City of Crows Books 1-3 Box Set Page 4

  He never had a chance.

  Riker was the one who found him, ten minutes later.

  Who found the ghouls eating what was left of him.

  And Riker…Nicholas Riker killed six ghouls by himself, with a machete.

  He avenged Bishop sevenfold, for sure. But it cost him. One of the ghouls got in a lucky shot and almost ripped Riker’s right leg clean off. From what I’ve heard, the doctors had to put it back together with screws and titanium rods. For many, it would have been a career-ending injury. For Riker, it was a month in the hospital, followed by an immediate return to desk duty. Whether his leg heals well enough to put him back in the field depends on how the next year of physical therapy goes.

  Given how hard Riker fights his pain, denying himself meds until it’s unbearable, I can’t imagine him losing out to the injury. He’s too damn stubborn.

  That doesn’t mean he’s unaffected though.

  There’s a picture on the wall behind Riker’s desk that depicts the man he was before France. A clean shave. A neat haircut. A straight back. A proud face.

  The man in the chair in front of me has none of those traits. In their place are dark bags that hang beneath his eyes, hunched shoulders, a five o’clock shadow, and hair straight out of an eighties rock music video. Riker is tired. Tired and mourning the loss of a man he fought alongside for a decade.

  And here I am, Calvin Kinsey. Twenty-two-year-old rookie. Upstart and arrogant and a real dick when I’m in the right mood. A round peg in a very square hole. Forced by the commissioner with his good intentions to replace a guy years my senior. On a team that hasn’t yet gotten over the loss of their friend and comrade. With a captain who blames himself for that man’s death. For not getting there in time. For using the “wrong” combat strategy. For other bullshit reasons people blame themselves for deaths that aren’t their fault.

  In summary, I’m the new fluffy puppy somebody gifts you when your beloved old dog finally bites the dust. And trust me when I say you do not want to be that puppy. Because the sad owner might think you’re cute, but he still resents you for trying to replace something with a lot more sentimental value.

  I retreat to my uncomfortable chair, sit down again, and clear my throat. “So, uh, sir, what do you want me to do, if this case is too much for me to handle?”

  Riker, who’s been in a daze of pain for the last minute or so, blinks the distant, hazy look from his eyes and gives me a shadow of a smile. Grateful. That I’ve stopped butting heads with him for the time being. He grabs a pad of sticky notes with unsteady fingers, picks up the same pen he was holding before his pain attack, and scribbles what appears to be an address in his standard chicken scratch writing. Then he tears off the note and offers it to me.

  I take it and attempt to read it. “Is this…the occult shop on Broad Street?”

  Riker nods, a hint of color returning to his cheeks, but his voice is still strained when he speaks. “The owner is a witch, and she’s a member of the International Council. She’s been more forthcoming with information in the past than many of the other witches and wizards in town, so I like to check with her whenever we get a case where a practitioner is involved. I’d like you to stop by and show her the photos, especially the circle. See if she recognizes the magic style. And ask if she’s heard anything about a new potential sorcerer in the area.”

  “Ah, information gathering.” I fold up the note and stick it in my pocket. “Anything else, sir?”

  He scratches his stubble and shakes his head. “I’ll ask around and see if I can, uh, borrow a detective from one of the other elite teams. If so, I’ll partner you with him or her. Then I’ll let you back into the thick of it, tracking down this creature and the summoner, the real fight, if that’s how you want to put it. Until I make such an arrangement, however, I want you to steer clear of the crime scene and the circle. I’ve got a lower-level team, Delarosa’s, securing and documenting all the evidence for now. They’ll also handle the interviews with the victim’s family and the general canvass.”

  He stops to take a breath and drink the rest of his water, then finishes. “I mean what I said, Cal. I don’t want to hinder your development. But I know how quickly a case like this can go south. I don’t want you to get cornered by things you’re not ready for. You have a lot of potential. I want to see you fulfill it. Not end up dead in a ditch somewhere a month in. Okay?”

