“Damnit,” I cried. I retrieved the overturned bowls. I’d lost almost all of the mix, save a few scraps left in the bottom of the bowl the tag had struck. All the rest was sprayed out over the dirt and in the grassy cracks through the pavement, ruined. I glared up at the vamp, who lay half sprawled in Calaphase and Fischer’s arms. “ Asshole! ”
The vamp’s hazel eyes glowed. “I tried to save him, and you insult me?” he said, trying to regain his footing. “In Lithuania I stood in the Gentry! No mortal speaks to me that way!”
I crouched, hooked my right foot behind my left, and stood back upright, twisting like a corkscrew as I did so. Mana built up in my skin and brought it to life, bursting my vines outward and making every gem on my body sparkle and every flower unfurl. The shimmering light burst onto the clearing in a rainbow of colors, washing all natural color from the vamps and weres and leaving their faces pale circles of shock.
“I don’t care what country club you were in. This ain’t Lithuania,” I growled. “Now stay back, or this thing will kill you too dead to hear this mortal tell you what an idiot you are.”
I twisted round, expanding my vines, recreating my glowing shield. “I’m coming for you, Tully,” I said, stepping straight towards him slowly. “But this will be a bit tricky.”
The tag’s free tentacles snapped and bit at me, uselessly, then folded back on Tully, clenching on him. He screamed-but his eyes were on me and he nodded. Behind him the planet motif shimmered, eerily real; through some trick of perspective it almost looked like the tag’s tentacles were pulling him into the wall, towards it. There was a cracking sound, and I looked over to see ugly lumps begin to form at the base of the wall, beneath the splashes of paint. Tombstones, no doubt-the only element in Revenance’s tag that had been missing from this design. The basil and paint had suppressed the tag a little, but there was no doubt: it had the same logic as the one that killed Revenance, and was getting stronger.
I knelt and drew the first arc of a magic circle, just beyond the safety line I’d drawn earlier. The chalk broke against a crack in the pavement and I dinged my knuckle, wincing, but I didn’t stop, feeling the tag writhe before me in malevolence and hearing Tully moan. Soon I had the inner rings, the layer of runes, and the outer circle that would hold what little magic powder I had left. I studied the bowl, then began picking out pinches of dust, laying them around the design, trying to stretch each little bit out so that I’d have enough left for my final trick.
Somehow, I managed to complete the circle, scraping enough out of the bowl to complete the final arc-almost, leaving one gap in front of Tully. The circle of powder looked dangerously sketchy, but it would have to do. So I poured all the dusty remains in the bowl at the edge of the gap, creating a pitiful little heap of fine powder on one end. Too much! The lines of the circle began glowing, like a flickering neon, as the mana it absorbed from the tag began sparking over the gap. I scooted the heap aside, and the sparking stopped. If the circle closed before we were inside, it would shove Tully and me into the tag rather than protect us from it.
Then Tully moaned again. I flung the bowl aside. There was nothing left to be done. I had to do it now. I crouched down, concentrating.
“Spirit of Earth,” I murmured. “Shield our lives.”
Then I lunged forward and threw both my arms around Tully’s chest.
Tully screamed as the vines tried to saw him in half-then the tag squealed in rage as I wrapped Tully in a protective cocoon of mana. Tentacles flailed at me as my vines whipped around him, barbs wearing at my defenses as my trusty wrist snakes snapped at the tentacles on his chest. More tentacles curled around me, pulling me forward, into the wall, into the tag, like there was a whole world behind the paint. I felt an immense magical pressure weigh on me, like water weighs on your ears at the bottom of a pool-but I jammed my boot against the wall and shoved, hurling myself backward into the circle with Tully in my arms.
The tentacles refused to give up, wrapping around us, hot, burning, pouring mana out around us in elaborate arcs of living flame. I couldn’t see anything through the blazing light. I’d like to say I used skindancing to fight it off, but I didn’t. I just ground in my feet and held on to Tully for dear life, forcing the tag to expend as much mana as possible. The tentacles squeezed tighter; we both screamed in pain And then finally the excess mana the tag was pouring into the air closed the circle’s magical circuit, like a spark leaping a gap, and Tully and I collapsed gratefully to the ground. The tentacles leapt back, wounded, and I quickly shoved the tiny pile of mix back over the gap with my boot, making sure the circuit stayed closed.
But almost immediately the protective bubble began to flicker and sparkle as the tag, squealing, renewed its attack. The clouds on the image of the planet began whirling furiously. I could see the images of tombstones cracking up through the join of the wall and the pavement, struggling to break free of their layer of paint. A horrible scream rent the air, and a dozen new tentacles whipped down on us, screaming with rage as if the tag was a living monster. It was still getting stronger-but Tully was out of the circuit!
“So much for Saffron’s theory,” I said.
The bubble began to crack. My mix was thin and poorly refined, and the pavement beneath us was an uneven mess; there was no way it would hold. Fine- I was counting on it. I took a deep breath, sinuously stretching within the bubble until all my vine tattoos came to life again and wrapped around Tully and me, a green glowing shield. Then I grabbed him tight.
“Hang on, Tully,” I said-and leapt backwards out of the circle.
The tentacles closed on the magic bubble right as it collapsed with a bright flash. All the built up mana discharged with a bang, rippling back through the graffiti like blue lightning. As Tully and I landed, the whole tag sparked and shorted out, a brief two-dimensional fireworks display, leaving nothing but black crinkled smudges dotted with glowing red embers.
