“Hey,” she snapped, unexpectedly stung. “If you want me to keep you as a client, play nice.” Cops never did appreciate PIs, but she’d have thought the fact that he needed her would keep his contempt at a civil level.
Sylvie stalked toward the mall, keeping to the shadows clustering beneath royal palms, the fronds high above rustling in the breeze, hiding her footsteps’ soft rasp against the asphalt. Hiding his. He followed on little cat feet, as silent as she, and clinging to the shadows with a tenacity born of practice.
Beat cop, she thought. Really? They tended to walk the centers of streets, the better to see what could be seen, what could be coming at them. Wright looked far too comfortable skulking along like a stray dog for it to be foreign to his nature. Alex was going to have to dig deeper. The clients always lied. Always.
The fragrance of jasmine reached out delicate tendrils to her, a scent warning that she had reached the edge of the parking lot. Wire-mesh benches lined one side of the smooth concrete path, paint-scored where people had chained bicycles to them, bounced skateboards off them. Stepping onto the path to the door showed her lights glimmering inside the mall’s main promenade, a faint flicker visible even against the store’s emergency lights. Something about the little glow made her queasy, dizzy, that disorientation growing again. She took a step back, bumped into Wright, standing skin close.
“They’re still there?” he asked, a breath in the shell of her ear, his hands resting on her hips.
She twitched him off. “Yeah, but that’s no flashlight they’re carrying. It’s something else. Something like a torch.”
“Smoke detectors?” he asked, but he shook his head. “Maybe not. Not if it’s magical. Then the rules don’t necessarily apply.”
She gave him a longer, warier glance. “You’re getting the hang of this world pretty damn fast, Wright.”
“Good teacher,” he said, bared his teeth in what should have been a grin but came out a grimace.
She got closer to the mall doors, leaning on the stucco when her body felt iffy again; she squinted inside at the alarm pad. “Alarm’s still active,” she murmured. “But the door’s unlatched.” That close, she could see the bolts drawn back, the gap between the door and the frame.
He caught her hand. “The alarm will go off.”
“Not if they know their business as well as I think they do,” she said. The flickering light grew stronger, and she yanked her hands away, suddenly nervous, suddenly dizzy. Suddenly scared of the dark. Not the dark. The light in it.
She steeled herself and grasped the handle and pushed, just as the torchlight shifted and dimmed, the weight of shadows stepping before the flame.
“They’re coming,” Sylvie muttered. The alarm system showed active, but it also showed the door still shut. She fumbled for the touchpad, for the emergency call button, but a flu wave of dizziness, nausea, and terror slammed into her. She fought it, pulled her gun, felt Wright collapse behind her, a sliding, silent weight along her calf and foot, then the torchlight was on her. She bit her lip, fought the vertigo, fought the exhaustion long enough to get a glimpse of a startled, underlit face, made skull-like by a sulfurous glow.
“Get back—” she said, tried to raise her gun with hands that felt miles away.
SHE ROLLED AWAY FROM THE BOOT PUSHING AT HER HIP, HER GUN hand clutching at nothing, nails scrabbling on the concrete, collecting sand and splinters.
“Easy, now,” the voice warned. It vibrated with tension. Sylvie rolled to her back, squinted up at the man looming over her, backlit by the rising sun. Yeah, she’d thought so. Cop.
Hell. Worse than that. Cop with a gun pointed down at her.
“I’m unarmed,” she said, and wasn’t that a concern? Her hand twitched against the concrete again, still trying to find her gun. A quick glance around gave her nothing at all. She pushed herself up on her elbows, as slow as a yoga movement, both for the sake of the patrolman’s nerves and her own trembling weariness.
What the hell kind of spell was this? She hadn’t heard anything, no trigger words, no incantation, and anyway, teenagers were unlikely to be skilled at magic. The talent was rare enough, thank god, and the training, rarer still. Yet here they were, teenagers with power.
Her head throbbed, but she folded the pain back and forced herself to think. Witches tended toward elaborate plans, careful preparation, long buildups to ensure everything went off exactly as planned. This power was overkill for a witch, who tended to be sparing with power. An illusion would have done the job just fine; a repulsion glamour could clear a stadium if done well.
Sorcerers, on the other hand, loved splashy. The more power, the better, but they wouldn’t have walked on by Sylvie. Sorcerers, faced with an unconscious obstacle, would have killed her where she lay.
Talismanic, she thought, and groaned. She always forgot that one. Borrowed power.
Borrowed power was like handing a gun to a toddler.
“You hurt?” the cop said.
“Only my pride,” she muttered. Finally, her body cooperated enough to let her sit upright, one leg crossed beneath her, one knee up. Another moment, and she’d stand.
That plan fled her mind when she saw Wright. Disoriented indeed. She’d forgotten about her client.
He lay sprawled a bare body’s length from her, supine, legs dangling limply over the curb, another patrolman bent over him gingerly. Wright’s hand twitched, and Sylvie relaxed. Still alive, then. Good. Her rep was iffy enough without getting a client killed.
“Up,” her patrolman said. His name tag read ROSS. “And go easy. What are you doing here? This isn’t the Grove—you can’t sleep on benches around here.”
She licked her lips, waiting for him to point out that the doors to the mall were ajar, that the store shutters were open. That would be embarrassing; to explain to her client that no, she hadn’t seen enough to identify the burglars, hadn’t caught them, and pretty please could Lisse Conrad admit to hiring Sylvie and tell the police that she wasn’t the burglar?
Ross pulled her to her feet. “Got any ID?”
“In the truck.” She gestured. “My friend all right?” She moved toward Wright, and away from Bayside. Maybe they’d be lucky and get hauled in, get bailed out, before the mall even recognized their loss.
Ross said, “Stay where you are.”
Sylvie slowed but kept moving, talking all the while. “Hey, I just want to check. He’s a little squirrelly, got hit by lightning recently—what if he had a relapse? I mean, that would suck, right? And your department can’t take too many publicity hits.”
While the thought distracted Ross—how did one have a relapse from a lightning stroke?—Sylvie dropped to a crouch beside Wright and the other patrolman. He looked over at her, and her stomach plummeted. Her luck had just run out. His name tag read F. SUAREZ; the mismatched eyes—one brown, one blue-green—argued that he was Rafael Suarez’s close kin, and no friend to her.
“Shadows,” he said. His lips curled; he scowled; he reached for his cuffs.
She dodged his grasp, fighting the urge to move in and strike, to unsnap his gun from his holster and demand they leave her be. Wright chose that moment to wake, groaning, obviously startled and disoriented. He crab-scuttled back on heels and hands, fell off the curb and into the street, before stopping.
“Vagrancy, Shadows. An unlicensed weapon—”
Oh. There was her gun. Where Wright had been lying. She wondered if Suarez had moved it, or if the burglars had considered taking it as part of their haul. She might get it printed. Then Suarez scooped it into his sweaty palm, and that idea fled.
“I have a license,” she said.
“You’re a liar,” he said.