  I feel the corner of the address note prodding at my skin. “Okay, sir,” I say. “Okay.”

  Chapter Five

  The little occult shop on Broad is sandwiched between a bistro and a post office. The bistro must be a popular lunch spot, because droves of men and women in business suits constantly enter and exit, sandwiches and subs and large coffees in hand. My guess is they’re employed at the dozen plus office towers that loom up behind the small stores on Broad, ten or twelve blocks away. Sleek, modern buildings that aren’t quite skyscrapers but mark the era of Big Business well enough. They make up the commercial center of Aurora.

  I park my work car in a public lot across the street, watch the occult shop for any suspicious activity for a minute, and then head inside. The bell on the door jingles when I enter, and the second I cross the threshold, I’m greeted by the intense odor of incense. It’s so thick, my nostrils burn, and I swat it away from my face like a fly, fighting back a sneeze.

  Once I acclimate to the overbearing smell, I move through the narrow aisles of the shop, checking out all the wares on display. Most of it is useless junk. Mass-produced dream catchers. Charm bags filled with sticks and plastic gems. Lucky coins made in a factory in China. Herbs and spices you can get by the pound that would be far more useful for baking a pie than performing real magic. All the stuff you’d expect to see in your standard fake occult shop. Stuff that makes tourists giggle and open their wallets.

  The real magic paraphernalia, I know, is hidden in a back room somewhere. When an actual practitioner walks through the door, the cashier will let him past the counter, into the secret space where all the potion mixes, spell ingredients, and charm materials are stored, in jars and cans and boxes and baskets, for your friendly neighborhood witch or wizard to purchase at their convenience. And that’s where the real money comes in, too. Gold and silver and precious gems, bits and pieces of extinct animals, plants that only grow in one country in the world. Crafting good magic, I’ve heard, can be a pretty expensive process.

  Bad magic, though…I wonder how much that costs.

  I make my way past all the cheap novelties, reaching the counter. No one is manning it, so I ring the little metal bell next to the tip jar. A moment later, someone starts to shuffle around in the employee (or magic paraphernalia) room hidden behind a long violet curtain, and a female voice calls out, “Just a minute.”

  The woman who emerges from behind the curtain might be twenty-five. Or fifty. Wizards and witches have this habit of using magic to make themselves age more slowly than us normal people, but the exact rate at which they age isn’t quite the same for all of them. So the witch who saunters up to the counter, all smooth tan skin and long dark hair, could be somewhere around my age. Or she could be old enough to be my grandma. It’s a crapshoot.

  There’s a nametag clipped to her T-shirt that reads Erica, and as she approaches the counter, she throws up a cheery smile. Then she gets a load of what I’m wearing, and her smile drops into a frown dark enough to send small children fleeing in terror. “Oh, great. A Crow,” she mutters.

  Yup, the supernatural community has their own word for us, too. Crows.

  So the normal people call us crazy, and the magic people call us annoying.

  Not sure which of those I find more offensive.

  Erica the witch drops a book she was carrying onto the counter and stares up at my face. A few seconds of uncomfortable silence pass between us, and her repulsed frown softens to pursed lips that might be interpreted as ambivalence. “Huh,” she says. “A hot Crow.”

  That throws me for a lo
op, but I try to roll with it. “Do you always start conversations with people you don’t like by hitting on them? Seems like a weird strategy to me.”

  She flips her braided hair over her shoulder and rolls her eyes. “Sorry. I’ll try to restrain myself next time. Thing is, most Crows I know look like weather-beaten driftwood. To put it nicely.”

  “I imagine that’s because most Crows you see don’t hesitate to put their necks—and ‘beauty’—on the line to protect the innocent people of this fair city. Using your body as a shield tends to leave a few marks.” I tug my phone out of my pocket to pull up the photo files again. Best to get this over with before I start a verbal war with a witch that ends with my ass getting blasted out a window by a wind spell. You have to be powerful and skilled to win the title of witch or wizard from the International Council of Magic. The ICM doesn’t let minor practitioners into their ranks. So Erica here must pack a punch.

