Turn Coat

It was late. The place was quiet and mostly empty. Whoever was on the night shift must have been out on a call of some kind. Of the three cops in the room, I only knew one of them by name—Murphy’s current partner, a blocky, mildly overweight man in his late fifties, with hair going steadily more silver in sharp contrast to the dark coffee tone of his skin.

“Rawlins,” I said.

He turned to me with a grunt and a polite nod. “Evening.”

“What are you doing here this late?”

“Giving my wife ammunition for when she drags my ass to court to divorce me,” he said cheerfully. “Glad you made it in.”

“Murph around?” I asked.

He grunted. “Interrogation room two, with the British perp. Go on down.”

“Thanks, man.”

I went down the hall and around the corner. To my left was a security gate blocking the way to the building’s holding cells. To the right was a short hallway containing four doors—two to the bathrooms, and two that led to the interrogation rooms. I went to the second room and knocked.

Murphy answered it, still wearing the same clothes she’d been in at the storage park. She looked tired and irritated. She grunted almost as well as Rawlins had, despite her complete lack of a Y-chromosome, and stepped out into the hall, shutting the door behind her.

She looked up and studied my head for a second. “What the hell, Harry?”

“Got a visit from Shagnasty the Skinwalker when I went to talk to Lara Raith. Any trouble with Binder?”

She shook her head. “I figured he’d have a hard time doing whatever he does if he can’t get out of his chair or use his hands. I’ve been sitting with him, too, in case he tried to pull something.”

I lifted an eyebrow, impressed. There hadn’t been time to advise her how to handle Binder safely, but she’d worked it out on her own. “Yeah, that’s a pretty solid method,” I said. “What’s he in for, officially?”

“Officially, I haven’t charged him yet,” she said. “If I need to stick him with something, I can cite trespassing, destruction of property, and assault on a police officer.” She shook her head. “But we can’t keep this close an eye on him forever. If I do press charges, it won’t be long before he’s under lighter security. I don’t even want to think about what could happen if he got to turn those things loose inside a precinct house or prison.”

“Yeah,” I said, nodding. “Long term, I don’t think you can hold him.”

Her mouth twisted bitterly. “Hate it when I have to let pricks like that walk.”

“Happen much?”

“All the time,” she said. “Legal loopholes, incorrect procedures, crucial evidence declared inadmissible. A lot of perps who are guilty as hell walk out without so much as a reprimand.” She sighed and twitched her shoulders into something like a shrug. “Ah, well. It’s a messed-up world. Whatcha go

“I hear that,” I said. “Want to compare notes?”

“Sure,” she said. “What did you get?”

I gave her the rundown of what had happened since I’d last seen her.

She grunted again when I finished. “Isn’t that sort of dangerous? Involving the vampires?”

“Yeah,” I said. “But it’s Thomas. I think Lara is probably sincere about getting him back. Besides. Why worry about smoking in bed when your building is already on fire?”

“Point,” she said. “I got the photos. They don’t tell me anything new. I ran those account numbers you gave me through the system to see if anything came up. Brick wall.”

“Dammit.”

“It was a long shot anyway,” she said.

“Binder give you anything?”

Her mouth scrunched up as if she wanted to spit out something that tasted terrible. “No. He’s a hard case. Career criminal. He’s been grilled before.”

“Yeah,” I said. “And he knows that you can’t do anything but make him sit still for a little while. If he gives us anything on his employer, he’ll lose his credibility with clients—assuming that he lives that long.”

She leaned her shoulders back against the wall. “You say this Shagnasty thing has Thomas’s cell phone?”

“Yeah. Think you can track it?”

“As part of what investigation?” she asked. “I don’t have the kind of freedom to act that I used to. If I wanted to get what amounts to a wiretap, I’d have to get approval from a judge, and I don’t know any of them who would take ‘my friend the wizard’s vampire brother was kidnapped by a demonic Navajo shapeshifter’ as a valid justification for such a measure.”

“I hadn’t really thought of it like that,” I said.

She shrugged. “Honestly, I suspect Lara’s resources and contacts are better than mine, given the time constraints.”

I couldn’t quite suppress a growl of frustration. “If she learns anything. If she’s honest about what she learns.”

Murphy frowned, scrunching up her nose. “Where was Thomas taken from?”

“I’m not certain, but I think he was at the storage park. His rental van was there, and he said something about not being able to handle all of them on his own.”

“Them? The grey suits?”

I nodded. “Most likely. But since Thomas never pitched in during the fight, I figure Shagnasty probably snuck up on him and grabbed him while he was being distracted by Binder and his pets.”

“And you can’t track him down with magic.”

“No,” I growled through clenched teeth. “Shagnasty is countering it somehow.”

“How is that possible?”

I took a moment to assemble my thoughts. “Tracking spells are like any kind of targeted thaumaturgy. You create a link, a cha

“Okay,” she said. “I get that, mostly.”

“The way to stymie a tracking spell is to prevent that cha

“Like what?”

“Well, for example. If I had one of your hairs and wanted to use it as part of a tracking spell, you might beat it by shaving off your hair. If the hair in my spell doesn’t match up to an end somewhere on your head, no link gets created. So, unless I had a hair that had been torn out from the roots, and fairly recently, you’d be hidden.”

“And that’s the only way to beat a tracking spell?”

“Nah,” I said. “A good circle of power could probably screen you off, if you took the time and money to give it serious juice. Theoretically, you could also cross into the Nevernever. Thaumaturgy originating on the earth doesn’t cross into the spirit world very efficiently—and before you ask, yeah, I tried it from the Nevernever side, too. It was failed spell number three.”

Murphy frowned. “What about Justine?” she asked. “Justine was able to find him once before.”

I grimaced. “She was able to give us a vague direction a few hours after Thomas had ripped most of the life out of her. It isn’t the same this time.”

“Why not?”

“Because she wasn’t sensing Thomas so much as the missing part of her own life force. They haven’t been together like that in years. Thomas—digested, I guess you could say—all of that energy a long time ago.”

Murphy sighed. “I’ve seen you do some neat stuff, Harry. But I guess magic doesn’t fix everything.”

“Magic doesn’t fix anything,” I said. “That’s what the person using it is for.” I rubbed at my tired eyes.

“Speaking of,” she said. “Any thoughts as to why these wizards didn’t seem to be using magic?”

“Not yet,” I said.

“Any thoughts as to the nature of our perpetrator?”

“A couple,” I said. “There are all these disparate elements in play—Shagnasty, Binder, Madeline Raith. There is serious money moving around. And if we don’t find this cockroach and drag him into the light, things are going to be bad for everyone. I don’t know what that tells us about him.”