For a moment, Tully and I just lay there in the dust, staring at the intricate concentric rings that were all that was left of the design. Then we looked at each other.
“Congratulations, Tully,” I said. “You get to live to run another day.”
“Thank you thank you thank you,” Tully said, trying to give me a hug, then grimacing as the gesture squeezed a new river of blood from his chest. “Aaah-I’m so sorry-”
“Thank you, Dakota,” a voice said, and I looked up to see Calaphase staring down at me. The vamps and werekin were all standing over us, all looking down gratefully-except Gettyson, who just stood there, jaw clenched, before turning on his heel and stalking off.
Tully kept sobbing. “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, I had no idea this would happen.”
“There’s no way you could have known,” I said.
“I means, it was just magical graffiti-”
“Wait,” I said. “You already knew it was magical?”
“You can’t miss it,” Calaphase said quietly. “These tags, they’re always moving-”
“Wait wait,” I said, alarmed. “They? This has happened before?”
“An attack, no, but the tags-yes,” Calaphase said, even more quietly. “We’ve seen tags like this for weeks, nothing this elaborate, usually just little ones, though they seem like they get bigger over time-or else the prick keeps coming back to flesh them out. Revy said he saw a huge one yesterday, though he never got to show me where. For all I know, this was it-”
“No,” I said. “This thing loves vamps. If he’d gotten close to it, it would have caught him-and then how would he have ended up in the cemetery?” I asked. Then I recalled the odd sensation I’d felt in the graffiti’s grip… like it was pulling me inside. The conclusion sounded outlandish, but was just too damn obvious to ignore. “Unless. .. that’s where this one… led?”
But before I could go any further, Tully began convulsing in my arms.
“I gots-I gots to change,” he said, holding his bloody hands up, staring at them, at the gash in his chest. The graffiti had dug down to the bone, exposing white flashes of ribs, and I felt my stomach churn. “I can’t heal like this.”
“Come on, cub,” Fischer said, squatting down beside us, taking Tully from my arms and picking him up. “I’ll carry you out to the clearing, to the light of the moon.”
I got to my feet, groaning, covered in grime, dirt, blood and basil. More and more weres and vamps were gathering; the ones who had watched stood in awe, but the newcomers stared at me with cold, hungry eyes. Wonderful-I was covered in Tully-flavored barbecue sauce. Fortunately the curly-headed vamp guard was on crowd control, keeping both the weres and the vamps away from the tag.
“She’s Lady Saffron’s troubleshooter,” he said to a new arrival, following with a glowing account of my recent duel with the graffiti. I half smiled. I wasn’t Saffron’s ‘troubleshooter,’ and it hadn’t been that easy. I turned to correct him-and got a bucket of water in the face.
“Wash up, wash up,” Gettyson said, splashing the rest of me with cold, stinging liquid, then attacking me with a towel. “You gots to get Tully’s blood off you, get it off you.”
I took the towel and began scrubbing gratefully. The fluid stank of ammonia and disinfectant and other things besides, and felt harsh against my hands. My eyes were watering from the initial splash, and my lips were actually tingling… surely he hadn’t just splashed wolfsbane extract in my face! But then, a thin purple haze began lifting off my top, chest and shorts-not smoke, but mana, from Tully’s moon-charged werekin blood-and the grateful magician in me won out over the worried chemist.
Gettyson handed me a dry towel for my face and looked me over roughly, checking my chest, my hands, under my arms. He daubed a more concentrated form of the stinging substance on a cloth and began wiping scrapes on my legs, arms, finally my forehead.
“That was from earlier,” I said.
“But still,” he said, frowning, wiping it clean. “You feels like you’re cut anywhere?”
“No, no,” I said, feeling myself up and down. “I’m good.”
Gettyson seized my hand and inspected the knuckle. “That’s not from earlier,” he said, holding my hand firmly in the cloth and pouring the stinging fluid straight on the wound. “Keep watch on this. I don’t wants you turning wolf unless you wants to.”
“Ow. Thanks,” I said, taking the bottle and cloth gratefully. He nodded, barely looking at me, his odd, slit-pupiled eyes angry and tight; not at me, but at a memory. I had a feeling he hadn’t ‘turned horse’ because he wanted to.
A sudden howl rent the air, and Gettyson looked off. “Tully’s changed,” he said. “If he has, the other young ones will too. It’s like a trigger. You gets yourself out of here.”
“We don’t have time for all this werekin bullshit,” I said. “A tag like that killed Revenance. This one nearly killed Tully, started to drag us both inside. I think the different graffiti is connected somehow. I need to see the others-”
“In daylight,” Gettyson said. “ After the full moon. The last thing we needs is you here covered with the scent of blood right when we gots a crowd of wolves changing.”
And then a crackling growl rippled across the pavement. I looked up to see a monstrous bear lumbering past, larger than a horse, eyeing me sideways as he planted himself at the edge of the darkness: the Bear King, leader of the werehouse, in full animal form. A young, slender wolf came up and fawned before him, but the Bear King batted at it. The wolf whined, rolling on its back, exposing its white chest marred with a ragged stripe of bloody fur; and then it looked at me with Tully’s eyes. He was safe. The werehouse was a rough place, but they cared for the least of their own. And that meant, somewhere behind me in the werehouse, Cinnamon was safe too-at least while she struggled through her change.
But a thousand glowing eyes still stared at me hungrily from the darkness.
“On behalf of the werehouse, thank you,” the Bear King rumbled. “Now leave us.”
