I pushed through the doors and expected Stotts to be right there with me, but once I made it to the lobby and wiped the rain off my face, I realized he wasn’t there. My police escort was gone, like a ghost in the wind.
Chapter Three
Before I’d taken more than three steps across the lobby, a man’s voice called out. “Hey, Tita!”
Detective Love, who, if you believed his stories, had a mama from Samoa and a daddy who was a Scottish pirate, strolled my way. Love was six foot three if he was an inch, and almost as wide. His dark wavy hair fell down to ox-thick shoulders as broad as a city bus. He wore a bright blue button-down shirt and tan pants, a combination that made me think of sand and sky on a distant, sunnier shore.
Tita, I’d learned, meant tough girl. Love had called me that since the Hounding job I’d done that put Lon Trager in jail.
“Why’d you have to make it in on time?” he asked with a wide, white smile. “Now I owe Payne ten dollars.”
“You should know better than to take bets against me,” I said.
He laughed. “Yah, yah. Come on this way.”
He started off toward his office, and I fell into step next to him, absorbing the sunlight good humor he radiated. “There’s coffee, right?”
“Oh, yah. Coffee’s onolisicious today.” He glanced over his shoulder and rolled his eyes.
So much for coffee.
“You like the new apartment?” he asked as we left the lobby behind us for a maze of cubicles and desks. “I heard you moved away from the river.”
“I like it okay. It’s better than the Fair Lead.”
“Yah, yah. That place’s a pit. Don’t know why you stayed there so long.” He opened a door to the small office he and his partner shared. He lumbered around the desk to the right and sat. Payne was not in the room.
“It was cheap.” I pulled off my coat and hung it on the coatrack that leaned against the file cabinet. With me and Love in the office, I was fast running out of breathing space.
Think calm thoughts, I told myself. There was plenty of room for me, plenty of room for Love, and plenty of room for lots and lots and lots of air.
“You okay?” Love asked.
I nodded and took the seat in front of the desk. “Small spaces.” I shrugged like it was no big deal.
He raised his eyebrows. “Want me to open the door?”
“No. I’m good.”
He gave me a considering look. I (of course) met his gaze straight on.
“Okay,” he finally said. He pulled a file folder off of a stack to his left, opened it, and tapped his computer keyboard. “Right.” He looked over at me and gave me a nod. “You ready for this?”
“Sure.”
He pulled out a tape recorder and turned it on and then held it close to his mouth while he said his name, the date, and some other things I wasn’t paying attention to. What I was paying attention to were the pictures on the wall. Him towering over a group of kids at a school, him and a police dog. And one of him and his dark, lean partner, Lia Payne. Other than that, the walls were off-white cracked plaster.
There was something odd about the walls, a cool dampness that emanated from them. I looked closer. Those weren’t cracks in the plaster. They were very fine, very subtle Blocking spells, placed there by adding lead and glass to the paint or plaster and then drawing out the glyphs with Intent. Pulling a magic fast one in here would rebound back on the caster. The glyphs seemed strange to me, since I didn’t remember ever noticing them when I’d come in to talk with Love before. I wondered if they’d created the spells recently, or maybe if they’d done it because of my spectacular meltdown a few months ago.
Magic shifted in me, stretched so hard I had to take a deep breath to make room for it. I hoped Love didn’t notice.
The door opened and Detective Payne walked in, three coffee cups in her hand. The door stayed slightly ajar behind her, offering a tantalizing glimpse of the space behond it.
“Hello, Allie. I knew you’d make it. No sugar, right?”
She handed the coffee over my shoulder and I smiled up at her. The woman never smiled, but I liked her anyway. Clear, efficient, and not afraid to make hard choices on a moment’s notice. She must have a soft side since I knew she had a couple of kids at home that her husband took care of during the day.
And, hey, she remembered how I liked my coffee.
“Right. Thanks.” I took a drink and shuddered. It was really and truly horrible, but it was hot and caffeinated, and I was desperate. I held my breath and went for another gulp.
She gave Love his coffee, which smelled like powdered hot cocoa mix, and held her hand out to him.
“Pay up.”
Love sighed and shifted his weight to access his wallet in his back pocket. “Fine. Fine.” He sifted through a couple bills. “We said five, right?”
“Twenty.”
“Ten.” He slapped a bill in her hand. “You tired of robbing me yet?”
“Just look at it as my way of keeping that superhero collection of yours under control.”
“Superhero?” I asked. “Which one?”
“Deadpool,” Love said.
“Who?”
“See?” Payne said. “No one even knows him.”
Love just shook his head. “He’ll be bigger than Batman, I’m telling you. People love him.”
Payne drank her coffee and gave him a level stare. “People love Batman because he’s a good guy.”
“Really? You read him?”
She blinked a couple times like that was the stupidest thing she’d heard all day. “I don’t read comics.”
“See how she is?” Love shook his head sadly. “No heart for the art.”
I took another drink of my coffee. Winced at the horror of it. “I think it’s the coffee. It could make anyone mean.”
Payne did not smile, but her eyes twinkled. She pocketed the cash and sat at her desk. “Yah,” Love said, “That’s why I drink the cocoa. Keeps me sweet.”
Payne just raised one eyebrow.
Love thumbed the recorder back on. “State your name, please.”
I did so. Love took a nice, noisy slurp of his cocoa and wrote something down on the yellow legal pad in front of him. Then he asked me to state where I was the day my father died and to tell him what happened in as much detail as possible.
So I did. The entire statement didn’t take longer than fifteen minutes. I’d Hounded for Mama Rossitto a hit that was killing a five-year-old out in St. Johns. I thought the magical Offload was my father’s signature and had taken a cab to my dad’s office, where I told him I was advising Mama to contact the police and then sue my father for illegal Offloading practices.
I told Love my dad denied that he or his company had Offloaded on the kid. I told Love I stabbed my dad’s finger-and my own-with a straight pin and worked a blood magic Truth spell at his request. Even under the influence of Truth, my father had told me he and his company were not involved with the Offload.
“Were you angry?” Payne, who was also taking notes at her desk, asked.
Okay, here’s where I realized it might have been smart to have an attorney come in with me. Hells, how stupid could I be?
Still, honesty was the best policy, right?
“Yes, I was angry. I thought my father had Offloaded a huge magical price onto a five-year-old kid and that the kid was dying.”
“Was that the only reason you went to see your father that day?” Love asked.
I knew what he was getting at. I’d managed to avoid seeing my dad for seven years before I’d gone storming into his office. And on the one day I did go see him, he was killed. It was a pretty hard coincidence to swallow.