so violent an attack was personal. She crouched to investigate a scatter of pale flecks on the steps, like a splash of milk frozen in place.
The patrolman swallowed loudly. Red hair and freckles, couldn't have been four years older than the victim. Despite herself, Garrett took pity on him. "What's your name, officer?"
"Forester," he replied. His face gleamed white around a fevered flush spotting the center of each cheek.
She sighed, seeing her own imperious face reflected in his eyes. Twenty years ago, she had been thought a great beauty. Boys like Forester had been so far beneath her notice that she had not even realized it was possible for them to have feelings. Times change, Abby Irene. "I am a sorcerer, lad, not a cannibal. You did as well as could be expected." She turned away.
"Ma'am?"
"Dismissed," she confirmed. "Go back to your dispatch for debriefing, Forester. You were right to call me in. This is a matter for the Crown." She knew perfectly well that the summons had come from the city Guard, and not from the Mayor's Colonial Police, but it was polite to lie.
Sometimes—but only some times—Garrett could almost admit a
sympathy for the Mayor and his push for home rule. Her true loyalties, however, lay with the Crown. And the Duke.
Except, she mused, bootheels clicking as she made her way back to her waiting carriage, the Crown was an ocean away on the other side of her self-imposed exile, and in these days of threatened hostilities with the French and Iroquois it seemed to prefer to forget the Colonies existed. And the Duke, loyal Patriot that he was, had problems of his own.
Still, it rankled: in London, she could have counted on a specialist sorcerer and at least one additional DCI for so gruesome a murder. In the entire reach of the Colonies, from the Atlantic to the Iroquois territories West of the Appalachians, Garrett's only colleagues were in Boston and Philadelphia. One doddered through the closing years of a white-bearded wizard's career; the other was a puling idiot who never would have achieved his Th.D without judiciously applied nepotism.
Yes, unequivocally—and especially since the Iron Queen's death and her eldest son's succession—Garrett was on her own.
Her driver, huddled miserable on the box, touched his cap. The renewed patter of rain on the cobbles told her to hurry. Uniformed officers held the gathering crowd back while Garrett rooted in her blue velvet carpetbag, kept dry in the enclosed coach. Quickly, she found what she needed and returned.
It was nasty work, sketching a circle around the corpse, and the hem of her dress was black with sucking mud and daubed red as well by the time she closed it. Renewed murmurs ran through the onlookers. Garrett shook her head, not troubling herself to look up. They can't have only now figured out who I am.
But deliberate steps clipped along the bloodsoaked walk, and a silken voice close behind her said, "Crown Investigator."
Garrett pinched the bridge of her nose, thinking very hard about the silver flask of brandy in her carpetbag. She knotted the circle off so that it would hold during her distraction and turned to face the intruder.
"I see the officers recognized you, Viscount," she said, briefly distracted by hazel eyes under a fall of brown-black hair. Princely cheekbones, a caballero's noble nose, and the sensual lip of a Rumanian aristocrat.
Garrett bit down on a sigh.
"Please," said the notorious amateur detective, extending his grey-gloved hand, voice melodious with the interwoven tones of his native language. "So lovely a lady must by all means call me Sebastien. Besides, your English
titles are so confusing."
Garrett transferred her wand to her left hand and allowed him to bend over her right. Much as she despised the man, she had to admit to a certain agreeable shiver when his lips brushed her glove. Don Sebastien de Ulloa straightened and smiled, gesturing to the mangled remains of the boy
with the tip of his walking stick. "And so, my dear investigator—what have we here?"
Garrett pursed her lips in frustration, but kept her voice level. "I'm not certain yet," she said. "I've just finished containing the scene. There are a few interesting anomalies. . .."
"That is candlewax." Don Sebastien leaned forward, laying a hand on Garrett's arm to steady himself away from the circle.
"It appears to be," she answered, shifting from the touch. "Interesting, is it not? Other than the mud and blood, it is obvious that the doorstep and facade were immaculately kept; probably scrubbed daily,