Sweet and Sticky
Less than a quarter hour later, but seemingly a million miles away, Calaphase scowled, eyes closed, brow furrowing in pain as he took the straw of the Frappuccino from his lips. I winced in sympathy. “Is even liquid food too hard on you?”
“Yes-no,” he said, kneading his brow. “Drank too fast-brain freeze.”
I laughed.
The Starbucks in Vinings was in a quaint little converted house tucked into a cluster of similar shops off of Paces Ferry Road. Vinings was a full mile inside Atlanta’s northeast Perimeter, but the steep hills and dense forest made it feel like a cozy mountain outpost. The cafe’s outdoor patio was cradled in clusters of trees and bushes, and in that cradle we lounged beneath the warm light of a heating lamp-and while the vampire was trying his best to suck down the moral equivalent of a coffee Frostee in the beginning of January, I was drinking a hot chai latte and feeling it down to my toes, thank you very much.
“Why did we come all the way up here?” I asked, grinning as he put the delicious sludge down. “There’s a Starbucks up South Atlanta Road, not a mile from the werehouse.”
“Do you know where all the Starbucksen are in Atlanta?”
“Not all of them,” I replied. “And you ducked my question. Why here?”
“One,” Calaphase ticked off with his finger, “the cats here know me and blend the way I like, rather than just handing me a cup of crushed ice with coffee poured over it. And two… Vinings is inside the Perimeter. Safer for you.”
“I wondered why you ran us down all those back roads,” I said. To mundanes, the Perimeter was Interstate 285, twin ribbons of asphalt that ringed Atlanta like a black eye. To Edgeworlders, it was a mammoth magic circle, protecting the residents within from the full chaos of the magical Edgeworld. Fae battles and demon possessions didn’t happen here.
At least, they didn’t happen… much. The vampires saw to that. I tugged at my steel collar. It was the sign of Saffron’s protection, but it didn’t mean too much OTP-”Outside the Perimeter”-where the delicate truce established by civilized vampires broke down.
Most humans never noticed, of course, but an Edgeworlder traveling outside the safe zones had to watch her back. There were rules, as old and ancient as those governing trolls under a bridge. First and foremost, you didn’t expose Edgeworlders without their permission.
That, of course, hadn’t flown with Rand when I’d called in to report this new graffiti attack. He blew up at me when I refused to divulge our location, cussed me out, in language more suited to me than him. And then he hung up, on me! And rather than support me…
“You can’t tell Rand where the werehouse is,” Calaphase said, with quiet authority. Calaphase and I had met most often at weekly meetings at Manuel’s Tavern, with Saffron and our mutual friend Jinx. My memory from Manuel’s was just gleaming blue eyes flashing across the table, but close up his hair was wiry gold, his skin like polished ivory. “You know the rules.”
“I know, I know,” I said, still avoiding his eyes. “I won’t out an Edgeworlder. But that’s going to make things difficult. Someone’s got to analyze the crime scene, take pictures of the tag. Secrecy will make it harder to find the bastards that killed Revenance-”
“Bastard s?” Calaphase asked. “Plural?”
“The tag had the same motifs as the one that killed Revenance,” I said, “but not the same style. They were inked by two different people. This isn’t one tagger. It’s a crew.”
Calaphase stared off into the distance, thinking. “This is bad,” he said. “Revenance dead. Two more vamps missing, plus Josephine. And now this attack. Look, talk to your pet cop-”
“Andre Rand is not a pet,” I said. “He’s like an uncle. I can’t believe he hung up on me.”
“I can’t either, Dakota, but call him back,” Calaphase said, again with quiet authority. “We’ve got to investigate this, but we can’t lead cops to the werehouse. Rand will have to work through you. Get him on board and ask him what evidence you need to collect.”
“I’m not a crime scene investigator, Cally-”
“Then learn what you need to do,” Calaphase repeated. “Get a copy of Criminology for Dummies if you have to. When you come for Cinnamon on Thursday, you can take pictures-”
“Wait, what about Thursday,” I said. “I’m coming back tomorrow.”
“No, Dakota,” Calaphase said, staring off into the distance with the same quiet finality. I glared at him, about to speak, but he abruptly looked over, his blue clear eyes meeting mine. I quickly looked away at the table, and he sighed. “I’m not going to put the whammy on you. You can look at me. Please. Look at my face, if not my eyes.”
Reluctantly I looked up, not quite directly meeting his gaze. It was a pity that he was a vampire, that his eyes could project his aura and work on my will. Otherwise I would have enjoyed gazing into them, two gems of blue sky embedded in a statue of dark cruelty.
“The werehouse is a private haven for a private affliction,” he said gravely. “No police, no outsiders-and especially no fresh meat on the full moon.” His eyes sparkled. “Unless you’re planning on providing a one-time catering service for Wednesday night’s hunt.”
I couldn’t help but smile. “When you put it that way-what time on Thursday?”
“Right at six-the moon will just be coming up, but the sun will just have gone down, so I can protect you,” Calaphase said, taking a sip of his Frappuccino. He got the same pained expression, and this time I was certain it wasn’t a brain freeze.
“What gave you the idea to eat human food?”
“Not a what,” Calaphase said, eyes still closed, now just as clearly savoring the taste. “A who. You, Dakota.” His eyes opened, catching the shock in my glance before I looked away, and he laughed. “This is the Saffron diet. You told her to try human food.”
