Night Shift

Harp's voice came from the living room, slightly raised. Dominic's eyebrow twitched, an eloquently inquiring look expressed in a fraction of an inch.

"Don't ask me." I spread my hands, indicating i

"Three bedrooms. Two decorated for cubs, both with beds messed up like the little ones just got up for a drink of water." He tilted his head back slightly, indicating the cellar. His eyes glowed briefly, very sad. "My guess is, down there. I'd love to be wrong."

But it's not fucking likely, is it. I swallowed something suspiciously hot, tasting of bile. "Scene's been held for me?" What else is down there, Dom? Drop the other shoe.

The look he gave me qualified as scathing. "Of course. Harp and I took a look at it from the stairs, that's all. Something down there stinks of sorcery, and that's your job. There's enough in the yard and around the door to keep the humans busy for a while. Take your time."

My, that's awful sweet of you. But I just eased past him and through the door. Wooden steps went down, concrete walls dry-gleaming with oil under the gassy reek of bodies. The smell of dandruff and hot spoiled musk was eyewatering. I was glad I had stopped for a fresh copper cuff, the air itself was caustic.

Add the sweetish rot of hellbreed, and I suddenly wished very hard that I hadn't eaten di

The memory of Saul's mouth on mine rose. I pushed it away with an almost-physical effort. Distraction was the last thing I needed. Shelves on my right held cans and jars—nonperishables, laid in for a rainy day. I caught sight of a can of Chef Boyardee and my stomach turned hard, thinking of two small rumpled beds upstairs.

My heart pounded thinly. Of all the things about this job I hate, that's the worst. Kids are the worst.

I wasn't the only one to feel that way. The hardest cases, and the ones the psych officers worked the hardest on, involved the very young. No matter how hardened or seasoned the cop, kid cases can cut you right down to bone and bleed you for months, if not forever, afterward.

I swallowed, my tongue sticking to the roof of my mouth. I kept an eye out for critters—they weren't likely down here in a concrete cube, but you never know.

The steps turned to the right, a one-eighty that slowly revealed a dusty disused cellar. In the back left corner, as far away from the stairs and the door to the backyard—a trapdoor, just like Auntie Em's—as possible, was a tangled mess of shapes.

Oh, God, White bone peeped through, glimmering in the dark. One electric bulb in the ceiling did nothing to dispel the darkness. A curtain of glaucous night shielded the corner, a shimmer like heat off pavement mixed with night's obscurity only pulling aside to show small glimpses of whatever lay beyond.

Tangled over the bodies was a sorcerous shell of concealment, laid with power and exquisite care. The shield drew tight, humming with alertness as my aura fluoresced in the ether, random points of brilliance swirling around me as the sea-urchin spikes of my personal borders poked through, sparked against the contamination of hellbreed, and retreated.

It nagged at me. Even with what Clarke had told me, something was wrong here. One instrument was out of tune, screwing up the whole symphony.

Deal with what you've got in front of you, Jill Analyze later when the scene's safe.

The ruby warmed at my throat. Silver chimed in my hair, shifting and heating up.

I shut my dumb eye, my blue eye piercing the strings of sorcery, a shifting pattern of darkness and occasional bloody flashes. She did good work, this Cenci.

The copper cuff snapped free of my wrist of its own accord, tinkling down the stairs. The scar turned into a brand, wet heat tracing obscenely up my arm, following the branching cha

Pitch a levinbolt low enough, and you can actually shatter glass or work a hole in pavement. The drawback is, it takes a lot of energy—energy I had to burn now. One reason to be glad that I'd made my bargain with Perry, no matter how much I cursed it while I was in the Monde.

Oh, very nice work. If I push there, it traps me. If I take it apart here, the backlash knocks me down. Huh. You're a sneaky bitch, aren't you? Daddy must have taught you well.

I set my feet on the last stair. My coat flapped, a hot breeze lifting from nowhere, teasing my cheeks and the silver weighing down my hair. Sparks crackled, Mikhail's ring burning on my left hand, the ruby at my throat spitting again and again, warning me.

Levinbolt flames swirled counterclockwise, coming to a tapered point like a narwhal's horn. Cupped in my palm, the spire of etheric energy trembled, cycling up to a moaning cry of torched and distressed air.

More, Jill. Give it more. The whisper burned under my conscious thoughts, my attention centered on the levinbolt straining to wriggle free. It takes a particular relaxed fierceness to hold this much energy still, corralling it to one's will; sorcery isn't for those who can't relax and concentrate.

If Harp and Dominic had come down off the stairs, they would have triggered the trap. I'd have been looking at a severely wounded pair of Weres, maybe even critically damaged.

Good thing they've got me. I bent my knees, sinking down, compressing myself. The levinbolt whined, my fingers scorching where it pulled on the nerves and yearned to fly free. My coat pooled behind me, clinks and clanks and sparks trembling in the air as the silver in my ammo, knives, and jewelry responded to the contamination of a hellbreed curse in the air, straining toward me just as the bolt strained to escape my control.

Do it fast, Jill. Go for the quick tear.

I leapt, uncoiling, right hand flung forward, the bolt crackling through the first few layers of the sorcerous shield and piercing, stuck fast—then, explosion, all that contained force suddenly finding itself free. Potential became kinetic, like a lightning bolt lancing air and producing a sonic boom. The psychic thunderbolt smashed the shield wide open, and I landed, driven to one knee by the backlash of energy bouncing off concrete walls and buffeting my aura. A shower of sparks fell from my hair, one huge bloody point of light from the ruby at my throat, and I shook the deep hideous noise out of my head. It was like the world's biggest gong vibrating inside my skull.

Easy as cake, Jill. Your usual fine work.

A low thrumming growl slid under the ringing in my ears, my right hand spread against the cold concrete floor, my leather-clad knee soaking up a chill too. My coat pooled behind me, and I raised my head slowly. Very slowly.

Oh, shit.

It hadn't been a shield to keep the bodies from being found. It had been a protection laid on the rogue Were, sleeping in his nest of meat and snapped bone.

He wasn't sleeping anymore.

His eyes were flat with beastshine in the dim light, and he crouched on the slope of mounded bodies. He was halfway between his animal form and human, neither one nor the other, and as a result… well, most Weres are beautiful and graceful in their human forms, and just as beautiful in their animal forms. The state in-between is never someplace they linger, and it is just as graceful as the rest of them—but subtly wrong. Wrong like a nonhuman geometry. Wrong like a note no human instrument can produce.