out of my way and let me get the job done. You could have contaminated the entire scene.” Or blown up the block. Or killed us.
I was yelling, or at least I thought I was. The other sounds, things like city traffic and air noise, still seemed rather distant now that I thought about it, like someone had shoved cotton in my ears.
Apparently angry, screaming women weren’t something that fazed Detective Stotts.
“You were burning,” he said calmly. He looked over my shoulder. “Call an ambulance.” Stotts sounded a lot farther away than he should. Didn’t matter. I was good at reading lips. The person behind me whom he was talking to, probably a cop, might have responded. I couldn’t tell.
“I’m fine.”
Stotts gave me a look that could melt the hinges off the doors to hell. “You are burned. And bleeding.”
“I’m Hounding.”
“No. You’re not.”
I took a step and Stotts grabbed my arm. Strong. He was a police officer, after all.
“You are dismissed from this case.” He made sure to stand in front of me so I could see his lips moving. He was not a happy man. “I’ll find another Hound to take the job.”
Someone stepped into my range of vision. I hadn’t heard Davy coming—ears—but he was close enough I heard him say, “I’ll do it.”
I scowled. Hounding for Stotts wasn’t always a hard job. But Davy wasn’t kidding when he said the man was cursed. A lot—too damn many—Hounds had died working cases for the detective.
“You’re injured,” I said to Davy.
He raised his eyebrows. “I had a headache a while ago. I’m good now.”
Liar.
“No,” I said.
Stotts let go of my arm. “That would be fine. Allie, step back.”
I didn’t step back, but I didn’t move forward. Davy followed Stotts closer to the center of the park, stopped, traced a glyph in the air, and then pulled magic up from the network of conduits and lines that ran beneath the streets.
Easy. Like he’d been doing this all his life. Magic answered him, did exactly as it should—followed the lines of the glyph and gave him Sight and Taste and Smell. He paced a large circuit around a couple benches and trees, the wide half circle of brick steps just south of us. Nothing else in the park except the ashes of the old spell that I could only guess still lingered there.
My hands itched and stung, like I’d slapped them against stone. I wanted to cast magic so badly, it hurt.
Instead I wiped the thin line of sweat off my forehead again. Not sweat. Blood. Great. Stotts wasn’t kidding I was hurt. Weird that I didn’t feel it.
I gently ran my fingertips through my hair, searching for a cut. Found one just inside my hairline on the left. A scratch, but deep enough to bleed.
And finding that scratch made me realize how tight and sunburned the left side of my face felt. Which meant Stotts was right about that too. I was burned. But not so badly I couldn’t have finished Hounding for him. Even my hearing was clearing up.
Fine, if I wasn’t Hounding, I was backup. Which meant I needed to keep an eye on Davy. I paced over to Stotts, still angry enough to ignore the pain of the burn and the cut. “You watching?” I asked, meaning, of course if he was watching with magic.
Stotts had his thumb and middle finger pinched together, his hand held out in front of him. I knew he was holding another glyph there, probably something like what he threw at me.
“Not yet,” he said. “I want to make sure he doesn’t go up in flame. Once in a night is my limit.”
I calmed my mind, set a Disbursement again, and traced the spell for Sight. Nothing fancy, nothing difficult. Magic lifted through me like morning fog, soft and easy, and filled the glyph.
It was like someone had turned on the sun. The park broke open into sharp colors and deep shadows. No watercolor people in sight. That was the one benefit of having my dad in my head. Somehow, his presence blocked my awareness of the Veiled—the imprints of dead magic users on the flow of magic—and better yet, he blocked their awareness of me.
I didn’t think he did it on purpose. Knowing him, he’d rather not help me like that.
Davy finished pacing the circle. I’d never watched him work before. He was a good Hound, knew when to let go of a spell that wasn’t giving him the information he