CHAPTER 4
AS SINCLAIR EXITED the
freeway into downtown D.C., Laura toyed with her necklace, an
emerald on a gold chain. She wore it always, both as a memento of
the person who had given it to her and as a tool for creating
glamours. Light glamours—like enhancing her skin tone or adding a
glow to her hair—she produced with a simple manipulation of her
body signature. More complex ones, ones that changed her appearance
to someone entirely different, required a talisman to hold a
template for the persona. Gemstones were ideal to use because their
crystalline structure retained templates better than anything else.
Once the template was set, her body signature powered it with no
additional effort.
As they drove the local streets, she allowed her
body essence to interact with the stone. The essence activated the
template embedded within—the characteristics of Mariel Tate, her
InterSec persona. As Mariel, she was a well-known InterSec agent,
distinct and unconnected to Laura Blackstone. Physically, they bore
little resemblance to each other, Mariel’s willowy figure and long
dark hair a stark contrast to Laura’s more toned shape and wheat
blond hair that fell to her shoulders. As the essence field
activated, a soft tickle of static swept over her as the glamour
settled. Her InterSec uniform remained since she had changed into
it at Stafford.
Sinclair cast curious glances at her as he
maneuvered their car toward the northeast of the city. “Why
Mariel?” he asked.
“Why not Mariel?” she asked.
He grinned. “We’re about to pull rank on D.C. cops
at a crime scene. I seriously doubt that after you took over a
police station, held a captain hostage, then flipped everyone off
when you left, they’ll be happy to see Mariel Tate again.”
Mariel had power and was not afraid to use it.
Laura had designed her for brains, looks, and ability. Over the
years, she had established Mariel as a force to be reckoned with,
and the persona had become her default InterSec player. Laura
enjoyed the persona because she was able to use her fey abilities
without restraint—something that wasn’t appropriate in public
relations. “I did not hold him hostage. I simply didn’t let anyone
else in the room while we talked.”
Sinclair chuckled. “Same difference.”
Laura shrugged. “I got the job done. That’s all
that Terryn asks. Terryn said to rattle some cages. Mariel rattles
cages.”
They passed through Logan Circle, a section of the
city due north of the Guildhouse. “Isn’t this a local crime
incident? Why didn’t he ask the Guild to send someone over?”
Laura pursed her lips. “He probably did and got
nowhere. Internal politics.” InterSec’s local authority in D.C. was
tenuous at best—based on the fact that at least one of the victims
in the new case was not a U.S. citizen. Not quite the explicit
intervention protocol that InterSec’s international mandate
demanded, but Terryn didn’t like the D.C. police dragging their
heels.
Traffic slowed as emergency lights flashed into
view ahead. Sinclair double-parked near a paramedic van. They left
the car, pausing to survey the scene. “I’ll tell you one thing for
sure, Jono. After the Guild hears we were here, they’ll get
involved. If there’s one thing Guildmaster Rhys doesn’t like, it’s
being embarrassed in public.”
A gaping hole puckered the front of the building up
on the U Street corridor of cafés and boutiques. Wrapped bars of
soap and lotion bottles in bright yellow-and-orange packaging lay
scattered on the ground amid fractured-building char and debris.
Odors tweaked Laura’s nose as soon as she left the car. Heavy soot,
burnt herbs, crisped wood, and a touch of C-4 explosive.
A plainclothes officer came toward her. “Agent
Tate?”
She stepped under the crime-scene tape with
Sinclair beside her. “Yes.”
“Mariel Tate?” he asked. She sensed annoyance from
him, particularly directed at her. Someone wasn’t happy his case
was being looked at by another agency.
She cocked her head, letting him see her eyes,
which glittered with the preternatural light of an Old One, a fey
who had lived in Faerie. “Are you expecting more than one Agent
Tate?”
The look had the intended effect. The officer’s
mouth closed as he paused. “Yes. Well, I mean no. We got word a few
minutes ago that InterSec was sending someone.”
She paced across the front of the building, not
looking at the officer as she perused the damage. Follow my lead, Jono, she sent. “They have. This is
Officer Sinclair. He’s consulting with us.”
The policeman narrowed his eyes as he pulled out a
memory. “Out of Anacostia?”
Anacostia was Sinclair’s last posting with D.C.
SWAT, where he was when he met Laura on a case. The entire D.C.
police force knew that Sinclair was the only survivor of his squad.
Rather than keep him in Anacostia with a new crew, he was
officially on leave, an administrative lie that Terryn had put in
place.
“That’s right,” he said.
“Surprised you’d be working with . . .” The officer
glanced at Mariel and stopped speaking.
Mariel tilted her head at him. “I didn’t get your
name, officer.”
“Willis. Detective Willis,” he said.
She turned her attention back to the building.
“Well, Willis Detective Willis, maybe we can skip the biographies,
and you can fill us in.”
Her sarcasm had the desired effect. Willis’s body
signature glowed with anger. Good, Laura thought. He’ll grouse
about her, and word will get back to the Guild that much
quicker.
“Bomb thrown through the window. Two bodies inside.
The owner and a customer. An Inverni fairy and a normal.”
He said the word without a hint of embarrassment, a
feeble attempt to get a rise out of her. “Normal” was a mild dig.
It meant human, as opposed to the “abnormal” fey. The fey used the
same word, only their meaning was intending to convey someone, a
human in particular, was nothing special. Laura didn’t like either
sense of the word, but she didn’t rise to his bait. “This is the
eighth fey business to be attacked in the last two months,
Detective. Dead bodies mean this one is an escalation, don’t you
think?”
