In two strides, I had crossed the space between us and seized her wrist. Her headdress held back straight brown hair. She wore a necklace of bones around her neck, interspersed with white and black beads. And holy hell, that really was all she was wearing above the waist. Her nipples were encircled by blood, too.
If Pops ever caught one of my cousins in public like that, she’d have been sitting tender for a week. Me? I didn’t mind so much. But it’s not good to stare at the suspects.
“Let go!” she cried, trying to yank free of my grip. She had obviously never fought a guy twice her body mass before. She didn’t get anywhere with it.
“I’m Agent Cèsar Hawke with the Office of Preternatural Affairs, Magical Violations Department.” I automatically reached for the cuffs on my belt only to realize that I didn’t have them. I never went anywhere without my handcuffs. What had I done with them?
Right. They had taken a vacation on my headboard the night Erin died, so the cuffs were probably in an evidence locker right about now.
My eyes swept over the ritual scene. Her circle was small, and now that I had crossed her salt line, it wasn’t resonating magic. The candles had melted into place on top of Brian Stewart’s gravestone. Add the drum and incense and animal bones to the mix, and I was certain I could prove she had been doing magic in front of mundane humans, if nothing else. Definitely an arrest-worthy offense.
Too bad I wasn’t taking her back to the OPA offices.
“We’re going to have a talk,” I said. Maybe in one of the mausoleums.
She kicked at my knees with sandaled feet. I grunted and hauled her down the hill toward a slightly more hospitable-looking tomb.
“Let me go! This wasn’t supposed to happen tonight! He told me I could do another job!”
What the hell was she talking about? And more importantly… “Are these cat bones?” I interrupted, shaking her wrist.
She gave her bracelets a surprised look, as if seeing them for the first time. “Raccoon.”
Well, at least Cat was safe from her.
Eyes on the road watching for other OPA agents, I pushed her toward the tomb. She stopped dead when we came out from behind the trees.
“Where’s your SUV?” Stonecrow asked, glaring at the parking lot.
Shit. She had obviously seen us before. We drove big black SUVs, much like the union , though ours had lights and plates like the FBI’s did. And the fact that I didn’t have one now was, apparently, a big fucking giveaway.
I really should have borrowed Suzy’s handcuffs.
“Traitor!” she hissed.
With surprising speed, Stonecrow wrenched free of my grip. The bone bracelet snapped, leaving me holding a fistful of raccoon ribs and what looked like a car key dangling among them. I wasn’t even sure how she’d escaped me. She must have been feigning weakness when I first grabbed her.
Stonecrow reached into her animal skins and pulled out a fistful of gray powder. My eyebrows lifted, and I couldn’t help but grin a little bit. She looked like she was naked under her butt-flap. Did I want to know where she had been storing that dirt? Probably not.
“Stand down or I’ll shoot,” I said.
I made it two steps down the hill before she flung the powder into my eyes.
It was like having a beehive tossed in my face. I crashed to my knees with a roar, clawing ineffectually at my eyes. Fuck, that burned. Fire swept up my jaw, cheeks, forehead. Blisters bubbled under my hands. They popped. Gushed down into my collar.
There was no surge of magic and not a single sound, but by the time my running eyes cleared, Isobel Stonecrow was gone.
Nine by Night: A Multi-Author Urban Fantasy Bundle of Kickass Heroines, Adventure, Magic
CHAPTER TEN
I staggered into the public library as soon as the librarian unlocked the door. She stepped back, giving me a wide berth and a shocked look.
“Oh my,” she said, crossing herself as she scurried inside. I might not have been popular with the ladies, but I wasn’t “turn pale and run away” ugly. That was a bad sign. Real bad.
Slamming into the lobby bathroom, I flipped on the light switch. Considering how old and musty the building had looked from outside, the place sure got painfully bright, like jabbing huge fucking knives into my eye sockets. And, unfortunately, it let me see what Stonecrow had done to my face.
My square features were covered in boils. The left side was bad, but the right side was worse. My eyelids were swollen, lip sagging with the weight of pustules.
Fuck. This was not one of my better weeks.
I splashed water on myself to get off the last of that nasty gray powder and tried to decide what, if anything, I could do about it. It was more uncomfortable than painful now. Little Tylenol and it probably wouldn’t ache.