Kitty Rocks the House

chapter 11




I HAD TO figure out what to do about Darren. He was causing trouble in the pack. No, if I had to be honest, I was the one having the trouble. He kept rubbing me the wrong way, and I didn’t want him here anymore. But was that fair to him? Ben offered to run the guy out of town with the help of his silver bullet–loaded Glock. As much fun as that sounded, I didn’t want to admit failure on bringing him into the pack just yet. He wasn’t a bad guy, I was sure. He kept challenging our authority without apparently meaning to, and I didn’t know how to convince Darren that what he was doing was bad form. If he’d been belligerent, I could have challenged him and run him out like Ben said. But he wasn’t being mean; he was just being rude.

When Darren called me the next morning to see if I wanted to go out for coffee with him, I was surprised. I’d been thinking of suggesting exactly the same thing. He’d picked up on my favorite method of diplomacy; maybe there was hope for him yet.

We met at a little coffee shop a couple of blocks from the radio station. He bought me a cup and brought it to me at one of the café tables out on the sidewalk.

“The cub learns,” I said as he sat across from me.

He actually looked chagrined. “I know I screwed up, and I can tell you don’t like me—”

“It’s not that,” I said, while thinking that yeah, no, I didn’t much. I let the white lie stand. “You’re very charming. But I’m not sure I understand you. There are times I wonder if you’re really a werewolf, or if you’re just not used to dealing with authority.”

He bit his lip, lowered his gaze. “I was like this even before becoming a werewolf. Arrogant, I think some people call it. Have to be the center of attention. Add that to the werewolf posturing—I either get along with everybody, or nobody. I’m trying, Kitty, I really am. But it’s hard for me not to treat it like a game sometimes.”

“It’s not a game, but you know that,” I said. “I’ve watched people die, trying to get into or out of a pack. Why do you want a pack, really? You must have done just fine as a lone wolf.”

“Lone wolf gets lonely. I want friends at my back. I’ve always imagined meeting someone like Becky—” He blushed at that, and his voice caught. Wetting his lips, he tried again. “I figured if I could fit in with a pack anywhere, it’d be yours.” And then with the puppy-dog eyes.

“You’re working really hard to sell yourself to me,” I said.

“What is it you’re always saying? Civilization is worth fighting for. I like civilization, and around here that means a pack.”

Smiling in spite of myself, I said, “You listen to the show. Brownie points for you.”

“What a relief.” I glared, and he had the good sense to drop his gaze, avoiding the barest hint of a challenge. “I really want to make this work, Kitty. Please give me another chance.”

God, he was begging. How could I say no? “I’ll give you another chance, for Becky’s sake. And for her sake, don’t f*ck it up. All right?”

He agreed, thanking me profusely, then bought me another cup of coffee. I felt like I was being bribed.

I hoped he’d succeed at integrating into the pack more than I believed he would.

* * *

CORMAC SLEPT on and off a whole other day, which was good, because it meant we didn’t have to argue with him about lying down and keeping his arm still. He woke every couple of hours for soup and painkillers and the bathroom, but that was it. He must have been exhausted. Ben worked at home to keep an eye on him.

It couldn’t last.

The next morning, noise woke us half an hour or so before we usually dragged ourselves out of bed. A coat dropping; a hard object scraping on the table.

Ben and I tensed, lifting heads, listening. “What’s that?” I whispered.

He thought a minute, then blew out a breath. “It’s Cormac sneaking out.”

I rolled out of bed, pulled on sweats and a T-shirt. Ben was right behind me. I got to the living room in time to see Cormac struggling to ease his broken arm into its sling, dropping the keys to his Jeep, his jacket tucked under his good arm. I’d never seen him so physically awkward.

“What are you doing?” I said.

“Getting out of your hair. Heading back to my place. I’m fine, I can take care of myself.”

He hadn’t changed clothes since the hospital; we’d all figured rest was more important. He also hadn’t showered, and was starting to smell ripe, of illness and bandages. But if he was having this much trouble getting himself together, how was he actually going to function on his own?

“You can’t,” I said. “You can’t even put your coat on.”

