didn’t sound surprised that we mentioned magic, but he’d lived in Magellan all his life. Spells and magic were real here.
Mick studied Sam with clinical attention. “Compulsion spell, probably. To tell us anything we want to know, whether he likes it or not. That means Smith wants us to know these things, or doesn’t care. Which means we will get nothing useful out of him.”
“I don’t know,” I mused. “We know Emmett visits people in high-priced houses and an office in the heart of downtown Phoenix. I haven’t been there enough to know much about the city, but I noticed a lot of high-rent bank buildings and other stuff down there. So he’s visiting people with money.”
“He owns the building in Phoenix,” Sam said before he could stop himself. “Second Ave and Adams. A couple of resorts in Scottsdale too. And houses in Santa Fe.”
“Do you know what he does in any of these places?” I asked.
Sam looked relieved. “No, I don’t. He goes in. I wait. Like I said, I like Cooperstown though I’ll grab fast food if he’s not going to be long. There’s a lady I visit if he’s going to stay all night …”
I held up my hand. “That’s all right. Don’t need to know.”
“Her name is Maria Harding. She has a place on 24th Street, around Camelback, a pretty nice condo. Her husband’s a total bastard, but he’s always out of town …”
Sam struggled to shut his mouth. I wanted him to before he spilled details about what he and Maria got up to in the master bedroom of her nice condo.
“Mick, can you do anything?”
Mick came to stand behind Sam and placed his big hands on the man’s shoulders. “Just relax.”
Sam shivered, hard, sweat filming his skin. Under Mick’s touch, he began to quiet. Mick must be using a little healing magic, or some dragon juju to counteract Emmett’s spell.
Then Sam’s body jerked and went perfectly straight, rigid across the seat and back of the chair. His face turned from white to a bright shade of puce, and he screamed, a terrible scream. As Lopez and I watched, openmouthed, his skin began to smoke.
“Mick, stop!” I cried.
Mick started to pull his hands away, then frowned and jerked at them. His eyes widened as his fingers began to fuse to Sam’s shirt.
I lunged for Mick, ready to yank his hands away, but Mick danced back. “No—don’t touch me.” His voice was far too calm. “Lopez, take Janet out. I mean out of the building. Everyone else in it too.”
“Mick …” I stared in horror, Mick’s hands were melting, becoming one with Sam’s flesh.
“Go!” he said. “Hurry.”
There was only one way Mick could deal with this, I realized. I grabbed on to Lopez and started tugging him out the door. “Come on. We need to get the prisoners out. Fast.”
The dragon tatts on Mick’s arms started to flow around and around, their eyes bursting with red flame. Mick’s fingers elongated and grew down into Sam, who was screaming in a high, shrill keen.
“I can’t leave them in here,” Lopez protested. It was his duty to make sure the prisoners were okay. I imagined Nash was pretty insistent about that.
My grandmother had taught me how to make people obey. I seized Lopez by the ear and pulled him, protesting, out into the hall, and then I pushed him toward the cells.
Behind me, I heard Sam’s screams merge from pain into absolute terror, and then the walls began to bulge.
Chapter Fourteen
Lopez fumbled with the coded lock on the steel door that led to the cells. The door and lock were new—Nash had been quietly triumphant when he’d obtained the funding for it. Lopez preferred old-fashioned keys. His fingers slipped on the pad and the lock buzzed red, not letting us in.
Lopez started to try again, but I batted his hands aside, fried the lock with a burst of Beneath magic, and yanked open the door.
Behind us, the walls of the interview room exploded outward, throwing bricks, mortar, nails, insulation, and probably many toxic substances toward us. I shoved Lopez into the corridor with the cells and slammed the door behind us.
Lopez clearly wanted to know how I’d futzed the lock, but he sprinted with me to the cells at the end. The two men inside them were still on their bunks, but they were writhing and kicking, as though being squeezed by some unseen force. The heavily muscled one turned over and puked onto the floor.
I wondered if