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 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?”