2. Choices, choices.
TWO
Choices, choices.
I dragged myself out of bed at noon and spent an unreasonable amount of time glaring at the mangled ruins of McGee’s phone.
Even if there was data on it, there was no way I could access it without exposing someone to the gorgon dust inside.
Even after bathing it in the neutralizing solution, I worried someone would be petrified and possibly turned into a gorgon.
I had two choices: I could assume Magnus McGee had lied to me or I could take a walk on the wild side and perform some magic to learn the truth. Choices, choices.
Ah, hell. Hocus pocus it was. Until I got a new job, I needed something to do to fill the time.
I’d do another round of spraying to make certain all the gorgon dust was neutralized, too.
Thankfully, since I didn’t have any real friends, no one came to my apartment without good reason.
In a day or two, my place would be safe.
It’d take a lot longer than a day or two to get a reply from my job applications. It took me ten minutes to update my resume to reflect my work at Faery Fortunes and add a few lines to include my certifications. The hard part would be submitting to jobs, but I’d manage.
I always did.
After three frustrating hours, I gave up and decided to get my hands dirty. If McGee had a legitimate job hiding behind his stupid exploding cell phone booby trapped with gorgon dust, I’d find out. Either way, I’d make him pay for every last cut inflicted on me.
To hide my magic so my talents weren’t classified, I used rituals and spells to make it appear like I was a harmless practitioner.
Without tools, practitioners couldn’t work any magic, placing them firmly in the vanilla human category.
Given the right tools, enough determination, and time, they could accomplish just about anything.
Pretending I needed tools to tap into magic would keep me off the radar—mostly.
Ideally, no one would ever find out there was something more to my ability to find what others didn’t want found.
I really needed to sit down and have a chat with Magnus McGee about his exploding cell phone. Thanks to the wretched device, I’d have to do a lot of coverup work to stop anyone from realizing there was something more to me than I wanted them to see.
To make my special brand of hocus pocus work, I needed two components: a piece of paper and some ink.
Everything else I gathered, ranging from a big bag of marbles to a light bulb, served as props to trick anyone who might be watching.
A little caution never hurt anyone, and I never knew when the walls might grow eyes.
Magic worked in mysterious ways, and mine was a little more mysterious than most.
I wasn’t even sure how it worked. It just did.
Since the phone was the largest contamination risk, I’d put it in a plastic bag, which I set in front of me along with the paper and ink.
I scattered everything else around me in a haphazard circle in a mockery of a practitioner’s ritual.
Crossing my legs and resting my hands on my knees, I closed my eyes.
Maybe one day I’d figure out how my magic ticked and learn to control it so it wouldn’t find some way to bite me in the ass.
The first step was to concentrate on what I needed to know, but I often found the simple tasks were the most difficult.
I had too many questions. Had McGee wanted someone found, or was he just after some good old-fashioned revenge?
Then my thoughts wandered to the day Chief Quinn, easily one of the sexiest human beings alive, had barged into the coffee shop asking if I could help him find his wife.
The camera he’d given me should have tipped me off he knew his wife had been cheating on him.
Was the phone revenge for finding proof of Audrey McGee Quinn’s infidelity?
I reined in my thoughts and turned them back to McGee, the phone, and the possibility of revenge. Then I waited until a tingle swept through my body, the sole indicator my magic was working. I cracked open an eye and peeked at the page.
Ink splattered over most of the sheet, leaving behind enough white space to form a single word: yes.
How lovely. Why wasn’t I surprised? Yes was an easy enough answer to interpret. Revenge motivated McGee, and he had used the phone to get it—or tried to. Too bad for him I was immune to his stupid batch of dust.
Still, the single confirmation wasn’t enough. I needed to take it a step further. Discarding the soaked page, I grabbed another and plunked it down beside McGee’s phone. The more specific I got with my desires, the harder it was to get an answer I could use.
On a good day, my magic would seek out the truth and, using a single word, tell me what I needed to know.
It tired me, and without fail, there were consequence associated with using my talent.
Usually, the magic put me in the worst position possible, like witnessing Magnus McGee’s sister doing things I only fantasized about.
With her ex-husband.
I groaned and gave up all hope of concentrating on the problem without my mind diving into the gutter.