“I did?” I asked… and then I remembered. “I did. When she was thinking about becoming a vampire, she told me she’d have to give up human food-”
“And you said, ‘Why? Aren’t you going to even fucking try it?’” Calaphase responded, miming my diction uncannily. “And so she did. Every vampire tries eating rare steak and pukes it up. Saffron analyzed vampire digestion, started off with sugar water, and built up from there.”
“So… if it’s so bad, why torture yourself? Are you going vegetarian-”
“Hell, no,” Calaphase said. “I love the taste of blood. But… Saffron’s a daywalker, Dakota. She can stand in the sun and not catch fire. And she thinks a diet of human food-ahem, a diet of food humans eat-has a lot to do with that.”
“Did Revenance follow the Sav-uh, ‘Saffron’ diet?” I asked, pleased and horrified: pleased that vampires were cutting back on blood, and horrified that it might loose these predatory superhumans onto the daylit world. “He lasted a long time under a cloudy sky.”
“So it did work,” Calaphase said. “Revy always was bolder than me. Since I started the diet, I’ve felt less oppressed by the daystar, but I’ve not been brave enough to face it.”
“Don’t be in too much of a hurry,” I said quietly. “He survived the clouds… but direct sunlight killed him.” That unpleasant reminder hung there between us, and Calaphase took a sip of his beverage, again staring off into the distance. Eventually I filled the gap. “So… where are you on the Saffron diet?”
“I could show you. Canoe is my current favorite restaurant in the area,” Calaphase said. “You’d like it. I should take you there.”
I blinked. “Did… you just ask me out?”
Calaphase blinked as well. “No, I was just thanking you for-” he began… and then stopped. Then he looked me straight in the eyes, blue gems gleaming in that handsome statue, and said, with quiet confidence, “Yes, I did. Would you like to go to Canoe, Dakota?”
My heart leapt into my throat and I felt my face flush. Oh. My. God. I had just attracted the attention of a vampire, one who probably chased his steaks with O Positive. Very bad news. I don’t like vampires. I certainly don’t date vampires. And why was I thinking of dating, when I was dating Philip Davidson… Philip, who was off in Virginia, and who was never here?
“I don’t give blood,” I blurted.
“Never on a first date,” Calaphase said with a smile. Then the smile faded. “I’m serious. Never on a first date. It means as much to me as sex.”
“Then how do you live?” I said, brow furrowing. I don’t trust vampires because I was trained as a chemist. Vampires were powerful and fast-so something had to be powering those hyperactive metabolisms. If blood was no richer in calories than a good Frappuccino it would take something like a gallon a day to feed them-and a human can’t safely donate more than a pint of blood every few months. “I mean, the amount of human blood-”
“Cow’s blood, actually,” Calaphase said, a bit embarrassed. “Kosher butchers have been selling it to vampires, both above and below the table, for hundreds of years.”
I blinked.
“I can show you where I buy it,” he said, sipping his Frappuccino.
“I think I’d prefer Canoe for our first, uh, date,” I replied, with a nervous little laugh.
“Call it a dinner in thanks for your service if it makes you more comfortable. Besides, the Lady Saffron doesn’t share well with other clans,” Calaphase said. “Still… is that a yes?”
We were just staring at each other now. I was afraid to breathe. Did Calaphase breathe? Saffron would say, if he eats, he breathes, but I wasn’t sure; come to think of it, vampires were magic. Could his metabolism involve magic? Would our date?
“Are you free tomorrow night?” I said suddenly.
“Yes,” he said. “No-damnit, yes. I will have to return to the werehouse, but I can take a break around dinnertime. I’ll meet you at the restaurant. You’ll feel safer.”
“I’ll feel safer or you’ll feel safer?” I asked, tugging the ring on my collar. “I know I’m safe around a vampire, unless you want a ‘Lady Saffron’ garlic enema. Don’t trust yourself?”
“Oh, I trust myself completely,” Calaphase said, staring straight at me. “No matter how good the dish looks, I know the stew tastes better if you let it simmer.”
Calaphase’s phone rang, more werehouse business, and while he spoke I excused myself with a nervous wave, hopped in the blue bomb and fled out into the dark. My brain was buzzing: finish the paperwork for the Clairmont Academy, buy Cinnamon’s books, get the Prius fixed up, find a good lawyer to handle the adoption and the Valentine Foundation’s missing payments, and, oh, yeah, track down a graffiti killer. There were a thousand things to do.
But mostly my brain was buzzing with the obvious: I was having dinner with a vampire. Oh, man. How did that happen? And why was I so jazzed about it? My palms were almost as damp on the wheel as they had been when Cinnamon had been ready to rip my head off.
I tried to force myself to relax.
So I was having dinner with a vampire. What’s the worst that could happen?
Magical Fallout
“You want me to what? ” I said, bringing the Prius to a screeching stop.
“Stop what you’re doing and stay out of this,” Rand ordered through my Bluetooth headset. I’d called him back, just as Calaphase had asked… but bringing him back on board was proving to be difficult. Rand wasn’t going down without a fight. “This investigation is getting hairy. Having a loose cannon is going to complicate things.”
“But I’ve already started,” I said, and I had. I’d not yet found anything on magical graffiti, but I had found a little on magical pigments and a lot about regular graffiti. Now that I was primed for it, I was seeing graffiti everywhere-on walls, on street signs, even on the street itself. It was hard not to get lost in the raw folk beauty of graffiti, but already I was starting to notice patterns, possibly crews, and even the occasional magic mark, and was convinced we could catch this guy. “In fact, it’s hard to see how I could stop-”
“Try this. Just stop,” he said. “The Atlanta Police Department does not want a registered freelance magician nosing around this case. Especially not if you’re going to help by stirring up a hornet’s nest in the local werehouse and then not even telling us where you were-”
“I tried to tell you before,” I said sharply, “I was not there to stir up a hornet’s nest.”