“I haven’t taken any pills since last night, I want to get home while I’m still lucid. I’ll get back to bed then.” And how long would that last?

“How much pain are you in? Don’t lie.” He didn’t answer, and I let out an exasperated sigh. “You’re in no shape to be driving anywhere! What are you thinking?”

He gave me a look, like he’d be happier if I just kept my mouth shut.

“I’ll drive you,” Ben said.

“I can drive myself—”

“Stick shift with a broken arm, yeah right,” Ben said. He grabbed the Jeep’s keys off the table where Cormac had dropped them, then took his jacket from him. With his good hand free, Cormac could finish shrugging on the sling, resting his broken arm more comfortably. How lucid was he, really, if he couldn’t figure out how to get his sling on? Pointing that out would have made him more surly than he already was. “Kitty, you want to follow in the car?”

Seemed as good a compromise as any. I was still glaring at Cormac. “Only if you promise to call if you need anything. Anything.”

“I promise I’ll call if I need anything,” he said dutifully, to the opposite wall, his shoulders in a defensive slouch.

Not sure I believed him, I continued glaring.

“Amelia will make sure I call if I need anything,” he said.

That, I believed. I found my bag and car keys and followed them out of the condo.

Cormac lived in a studio apartment north of town, along the Boulder Turnpike. Not a great neighborhood, but I usually didn’t worry. Cormac could take care of himself, and he didn’t exactly give off the vibe of someone who could be taken advantage of. But that was when he didn’t have a broken arm. Over the last couple of years he’d worked a series of warehouse jobs he’d gotten through his parole officer. Point of pride—he wanted to be self-sufficient. I didn’t know how he’d manage work with a broken arm, but he didn’t seem bothered.

I parked in front of the building next to the Jeep and helped Ben help Cormac up the stairs. Mostly by hovering. Cormac winced when the arm got jostled, turning a corner and bumping into the wall. For him to show even that much pain meant he was in bad shape. Good thing I’d made sure the bottle of pills was tucked in his jacket pocket. I’d sit on him to get him to take a dose, if I had to.

The apartment’s interior belonged to both Cormac and Amelia. The sparse furnishings—table, chair, futon—and bare walls were Cormac’s. The books piled everywhere—table, floor, kitchen counter; basket full of dried herbs; skein of yarn; locked and weathered mahogany box; and various maps and diagrams drawn on rolls of paper, held down by candles, statuettes, and other various weighted items—those were Amelia’s, the tools of the wizard’s trade. I could have pawed through it for hours, looking for meaning.

Ben guided his cousin to bed, while I went to the kitchenette for a glass of water and ice packs. We watched him until he took a painkiller. In the end, I had a suspicion it was Amelia who made him do it.

Pulling a chair near the bed, Ben sat and glanced around the apartment. “I think you’ve checked out more books in the last year than most people do in a lifetime.”

Cormac chuckled. “I guess I like to read. Who knew?”

I’d taken to sending him books during his stint in prison. It started as a joke, but turned earnest. He really seemed to have read everything I’d sent him.

“I think he’s reading for two, now,” I said, noting some of the titles. Churchill’s multivolume history of World War II; Woodward and Bernstein’s All the President’s Men; Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique. I wondered what Victorian Amelia was making of that one.

“Think about it,” Cormac said. “If you went to sleep and woke up a hundred years later, what would you do?”

This wasn’t a hypothetical question—Amelia really had been out of the world for that long. “I suppose I’d freak out for a little while. Everything I knew would be gone. But then—I’d want to find out what I’d missed. I’d want to explore everything.”

He said, “These last couple years—I’m seeing the world in a whole new way. She’s never seen anything like it, and all she wants to do is … take it all in.”

I sat in another chair while we kept watch. Just when we thought he was drifting off, he sat up, propping himself on his good elbow, wincing yet again. He still wasn’t used to favoring the hurt arm. He adjusted the pillow he’d propped the cast on, trying to get comfortable. “You get ahold of Rick yet?” he said.

I leaned back. “No. His Family won’t admit it, but they don’t know where he is, either. He’s not at Obsidian, so I’m pretty sure that means he’s with Columban.”

“At St. Cajetan’s?”

“If they haven’t already left on some crusade.”