He frowned. “We’ve been looking at several
leads.”
Laura gave the shattered storefront a significant
look. “Just looking doesn’t seem to be going anywhere.”
“You got something to say?” Willis asked.
Laura gave him a bored glance. The Mariel persona
had a stop-in-your-tracks attractiveness that prompted people to
resent her or fall over themselves helping her. She used both
reactions to her advantage. Willis was falling into the former
category.
Sinclair stepped between them with a feigned
oblivious-ness. “Maybe we can take a look inside?”
Willis hesitated, shooting one more glare at Mariel
before leading them through the remains of the door. A uniform
theme ran through the store design and product packaging, bright
colors in a brightly lit space. The small shop sold skin-care
products and beauty aids. Laura didn’t recognize the brand. The
owner probably marketed his own skin-care line. Lots of fey with
herbal expertise did. The scented air was an unlikely mix of burnt
chemicals, flower oils, and blood.
The apparent owner lay partially visible halfway
down the room, crushed behind an overturned and destroyed counter.
Against the wall on the opposite side of the shop, the mangled body
of the customer slumped against the base of a shattered display
case. Laura squatted to examine the line of scatter from the
explosion. Pivoting on the ball of one foot, she peered toward the
street, then back along the floor of the store.
“Any witnesses?” Sinclair asked.
“Not yet. We’re canvassing and checking for
store-security footage,” said Willis.
Laura pointed at the floor. “I don’t see any glass
on the floor near the window. All the scatter is outside. The bomb
wasn’t thrown in. It was brought in and detonated inside.”
Willis slid his hands in his pockets. “I’m sure
crime scene would have picked that up.”
Yeah, but you didn’t, Laura thought. She was
getting a sense of why Terryn wanted InterSec to push the case
along. If the officer in charge had such a bad attitude, she wasn’t
surprised that the broader investigation into attacks against the
fey wasn’t progressing much. She stared at the customer, the
emotional part of her mind clicking off as she registered the
extent of the damage. The bomb had savaged the lower half of his
body until it was unrecognizable. She stepped around a fallen
shelving unit for a closer look at the body.
“The scene hasn’t been cleared yet,” Willis
said.
Ignoring him because she knew he was the type that
hated being ignored, she crouched next to the body and slipped on
latex gloves. With a professional detachment, she examined the
destroyed body. Major damage. She pulled his torso away from the
wall to peer behind him. Her senses picked up chemicals on his
undamaged side that shouldn’t have been there if the bomb went off
in front of him.
“You’re disrupting a crime scene,” Willis
said.
“I think I know what I’m doing,” Laura said with
enough inflection to imply Willis didn’t.
More anger clouded his body signature. “Is this my
case or not?”
“Relax. We’re here to help,” Sinclair said.
Willis shoved his hands in his pockets. “I didn’t
ask for your help.”
Sinclair gestured with resignation. “We didn’t ask
to come. We’re all doing our jobs here.”
Laura released the body, letting it fall back
against the wall. Resting her elbows on her thighs so that her
hands dangled, she pressed her sensing ability against the man’s
skin and found traces of industrial oils.
“This isn’t a customer. It’s the bomber,” she
said.
Surprised, the officer stared at the dead man. “You
can tell that by looking?”
She stood, removing the gloves. “Something like
that. I’m picking up C-4 in the air, and this guy”—she gestured at
the body—“has chemical traces on his skin that are in line with
bomb-making materials. Given the body damage and the extreme
coincidence of the chemicals, I’m comfortable with my
assessment.”
She pulled an evidence envelope out of a pouch in
her jumpsuit and slipped the gloves inside. She handed Willis her
business card. “Call me when you have an ID.”
Before he could respond, she walked out. Sweeping
her gaze over the gathered crowd, she checked for anyone or
anything unusual. Nothing jumped out. A typical rubberneck crowd.
She glanced back at the store. Sinclair emerged with Willis, who
glared at her again.
“That’s it? You came down here to yank my chain?”
he asked.
“I gave you a lead, Detective Willis. Would you
like us to hang around some more?” Laura asked.
He didn’t answer. Sinclair stuck his hand out. “It
was nice meeting you.”
Laura didn’t wait to see if they shook. Let Willis
resent her. C-4 didn’t happen to end up here. It wasn’t like
someone could purchase it from the local drugstore. Terryn had sent
case details on the earlier fey attacks. They were being given low
priority by the police department. Nothing they could be truly
called out on, but anyone in law enforcement would know. Maybe if
they had pushed a little, they would have seen more organizational
intent behind whatever was happening.
Sinclair walked beside her to the car. “That was
bitchy.”
Laura smiled. “Thanks. That was the point. You
watch. Terryn will get a call from the Guild’s Community Liaison
Department before we get back. They’ll take the case now.”
“It was kind of hot, too,” Sinclair said, as they
got in the car.
“Feel free to turn up the air-conditioning,” she
said. She enjoyed teasing him. He did, too. She knew she might be
pushing it too far, though. Despite his persistence, even Sinclair
had limits to his patience. She had almost invited him on vacation
with her but panicked at the last moment, pretending to have
miscommunicated. They had dinner before she left and a few times
after she returned. Terryn decided to try Sinclair undercover with
Legacy, and they didn’t have time to see each other then.
Sinclair chuckled as she tossed the evidence
envelope on the dashboard. It was an honest chuckle. He was still
patient.