“Then what were you doing?”
“Trying to get help for Cinnamon,” I said, and the line stayed silent. “She hadn’t changed since she was poisoned… and apparently that shit builds up. She turned early, and I didn’t know where else to take her. I don’t have a radar for evil graffiti. Being there to help was blind luck.”
Rand was silent, so I pressed my case. “Cinnamon’s safe because I took her there, and our werekin friend is alive because I was at the right place at the right time. If you don’t like blind luck, call it dumb luck. Did you really want me to let that boy die, Uncle Andy?”
“No,” Rand said. “No, I’m sorry. The attack’s clearly related to the one on Revenance, so I assumed it was a reaction to you poking around. I didn’t realize it was a coincidence-which actually makes our problem worse. I shouldn’t have hung up on you-”
“No, you shouldn’t have,” I said, starting up the car as the light turned green. I was silent for a moment, just driving, then said, “Not before you got the whole story.”
“Look, the DA freaked when she found out you’d been at the crime scene. We can’t have you connected to the investigation in any way, or we can kiss a conviction goodbye.”
“No way,” I said.
“No way, no how-no investigating,” Rand said. “You’ve got to promise me that you’ll stay out of this-or you might end up attached to the investigation as a suspect.”
“Uncle Andy,” I said. “Are you… threatening me?”
“No, I’m trying to make you see how serious this is,” Rand said. His voice was so stern and important I could almost see his expression. “You have to promise me, Kotie-”
“Oh, please,” I said. I automatically crossed my fingers, then glared at them. I was not going to play this game. “Cross my heart and hope to die? Detective Andre Rand, don’t you think we’re both a bit old for this? This thing murdered a friend, attacked another and almost killed me. I want to help you get this guy. These guys. Whoever it is.”
Rand was silent for a minute. “Fine,” he said. “I love you like a daughter, but I promise you that if you stick your nose back into this I will have you up on obstruction charges.”
“Andre-”
“I mean it, Dakota,” Rand said. “Butt. The Hell. Out.”
And he hung up, leaving me and the blue bomb sailing into Midtown in near silence. Once Midtown Atlanta had been a graveyard of half-filled mid-height office buildings and closed hotels, but now it was having a comeback, with new buildings in brick and stone with nary a bit of graffiti on a one of them, except for a mural, clearly commissioned.
It was new, fresh, vibrant-yet sterile: even though the cars on West Peachtree’s wide one-way expanse held enough people to make a crowd, I felt alone. Sometimes I missed riding my Vespa. No matter how comfy my Prius was, it left me disconnected from my environment.
Then the phone rang, and I blooped it through without thinking. “Dakota Frost,” I groused. “Best magical tattooist in the Southeast-”
“You won’t get many customers with that tone,” the caller said.
“Philip!” I said, smiling with pleasure. “It’s so good to hear your voice.”
“Good to hear yours too, Dakota,” Special Agent Philip Davidson said. You could still hear the warmth, even through the Bluetooth. I wanted to see his face: his wavy brown hair, his cute little goatee, the blue-gray eyes he always hid behind dark glasses. I was glad he couldn’t see me, cheeks red with guilt. I waited a second too long to keep the conversation going, and Philip caught that. “Is everything all right?”
“Yes,” I said, abruptly, turning onto West Peachtree. “Damnit, no, things aren’t all right. One of my friends, Revenance, was just killed.”
“Rand told me-I’m so sorry. He also mentioned you witnessed a second attack,” Philip said, slipping into his smooth-but-not-accusatory tone of disapproval that made me feel as big as a bug. “But that you refused to divulge its location because it was ‘Edgeworld’ business.”
“That I did,” I said. Philip Davidson and the Department of Extraordinary Investigations had definite ideas on how to treat Edgeworlders, and respecting Edgeworld privacy was about the last thing on their list. “Like I told Rand, it isn’t my place to divulge their secrets.”
“Dakota,” Philip said, voice softening. “I’m not calling to bust your nuts. Rand also told me you were there to help Cinnamon. She hadn’t changed in a few months, had she? Jesus. And that was your first time dealing with it too. That must have been very difficult for you both.”
“You have no idea,” I said, glancing back at my torn rear seats. As my head turned back, the car in front of me pulled away, the car behind honked, and I cursed, “All right, all right, I’m going!” and hooked onto 5 ^th Street into Georgia Tech’s new campus village.
“What are you doing, Dakota?” Philip asked.
“I’m on the last of my rounds of ‘would you deliver the bad news for me, Dakota’ that Rand and her Highness the ‘Lady Saffron’ dumped in my fucking lap,” I snapped. “I’m going to go break the news about Revenance to yet another friend, and while they’re getting over that, I planned to start interrogating them about some weird fucking shit I saw while I was pulling Cinnamon’s childhood sweetheart out of a magic graffiti tag that was eating him alive.”
“ Cinnamon had a childhood sweetheart? From how you’ve described the werehouse-”
“Oh, maybe I’m romanticizing it, but I could tell they had some relationship-and don’t change the subject,” I said. “I’m being serious here. One dead, three missing. Do you really want me to stop? If so, where do you want me to draw the fucking line, Philip? After I saved a kid’s life, but before I find out what we need to stop this shit from killing anyone else?”
“What’s wrong, Dakota?” Philip asked. “I mean, what’s really wrong?”
