whoever it is.”
Rand was silent for a minute. “Fine,” he said. “I love you like a daughter, but I promise you that if you stick your nose back into this I will have you up on obstruction charges.”
“Andre-”
“I mean it, Dakota,” Rand said. “Butt. The Hell. Out.”
And he hung up, leaving me and the blue bomb sailing into Midtown in near silence. Once Midtown Atlanta had been a graveyard of half-filled mid-height office buildings and closed hotels, but now it was having a comeback, with new buildings in brick and stone with nary a bit of graffiti on a one of them, except for a mural, clearly commissioned.
It was new, fresh, vibrant-yet sterile: even though the cars on West Peachtree’s wide one-way expanse held enough people to make a crowd, I felt alone. Sometimes I missed riding my Vespa. No matter how comfy my Prius was, it left me disconnected from my environment.
Then the phone rang, and I blooped it through without thinking. “Dakota Frost,” I groused. “Best magical tattooist in the Southeast-”
“You won’t get many customers with that tone,” the caller said.
“Philip!” I said, smiling with pleasure. “It’s so good to hear your voice.”
“Good to hear yours too, Dakota,” Special Agent Philip Davidson said. You could still hear the warmth, even through the Bluetooth. I wanted to see his face: his wavy brown hair, his cute little goatee, the blue-gray eyes he always hid behind dark glasses. I was glad he couldn’t see me, cheeks red with guilt. I waited a second too long to keep the conversation going, and Philip caught that. “Is everything all right?”
“Yes,” I said, abruptly, turning onto West Peachtree. “Damnit, no, things aren’t all right. One of my friends, Revenance, was just killed.”
“Rand told me-I’m so sorry. He also mentioned you witnessed a second attack,” Philip said, slipping into his smooth-but-not-accusatory tone of disapproval that made me feel as big as a bug. “But that you refused to divulge its location because it was ‘Edgeworld’ business.”
“That I did,” I said. Philip Davidson and the Department of Extraordinary Investigations had definite ideas on how to treat Edgeworlders, and respecting Edgeworld privacy was about the last thing on their list. “Like I told Rand, it isn’t my place to divulge their secrets.”
“Dakota,” Philip said, voice softening. “I’m not calling to bust your nuts. Rand also told me you were there to help Cinnamon. She hadn’t changed in a few months, had she? Jesus. And that was your first time dealing with it too. That must have been very difficult for you both.”
“You have no idea,” I said, glancing back at my torn rear seats. As my head turned back, the car in front of me pulled away, the car behind honked, and I cursed, “All right, all right, I’m going!” and hooked onto 5 ^th Street into Georgia Tech’s new campus village.
“What are you doing, Dakota?” Philip asked.
“I’m on the last of my rounds of ‘would you deliver the bad news for me, Dakota’ that Rand and her Highness the ‘Lady Saffron’ dumped in my fucking lap,” I snapped. “I’m going to go break the news about Revenance to yet another friend, and while they’re getting over that, I planned to start interrogating them about some weird fucking shit I saw while I was pulling Cinnamon’s childhood sweetheart out of a magic graffiti tag that was eating him alive.”
“ Cinnamon had a childhood sweetheart? From how you’ve described the werehouse-”
“Oh, maybe I’m romanticizing it, but I could tell they had some relationship-and don’t change the subject,” I said. “I’m being serious here. One dead, three missing. Do you really want me to stop? If so, where do you want me to draw the fucking line, Philip? After I saved a kid’s life, but before I find out what we need to stop this shit from killing anyone else?”
“What’s wrong, Dakota?” Philip asked. “I mean, what’s really wrong?”
I’m having dinner with a vampire when I’m supposed to be dating you.
“You’re never here, Philip,” I said. “I haven’t seen you since November.”
“December 4 ^th,” Philip said. “It was a Monday.”
“It was fifteen minutes for breakfast at the Flying Biscuit before you rode off to the airport. Which puts our last real date, what, a month ago today?”
“I’ve been busy,” Philip said. “I can’t fly down to Atlanta every week.”
“But you won’t let me come up and see you in Virginia,” I responded, which was true. “Philip, I haven’t even heard from you since… since before Christmas.”
“You’ve found someone, haven’t you,” Philip said.
“Damnit!” I said, screeching to a stop as the light in front of me turned red. “No, Philip, someone found me. Someone just asked me out to dinner, and it’s making me feel guilty. Happy now? Why, why, why do I always have to be the guy in the relationship?”
Crickets chirped. It was that silent on Phillip’s end. After a long pause he finally answered. “Oh. I should have seen this one coming, huh? A girl. And you.”
I laughed. I could see how he jumped to the wrong conclusion,. “Sorry, Philip,” I said. “You don’t get off that easy. You can’t blame this one on the other team. I do still like boys. I just like ones that are here, at least once in a while.”
There was a second silence over the line, as cars streamed down the broad lanes of Spring Street before me, narrowly missing Tech students bolting through the traffic as they darted from the restaurants and bookstore and back again. Finally Philip spoke.