“Rick wouldn’t leave town without telling you,” Ben said.

“I hope he wouldn’t,” I said, my uncertainty plain.

“I’m going to figure it out,” Cormac said.

Ben looked at him. “Figure what out?”

“Those protections he’s got up. If we get to the thing that’s after him, we can get to him. Can’t be that hard.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “Really. Just get some rest.”

“You want to know what he’s really up to, I’ll figure it out.” With that, he closed his eyes, snugged down into his pillow, and sighed. In another minute he was asleep.

Ben and I left him to it. I considered taking the keys to the Jeep with us, so he wouldn’t be tempted to run off on some epic scheme, but Ben talked me out of it.

“Are you sure he’ll be okay?” I said as we got in my car.

“Yeah. I think so. Probably. Seriously, he survived two years in prison, and we’re worried about this?”

He had a point.

* * *

STILL, I had a feeling. At dusk, on the way home from work, I took a detour to the Auraria campus and swung by St. Cajetan’s. Just to see.

I found the Jeep before I found Cormac. Parked on the street at a meter, a block or two away from the church, it was definitely his Jeep, with dried mud on the wheel wells, chips in the windshield, scratches in the paint that might have been normal wear and tear, or might have been, with enough imagination, claw marks. Thing had been around the block a few times. A few dozen times. He’d managed to drive the stick shift, broken arm or no. I parked in a spot nearby and went in search of the man himself, letting my nose guide me. He’d managed a shower sometime during the day, but he still smelled like Cormac, like his leather jacket and the muddy Jeep. He’d left a faint trail through the air he traveled through, and the steps his rough boots tracked on the pavement.

I found him on the church’s north side, and Detective Hardin was with him. Her smell was touched with the stale scents of nicotine and breath mint. They stood side by side, looking up at the roofline. His broken arm was held close to his body by the sling; otherwise, he looked normal. He wasn’t lighting candles or drawing Greek letters on the sidewalk. I supposed that would have looked suspicious with people still walking around.

“This isn’t resting,” I said. Hardin glanced over. Neither seemed surprised to see me, and neither said anything. I tried to sound polite, but it came out frustrated. “What are you guys doing?”

Hardin wore a satisfied smile. “I think Mr. Bennett is right. My suspect is hiding out here, and I have a warrant for his arrest and extradition. A couple of officers and I scoured the building earlier today and didn’t find anything—”

“And you’re not going to,” Cormac said. “He’s a vampire, using magic to hide himself. You could walk right past him and all the holy water in the world isn’t going to flush him out.”

“Which is why we’re here,” Hardin said. She was definitely pleased with herself.

“And why are you here?” I said, trying again to make sense out of this.

Cormac said, “Figure the best way to get a reaction out of the guy is to break his protections.”

“I’ve hired Mr. Bennett as an independent contractor,” Hardin said. “He’s going to help me nail my suspect.”

What happened to hell, no? “When Ben said you should go into business for yourself, I don’t think this is what he meant,” I said.

“Yeah, well, he should have thought of that.” Cormac pointed along the roof. “The protection spell forms a sphere, not just a circle,” he said. “Or maybe a dome. I haven’t been able to get into the basement yet, to see if it extends underground.”

“Maybe you should check out the dinosaur museum?” I pointed around the corner where I’d seen the door.

“It’s closed,” he said.

Well then. “This still isn’t resting.”

“I’ll rest better once I’ve figured this thing out.”

“Are you sure that’s such a good idea?” I appealed to both of them. “If your information is right, Columban burned buildings fighting this thing in Europe. People died.”

“And that’s why we want him in custody and out of Denver,” Hardin said.

Pacing away from us, Cormac muttered under his breath, almost to himself, “I want to know what we’re dealing with. What kind of magic. How he made it, what he hopes to accomplish. The nature of his enemy—is it magical or demonic, can it be reasoned with? The shield, it feels different somehow, as if it recognizes me from the last time. Or as if it’s waiting for something.”

Following him, I narrowed my gaze and said, hushed so Hardin wouldn’t hear, “Am I talking to Cormac or Amelia now?”

“Yeah,” he murmured, not really paying attention to me.