I’m having dinner with a vampire when I’m supposed to be dating you.
“You’re never here, Philip,” I said. “I haven’t seen you since November.”
“December 4 ^th,” Philip said. “It was a Monday.”
“It was fifteen minutes for breakfast at the Flying Biscuit before you rode off to the airport. Which puts our last real date, what, a month ago today?”
“I’ve been busy,” Philip said. “I can’t fly down to Atlanta every week.”
“But you won’t let me come up and see you in Virginia,” I responded, which was true. “Philip, I haven’t even heard from you since… since before Christmas.”
“You’ve found someone, haven’t you,” Philip said.
“Damnit!” I said, screeching to a stop as the light in front of me turned red. “No, Philip, someone found me. Someone just asked me out to dinner, and it’s making me feel guilty. Happy now? Why, why, why do I always have to be the guy in the relationship?”
Crickets chirped. It was that silent on Phillip’s end. After a long pause he finally answered. “Oh. I should have seen this one coming, huh? A girl. And you.”
I laughed. I could see how he jumped to the wrong conclusion,. “Sorry, Philip,” I said. “You don’t get off that easy. You can’t blame this one on the other team. I do still like boys. I just like ones that are here, at least once in a while.”
There was a second silence over the line, as cars streamed down the broad lanes of Spring Street before me, narrowly missing Tech students bolting through the traffic as they darted from the restaurants and bookstore and back again. Finally Philip spoke.
“All right, Dakota,” he said. “You have your date, if that’s what you want.”
He sounded crushed. “Hey, Philip,” I said softly. “That’s not what I meant-”
“No, you’re right,” he said. “I’m never there, and that’s not fair to you. Take your friend to dinner, and that’s OK, but if you’re still
… interested, I’m willing to give us another shot next time I make it down there. If things are as bad as Rand said… well, it won’t be long.”
“I’m sorry, Philip,” I said.
“I am too,” he said. “And sorry about the ‘investigating this on your own’ crack. We really appreciated you helping us track the tattoo killer last year, but please, please, please wait until we bring the problems to you instead of making trouble on your own. I worry about you, Dakota. You’re a… a valuable resource, and I’d hate to lose you. Take care.”
“I’d hate to lose you too, Philip,” I said, but my headset blooped and my brain put the words “valuable resource” on an endless loop.
He was already gone. He’d called his girlfriend a valuable resource and hung up.
Damnit! Damnit! Damnit! This was not what I wanted. A dalliance with a vampire had just cut me off from a man who was both my boyfriend and my spook contact, and said dalliance hadn’t even happened yet. And protecting the werehouse’s privacy had alienated Uncle Andy.
Maybe Philip was right; things were already blowing up in my face.
Was I getting sucked in too deep?
But then I saw Revy’s face, burned up like paper. No one did that to my friends. And no matter how much I liked Philip, he was first and foremost a monster fighter, not one of their guardians. And no matter how much I trusted Uncle Andy, he had to work within the law. Not on the Edge, where I lived. Someone had to protect these people-someone who understood them.
The light turned green, the car behind me honked, and I gunned the blue bomb over the 5 ^th Street Bridge into Georgia Tech proper.
“ Fine, ” I said. “My own damn investigation it is.”
Nuclear Wizardry
A great chasm of asphalt cuts across the heart of Atlanta-river-wide, canyon-deep, and filled with a current of cars faster than any rapids: the Downtown Connector. The Connector had contained Georgia Tech’s growth for decades, until finally a spray of new buildings had burst over the recently completed 5 ^th Street Bridge.
As I crossed the bridge, I saw Tech shift from shiny glass towers to aging red brick. Winding through the campus was like traveling back in architectural time, from the 90s to the 80s to the 70s… next stop, the 1950s, and one of the oldest buildings on the campus: the Georgia Tech Nuclear Research Center.
The NRC was two cubical buildings guarding a squat ribbed tower, ugly and alien, that once housed the reactor. Now decommissioned, the NRC held something different, and perhaps more dangerous: the very first laboratory in the country studying the Physics of Magic.
In a pebble-floored, low-chaired lobby, I signed in an ancient log book that looked like it really did date from the 1950s. As I put the pen back into its tiny, conical holder, Annette, the lab secretary, asked, “Is everything all right, Kotie? You look flushed.”
I frowned, trying not to take it out on her: Annette was all pink hair and bubblegum, so sickeningly sweet you wanted to punch her in the nose-but she really was the nice sort, even though she dressed in poufy florals that even Catherine Fremont would have punked up a bit.
“I just had an argument,” I said. “Nothing important.”
“Sorry to hear it,” she said, picking up the phone. “Don’t worry, you’ll find someone.”
“How did you… ” I began. “Am I really that transparent?”
“Yes, she’s here,” Annette said, hitting the buzzer. “Doug and Jinx are in the tower.”
“I remember the way,” I said, opening the heavy metal door. “And thanks.”
“Remember, there are lots of fish in the sea,” she chimed sweetly.
“Thanks,” I said, as the door clanged shut behind me.
The chilled, dark metal corridor felt cramped as a submarine, but soon opened into a cavernous vault big enough to hold a house. I wondered the chamber had held in its heyday, when these idiots had thought to contain nuclear death smack dab in the middle of a crowded college campus at the center of the Southeast’s largest city. But now the vault was almost hollow, a birdcage of cranes and catwalks over a huge single-cut slab of polished marble inscribed with the largest magic circle in the country.
