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.”