“But…” Clarissa studied my face. “Oh, I see, your eyebrows are gone. But your face doesn’t look blistered or burned in any way. Was the spell old? It must’ve created a decent amount of heat if it burned your eyebrows. I’d think you’d have light blistering, at the very least. I can heal that, of course.”
“Oh. Uh…” I shrugged. Time to lie. “A cousin made a fire-retardant spell. You know,thatcousin. The one I mentioned when I helped you with the case earlier today. He lives in Canada.” They couldn’t possibly know I had no living relatives. Except my dad, but he didn’t count.
“Da one you lost yer birginity to?” Garret asked. He wheezed out a laugh, still holding his face.
“Do you want a broken limb to accessorize with that nose?” I asked him. “But yeah, turns out the spell works on skin but not hair. I’ll, uh…have to tell him that.”
“I thought we had an understanding about experimental magic,” Clarissa said with disapproval.
“It saved my life, didn’t it?” I turned toward home.
“No,Itaved yer life,” Garret yelled after me.
I was walking away when Garret asked Clarissa tosee to his nose. Other MLE staffers were showing up as I exited the little side alley. Their response time was terrible. If I hadn’t acted when I did, prompting the captain and Garret to act with me, the creature would be long gone.
Something that would be overshadowed by Garret’s assumed heroics. What joy was mine…
Now to deal with Smokey. If he’d seen what I had, which was likely, given the text message and his many calls, he might be a little frantic. Not to mention that if he was dumb enough to talk to the cops, he might need to be bailed out. It was the day that wouldn’t end.
Chapter Five
Icould finally afford a car, but I still hadn’t gotten around to buying one. Instead, I took cabs or one of the rideshare services that were like cabs, only nicer.
One of those services, Lyft, dropped me off down the street from my house so I could check in with the local neighborhood watch, which consisted of Smokey, No Good Mikey, and occasionally ex-boxer Mince.
It didn’t take long for Smokey to come hustling my way, his face drained of color and a trickle of blood down his neck.
Alarm rolled through me. I picked up my pace, yelling out, “It didn’t scratch you, did it?”
“Reagan,” he said as he neared, out of breath. “Thank God. That thing was disgusting. I didn’t get pictures, but I can describe it in detail. Where are your eyebrows?”
“They flew away with that creature you probably saw. Did it scratch you?” I pointed at the line of blood originating from a small dot on his neck.
He absently brushed at his skin. “No. Some idiotmugger thought I had money. But the bird claws scraped at me. They didn’t draw blood, but I felt them. Why? Is that bad?” He pushed in closer and stuck his cheek out for inspection.
“If you’re still alive, you’re probably fine.”
“Wait,” he said, shadowing me down the street toward my house. “There are a bunch of police down there. Maybe you should sneak in through the back. I’ve been avoiding them.”
I shrugged. “I’m not worried about police. I don’t have anything on me they’d be concerned about.”
“Except your gun.”
“I have a license.” Illegally obtained, but nonetheless real, just like the papers that had legitimized me in the supernatural world.
Darius was nothing if not thorough.
“The sword?”
“I’ll say it’s aLord of the Ringssword. No one questions extreme nerd-dom. It’s crazy without equal.”
“Youare crazy without equal.”
He had a point there.
“Fine,” he said, slouching beside me. “So anyway, first I saw a huge bunch of birds. Little black birds.” He cleared his shaking voice. “Wait. Let me just start from the beginning.”
I listened as I closed the distance to my house. Once there, I leaned against the railing beside the two stepsthat led up to my porch while looking at the cemetery opposite us. In a normal neighborhood, there’d probably be a cluster of people hanging out around the cemetery gates, trying to peek in and see what had happened. Not in this neighborhood. People minded their own business where cops were concerned.