“Taking this kind of personal, aren’t you?”

“Something wrong with that?”

“Well, yeah. You’ve already broken your arm over it.”

“I’ll be careful.”

“I assume you were being careful when you broke your arm.”

“Ms. Norville,” Hardin called after us, using her official cop voice. “It might be a good idea for you to leave the area for the time being.”

“Yeah, probably.” I started at a slow pace, a few steps along the sidewalk between Cormac and the church’s pink walls, stepping purposefully across the invisible line he’d marked out the last time I was here. I went all the way to the stucco wall, pressed my hand against it, looked up along its length. I didn’t expect firebolts from heaven to strike me, but I thought I might feel something. I didn’t, not even a tingle on my skin. But why should I? Hundreds of people walked by here every day, used the auditorium and offices that the church had been converted to, and didn’t sense anything wrong. Even now, lights shone through the windows, indicating activity inside.

I turned away and rejoined the pair. “Just for the record, I think this is a bad idea.”

“Noted,” Hardin said.

Cormac had pulled a length of red yarn from his pocket and began tying knots in it—awkwardly, anchoring with the fingers of his broken arm, manipulating with his good hand. I itched to take the yarn from him and do it myself, in the name of helping. Not that I would have known what I was doing with the knots. It was painful, watching him struggle with the yarn. Sweat dampened the skin along his hairline, either from effort or pain. He had a two-day-old broken arm, he had to be in pain, not that he was going to admit it.

Hardin stood politely out of the way—giving her hired expert the space to work. And if that wasn’t bizarre—just a few years ago she’d wanted to put him in jail herself. I wondered what Ben was going to say about their partnership.

Dusk fell, which meant the vampires inside—assuming they were still there—would be waking up any minute now. Fewer and fewer people passed by the church.

“Has anybody tried asking the guy to come out?”

“I don’t ask murder suspects,” Hardin said.

We were going to look back on this and realize it was all a big misunderstanding. “How about I just poke my head in,” I said and started toward the front steps.

“Kitty—” Hardin said, but I ignored her. Cormac was busy tying knots.

At dusk, after classes and meetings, I figured the front would be locked, but the door I tried opened. Stepping into an unassuming lobby, I almost shouted Rick’s name, but a sound stopped me—the voice of a lecturing professor, coming from the next room. Late classes. Right. I poked around as much as I thought I could without drawing too much attention, turning down a couple of side hallways, peeking into a few equipment closets. I didn’t even smell much vampire—just a trace of a corpse-like chill, as if one had passed by recently. Too faint of a trail to follow.

I returned to the front of the church and shut the door quietly behind me on my way out. Back outside, Cormac’s spell, counterspell, whatever, seemed to be progressing. He was still managing to tie lengths of yarn into patterns. I’d kind of hoped that whatever he was planning really did need two working arms, and he’d get frustrated and give up.

“There are people inside,” I said. “Living people, not vampires. You’re not going to do anything that’ll get anyone hurt, will you?”

He gave me a look, kept tying knots. I heaved a frustrated sigh.

“Don’t worry, I’m keeping an eye on things,” Hardin said, which didn’t give me any more confidence. She had a hungry expression, a hunter on the prowl, waiting for her chance to strike.

Cormac walked clockwise around the church, making his knotted charms and dropping them at the cardinal and ordinal points, eight in all. His plan probably took twice as long as it would have if he’d been able to use both hands to full capacity.

Maybe this wouldn’t work.

Both Hardin and I stood with our arms crossed, to keep from reaching to help him.

I tried to make conversation. “You talk to Rick yet?” Not that I thought she had. I would have been offended if she had, that Rick would talk to her and not me.

“He doesn’t seem to be answering his phone. You?”

I shrugged, noncommittal.

“So what’s his deal?” she said.

“He’s five hundred years old,” I said. “He doesn’t owe us anything.”

Rick had spent much of his time as a vampire being nomadic, wandering throughout the West, from Mexico to San Francisco to Albuquerque and who knew where else. People who’d known him for a long time—other vampires—expressed surprise that he’d settled down and become Master of a city. Maybe … maybe Rick wasn’t cut out for the settled life after all. Maybe he really had left town, taken up his wandering ways again. And why should he tell any of us? We were mortal, we’d be dead soon anyway, from his point of view. I didn’t think Rick was like that, but what did I know, really?