A darkhaired, cleancut man in a Georgia Tech sweatshirt was adjusting some equipment in the center of the circle. At a console outside the ring, a young, gothy, bonneted woman in an exaggerated Victorian outfit read numbers out loud to the thin air. Doug and Jinx.
Doug saw me and smiled, a wicked twinkle belying his clean cut look-which didn’t fool me anyway: the first time I’d met him, he’d been wearing leather puppy gear. Jinx, on the other hand, never changed her style to suit the circumstances. I don’t think I’d seen her wear anything less elaborate since… before she went blind. Today, however, she had a new accessory.
“Dakota?” she asked of the air, even as she turned towards me, eyes hidden behind her dark glasses. Her hand shot out, delicate black lace glove now adorned with a new sparkle-a gleaming diamond ring. “Guess what? We’re getting married!”
Oh, how wonderful for them. “That’s great,” I said, with forced cheeriness, reaching to take her hand. It wasn’t a large rock, since they were both graduate students, but still-how wonderful for them. Really.
“Dakota?” Jinx said-and pulled down her glasses slightly. I looked up, expecting her spooky geode eyes-and saw instead spooky black snowflakes gleaming within her formerly clouded marbles. “Oh, Dakota, what’s wrong?”
Damnit. I had forgotten she could partially see now, some positive fallout from a magical injury last year. I forced a smile. “Nothing, just a bad day,” I said, casting about for something else to talk about. “Look, I’m sorry I haven’t coughed up your fee from the tattooing contest… ”
“When the Valentine Foundation pays you, you can pay me, but, really, Dakota,” she said reprovingly. “That’s the worst attempt to change the subject ever. All I can see is a blurry spot, but even I can tell that smile is fake. It’s not just a bad day. What’s wrong?”
“It’s nothing,” I said. And then I remembered what I had come for, and forgot all about Philip. “Actually, you’re right,” I said gently. “It is something. Jinx, I have some bad news.”
Doug and Jinx sat in shock at the break table as I told them about Revy, about the attack on Tully, and about the other vampire disappearances that were almost certainly connected. Jinx, the best graphomancer I knew, agreed to tackle the graffiti without a second thought.
“I know the literature on decorative marks quite well,” she said primly. “But I’ll need more than a description to build a model of how it’s working. I need good digital photographs, and hopefully video, thirty seconds or a full sequence if your camera will last that long.”
“I know,” I said, speaking up to compensate for the sudden whine of the air conditioning. “I’m supposed to take pictures tomorrow at the werehouse when I go pick up Cinnamon.”
“Why is Cinnamon at the werehouse?” Jinx asked, brow furrowing. She didn’t bother to speak up at all. “I thought you were trying to rescue her out of there.”
“It’s a long story,” I said. And potentially embarrassing. My daughter might not want her mother telling people she had trouble controlling her changes. “I’ll let her tell it, if she wants to. But I have a question for you, Doug. The first tag was powerful, but didn’t do anything I haven’t seen a tattoo or any normal spell do. The second one, however, did something unusual-”
A crack like thunder rang through the dome, and I flinched back from a flash like controlled lightning. “Jeez!” I said, raising an arm, seeing goose bumps ripple up as stray mana flooded out through the room. “What the hell are you guys doing? ”
“Testing a theory of magical capacitance,” Doug said. “Lenora, give us some warning next time!”
“Why? Nothing is going to happen,” said a brown-haired woman, stepping out of a control booth-and then blithely stepping over the glowing outer ring of the magic circle as if the sea of energies it contained couldn’t turn her into a pumpkin. She used tongs to extract a metal disc from the equipment at the center of the circle, stomped back over to us, and tossed the disc on the desk. “Yet another failure.”
Inside the metal ring was a pinkish membrane with a gridlike test pattern at its center. I stared at it with growing horror. “Don’t tell me that’s real human skin. ”
“Of course it’s real,” Lenora said, “you can see it with your own two eyes-”
“Down, Lenora,” Doug said, holding the membrane up to the light. “Yes, Dakota, it’s human skin, but not from a human. It’s grown on a synthetic matrix in the Biotech building-they’re hoping to use it on burn patients. Dang-it looks exactly like it did before.”
“My point exactly,” Lenora replied. “I don’t care what mana flux you use, you’re not going to get any accumulation in a single layer. There’s no such thing as ‘tattoo magic.’”
I raised an eyebrow. “So what is it that I do for a living then, chop liver?”
“Oh, so you’re the Dakota Frost that got him on this wild goose chase,” Lenora said. “It was bad enough when he started dating the witch and eating granola-”
“Lenora!” Jinx said, putting her gloved fingers to her breast in mock shock. “After all the wonderful spells I’ve shown you… ”
“Which are supposed to do what, exactly?” Lenora asked, smirking.
“I don’t know in particular, Scully,” I said, cracking my neck, “but if you can’t get them to work, don’t blame Jinx. Start closer to home, like with yourself. ”
“Down, Dakota. I need a Scully to keep me honest,” Doug said, handing the disc back to her. “Please photograph it and run another control. So, Dakota,” Doug said, pulling out a tan gridded notebook and writing a few lines, “what did the graffiti do that was so unusual?”
I stared at him: as his smile faded he was left calm, like that little discussion hadn’t just happened, and he was actually taking notes. He hadn’t taken it personally, like I had. Doug was going to be a good scientist someday. Maybe he’d be open enough to listen.
“Tully was trapped against it, and while I was pulling him out it got a really good grip on us,” I said. “It’s really weird, but it felt like… it was sucking us inside. Not just pulling us against the wall, but into it, like the graffiti had made a doorway into a space beyond.”
