Daemon’s Mark by Caitlin Kittredge (web ebook reader .TXT) 📕

ankle twisted when I landed, but I shook it off and kept running. It would heal by the time I caught up with Russ, and if it was sprained, I could at least make him hurt as much as I was.

Russ had made it across the street, into the alley between a bodega and a handbag boutique. I darted into traffic, nearly clipping the bumper of a late-model Lexus. The driver cursed at me.

I drew my Sig, aiming at Russ’s skinny back. He fetched up against the blank wall of the building on the next street, rattling the emergency door fruitlessly.

“Nowhere to go, Russ,” I said. “Now, let’s try this again, with the knowledge that if you try any more magick tricks I’m going to put two in your head. Sound good?”

He turned around, his lip curling. “I didn’t kill her.”

“At this point,” I said, grabbing his arms and cuffing them behind his back, “I don’t even care. You’re under arrest.” I Mirandized him while Bryson got the car and helped me load Meyer into the back seat.

“Get Pete down here to search his apartment,” I said. “If there’s any hard evidence he was with Lily last night, we’ll find it.”

Bryson rubbed his throat, glaring at Russ in the rearview mirror. “What I wouldn’t do for five minutes alone with you, you little shit.”

“You know, Russ,” I said. “If you just give us an alibi, I can probably save you from having Detective Bryson here accidentally ram your head into your cell door on the way in.”

“Go piss up a rope, cop,” Russ said. “I want a lawyer.”

“Have it your way,” I sighed, and drove toward the SCS offices.

CHAPTER 4

The SCS doesn’t get a real office. Like most of the unpleasant things that normal people like to keep out of sight, we’re hidden in the basement of the main administrative building in downtown Nocturne City. The top floors of the Justice Plaza are full of Narcotics, Vice, SWAT and other noble pursuits.

The freak squad is in the old bomb shelter. In a way, it’s appropriate.

I walked Russ Meyer to an interview room and cuffed him to a chair. He smirked at me. “You think these will hold a witch?”

“They’ve done pretty well so far,” I said. “And if you get cute, look up.” Russ blinked, staring at the ward drawn on the ceiling of the interview room. “Think of yourself as a cell phone,” I said. “This is a dead spot. That ward mark makes sure of it.”

Bryson knocked on the observation mirror, and I stuck my head out the door. “Bright boy here doesn’t have a lawyer. I called the public defender’s office. Couple of hours.”

I gave Russ a smile. “Make yourself at home, Mr. Meyer.” Ducking out, I walked into the bullpen with Bryson.

“Let’s use the time we have and dig deep on Russ’s no doubt sad and inadequate life. If he’s got a sealed juvenile record, find a judge who will unseal it. Look at his financials. See where he’s getting his drugs from. Everything.”

My detectives bent their heads over their computers. I tapped Kelly on the shoulder. “Hunter, do me a favor.”

Kelly raised his eyebrows. He was about as strong and silent as they came. I said, “Go offer our suspect a coffee and see if you can get a read on what kind of magick he’s messing with, and more importantly, if it involves pulling hearts out of little girls’ chests.”

Hunter nodded. “My pleasure.” He lumbered up, like a landslide in reverse, and headed for the interview room.

I went into my office, settling down with a cup of microwave coffee and the overnight dispatches that had come in. Two assaults at were bars, one drunk and disorderly, a domestic dispute between a witch and her live-in boyfriend.

I shoved the dispatches into my outbox for Norris, our unit’s civilian assistant, to distribute to the detectives and put on the board, and was about to call Kronen for the autopsy results on Lily Dubois when my office door opened and Detective Just-Call-Me Natalie Lane came in.

“I know SVU is one big happy commune, but around here we knock,” I told her without looking up from my email.

“The desk by the coffee machine was empty,” Lane said. “I put my things there. Hope that’s okay.”

“I can’t imagine you’d care if it wasn’t,” I said. Lane spread her hands.

“Is there some problem I’m not aware of?”

“The squad might not be too happy with you,” I said, gesturing at Andy and Javier, who were looking at Lane’s box of things and her potted fern with frowns. “Lot of baggage comes with that desk.”

Lane raised her eyebrows. “Oh?”

“Annemarie Marceaux used to sit there,” I said.

“Really. That detective who went bad?”

“The same,” I said. Lane shook her head.

“That was a real shame. Whatever happened to her?”

“I shot her in the stomach after she tried to kill me.” I closed out my email in-box and stood up. “Was there anything else I could help you with, Detective? A welcoming fruit basket, maybe?”

Lane shook her head and backed out of my office, giving me a twitchy look over her shoulder. I smiled. I was having a crappy morning and I didn’t feel bad at all about taking it out on Lane. She sat down at her desk and started to arrange her knickknacks.

I took a minute to dispel the memory of Annemarie, the detective who had sold me out to the Thelemites and almost gotten Will, Bryson and me killed. I’d trusted Annemarie. She’d been a friend. Lane’s cutesy framed photographs and ceramic figurines wouldn’t change that.

Kelly came out of the interrogation room and stalked across the bullpen, beckoning me. “He’s a warlock, like me, and a piss-poor one. You believe he had the nerve to give me attitude?”

I snorted. “I know biker gangs that wouldn’t give you attitude, Kelly.”

“No call for cutting out the heart,” Kelly said. “Warlocks don’t use fetishes for their workings. You’re looking for some low-down, dirty blood magick.”

“Great,”