If Rick was with Columban, he was here. Maybe in one of those square bell towers, looking down on us from the shadows, suitably mysterious and vampiric. I didn’t sense more than a trace of vampire on the air. If they were here, they were keeping themselves inside, and they hadn’t left the building in the last few days. Finding food would be easy enough for them to do, after dark on a college campus. Use their powers to draw in prey who’d be none the wiser. They only needed a few sips, and didn’t need to kill.

After half an hour or so, Cormac arrived back at his starting point.

We waited. Full twilight had fallen; thin strings of clouds were black against a dark blue sky. Streetlights had come on around us. The pink on the walls of the church had faded, so the building now loomed, a dark, hulking object.

“What is this supposed to do?” I said.

“Just giving the door a kick,” he said. “See what happens.”

I gave him a look. “And what happens if something actually, you know—kicks back?”

“I’ve got some backup,” he said. Despite the broken arm, despite Hardin standing right there, he seemed to be enjoying himself. His moustache showed his lips pressed in a thin, satisfied smile. Another hunter on the hunt.

“How long until something happens?” Hardin said.

“Just wait.”

“If nothing happens, I might think twice about paying you.”

He didn’t say anything to that.

Cormac was patient. He could stand here all night, waiting for something to happen, sure that something would. The spell that Amelia had woven made sense to him. I couldn’t guess what would come next. If nothing else, I stayed to make sure I could talk Hardin out of arresting Cormac for something that might be interpreted as breaking his parole.

About twenty minutes into the vigil, my nose wrinkled, catching a scent before I was entirely aware of what I was smelling. I cocked my head as if listening, focusing on my nose, and the acrid tickling that now caught my attention. A burning, like the ozone that tinged the air during a bad thunderstorm. Lightning was brewing somewhere, but no clouds hung overhead, no thunderheads were blowing in from the mountains like they sometimes did, a late spring storm.

The knotted bits of yarn around the boundary of the church had started glowing. Orange, intense, like the heating elements in a toaster. I squinted against the light, which was searing in the dusk’s gloom.

“Cormac,” I hissed, not sure why I felt the need to whisper.

He was digging in his jeans pocket for something—a butane lighter, which he nestled in the fingers of his bad arm, then went to his jacket pocket for something else. He’d turned his gaze away from the heated circle now forming around the church.

“Kitty…” Hardin stared at the church, at a loss like I was.

Under my rib cage, my gut turned, Wolf wanting out. To leap, claw attack, even though we didn’t know what to attack, we had no direct enemy. Just this vague, arcane magic. Incomprensible. I curled my lips to snarl. The air smelled of brimstone; I could taste it in the back of my throat.

Sparks started popping from each of the knotted pieces of yarn, static-like crackles of energy. Then they gathered, forming tendrils, linking to one another. But one of them—the one closest to Cormac—drew the rest of the tendrils to itself, forming a pulsing will-o’-the-wisp. It threw off short, tentative streaks of energy, miniature bolts of lightning—testing, I thought. Seeking out its target.

“Cormac!” I shouted this time.

He saw the gathered lightning storm, glanced at it calmly, and struggled to light his lighter one-handed while holding a smudge stick, a bundle of dried sage bound together with twine. He couldn’t get the lighter to strike.

He’d run out of time. The tendrils of lightning were reaching toward him, as if they had sentience and had found the target they sought. Cormac wouldn’t back down, but kept struggling with the damned lighter.

I ran at him and shoved. We toppled, and an earth-rumbling crack of thunder ripped over us, along with an atomic pulse of white light. The afterimage of the flare blazed against my shut eyelids, and my ears rang. Someone was yelling, I couldn’t hear what.

Wolf got me off the ground; we turned, faced the threat. Another surge of lightning gathered in front of us. I put myself between it and Cormac, crouching in readiness for the next attack. Not that there was anything I could do against a lightning strike. Cormac had kicked the door, and this was what happened—automatic defenses. I didn’t know what to do but face it down and hope. I had a werewolf’s toughness—it probably wouldn’t kill me.

