and Phil and Balducci looked at each other and raised their eyebrows. “The psychic record ends there. I’m pretty sure the salt was to sever any remaining magical connection to the living host.” She lowered her head. “I can’t say for certain, but I got a very strong impression that dagger wanted to end the ritual in her heart.”
“That’s… consistent,” Philip said.
“That’s fucking amazing is what it is,” Balducci said.
“Language, Officer Balducci,” Jinx said calmly. “I’m afraid that touching the lid is quite… aversive… to a sensitive such as myself. With your permission, I’d like to encircle it before I begin my examination. It might serve to dampen some of the ‘vibes.’”
“That… that wasn’t the examination?” Balducci said.
“No,” she said. “That was a side effect.”
“Miss Anderson is a graphomancer,” Philip said. “She’s here to analyze the tattoo and give us her thoughts on why the killer may have wanted it.”
Jinx had pulled out what looked like a small makeup case from her shoulder bag and was feeling the table. “May I draw on this?” she asked, retrieving a piece of chalk from the case.
Balduci let out his breath. “Sure. Why the hell not?”
“Language, Officer Balducci,” Jinx said, drawing a wide circle around the evidence tray. “I’m only doing this because I’m trying to help.”
“Uh, Philip,” I said. “There was that matter of my… other associates—”
“Davidson,” Balducci warned. “I appreciate you bringing APD in on this, but you’re—we’re letting out a lot of information about this case to a lot of people—”
“Current thinking,” Philip said, ushering me towards the observation room to talk but speaking to Balducci, “is that if you have a known victim category, you alert them. That it’s better to prevent more crimes than to nail the perpetrator.”
Balducci threw up his hands.
Philip joined me in the observation room, and the door closed with a sudden click.
There, alone together in the near darkness, I forgot what we were going to talk about. We stared at each other for a moment, his grey eyes glinting with reflected light from the window on room beyond, his strong physique outlined by the soft glow of the monitors. I drew a breath, and his eyes lit up and sparkled at me, hungry and alive.
We closed the gap. His hand touched my waist, my hand touched his cheek, my head bent down, our lips almost touched— and then, just as abruptly, we pulled apart.
“Whoa,” Phillip said, reddening. “I’m, uh, sorry, Miss Frost—”
“Me too,” I echoed, feeling my face flush with embarrassment as well. “I—”
“I assure you I didn’t call you in here for that,” Philip said, stiffening.
“I didn’t mind,” I blurted out, then raised my hands as he raised his eyebrow. “Wait, I didn’t mean it like that. I assure you, I stopped moving that fast back in college. I meant, I don’t interpret this as any kind of harassment, Special Agent Philip Davidson.”
“That’s a relief,” he said, staring at the hand that had touched my waist like it was a foreign thing. Then his mouth quirked up in a wry smile. “Inappropriate touching!”
I choked off a laugh. “Maybe inappropriate,” I said, “but… still, I didn’t mind.”
Philip glanced up at me, and his smile warmed. “Even more of a relief.”
Suddenly a bright wave of color splashed into the observation room. “Whoa,” Philip said again, hopping back from the window as Jinx whirled her cane above her head with an odd, doublehanded motion, drawing a bright circle of light in the air like a giant halo. After a moment, the rainbow faded, an echo glittering across an elaborate magic circle she’d inscribed over the table. Despite myself, I leaned toward the window and looked at it: effective, but exhaustingly filigreed. I’d swear half of it wasn’t necessary, done just for tradition—or because Jinx wanted to be ‘extra special safe.’ Trust a Wiccan to overthink everything.
“She’s the real deal,” Philip said beside me, staring through the glass.
“Yes,” I said. “Did you really doubt—”
“After all the shit I’ve seen?” Philip said, shaking his head. “But not doubting something and seeing it in the flesh are two different things.”
Which reminded me of our little plan. “Speaking of seeing it in the flesh…let’s get the others in here so that Cinnamon can get a look at the lid.”
“Are you sure we want to do this?” he said, not directly meeting my eye, scratching behind his neck. “Your friend, she’s a were, but she’s young. And magically tattooed. And, I repeat, a were. If I had my druthers she wouldn’t