Magic Mourns(6)

I dropped the safety off my gun.

He raised his hands palms out, still grinning like an idiot.

I put the safety back on and dialed the number.

“Kate Daniels.” My best friend’s voice filled my ear.

“Hey, it’s me. How’s your stomach?”

“Stopped hurting. What’s up?”

“I need to ID a twenty-foot-tall three-headed dog with blood-red fur and burning spit.” That’s right, routine, casual, business as usual, I encounter giant three-headed dogs every day . . .

A small silence filled the phone.

“Is everything okay?” she asked.

“Everything is fine,” I assured her, smiling brightly at the phone, as if she could see me. “Just need an ID.”

“Does the tail look like a snake?”

I considered the long, whip-thin tail with a barb on the end. “Sort of.”

“Are you in the office?”

“No, I’m in our Jeep, out in the field.”

“Look under the passenger seat in a black plastic bin. There should be a book.”

Raphael hopped out, dug under the seat, and pulled out a dog-eared copy of The Almanac of Mystical Creatures.

“Got it,” I said into the phone.

“Page seventy-six.”

Raphael flipped the book open and held it up. On the left page a lithograph showed a three-headed dog with a serpent for a tail. The caption under the picture said CERBERUS.

“Is that your dog?” Kate asked.

“Could be. How the heck did you know the exact page?”

“I have perfect memory!”

I snorted.

She sighed into the phone. “I spilled coffee on that page and had to leave the book open to dry it out. It always opens to that entry now.”

I examined the dog. “It definitely looks similar. Ours was bigger.”

“Ours? Who is there with you?”

“Raphael.”

Kate’s voice snapped. “I’ll be in Atlanta in three hours. Where are you?”

“I said it’s nothing major.”

“Bullshit. You wouldn’t work with Raphael unless the Apocalypse was imminent and that was the only way to prevent it.”