Honey mustard would have been better. He should get some to stick in his desk. Unless it went bad. Honey didn’t go bad, and mustard didn’t go bad. Logically, an amalgam would reflect the qualities of both.
The spike of ice and acid through the bones of his hands originated from his iron Mage’s rings, and it not only made him drop a pretzel—splattering mustard across the scarred wooden desk—but it brought him to his feet before he heard the police sirens start.
He glanced at the clock. Five more minutes. “That which thou hast promised thou must perform,” he said, under his breath.
He left his lunch on the desk and found his keys in his pocket on the way to the door.
Their quarry almost ran them over as they were on their way in to start stalking him. Katie sidestepped quickly, catching Gina across the chest with a straight left arm. Melissa managed to get herself out of the way.
Doctor S. was almost running. His corduroy jacket flapped along the vent as he skidded between pedestrians, cleared four concrete steps in a bounce, and avoided a meandering traffic jam of students with as much facility as he’d shown on the basketball court. And if Katie had begun to suspect that it was just a bizarre case of mistaken identity, the toreador sidestep around the lady with the baby carriage would have disabused her. Doctor S. moved with a force and grace that were anything but common to academia.
Katie turned to follow him. It was only a small gesture to catch Gina’s wrist, and without more urging, Gina trotted along beside her. Which was good, because Gina was strong and stubborn, even if she was only three apples high. Melissa took two more beats to get started, but her longer legs soon put her into the lead. “Slow down,” Katie hissed, afraid that he would notice them running after him like three fools in a hurry, but frankly, he was getting away.
So when Melissa glared at her, she hustled, like you do. And Gina actually broke into a trot.
Doctor S. strode east on 68th, against traffic, towards the park. He never glanced over his shoulder, but kept rubbing his hands together as if they pained him. Maybe the rings were the magnet kind, for arthritis or something. RSI.
“I can’t believe I never noticed he wears all those rings.”
“I can’t believe I never noticed the muscles,” Melissa answered, but Gina said “Rings?”
“On all his fingers?” Melissa was too busy dodging pedestrians to give Gina the were you born that stupid or do you practice hard? look, and Katie was as grateful as she could spare breath for. They were disrupting traffic flow, the cardinal sin of New York’s secular religion. Katie winced at another glare. Somebody was going to call her a fucking moron any second.
Gina sounded completely bemused. “I never noticed any rings.”
Doctor S. continued east on 68th past Park Avenue, down the rows of narrow-fronted brick buildings with their concrete window ledges. By the time he crossed Madison Avenue, she was sure he was headed for the park. Every so often he actually skipped a step, moving as fast as he possibly could without breaking into a purse-snatcher sprint.
. . . he wasn’t going to the park.
Halfway between Park and Fifth Avenue—which, of course, unlike Park, was on the park—traffic was gummed up behind flashing lights and restraining police. Doctor S. slowed as he approached, stuffing his hands back into his pockets—“Would you look at that?” Gina said, and Katie knew she, too, had suddenly noticed the rings—and dropping his shoulders, smallifying himself. He merged with the gawking crowd; Katie couldn’t believe how easily he made himself vanish. Like a praying mantis in a rosebush; just one more green thorn-hooked stem.
“Okay,” Melissa said, as they edged through bystanders, trying not to shove too many yuppies in the small of the back. “Stabbing?”
“Sidewalk pizza,” Gina the Manhattanite said, pointing up. There was a window open on the sixth floor of one of the tenements, and Katie glimpsed a blue uniform behind it.
“Somebody jumped?”
“Or was pushed.”
“Oh, God.”
Gina shrugged, but let her hip and elbow brush Katie’s. Solace, delivered with the appearance of nonchalance. And then, watching Doctor S. seem to vanish between people, betrayed only by metallic gleams of light off slick hair. She could pick him out if she knew where to look, if she remembered to look for the tan jacket, the hair. Otherwise, her eyes seemed to slide off him. Creepy, she thought. He’s almost not really there.
And then she thought of something else. And maybe Melissa did too, because Melissa said, “Guys? What’s he doing at a crime scene?”
“Or accident scene,” Gina said, unwilling to invest in a murder without corroboration.
“Maybe he’s a gawker.”
“Ew.” Katie tugged Gina’s sleeve. “We should see if we can get closer. He probably won’t notice us.” And then she frowned. “How did he know about it?”
“Maybe he has a police scanner in his office?”
“So he’s a vulture.”
“Maybe he’s an investigator. You know. Secret, like.”
Katie rolled her eyes. “Right. Our gay college prof is Spider-Man.”
Gina snorted. “Hey. Everybody knows that Spidey and Peter Parker have a thing.”
Melissa hunched down so her head wouldn’t stick up so far above the crowd. Her hair was as bad as Doctor S.’s, and she didn’t have his knack for vanishing into the scenery. “Gina,” she said, “you go up, and tell us what’s going on.”
“I’ve seen dead people, chica.”
“You haven’t seen this one,” Melissa said. “Go on. It might be important.”
Gina shrugged, rolled her eyes, and started forward. And Melissa was right; a five foot tall Latina in gobs of eyeliner did, indeed, vanish into the crowd. “Criminal mastermind,” Melissa said.
Katie grinned, and didn’t argue.
This was the part of the job that Matthew liked least. There was no satisfaction in it, no resolution, no joy. The woman on the pavement was dead; face down, one arm twisted under her and the other outflung. She’d bounced, and she hadn’t ended up exactly where she’d hit. She’d been wearing a pink blouse. Someone in the crowd beside him giggled nervously.
Matthew figured she hadn’t jumped. He checked his wards—pass-unnoticed, which was not so strong as a pass-unseen, and considerably easier to maintain—and the glamours and ghosts that kept him unremarkable
His hands still ached; he really wished somebody would come up with a system for detecting malevolent magic that didn’t leave him feeling like a B-movie bad guy was raking his fingerbones around with a chilled ice pick.
He pulled his cell phone from his pocket, buttoned the middle button on his jacket, and hit speed dial. He was one of five people who had the Promethean archmage’s reach-me-in-the-bathtub number; he didn’t abuse the privilege.
“Jane Andraste,” she said, starting to speak before the line connected. He hadn’t heard it ring on his end. “What’s going on?”
“Apparent suicide at Fifth and Sixty-eighth.” He checked his watch. “It tickles. I’m on the scene and going to poke around a little. Are any of the responders our guys?”
“One second.” Her voice muffled as she asked someone a question; there was a very brief pause, and she was back on the line. “Marla says Marion Thornton is en route. Have you met her?”
“Socially.” By which he meant, at Promethean events and rituals. There were about two hundred Magi in the Greater New York area, and like Matthew, most of them held down two jobs: guardian of the iron world by night, teacher or artist or executive or civil servant by day.