One of the officers, a short, barrel-chested white guy, bent and picked up my Glock. “Did you fire your weapon?”
“No.”
I heard him sniff at the barrel. He retrieved the other weapon and sniffed at that one as well. I couldn’t see him well in the darkness, but I thought I saw him nod once to his partner.
“All right, Fearsson,” this second cop said. “You can get up.”
I climbed to my feet and pulled out my wallet. The other cop checked my ID before handing me my pistol and walking over to the wagon.
The second officer, a young, light-skinned African-American man, kept his shotgun aimed at Darby, but he was watching me. “You’re the guy who caught the Blind Angel Killer, aren’t you?” At my nod, he said, “That was nice work.”
“Thank you.”
“And now you’re back doing grunt work like this?”
I grinned. “That’s the job, right? I still need to earn a living.”
“I hear that.”
The other cop, who was still by Darby’s car, let out a low whistle. “There must be twenty grand worth of stuff in here. Maybe more.”
I walked over to Darby. “Your word against mine, eh?”
He raised his head fractionally. “Screw you.”
They cuffed Darby and read him his Miranda rights, and then they took a statement from me. I made sure to mention my suspicion that Mark was working with at least one of his fellow salesmen. While I was still answering questions, a second police cruiser showed up. A few minutes later, so did Mister Felder, driving a BMW, dressed in a suit I couldn’t possibly afford and flinging himself out of his car very much like a man who had been called away from a social occasion he didn’t want to leave.
One of the cops explained to him what had happened. Felder eyed the loading dock and Darby’s car as the cop spoke to him, but when they were finished talking, he walked straight over to me.
He shook my hand, a tight smile on his tanned, round face, but there could be no mistaking his tone as he said, “I thought we agreed that we were going to handle this matter without involving the police.”
“Yes, sir,” I said, not flinching at all from what I heard in his tone. “But then Darby took a few shots at me with a .380. Someone heard the shooting and called it in. It wasn’t my decision.”
“He shot at you?”
“Yes, sir.”
Felder huffed. “Then I suppose it couldn’t be helped.” A pause, and then. “You’re all right?”
“Thanks for asking. Yes, I’m fine.”
Even as I spoke the words, though, a memory stirred. Not of the shooting itself; I’d have nightmares about that-the flare of flame from the muzzle, the deafening pop! pop! pop! of the shots.
Rather, I recalled-as I should have long before-that fraction of a moment during which I felt magic all around me, charging the air like an impending lightning strike.
“Mister Fearsson?”
I roused myself with a small shake of my head and faced Felder again. He was watching me, expectant; I assumed he’d asked me a question.
“I’m sorry, sir. What did you say?”
“I asked if Darby did all this alone.”
“No, I don’t think he did. The police showed up before I could get a name out of him. But I have some experience with these things: He won’t hold up long under questioning. If he had a partner, you’ll know it soon enough.”
“Fearsson!”
I turned. The African-American officer was striding our way.
“Sorry to bother you, man, but Darby is claiming that you assaulted him. He says you hit him with your weapon.”
I glanced off to the side, exhaled.
“Did you?”
“It was hardly an assault,” I said. “I was asking him some questions, and he was having trouble remembering stuff. I was trying to jar the memories loose.”
The cop laughed; even Felder allowed himself a chuckle.
“But officially,” I said, “I never hit him.”
“Good enough for me,” the cop said. “You can go. If we need you for anything else, we’ll let you know.”
“Hey, wait a minute!” Darby called from the back of one of the squad cars.
“His word against yours, Darby,” the officer said. He gave me a wink.
Darby swore loudly.
“Come by tomorrow, Mister Fearsson,” Felder said. “I’ll cut you a check.”
“I will. Thank you.”
I walked back to the Z-ster, favoring my bad leg, conscious as well of a dull ache in my arm. I guess this is what the doctors had in mind when they warned me about trying to do too much.
Still, I was pleased. Sure, the police had shown up, but Felder hadn’t been too angry. And given how the evening could have ended-with me in a body bag-I couldn’t have asked for a better outcome.
Again, I thought of that frisson of magic. I hadn’t cast a spell, and I was certain that Darby was incapable of casting. Had I imagined it? Everything had happened in such a rush-it could have been a sensation born of panic and desperation. But how else could I explain the fact that Darby had missed me?
I needed to have a conversation with Namid’skemu of the K’ya’na-Kwe clan, the Zuni shaman who had been my runemyste for the past seven years, and who had been dead for close to eight centuries.
CHAPTER 3
The runemystes were created by the Runeclave centuries ago, their collective sacrifice an act so courageous, so selfless that it boggles the mind. Essentially, they were once weremystes, like me-sorcerers who had devoted their lives to the mastery of runecrafting. Thirty-nine of them were sacrificed by the Runeclave, the governing body of their kind, their spirits granted eternal life so that they could be guardians of magic in our world. They were essentially ensorcelled ghosts, although I’d learned over the years that they didn’t like to be referred to as such.
As I understood it, Namid and others like him were tasked with training new generations of weremystes and keeping watch on those who might turn to the darker elements of runecrafting. In all but the most extreme circumstances, they were forbidden from acting directly on our world, but through their instruction and training of weremystes, they could help to keep wielders of dark magic from doing harm to either the magical community or the non-magical population. The renegade-turned-serial-killer I mentioned, Cahors, was one of the original thirty-nine. But he chafed at the limits placed on his powers by his fellow runemystes, and he found a way to escape their controls and assume corporeal form once again. More, by committing murders each month on the night of the first quarter moon, he was able to keep himself young and powerful. If Kona and I hadn’t killed him, he would have gone on murdering for as long as he wished to live.
But Cahors was dead, and the runemystes now numbered thirty-eight. In the weeks since we’d killed him, I’d often wondered if Cahors had been training runemystes the way Namid did. Were there sorcerers out there who for years had been learning the darkest secrets of our craft?
I could have asked Namid about this, but he tended to be tight-lipped when it came to answering questions about the runemystes. To be honest, he was that way about everything, which at times made him an exasperating teacher. And tonight I had other questions that were more urgent.
I drove to my home in Chandler. It was a drive of no more than eight miles, and at this hour it took only a few minutes. At rush hour, which these days in the Phoenix-Scottsdale area stretched from dawn to dusk, it might have taken me three-quarters of an hour.
It had been a scorching day-July in Phoenix; go figure-and it was still hot in the house. But the night had cooled off considerably, as nights in the desert often did, and so I opened every window and changed into gym shorts and a T-shirt.
“Namid,” I said, pitching my voice to carry over some distance. I probably could have whispered it and he would have shown up just as soon, but I liked to maintain the illusion that I had some small measure of privacy.