cyclone in front of me before sending it off into the air. No one needed to see what I’d drawn.
“What the hell did you do?” Serah rasped, pinning Gideon with an angry glare.
“Sorry,” the warlock said, looking a bit sheepish. “That should never have happened.”
“I should have warned you,” I said, walking over to help Serah back to her feet. “We had a similar experience when we did a blood spell. The tattoo potion has given the energy surrounding the killer an unexpected level of awareness.”
“That would have been helpful to know!” Gideon snapped, appearing a little more shaken that I would have expected.
It was my turn to look sheepish, as I muttered a quick apology to the warlock. Honestly, I hadn’t thought of it until the image attacked Serah and then it was simply too late. I shouldn’t have been surprised. Magic had been acting strange with this killer since we started the investigation and I just chalked it up to the potion the person had flowing through her veins. What if the other killer making his slow way north to Low Town was also having an impact?
“Is there any way you can track this psycho bitch?” I asked as I zipped my coat up again. “I haven’t had any luck and we need to catch her for more than one reason.”
“I agree,” Gideon murmured. He turned and looked back at the dead woman in the alley, a brief sadness passing through his eyes. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“Here,” Serah said. Reaching into her coat pocket, she pulled out a clear evidence bag that had a small piece of a bloody paper towel. “I took another small piece of the killer’s blood from the evidence lockup. I was going to see if Gage had another spell he could try.”
Gideon accepted it with a nod. And then he was simply gone.
“Geez!” Serah said, releasing an enormous sigh as she slumped against the wall. “I hope I’m never that close to one of them again.”
A loud bark of laughter jumped from me, nearly knocking me back against the wall with her. There was some part of my brain that knew Gideon was intimidating, but it was hard to remember when I was up to my armpits in other crazy shit and the warlock was keeping me alive through it all.
“You’re pretty damn close to one right now,” I reminded her with a smirk.
Serah blushed and gave my shoulder a shove as she pushed back to her feet. “Yeah, well, you don’t count because you don’t act like them.”
“Or look like them. Or sound like them. Or slaughter huge swaths of innocent bystanders like them,” I listed, getting a giggle out of my companion.
“Yeah, that too.” She started to walk down the alley back toward her car when she stopped and looked back. The amusement was gone from her expression and the dire seriousness of our situation had crept back in. “What about her?”
“Call Curtis. Tell him he can crawl out from whatever rock he is hiding under. The Towers have retreated.”
Serah gave me a quelling look, but there was still a sparkle of laughter in her eye. She was going to enjoy this conversation whether she wanted to admit it or not. Tossing me her keys, she stood on the street and called the detective while I walked over and started her car, allowing it to warm up.
A few minutes later, she was driving me back to my apartment, where I was hoping to catch just a couple more hours of sleep before dragging my sorry carcass into the shop. I had half a dozen appointments scheduled for the day and I couldn’t cancel them because they were all appointments I had been forced to reschedule once already due to Towers bullshit.
I was dividing my time among the Towers, the parlor, and freelancing for TAPSS. Sadly only one of them was paying my bills, which meant either someone else needed to start forking over some cash or I was going to drop one of my non-paying obligations very soon. Unfortunately, I didn’t see the Towers offering me an hourly wage. Their argument would be that I should just be grateful that I was still alive. Damn warlocks. Fucking witches.
I missed my girlfriend.
CHAPTER 7
Upon arriving at my apartment, I discovered that I was not going back to bed anytime soon. Sofie was curled up in the middle cushion of my couch, looking for all the world as if she slept there