The buzzing of voices sounded far away to my still-ringing ears. Hardin had run over to us, kneeling next to Cormac, who was sprawled on the ground, struggling to sit up. He pointed with his good hand and yelled, “Light it! Light it!”

Hardin looked, then picked up the lighter and incense, which had dropped nearby. She needed two tries to strike the lighter to life, then she calmly, efficiently, brought the flame to the bundle of dried herbs. The bundle caught, shone with light, and gave off a tendril of white smoke.

Leaning on me, Cormac lurched toward the detective, who was still crouched on the sidewalk, holding the incense in front of her, staring at it like it might attack her. Its orange light reflected on her staring face. Cormac dropped to the ground next to her, and I stumbled with him, thinking he was falling, trying to support him. But he’d fallen on purpose, to get close to her, to grab hold of her hand that was clutching the incense. He didn’t bother taking it from her; he didn’t have time.

He raised her hand and the burning herbs in the air and shouted a series of words, a charm or chant. It could have been Latin; it could have been anything, he spoke so quickly and his voice was so rough, urgent. We ducked against the sudden, stabbing light.

The smoke from the incense spread out, flattening from a column to a shield. The piercing light striking from the church reflected off it, making the smoke opaque, easy to see. More smoke, an impossible amount, spread outward, and the purpose became clear—one shield countering the other. The smoke seemed more than opaque, it appeared solid, a thin barrier that the lightning couldn’t pierce. Swirling white and gray, the wall of smoke pressed closer, contracting against the sparking boundary shield. The lightning faded, from glowing bolts to static sparks, then to nothing.

The air smelled of smoke, fire, brimstone, sage. I sneezed. I’d somehow come to be kneeling on the ground behind Cormac and Hardin, looming protectively, a hand on each of their shoulders, as if I could have done anything against the light show. The situation had left me chagrined more than once: here I was, big bad werewolf, and how much good was I really? My uses as a real-life monster tended to be narrow: tracking and brute force. But I tried.

Sparks had fallen on some of the foliage around the church’s corners; the leaves of a shrub were cackling with flames that spread along the branches. The building itself, and the people inside, were next in line.

Hardin ran, and I shouted after her. She ignored me. So I dug my phone out of my pocket and called 911 to send a fire truck, while trying to haul Cormac back from what would no doubt become an inferno. Now, maybe we could get Rick and Columban’s attention.

Then Hardin returned with a handheld fire extinguisher, probably fetched from her car. She had the burning shrub sprayed down in minutes, leaving behind ashes, a chemical burning smell, and a climbing streak of soot marring the pink wall.

When she turned back to us, lugging the spent extinguisher, she was grinning. “This is exactly the M.O. of the arson case in Hungary. Exterior foliage burned and spread to the building. I’ve got him. That vampire’s spell did this—it’s reckless endangerment at the very least. Sucker’s going down.”

At least she was blaming Columban’s spell and not Cormac. Small favors.

Sirens blared, growing louder as the fire engine turned the corner and approached. The vehicle growled and lurched to a halt by the curb, and a firefighter in a heavy suit lumbered out. Now, who was going to explain this to him?

Hardin looked. “Who called them?”

I held up my cell phone, and she scowled. “I had everything under control.” She marched over to talk to the guy. I didn’t even have to ask her to.

Sitting hard on the concrete sidewalk, I forced myself to calm down, to steady my nerves. Wolf was snarling, and I pulled her back, gasping for breath while trying not to show it. Cormac didn’t seem at all bothered. Lips pursed, he cradled his arm and gazed thoughtfully at the church.

“So. Did that do what you wanted it to?”

Straightening, he brushed ashes off his jacket and jeans, wincing as he resettled his broken arm in its sling. The wince turned into a grin. “Didn’t manage to knock it down, but I know a little more about it now.”

“You seem inordinately pleased.” Half a block away, Hardin was showing her badge to the firefighter, who had his arms crossed and seemed unhappy.

“Every time it does something, I learn something new. A little more digging and I ought to be able to bust right through that thing.”