Lenora, walking past with a fresh disc rolled her eyes. “Oh, for the love of-”
“This time I agree with her,” Doug said. “That sounds impossible.”
“If you’re that susceptible to new age mysticism,” Lenora said, “maybe I should loan you some back issues of the Skeptical Inquirer -”
“Whoa!” I said, holding up my tattooed hands. “I am simply reporting an experience and asking you to help me interpret it. I’m the last person to go in for cosmic woo-hooery.”
“You supposedly have magic tattoos,” Lenora said. “What are we supposed to think?”
I glared at her. “ Fine,” I said, and flexed my hand.
I have large tattoos-vines, snakes, tribal patterns-but small ones too: flowers and jewels and butterflies. The littlest ones are easy to tattoo. I can do them in one sitting-so I’m not above using them to make a point.
My skin glowed. Lenora’s eyes widened. And then a pretty little honeybee I’d tattooed on one of my vines came to life, buzzing up into the air. Lenora cried out in delight, and Doug laughed. Only Jinx seemed nonplussed. With a gentle wave of my hand, I guided the sparkling bee over the test membrane, and it gently settled down and became two dimensional again.
“You can pretend that’s a yellow jacket,” I said-the Tech mascot-and folded my arms. “Look closely at the connections that make up the design, particularly the Euler circuits. Skin only holds essentially one layer of ink, so it’s the design that holds the magic. Using a grid pattern in your tester, you were almost guaranteed to fail, except maybe at the edges.”
“I tried to tell them that,” Jinx said, nudging Doug with her shoulder, “but my little scientist here kept going on about his need for proper controls.”
“Holy cow,” Lenora said, rubbing at the membrane. The bee stubbornly remained where it was and did not smudge off. “Holy cow. I can see why Doug had a bee in his bonnet.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” I said. “And for the record, I’ve subscribed to the Skeptical Inquirer for the last ten years.”
“Oh!” Lenora said. “That’s… uh… can I put this in the tester?”
“Knock yourself out,” I said, and Lenora took the membrane into the test chamber like she was carrying a baby made of gold. I looked at Doug. “How can she not see the evidence right before her eyes? I mean, isn’t that the point of science?”
“She’s come a long way,” Jinx said defensively. “You shouldn’t pick on her… ”
“But it’s so fun,” Doug said, ducking when she whapped him with her cane.
Lenora moved behind a sheet of glass, touched some controls, and then a rising whine started at the top of the tower. I’d heard it earlier-I’d thought it was an air conditioner-but now I could see it came from a big device far above the magic circle, like an upside-down glass jar wrapped in hundreds of sheets of metal: a massive magical capacitor. As it charged up, I could see a dance of light sparkling off a silver spear, pointing down out of the glass.
“So, now that we’ve established that I don’t make wild claims without something to back them up,” I said, “can you answer my question about how the graffiti bent space?”
“Sure. It didn’t. It had to be an illusion-you didn’t go anywhere, after all. There’s no way graffiti could affect the metric enough to change its topology.” At my baffled look, Doug tried again. “Look, it isn’t likely that any magic could bend space. It’s a matter of gravity.”
The rising whine reached its peak, and with another crack of thunder, a beam flashed down from the point of the spear. The test membrane flared with blue-white light, and the bee buzzed back to life. Doug looked back at it, amazed, as Lenora frantically took pictures of the moving tattoo. Then he shrugged and used what we’d just seen as his argument.
“That’s the largest magical capacitor on the East Coast,” Doug said. “Two hundred layers of infused papyrus and cold iron. When it fires, it puts out more mana than any magician in history-and it doesn’t affect gravity. If it can’t, then your graffiti can’t. It just can’t.”
“But it didn’t feel like the graffiti was affecting gravity,” I said. “Like you said, our feet were on the ground. The tag was… I don’t know what else to call it but bending space… ”
“But bent space is gravity,” Doug said. “Gravity is just… a kink in time that makes matter want to move together. It’s like setting two bowling balls down on a trampoline-first they’ll dent its surface. Then, slowly, the dents will come together.”
I squinted. “I’m… I’m not quite seeing it.”
“Don’t worry,” Doug said. “There are PhDs in physics that never get it. But the point is, bending space is so hard it takes the entire mass of the Earth just to keep our feet on the ground. And that’s just attraction, a dent in the trampoline. To make a tunnel from place to place-”
“You… couldn’t do that,” I said, starting to get it. “That’s not just bending space, it’s punching a hole-changing the topology, like you said. You can’t stretch a surface to make a hole-the trampoline would burst and the springs would snap back, going everywhere.”
“I’m not sure what that would mean in terms of my little example,” Doug said. “But either way, the amount of mass needed would be… astronomical.”
“But the tags aren’t using mass,” I said. “They’re using magic, and magic breaks all the rules. We don’t know how it works, or what its limits are.”
“And that’s why I hope you’re wrong,” Doug said. “Magic gravity would be completely new-and the last time that happened in physics was when we realized matter was energy. No one ever thought we’d be able to use that, but a few years later, we had atomic bombs.”
I felt my eyes widen.
“So that’s why we’re stuffed in this building,” Doug said. “We’re afraid magic can make nuclear weapons look like firecrackers. And if the graffiti can affect gravity -”
“If a tag on a wall,” I said, “can bend space harder than an entire planet-”
“-then graffiti magic,” Doug said, “is powerful enough to crack open the planet.”