Magic in the Shadows by Devon Monk Page A

stay awhile. A few weeks, if I need to. I wasn’t sure how long this would take, so I have someone looking after the farm and animals for me.”
    “Your husband?” he asked over the top of his coffee cup.
    “No.” The light in her dimmed a little, like it always did when she spoke of John. “He’s been gone for several years now.” She tried to smile the light back up, but any fool could see the old pain in her eyes.
    “I’m sorry,” Stotts said. “I lost my wife, Aryanna, just a year ago.”
    Me? I felt like an idiot. And a jerk. A jerkiot. I didn’t know his wife was dead. Or maybe divorced? I glanced up at him. From the look in his eyes, it wasn’t divorce. Well, hells. I’d called that wrong.
    “I’m sorry,” Nola said. Her gaze shifted to the ring on his left hand. She had noticed it, just like me, but unlike me, she had given him the benefit of the doubt.
    “I would really appreciate any help you could offer to Cody and me,” she said. “I thought I’d go downtown today and see who I could talk to. Would you have time to meet with me?”
    “I should. Well.” He stopped, like he suddenly remembered there was someone else in the room with them—me. “If you don’t think the job will take too long.”
    “You haven’t told me what the job is,” I said.
    “I’d rather discuss it with you in private. . . .”
    Nola caught the hint and stood. “Let me clean up the dishes. You two take your time. There’s coffee in the carafe, if you want. I’ll be in the kitchen.”
    She walked off, and I finished my cake. I watched Stotts out of the corner of my eye.
    “You like her,” I said, pressing the moist crumbs on the plate together with the tines of my fork.
    He held his breath for a second, the only indication of strong emotion I could feel off him.
    “I don’t really know her,” he said, “yet.” Calm, cool, coplike.
    “She’s my best friend,” I said.
    “I got that.”
    “And I will go to no ends to keep her safe. From anything. And anyone.” It came out cold. Matter-of-fact. A lot like my father. Except it was all me.
    “Do you really think she needs your protection?”
    I stuck the fork in my mouth and pulled the cake crumbs off with my teeth. “In this city? Yes.”
    He made a sound in the back of his throat. At least on that point, he and I agreed.
    “What do you want me to Hound?”
    “I’ll take you there and you can see for yourself.”
    “Illusion?” I asked. “Dead body?” I shuddered, really hoping it wasn’t a dead body. “Illegal Offload?”
    He just gave me a level stare. That was the problem with cops, especially the ones who dealt with magical crimes. They wouldn’t tell you a damn thing for fear of contaminating your opinion before you Hounded the spell.
    “Right,” I said. “So how long do we have before whatever it is fades?”
    He shifted in his chair and rubbed his palms over his slacks. “I’d like to get to it as soon as possible.”
    “Then let’s go.” He stood and so did I. We were of a height. I headed across the living room.
    “What if I hadn’t been available?” I asked.
    “I would have asked someone else to Hound it.”
    “Do you keep a list?”
    “Usually Pike—” He stopped, probably aware that Pike had been my friend and he was very recently dead.
    I looked over my shoulder at him. “What about him?” It came out relaxed and easy. Not at all how I was feeling inside. Every time I heard Pike’s name, it felt like there was a fist behind it. I wondered if that would ever fade.
    “Pike used to keep me up-to-date on which Hounds were available for jobs. Even though he took most of the jobs himself.”
    I figured that’s what Pike had been doing all those years. Hounds had always worked for the police, the nonmagical police, but I’d just heard about Stotts’ particular branch of magic law enforcement this month.
    It was true that magic cannot be used in high-stress emotions, so people generally believed it wasn’t that