in the passenger seat beside him. “That troll gone?”
“Hiding, like you said.”
He grunted and relaxed in his seat, accepting what I said. With his eyes on the building, Eddie pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his ragged coat pocket and I quickly lowered my window a few inches rather than allow him to fill the warm stagnant air with smoke.
“Not a smoker?” he asked with a sneer. “I thought you tattoo artists were into all the vices.”
“I’ve got a few,” I mumbled.
“What? Knitting pillows and collecting salt and pepper shakers?” he mocked.
First I was worthless slime and now I was a pussy. The guy was getting on my last good nerve and I hadn’t been with him for more than fifteen minutes. I bit my tongue. I figured drinking and casting hexes were bad enough vices. I was pretty sure that I didn’t need another. It didn’t matter. I had nothing to prove to this asshole.
“So I gotta know something,” Eddie said after an extended silence in which he listened to the radio and glared at his dwindling cigarette. He paused and took another draw off his cigarette before rolling down his window a couple inches to pitch the glowing butt onto the street. “You were the guy that bastard grabbed, right? Why didn’t he kill you?”
I sighed and rubbed my burning eyes with my thumb and index finger. The lowered window hadn’t helped much when it came to the smoke. “You’re going to have to be more specific. I know a lot of bastards.”
Eddie turned a little in his seat to look at me. He had unbuttoned his coat to reveal an old Iowa State sweatshirt that looked as if it had seen better days. But then so had this guy. The lines on his face and sprinkling of gray in the dark brown stubble on his chin said this guy was closing in on forty, but there was a youthfulness in his voice that made me think that his job and lifestyle were sucking the years out of him like some medieval torture device.
“You know, that Towers bastard who appeared at the site of the last killing,” he pressed.
I finally realized that this asshole had been at the crime scene that morning, but I hadn’t noticed him. Of course, I’d been half asleep when I strolled onto the scene and couldn’t remember anyone besides that lard butt detective and the dead woman.
“The warlock?”
“Yes! Why the fuck didn’t he kill you?
I gave a shrug, turning my gaze from the detective to the street just past his shoulder, looking for Serah. She should be exiting any moment now, and I was anxious to get this show on the road.
“I don’t know. He asked if I knew anything about the potion that had been tattooed on the killer. I told him what little I knew.”
“And . . .” he prompted when I fell silent.
“That’s it.” He pushed me around a little and then . . . nothing. Guess he had better things to do with his time than kill me.”
. . . Subject 2 is descending the elevator to the ground floor. Eyes on in two minutes.
“That’s her,” Eddie said stiffly as he shifted back into cop mode. He turned in his seat so that his body was facing forward but his eyes were on the hospital. “One of these days, we’re going find a way to beat the Towers. Don’t ever doubt that,” he started, his voice low and soft so that it was creeping across the car toward me. “And when we do, we’re going to line up every last one of those bastards and bitches. We’re going to kill them slowly, make them spend the rest of their miserable lives in pain so they can pay for everything they’ve done to us.”
“And what about the kids in those Towers? Do they get to go home?” I asked despite knowing I should just keep my fucking mouth shut.
Eddie gave a snort and shook his head. “Nope. They’re no different. Why let them go so this can start all over again? We gotta snuff out all magic use so we can be free.”
“Those kids haven’t done anything.”
“Not yet.” Eddie tore his gaze away from the empty street to stare at me. “But they will. Don’t let yourself go soft on them just because one fucker didn’t kill you on the spot. I promise you, the next one will.”
He was probably right about that, but he didn’t recognize that Gideon