Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
Murtola swore, then swore again, his voice going high and panicked. Someone came into the room, and their scream was loud enough to alert the entire building.
“Put your hands up,” Nick told Murtola. He held his own hands above his head. He trusted SAPD, but the room was covered in blood, and Nick was standing in the middle of it.
“You don’t tell me what to do, you absolute freak—” Murtola started, but when the officers in the lobby flooded into the room, he raised his hands.
The shouting got louder until a voice cut over everyone else’s.
“What on god’s green earth is going on?” Tate demanded. “King?”
Nick didn’t move, too many fingers on too many guns, but he said, “We need to lock the building down, sir! The CSI from Durkavic’s crime scene exploded. It might be contagious.”
Tate caught on immediately. “Lower your weapons! Lock the building down. No one in or out. As of now, we are treating the entire building as exposed to a contagion.”
Nick waited until the guns were lowered and most of the officers went to secure all entrances and exits before he lowered his hands. Murtola had fallen to his knees, breathing too fast.
Nick crouched and pinched his arm sharply until the other officer looked at him. Without saying anything, Nick modeled slow, long breaths.
“The blood is how it spreads?” Tate asked. He had put on an N95 mask, making his words slightly muffled. “Physical contact or inhaled?”
“No idea. I’m not even sure it’s the blood,” Nick called back. He looked at the room, trying to see a way out, but the blood spatter was everywhere. “We need a way out. Something we can walk on.”
“Let me see if we can get something.” Tate turned to a nearby officer, directing him to look for anything that hadn’t been in the room that they could use to make a pathway.
“—I don’t care what the procedures are. He is my husband, and I will go through you if I have to—” Parker’s voice carried loudly, and he pushed his way through the wall of officers milling around the entrance to the room.
Nick stood, his eyes searching Parker for any sign of damage. “Parker, are you okay? Do you feel anything? Too hot? Too cold? Anything?”
Parker’s face had gone white as he stared at the room. He swallowed when he heard Nick’s questions. “I’m fine. I feel fine. Are you okay? This is the last scene in Carrie or some Blumhouse film that made a billion dollars. Hollywood would be out of colored corn syrup for months after this. Nick…”
Nick could live on the way that Parker said his name. He wouldn’t need food or water; he wouldn’t need anything but the way Parker sounded like Nick’s safety was more important than the rest of the world.
“I’m fine. But whatever did this is contagious. Get back. Get a mask on.” Nick stared at Parker, who didn’t move. “Parker.”
“Yeah, okay.” Parker nodded decisively. He pushed through the cops again just as a sergeant brought a few long shelves that they managed to place together, forming a bridge between Nick, Murtola, and the relative safety of the doorway.
The blood on Nick’s shield spell had dripped down, leaving red streaks floating in midair, and Nick considered the best way to take the circle down. If he just closed the spell off, the remaining blood smears might drip down on him and Murtola.
As he squinted, Zahide shouted out, “Wait, I have some immolation spells here.”
Nick nodded in gratitude. Murtola stared at him. “Did you just save our lives?”
“We’ll see. We still have no idea what it is or how it spreads.” Nick watched as Zahide threw out three small circles that landed on his shield, sliding down it and burning everything in their path.
“But you think it’s the blood.” Murtola swore. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” Nick said because being polite never hurt anyone, and he wasn’t about to burn a bridge he might need soon. Even with someone who thought he was a freak.
When Zahide called her circles back to her, he noted how she deactivated them. The pull of magic was clean, and it didn’t use more power than she’d already expended.
Then he lowered the shield. Without the blood spatter on the shield, the room looked even more like a product of Hollywood. Parker had maybe understated how bad it looked.
Murtola went first, balancing carefully and making it to safety before Nick started across. When his feet touched the blood-free hallway, Parker leapt through the crowd, running his hands over Nick’s face, down his clothes, searching for any hint of blood.
“I think I’m okay.” Nick grabbed Parker’s hands in his own. Parker’s fingers twitched, and Nick repeated, “I’m okay.”
“King, you think we should seal the room?” Zahide asked, eyeing the doorway critically.
“Yeah,” Nick agreed. “Something that also prevents any airflow. No telling how much of the blood was aerosolized.”
Parker’s eyes went wide. “The air-conditioning. You need to turn off the air-conditioning before it spreads through the whole building.”
Nick stared at him, then let his eyes go to the ceiling. He turned, but Tate was already on the radio demanding maintenance turn it off.
“Let’s do a layered shield. Sandwich style?” Zahide asked.
“Sure, no sense in being careless. First layer physical, second layer air, third layer everything else?” Nick took out his notebook and pen. It was heavy, the weight of it supposed to remind him of the cost of alchemy.