  I’m not really up for a punch right now.

  Erica’s face twitches until her lips shimmy up into a sly grin. “You must be new to DSI.”

  “Graduated two weeks ago. What gave me away?” I mimic her smile. “The fresh, handsome face, or the fact that I didn’t slip a knife out of my belt when I walked in, wary of you getting funny ideas?”

  She raises her hands in a mocking gesture of peace. “Both, if you must know. New Crows always have this air of undue confidence hanging around them. Think they can take on the magic world with a .45 and a few fake magic rings, defeat the big bad monsters, play the valiant knights. But they learn real quick, most of them, the truth of the matter. That—”

  “The world of monsters and mayhem can’t be controlled by mortal hands.” My voice drops two octaves. “Don’t mistake my inexperience for naïveté, witch.”

  The woman shifts backward a step, and I sense a stream of magic building in her palms. A faint aura forms around her hands, an earthy green hue. A sign she’s preparing to attack.

  I respond by activating my beggar rings with a simple mental command, Build. My fingers begin to grow warm as the rings absorb the energy in the air around me. There’s a bit more than usual—a consequence of being in the presence of a magic user—which means I can produce a bigger bang for my buck.

  Beggar magic isn’t real magic. Normal people like me don’t have an internal source of power to draw from, like actual magic users. So us DSI agents cheat. The minor practitioners who work in Weapons Development forge beggar rings for us to use. A charm etched into each ring allows non-magic folk to pull in excess environmental energy and release it in various forms.

  Which forms depend on the rings, and which rings depend on the user. I favor force, fire, and electricity, on my index fingers, middle fingers, and ring fingers, respectively. The rings for my thumbs and pinky fingers are stabilizers that help me channel the energy for an attack.

  Beggar magic can’t win against the true spells of witches and wizards, but it can make for a decent defense when you decide to flee for your life.

  Erica the witch must sense my move the same way I sensed hers, and she slowly lowers her hands to the countertop, letting her power drain back to whatever spiritual well it flowed from. “My apologies, Crow. It seems I read you wrong. I don’t want a fight in my shop. Don’t need the mess.”

  I dispel the energy in my rings back into the air. “Apology accepted. And a word of advice: Judging a book by its cover can be a recipe for some bloodshed. Just ask the cops who unknowingly worked the Gloston Square vampire case.”

  Erica curls her fingers into fists, and a horrified look of understanding flashes across her face before she buries it. She shakes her head, a stray lock of hair falling over her cheek, and blows warm air through clenched teeth. Then she fakes a cough and says, “You came here for a DSI reason, I assume? Some evidence you want my opinion on?”

  “Yeah, Nick Riker sent me. Said you were a little more forthcoming than most of your friends.” Flipping through the images on my phone, I come to the first crime scene photo of Jason Franks’ dorm room. I almost move past it, to the circle, unsure if I should show this woman such an extreme level of gore. But I need her to grasp the seriousness of this—else she might hold back vital information. “There was a murder at Waverly College this morning. Freshman student. It was definitely supernatural. The culprit was a creature that has yet to be identified. An Eververse creature.”

  Her finely plucked eyebrows arch up, and she smacks her palm on the book she was reading, some old, dusty tome. “Are you sure? A summoned creature? That’s sorcerer work.”

  “Yeah. I know. That complicates the problem further. We have no leads on the creature or its magic master.” I set my phone on the counter and slide it toward her. “Whoever summoned the creature had it out for this kid, and whatever creature was summoned had more than enough juice to enact the desired level of death and destruction.”

  Erica glances down at the crime scene photo and sucks in a quick breath. She leans closer, as if she can’t believe what she’s seeing on the small phone screen. “Gods almighty,” she murmurs. “This may be beyond you, Crow. Council business.” She uses a finger to scroll through the photos, cringing at each new gruesome angle that depicts Jason Franks’ untimely demise. Finally, she reaches the image of the mystery writing on the wall and stops, trying to decipher the meaning.