My magic sucked. Samuel Quinn, quite probably the man of my dreams, was back on the market, and thanks to cheating and using some hocus pocus to do him a favor, he hated me.
At least I didn’t care if the McGees hated me.
Well, maybe I did. A face full of gorgon dust and glass shards wasn’t my idea of a good time. Why the hell would anyone risk contamination to get revenge on me? Only an idiotic moron would do such a thing.
There were easier ways to kill or hurt someone.
I opened my eyes. The marbles rolled across the floor and lined up, heading straight towards my door. One by one, they halted in a new position, stretching from my side all the way across my living room.
Someone knocked at my door.
A chill ran through me, and I picked up the bag containing the contaminated phone. Ink splotches on the page drew my attention, and I sucked in a breath. Written in the clearest words I’d ever seen my magic produce were two words: not you.
Another knock at my door startled me to my feet; my heart drummed a frantic beat in my chest, echoing in my ears and throat. I was immune to gorgon dust. Some people knew. Most didn’t. Because most didn’t, whenever the police department needed my help, Chief Quinn came personally. He always did.
Oh no.
“Bailey?”
Panic jolted through me. Yep. Chief Quinn was at my door, and unless my guess was way off, Magnus McGee wanted revenge—on him, not on me. I was just a bonus. “Oh, shit. Oh, shit, shit, shit, shit.”
I hurried to the door and engaged the deadbolt. Until I could confirm I’d neutralized every last particle of gorgon dust, I couldn’t let anyone in. Even with my cleaning and spraying of the neutralizing solution, I had no way of knowing if I’d gotten it all.
If I opened the door, some might get out, and it only took a trace to petrify someone.
“Bailey? It’s me. Open up,” he ordered.
“I can’t. Seal the door, Chief Quinn.” If I had to lock myself in until they could napalm the place to prevent a gorgon outbreak, I would. Being napalmed fell really low on my bucket list of things to do before I died, but if I allowed anyone to be infected, I would never forgive myself.
“What? What’s going on?”
“Get someone to seal the door. Someone bombed my place with gorgon dust. Just go away, please. I have neutralizing solution here, I just need time to get it all.” There. If that didn’t send him a clear message, nothing would. “Please.”
A string of curses spewed out of the man’s mouth, so potent my toes curled. “You’re certain?”
“Of course I’m certain. I know gorgon dust when I see it. Don’t be insulting.”
“Who did it?”
I imagined him standing on the other side of the door, his arms crossed over his broad chest, and the muscles of his biceps flexed beneath his uniform.
Damn. I wished my door had a peep hole so I could get a good look at him before I either starved to death, decontaminated my apartment, or was napalmed by law enforcement to prevent an outbreak.
“Bailey? Who did it?”
There was no point in hiding it, but I sighed anyway. “Ma—”
The pressure of invisible hands around my throat cut off my breath. Thunder roared in my ears, and when the sound crested, someone turned out all the lights.
I woke to Chief Quinn barking orders. My door shuddered in its frame, lost its will to live, and thumped against my back, shoulders, and head. Ouch.
The universe obviously hated me and wanted me to die.
Before I could gather my wits to do something about getting smacked with my own door—and figure out which end was up—Chief Quinn gave another command. I really wished the man would shut up for once in his life. My door smacked into me so hard it cleaned my clock and shunted me aside. Double ouch.
Why couldn’t he follow simple instructions? ‘Seal the door’ did not mean ‘batter the damned thing down.’
A white shoe and leg stepped over me, and it took me a moment to comprehend someone wearing a hazmat suit had invaded my apartment. Oh. Hazmat suit. That’d work, too. I blinked and tried to piece together how I had ended up on the floor, but I couldn’t remember.
The person in the hazmat suit was either a part of the police containment team or a member of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
Either way, I was screwed. Plastic crinkled, and I heard the gentle hiss of the oxygen tank ensuring complete protection from any potential gorgon dust lingering in my apartment.
A gloved hand pressed something cold to my throat. I guessed it was a stethoscope of some sort. It could be a gun, too, something they’d whip out if I started petrifying people.
“Sluggish pulse, semi-conscious, sir. Looks like she collapsed in front of the door.”