He didn’t even seem interested in the vampires anymore. It was all about the spell.

“The plan didn’t work,” I said. “Columban and Rick still haven’t come out.” He glanced at me sidelong but didn’t answer.

A few minutes later, a classroom-sized group of people came out the front door of the church and trailed down the steps, backpacks over their shoulders, talking to each other. Some of them saw the fire engine, and pretty soon they were all staring. But since no alarms were blaring and nothing was actually on fire, the students wandered off.

This could have turned out so badly. I silently thanked whatever might be listening that it hadn’t.

The firefighter whom Hardin had talked to and one of his colleagues started walking around the church, investigating—checking for more stray sparks, which seemed wise. Hardin returned to us, extinguisher tucked under one arm. She put her ash-covered hands in front of her, studying them. Some of the white flecks from the firestorm had drifted onto her hair and showed starkly against its dark color.

“You okay?” I asked her.

“I hid behind my badge and managed to convince them the fire was accidental and that we took care of it. I don’t want to have to explain the whole story. Mostly because I don’t know it.” Frowning, she said to Cormac, “I don’t see my suspect coming out to check on his spell.”

“That’s because the spell is still there,” he said, cradling his arm and wincing. “I didn’t break the protection, just pissed it off.”

“So now what?” she demanded.

“Just give me a few more days,” Cormac said.

“Maybe I can arrest you for fraud,” she muttered. I thought she was joking. Probably. She may have still been bitter that she wasn’t the one to put him away. Maybe she was looking for a second chance. Other than the fried bush and ashy streaks on the wall and sidewalk, no evidence of the conflagration remained. At this point, she didn’t have the physical evidence to charge Cormac with anything. But give it time …

“You can’t arrest him,” I said in a rush. Cormac was so close to finishing his parole, didn’t he see that? Didn’t she see it? If he wrecked that chasing down some wild goose that I’d set him on, I’d never forgive myself.

She said, “Did you learn enough about it to try again?”

“Yes,” he said. He probably would have said yes no matter what.

“And is this going to get my suspect to come out of there so I can arrest him?”

“Keep knocking at his door hard enough, he’ll come out,” he said.

She nodded, apparently satisfied.

“Let’s get out of here,” I said, a hand on Cormac’s shoulder to steer him back to the street.

“Hey,” Hardin said, stepping into our path, stopping us. “What happened to you in prison?”

“What makes you think anything did?” he said in his usual flat tone.

“Ever since you got out, you’ve been … weird. Not crazy, not more crazy at least. In fact I think you’ve been less crazy.”

“Less crazy?” he said, with a short laugh, like he thought it was hilarious. As well he might.

“Before, you acted like you didn’t have anything to live for. Now, you do.”

I looked at him, to see his reaction. Because I thought she was right. Would he tell her the truth?

He bowed his head, smiling wryly. “The system works, detective. I’m rehabilitated.”

She maintained an expression of skepticism. Without another word, he stepped around her. I followed. She didn’t.

I felt like we’d made a narrow escape. I walked with Cormac to his car. “Rehabilitated?” I said.

“You going to argue?”

I couldn’t. He wasn’t exactly on the straight and narrow these days, but he was a lot closer to it than he had been. “You really should be more careful around her.”

“Naw. I think she meant what she said—she wants to see what happens next.”

On second thought, Hardin was wrong. He may have had something to live for now, but he was still crazy. “You don’t have to go after this thing anymore,” I said. “I’ll find another way to talk to Columban and Rick, and Columban can convince Hardin not to arrest him.”

He’d opened the driver’s side door of the Jeep; I leaned on the hood.

“It doesn’t bother you that some vampire is camped in the middle of Denver inside a magical shield, doing who knows what?”

Well, when he put it like that … “It’s not worth getting hurt over. More hurt.”

He glanced at his arm in the sling. “I can take care of myself.”

“You keep saying that.”

Awkwardly, guiding his broken arm so it didn’t bang on anything, he climbed into the front seat and slammed the door. He had to reach across with his good hand to do it. When he started the engine, I had to decide if he really intended to drive right over me. He was very likely thinking, I was a werewolf, I could take it. I stepped away from the Jeep as he steered from the curb.