  “You know that language?” I ask.

  She chews on her lip. “No, unfortunately. I don’t recognize it. It’s not a standard language for magic instruction.” Her finger taps the screen a few more times, and up pops the image of the summoning circle. “I can’t say—”

  Erica recoils like something smacked her in the face, stumbling back into a shelf behind the counter. A dozen jars filled with strange-looking liquids clang together, and one of them slides off the shelf and crashes to the floor in an explosion of glass. The witch raises a hand to her mouth to stifle a low whine, eyes transfixed on the image of the circle. She begins to mutter in yet another language I don’t know.

  “Erica?” I grab the phone, clear the screen, and stick it back on my belt. “Are you all right?”

  Over the course of half a minute, she unwinds from her panic, rubbing her temples and sighing. “That circle is in this city?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then so is a dangerous sorcerer. The intricacy of that summoning…I’ve only seen things like that in books. Never in practice. Eververse summonings are largely forbidden by the Council because of the inherent risks involved in attempting to command and contain a creature more powerful than you. Given that circle’s level of complexity, whatever came out of…is it still here, roaming around Aurora?”

  “That’s my guess. There was no banishment done at that circle.” I reach for a small rack of fake stone charms on the countertop and run my fingers over the various options. Prosperity. Bravery. Tranquility. “The residual magic leading away from the circle indicated the creature was summoned there but never returned after it murdered the student. So unless it was banished at another circle, which seems impractical to me, it must still be here somewhere, presumably with its summoner.”

  Erica rubs her arms and then tips up her head like she noticed something on the ceiling. “Wait, you can see residual magic?”

  “I’m a tracker.” I shrug.

  “Oh. A rare skill for a Crow.” She approaches the counter again and picks up the aging book. “I’ll inform the ICM of this infraction. Expect Allen Marcus, the head of the Aurora chapter, to contact your liaison tonight or tomorrow morning. We don’t want a sorcerer of this caliber in our city any more than you do. Trust me on that. I think this might end up being one of the rare occasions where the Council and DSI see eye to eye.”

  “Ah, so it’s the end of the world, is it?” The Council avoids direct contact with DSI unless the equivalent of an apocalypse-grade meteor is bearing down on Aurora.

  Fantastic. My first real case, and the sky is already falling.

  Erica clears her throat and shakes the re
st of her ill ease away. “The world will survive, I’m sure. But anyone who gets in the way of that thing”—she glances in the direction of my phone—“is probably going to end up the same way that poor college boy did. I’m sorry I can’t be of more help, Crow. I really am.” She knocks one end of the book against my arm. “It’s fun to tease Crows when they’re chasing down magic children playing tricks or minor practitioners in over their heads, making zany things happen.”

  She balances the book on her fingers and whispers something I can’t interpret. With a faint pulse of green, the book levitates from her fingers and hovers in the air, steady as a rock. She blows the dust off the cover and sighs again. “I wish this was one of those times.”

  “As do I.” I step away from the counter and incline my head toward her. “Thanks for giving it a try though. I’ll be on the lookout for the Council call. Hopefully, by working together, we can rein this creature and the sorcerer in without any further loss of life.”

  Erica lets the book drop back into her hand. “I suppose hope is all we have at the moment, Crow.”

  “Cal.”

  “Pardon?”

  “My name. Cal Kinsey.” I retreat through the racks of useless ornaments, toward the front door, away from the source of real power in the room, who still stands at the counter.

  “Cal Kinsey, huh?” She clutches the book to her chest with one hand and tugs at her braid with the other. “Well, I suppose it wasn’t bad to meet you.”

  I bump into the door with my back and lean into it, forcing it open under my weight. The bells above me jingle again, echo across the store. “Same goes for you, Erica…”

  “Milburn. Erica Milburn.” She waves goodbye as I move past the threshold, onto the damp street beneath an overcast sky, a smirk playing at her red lips. “And, by the way,” she calls out, a moment before I let the door go, “I meant what I said earlier.”