Kicking It(4)

“You mean you’re going to do one?”

“If she’s really dead,” Rosen said. “Right now, I see a picture that might be a fake. Once I have an honest-to-God corpse, I’ll get to work. Other than that, maybe you ought to put a fence around your yard and get a big dog, unless you enjoy this kind of thing.”

“So you’re just going to file it and forget it,” I said. “Right?”

“Miss Caldwell, every hate crime gets reported to the FBI, and I’m going to flag it that way. So just quit punching me. It’s not a fight.”

He sounded tired, and in that moment I saw the strain in the tight wrinkles around his eyes. He’d probably been up for hours, and maybe had been just kicking off for the night when he’d gotten the call to come to us. Made sense he wasn’t thrilled to be here.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “Bad night?”

Some of the tension left his body. “Yeah, bad enough. We had a teen girl missing over in Clarksville. Found her in a cardboard box behind a bar. Not a pretty sight. I’ve got a daughter her age.”

“I’m sorry.” I didn’t know Rosen all that well on a personal level; he wore a wedding ring, but I knew nothing about his home life, if he had much of one at all. Some cops didn’t. On impulse, I held up a finger. “Wait here, okay? Be right back.” I dashed into the house and opened up a cardboard box sitting on the sofa in the living room. In it were small bottles with the printed label HOLLY’S BALM. It was magic, but benign and shelf-stable. Not my creation. Andy’s. And it was selling like hotcakes.

I grabbed a bottle from the carton and went back outside to Rosen. “Stress relief,” I said, holding it out to him. “No charge, and I promise, it won’t damn your immortal soul or anything. But it works.”

He looked at it with a frown, but opened the cap and sniffed. I watched the change come over him: pure, simple peace, flowing like air over his body. He let out a breath, capped the bottle, and said, “Well, holy shit. That’s good stuff.”

“It’s effective for up to six months once opened,” I said. “I figured someone in your position probably needs it more than most.”

He thanked me with another nod, more pleasant this time, and said his good-byes. They weren’t effusive, but I didn’t expect them to be. The patrol officers left soon after, and Andy and I wrestled the heavy, soot-encrusted cross out of the ground and dragged it around back. Our neighbor’s German shepherd took exception, but I wasn’t impressed. He hadn’t bothered to bark when the cross went up. “Rosen could be right about the fence and the dog,” Andy said. “Might be a reasonable step. Otherwise, I’m sleeping on the front porch with a shotgun. A little buckshot in their asses might move ’em on.”

“We’ll get a fence,” I said, and stripped off my blackened work gloves, which I dropped on top of the cross. “But you know what I want most?”

“What?” He opened the back door and pulled me inside the house and into his arms.

“I want you in my bed,” I said. “Not out on the porch.”

“You going to change into what you were wearing before?”

“After I wash off the smoke smell.”

“Join you in two shakes,” he said.

I looked back when I reached the top of the stairs, and saw that he had locked the door and was standing at the window staring out at the yard.

Detective Rosen had taken the dagger and the photo with him, as evidence. I didn’t know what Andy was looking at now. Maybe nothing.

“Andy?” I asked.

He dropped the curtain, turned, and said, “On my way.”

Whatever was bothering him, he seemed to have let it go. By the time he was in the shower with me, damp and soapy, neither one of us was wondering about the future very much.

It was a mistake. Obviously.

—

I went to work the next morning just as I normally did, albeit still smelling a little like smoke (you can never get that stuff off) and feeling gritty and raw on only about three hours of solid sleep during the entire night. Also feeling pleasantly buzzed by the very intense attention Andy had paid to my every need. So on balance, it evened out, at least until I finished my drive to work.

I turned the last corner, going on autopilot (as you do) and thinking about what I had waiting on my desk. I was an accountant—nothing too exciting or even too challenging, but it paid the bills and kept me in medical insurance, which even potions witches need. You can’t brew it all. I’ve tried.

I hit the brakes, because on the sidewalk in front of my building was a crowd. Okay, it wasn’t a mob, but it was at least thirty people, chanting and carrying homemade signs.