and pale Kevin Cooper. Blood had been wiped off his bruised face, but still leaked in his light brown hair, turning it dark on one side. An oxygen mask fit snug against his face. They moved him past me so quickly, I couldn’t see where else he might be injured. But I could smell magic on him. A lot of it, a lot of spent magic.
“Who?” I said. “Who did this?” I was trying to ask who could do this. There just wasn’t that much available magic to be able to do this much damage. “How long? When? When did that happen to him?”
Stotts hadn’t let go of my wrist. Smart. I’d probably go in there and ruin evidence in this state of mind.
“You’re here for that,” he said. “To Hound the scene. Tell me what you see. There’s more.”
And he was right. There was more.
More EMTs, men and women, and another stretcher. This one with tubes and monitors. I knew who it was from the shape of the prone figure even before I could see her face.
Violet.
Dad scratched at the backs of my eyes, no longer a moth-wing flutter, but something made out of sharp edges and teeth.
I exhaled to stay calm and pushed at Dad, needing him in a corner, away from my conscious thoughts, away from seeing Violet on a stretcher. I must have tried to pull away from Stotts too.
“Don’t,” he said. “Don’t get in the way. Let them do their job.”
Violet, my dad said. No. Please, no.
I pressed my lips together to keep his words from forming in my mouth. He was in my head, but he had no right to use my body. Even if Violet was hurt.
She was in better hands than mine right now. I was not a doctor, and neither was my father. Getting her to the hospital as quickly as possible was the smart thing to do.
As they passed, she opened her eyes.
My dad struggled, shoved at my control. Violet, he thought.
“Daniel?” she whispered.
No. Hell no. I didn’t care how much they loved each other—I was not going to let my father talk to her, was not going to let him use me or my mouth or thoughts that way, and was not going to stop the EMTs from getting her medical attention.
The EMTs moved swiftly past me. With Stotts’s hand still clamped to my wrist, I held my ground while Dad battered the edges of my control. Then the EMTs were gone. Violet was gone, placed very carefully into the back of an ambulance that drove away, lights flashing and sirens blaring. I pulled my hand away from Stotts.
Dad went dead silent. Angry.
Too bad.
Okay. Regroup. First the job. Hounding. Hounding the crime. Without magic. Then checking on Violet.
“Anything you’d like to tell me about this before I go in there?” I asked.
He looked at my expression, puzzled. Then glanced over my shoulder at the ambulance. Maybe at something beyond that. “Violet and Kevin were here when it happened. Violet was semiconscious when I arrived. She can’t remember anything.”
“Head wound?”
“She’s been hurt,” he conceded.
Yeah, well, I figured that out all on my own. “Is she going to be okay? Is the baby in danger?”
He looked down at his shoe, then back at me. “They don’t know yet.”
Fuck.
And the cool wash of my dread and my father’s anger melded into something else. Resolve. Whoever had done this, whoever had attacked my wife—I mean my friend—and my unborn sibling, was going to suddenly have a very bad, very short life.
I strode into the building, past the fallen door that looked like it had been blown off its hinges, and into the main room.
Stotts followed.
The first room was a reception area, though there was no desk. Just a couple small clean couches, a TV mounted on the wall, and a computer and a phone on a table.
I didn’t have magic at my disposal. None of us did. I glanced over at Stotts to see if he was uncomfortable with that. He looked calm, composed. Didn’t look like having magic or not having magic made any difference to him. Sort of an “If I don’t have my gun, I can kill you with my hands” kind of look.
Very cop of him. And it meant he wasn’t all that surprised that magic had suddenly died out.
“Do you know why magic’s gone?” I asked.
He shook his head. “I’m thinking it might have something to do with that gut feeling of yours. The storm. We’ve had magic