“All right, Dakota,” he said. “You have your date, if that’s what you want.”
He sounded crushed. “Hey, Philip,” I said softly. “That’s not what I meant-”
“No, you’re right,” he said. “I’m never there, and that’s not fair to you. Take your friend to dinner, and that’s OK, but if you’re still
… interested, I’m willing to give us another shot next time I make it down there. If things are as bad as Rand said… well, it won’t be long.”
“I’m sorry, Philip,” I said.
“I am too,” he said. “And sorry about the ‘investigating this on your own’ crack. We really appreciated you helping us track the tattoo killer last year, but please, please, please wait until we bring the problems to you instead of making trouble on your own. I worry about you, Dakota. You’re a… a valuable resource, and I’d hate to lose you. Take care.”
“I’d hate to lose you too, Philip,” I said, but my headset blooped and my brain put the words “valuable resource” on an endless loop.
He was already gone. He’d called his girlfriend a valuable resource and hung up.
Damnit! Damnit! Damnit! This was not what I wanted. A dalliance with a vampire had just cut me off from a man who was both my boyfriend and my spook contact, and said dalliance hadn’t even happened yet. And protecting the werehouse’s privacy had alienated Uncle Andy.
Maybe Philip was right; things were already blowing up in my face.
Was I getting sucked in too deep?
But then I saw Revy’s face, burned up like paper. No one did that to my friends. And no matter how much I liked Philip, he was first and foremost a monster fighter, not one of their guardians. And no matter how much I trusted Uncle Andy, he had to work within the law. Not on the Edge, where I lived. Someone had to protect these people-someone who understood them.
The light turned green, the car behind me honked, and I gunned the blue bomb over the 5 ^th Street Bridge into Georgia Tech proper.
“ Fine, ” I said. “My own damn investigation it is.”
Nuclear Wizardry
A great chasm of asphalt cuts across the heart of Atlanta-river-wide, canyon-deep, and filled with a current of cars faster than any rapids: the Downtown Connector. The Connector had contained Georgia Tech’s growth for decades, until finally a spray of new buildings had burst over the recently completed 5 ^th Street Bridge.
As I crossed the bridge, I saw Tech shift from shiny glass towers to aging red brick. Winding through the campus was like traveling back in architectural time, from the 90s to the 80s to the 70s… next stop, the 1950s, and one of the oldest buildings on the campus: the Georgia Tech Nuclear Research Center.
The NRC was two cubical buildings guarding a squat ribbed tower, ugly and alien, that once housed the reactor. Now decommissioned, the NRC held something different, and perhaps more dangerous: the very first laboratory in the country studying the Physics of Magic.
In a pebble-floored, low-chaired lobby, I signed in an ancient log book that looked like it really did date from the 1950s. As I put the pen back into its tiny, conical holder, Annette, the lab secretary, asked, “Is everything all right, Kotie? You look flushed.”
I frowned, trying not to take it out on her: Annette was all pink hair and bubblegum, so sickeningly sweet you wanted to punch her in the nose-but she really was the nice sort, even though she dressed in poufy florals that even Catherine Fremont would have punked up a bit.
“I just had an argument,” I said. “Nothing important.”
“Sorry to hear it,” she said, picking up the phone. “Don’t worry, you’ll find someone.”
“How did you… ” I began. “Am I really that transparent?”
“Yes, she’s here,” Annette said, hitting the buzzer. “Doug and Jinx are in the tower.”
“I remember the way,” I said, opening the heavy metal door. “And thanks.”
“Remember, there are lots of fish in the sea,” she chimed sweetly.
“Thanks,” I said, as the door clanged shut behind me.
The chilled, dark metal corridor felt cramped as a submarine, but soon opened into a cavernous vault big enough to hold a house. I wondered the chamber had held in its heyday, when these idiots had thought to contain nuclear death smack dab in the middle of a crowded college campus at the center of the Southeast’s largest city. But now the vault was almost hollow, a birdcage of cranes and catwalks over a huge single-cut slab of polished marble inscribed with the largest magic circle in the country.
A darkhaired, cleancut man in a Georgia Tech sweatshirt was adjusting some equipment in the center of the circle. At a console outside the ring, a young, gothy, bonneted woman in an exaggerated Victorian outfit read numbers out loud to the thin air. Doug and Jinx.
Doug saw me and smiled, a wicked twinkle belying his clean cut look-which didn’t fool me anyway: the first time I’d met him, he’d been wearing leather puppy gear. Jinx, on the other hand, never changed her style to suit the circumstances. I don’t think I’d seen her wear anything less elaborate since… before she went blind. Today, however, she had a new accessory.
“Dakota?” she asked of the air, even as she turned towards me, eyes hidden behind her dark glasses. Her hand shot out, delicate black lace glove now adorned with a new sparkle-a gleaming diamond ring. “Guess what? We’re getting married!”
Oh, how wonderful for them. “That’s great,” I said, with forced cheeriness, reaching to take her hand. It wasn’t a large rock, since they were both graduate students, but still-how wonderful for them. Really.
“Dakota?” Jinx said-and pulled down her glasses slightly. I looked up, expecting her spooky geode eyes-and saw instead spooky black snowflakes gleaming within her formerly clouded marbles. “Oh, Dakota, what’s wrong?”
Damnit. I had forgotten she could partially see now, some positive fallout from a magical injury last year. I forced a smile. “Nothing, just a bad day,” I said, casting about for something else to talk about. “Look, I’m sorry I haven’t coughed up your fee from the tattooing contest… ”
“When the Valentine Foundation pays you, you can pay me, but, really, Dakota,” she said reprovingly. “That’s the worst attempt to change the subject ever. All I can see is a blurry spot, but even I can tell that smile is fake. It’s not just a bad day. What’s wrong?”
“It’s nothing,” I said. And then I remembered what I had come for, and forgot all about Philip. “Actually, you’re right,” I said gently. “It is something. Jinx, I have some bad news.”
Doug and Jinx sat in shock at the break table as I told them about Revy, about the attack on Tully, and about the other vampire disappearances that were almost certainly connected. Jinx, the best graphomancer I knew, agreed to tackle the graffiti without a second thought.
“I know the literature on decorative marks quite well,” she said primly. “But I’ll need more than a description to build a model of how it’s working. I need good digital photographs, and hopefully video, thirty seconds or a full sequence if your camera will last that long.”
“I know,” I said, speaking up to compensate for the sudden whine of the air conditioning. “I’m supposed to take pictures tomorrow at the werehouse when I go pick up Cinnamon.”
“Why is Cinnamon at the werehouse?” Jinx asked, brow furrowing. She didn’t bother to speak up at all. “I thought you were trying to rescue her out of there.”
“It’s a long story,” I said. And potentially embarrassing. My daughter might not want her mother telling people she had trouble controlling her changes. “I’ll let her tell it, if she wants to. But I have a question for you, Doug. The first tag was powerful, but didn’t do anything I haven’t seen a tattoo or any normal spell do. The second one, however, did something unusual-”
A crack like thunder rang through the dome, and I flinched back from a flash like controlled lightning. “Jeez!” I said, raising an arm, seeing goose bumps ripple up as stray mana flooded out through the room. “What the hell are you guys doing? ”