“I’ll do layers one and three,” Zahide said. “How did you do the shield spell inside? How much time did you have?”
“I managed it without drawing the circle,” Nick said, busying himself writing out the circle he’d need.
“You what?” Zahide asked, her tone rising just slightly at the end, the only sign that she was alarmed.
“You did a circle without drawing it?” Parker asked, eyes wide. He looked at Zahide, whose face was stormy.
“Let’s get the shield up,” she said shortly.
It took about ten minutes, and by the time they were done, they’d lost the captain to an official meeting with the highest-ranking officers in the building.
The other officers were being directed by a particularly assertive desk sergeant, and everyone not being sent to keep the building secure was told to shelter in place.
Zahide glared at Nick and snapped, “We’ll shelter over here.”
He followed in her wake, sheepishly knowing that he had a dressing-down coming, while Parker shouted, “Robin! You should join us!”
The defense attorney was on her cell phone, briefcase in her free hand, but she lifted her chin and followed them into an unused conference room. Avila jogged up behind, carrying an armful of coffees.
Zahide shut the door before snapping. “You created a circle mentally when your life was on the line?”
Only the slight emphasis on her words indicated the direction of her anger. Nick’s shoulders dropped, and he exhaled a soft breath.
Parker jerked forward. “Hey, Nick is really powerful. He wasn’t being careless—”
“Parker, it’s okay,” Nick said gently. He looked at Zahide. “I’ve been practicing. This wasn’t desperation.”
Zahide snorted. “Well, if you blow off your own arm, don’t come crying to me.”
She turned away, and Avila handed over a cup of coffee. “Anyone else? I grabbed it before parking enforcement could.”
With the cups passed out, Nick couldn’t help himself. He turned to the defense attorney. “How did it go?”
“He wants to know if I behaved myself,” Parker said, smirking when Nick glanced at him. “Otherwise, I don’t get a cookie.”
Nick shook his head but didn’t disagree. Robin Keating set her briefcase down.
“As you know, Mr. Ferro is my client, and I’m unable to discuss his case with anyone else. Even with the person paying me.” She raised her eyebrows, and Nick winced sheepishly.
“We can leave,” Avila said. She reached out and grabbed Zahide’s elbow.
Zahide resisted for a moment but eventually gave in, grumbling under her breath. When they left, Parker waved a hand.
“I give permission for you to share anything with Nick. Can I do that?” Parker asked. He looked between them. “It’s just with Nick, the cookies I get for behaving are really good, you know what I mean?”
He waggled his eyebrows, and Nick reached out, putting a hand on his shoulder. “Parker, she gets it.”
“He listened to me and did refuse to answer any questions that I thought were intended to give them evidence against him,” Keating said.
“It was a fishing expedition?” Nick said. “That was the feeling I got from Murtola. They don’t know who else could do this, so they’re looking for the easy person to pin it on.”
“And, hey, here I am, a paranormal who literally just walked into the crime scene.” Parker made a face. “Only now you walked onto the crime scene.”
Parker raised his eyebrows, and Nick winced. “It wasn’t intentional. I noticed that there were circles on the bones left behind. We went to go ask the crime scene tech if he had more pictures, and he exploded.”
“Kaboom,” Parker said. “Huh. Circles?”
“Yeah, I don’t know what kind. All I saw was a piece of them, but on the bones left behind, I saw anchor points.” Nick frowned.
“Mr. Ferro,” Keating said. “Do you know any alchemy?”
“I mean… know is a very strong word,” Parker hedged. “Can I recognize it? Yeah. If I had to do an alchemy spell on my own? Uh, well, one time I tried, and it kind of melted in my hand and didn’t do what I wanted.”
Keating’s mouth went flat. “Yes or no. When they ask you questions, you need to answer yes or no, no narrative explanations that give them more information than they already have!”
“You sound like Nick when we play…” Parker trailed off and swallowed. “No. I can’t perform alchemy.”
Keating’s expression cleared. “Alright, if they find more alchemy circles at this recent crime scene, we can argue that.”
“Yes,” Parker said, grinning cheekily when she narrowed her eyes at him. “What? I can follow directions!”
There was a knock on the door, and Zahide poked her head into the room. “King, they want you upstairs. You, too, Ferro.”
“I didn’t even do anything! I wasn’t even on this floor when it happened,” Parker moaned. “Why do I have to go to the principal’s office?”
Keating stood, grabbing her briefcase off the table. “Now, I can represent both of you until it becomes a conflict of interest between you. It will cost you.”
“You sound like a spirit I know,” Parker said, sighing. “Okay, let’s go find out if we have detention.”