“Take it easy,” I said. “I’m not a threat. I can explain—”
“Watch that one, Collins,” said a voice behind me. “That’s one damn slippery freak.”
I didn’t have to turn around to know whose voice it was. A second later, Norden appeared in front of me, sneering, followed by his zombie partner, Sykes. It figured the Goon Squad would be in charge—we were in the New Combat Zone. But why did it have to be these two? Norden lived to give PAs like me a hard time. Well, tonight I wasn’t putting up with his crap. Guns or no guns, I dropped my hands and put myself right in his ugly, pitted face.
“I’m not the bad guy here, Norden,” I said. “Seth Baldwin tried to destroy the city. He was practicing unlawful sorcery, using the black arts to cause harm, and probably half a dozen other violations.”
Norden glanced over at Baldwin. A cop was trying to help him stand, but Clarinda’s binding spell meant that he kept flopping back into the same position on the floor.
“Yeah,” Norden scoffed. “The guy looks real dangerous. Why should I believe you?”
“Listen, blood bag, you’d have been Hellion food by now if I hadn’t—”
“Victory! Thank the Goddess you’re all right.” Roxana Jade pushed past the Goons and stood in front of me, beaming. “Magnificent job! You were wonderful. Just wonderful!”
Norden snorted, like “wonderful” was the last word he’d associate with me. But he stepped aside. In another second I saw why. Roxana was with Tony Bergonzi, head of the Goon Squad. Captain Bergonzi was a norm, but he was respected in Deadtown.
Roxana looked gorgeous, as usual, but tonight she looked more like a practicing witch than when I’d last seen her. She wore a long, midnight blue gown, and a silver circlet of stars glittered on her raven hair. I was suddenly aware of how filthy I must be. Well, fighting demons was dirty work. Almost as dirty as being one. I sniffed to check for any lingering eau de Harpy, then thought the hell with it. We were at a crime scene, not a charity ball.
Roxana introduced me to Bergonzi, who impressed me by shaking my grimy hand. I could see why the monsters didn’t mind him having some authority on our turf. Bergonzi turned to Norden, who’d pulled out a magic meter, which was used to detect the quantity and kind of magic present in a place, and was trying to turn it on. The thing hummed half to life, then sputtered. Norden swore under his breath and banged the instrument against the palm of his hand.
“Don’t worry about that now, Norden,” Bergonzi said. “You and Sykes go interview Mr. Lucado.” He jerked his head toward Lucado, and I got the feeling that Norden and his partner were being dismissed.
Norden must have felt that way, too, because he scowled at me. On second thought, that was probably his natural expression. He thumped the magic meter again and muttered, “Damn piece of junk,” shot me another scowl, and then said,
“C’mon, Sykes.” The partners went over to Lucado, who leaned against the altar where he’d been held captive.
“I don’t think Frank will remember much,” I said. “He was passed out for most of the fun.”
Bergonzi nodded, a far-off look in his eyes as though he was thinking about something else.
I was ready to get the hell out of there and go home, so I said, “I guess you’ll want me to make a statement.”
Bergonzi’s eyes focused on me again. “Yes,” he replied. “But we already know what happened here.”
“You do?”
“We got the whole thing,” Roxana said.
I raised my eyebrows.
“We plugged the scrying mirror into the coven’s computer and captured the transmission in digital. I burned it to a DVD and gave it to Captain Bergonzi.”
Wow. Ancient earth magic meets high tech. Who knew?
“I’m the only one who’s seen it,” Bergonzi said. He cleared his throat, and a calculating look crossed his face. I wondered what was coming. “And that brings me to what I wanted to say. We’d prefer to keep it quiet that a Hellion was inside Boston. So I’ll take your statement myself. Next week at headquarters would be fine.”
Keep it quiet? Was this bozo planning to protect Baldwin? Maybe I’d judged him too kindly. “I don’t care what you’d ‘prefer,’ Captain. There’s no way in hell I’m going to let Baldwin walk.”
“No, no. I didn’t mean that. He’ll be charged with conjuring demons to cause public mayhem, for sending those Harpies against the parade. Believe me, Baldwin’s not walking away from this. He’s going to prison for a long, long time.” He gestured at Baldwin, who was being handcuffed as Clarinda prepared to remove her binding spell. “But there’s no need, is there, to publicize the fact an amateur, unregistered sorcerer was able to breach the shield? That the city was nearly destroyed by a legion of Hellions? We don’t want any other would-be sorcerers getting ideas.”
I considered. I certainly didn’t want another run-in with a Hellion anytime soon. And maybe—just maybe—keeping this quiet would keep my face off TV for the next news cycle.
“Okay,” I said. Bergonzi gave me a politician’s smile and clapped me on the shoulder, then walked past Norden, who was fiddling with the magic meter again, to talk to Clarinda.
I watched him approach the witch, who cringed, looking as though she’d like nothing better than to disappear. If witches really could pull tricks like that, I’m sure she would have.
I turned to Roxana. “What will the coven do to Clarinda?”
Roxana pursed her lips. “She broke the first rule of witchcraft: harm none. There’s no more serious offense in the Craft.”
“Go easy on her. There were extenuating circumstances—Baldwin used the Destroyer to kill her uncle, then threatened to do the same to her child.”
“I know. We heard Baldwin through the scrying mirror.”
“And what does ‘harm none’ mean in a dilemma like that? Resist Baldwin and let him kill your child in the most horrible way possible? Isn’t that doing harm?”
She kept her lips pursed and didn’t answer.
“Besides, your scrying mirror didn’t show what happened after the Hellion was gone. Sending that thing back to Hell knocked me flat. Baldwin could’ve got away. But Clarinda stopped him. She didn’t harm him”—I’d have killed the guy if I’d been her—“she immobilized him. And then called you.”
“I see your point. We’ll take what you’ve said into consideration.” Then she smiled at me in a girlfriend-to-girlfriend way, clearly wanting to change the subject. “But let’s talk about what youdid, Victory. That was brilliant, the way you yanked the Destroyer away from Baldwin’s control. I didn’t even know such a thing was possible.”
Neither had I. And I wasn’t ready to think about the consequences yet. “Let’s find your amulet,” I said. I could change the subject, too. “I must have dropped it when the shield opened. That was a pretty intense moment.”
“I’ll say. Look how far down I chewed my nails.” She splayed a hand, the nails short and ragged, dried blood along the index finger’s nail bed. Good to know there was one thing about Roxana that wasn’t perfect.
I led the way to where I’d been standing when Difethwr had been sucked through the vortex, and we kicked through the debris on the floor. “Here it is,” Roxana said. She picked it up, tied the leather loop ends together, and hung it around her neck. She crossed to my right side—and the amulet lit up. Not a pale pink this time, but a shining, bloodred crimson, bright as the lights on a fire truck.