“Can’t I do it here?”
He shook his head. “It needs to be a formal statement on the record. We have enough to hold the prisoners we took, but to put them away, we need your testimony as the victim of their crimes.”
“And as soon as they heal and bond out, I’ll have to deal with them again.”
I was attracting entirely too much attention from Blair and the police. Sooner or later, he or someone he worked with would decide to check on my background and find out I didn’t have one. Other than abruptly disappearing while in middle school, then abruptly reappearing to file for a passport five years later, I didn’t exist. I could come up with a story about living in a cult or a hippie commune, but putting together an air-tight background would take some time and careful thought.
Then there was the possibility, slim I thought, that I had left a fingerprint or DNA sample at one of the murders I committed for the Illuminati. I hoped there wasn’t any evidence in anyone’s database tying me to a crime, but I couldn’t be completely sure. I was trained not to make assumptions. “The wrong assumption will get you killed,” Master Robyn had said more than once. “If it’s not a verifiable fact, you can’t rely on it.”
I went back to Sam’s office and spoke to him, and he encouraged me to cooperate with the police. With a sigh, I went back to the bar.
“All right. When?” I asked Blair.
“Tomorrow? Set a time and I’ll make the arrangements.” He handed me his card. I looked at the address and had no idea where it was but figured I could use my map to find a bus route to take me there.
“Do you like working here?” Blair asked, taking me by surprise.
“Yeah, I do. The people are nice and Sam’s a good boss. Some people say they care about their employees, but how many people would do what he did for me last night?” I shrugged. “There are always assholes you have to put up with working in a bar, but this place is better than most.” Hell, it was my dream job. I had expected to end up working as a hotel maid cleaning toilets or something.
“Where did you go to school?” That was a question I didn’t expect.
“Nowhere.”
He looked surprised. “You never went to college?”
I laughed. “I never graduated from high school. I’m a dropout, Lieutenant.” I certainly wasn’t going to tell him about the education I had received. He wouldn’t have believed it anyway. “Why?”
Blair shrugged. “I’m always looking for good people that can help me out.”
A job? “Do the police hire high school dropouts?”
He shook his head and stared down at his coffee cut. “No, we don’t.” Looking up at me, he said, “I do contract consulting services from people in the paranormal community, though. If you’d like to make some extra money.”
I laughed again. “We’re a community?” I immediately thought about how nice it would be to have a chair for my apartment. “Extra money is always nice. What kind of consulting do you think I could do?”
“It depends on what your talents are.”
“Oh.” I took an involuntary step back. Telling Blair, or anyone else, about my abilities wasn’t something I was prepared to do—then or anytime in the far foreseeable future. ‘Yes, Lieutenant, I’m a trained assassin, seductress, and fighter.’ That would go over well. All my training involved either attack or defense or spying. I wasn’t even sure how marketable any of them would be for any organization except maybe the CIA or another shadowy secret cult such as the Illuminati. And that wasn’t something I ever wanted to get involved with again, to be a pawn for powerful men seeking to gather more power and wealth. I couldn’t imagine ever trusting anyone playing such games.
“I don’t think I have anything useful,” I said. “Not like those guys with Lost and Found, or one of the seers.”
“Why don’t you tell me what you can do and let me figure it out,” he said.
I took a deep breath. “Do you know the difference between a witch and a mage?”
“Not…really.”
“A witch pulls on energy from the world around her and uses some sort of ritual or spell to twist reality. Some may pull their energy from the earth or plants or animals, or even from something like an electrical line. They study and experiment and learn how to use that energy to cast their spells. With me so far?”
“Yeah. I think so.”
“Okay. There are other energy sources that run throughout the earth called ley lines, and that is where mages get their power. Depending on how far a mage is from a line, and how powerful the line is, determines how much power he can pull from the line and use. Think of them like rivers and streams of raw magic of varying sizes. Mages tend to have an affinity for a particular type of magic. A mage twists ley energy into a physical manifestation. Like last night with the fireballs and lightning bolts. We call that pyromancy and electrokinesis.”
“Got it.”
“I can’t do any of that. I’m what’s called a ley line mage. All I can do is pull ley line energy and redirect it. I don’t convert it.”
His face showed his confusion as he tried to figure out what I was saying. “I’m not sure I understand.”
“I know.” I wasn’t about to explain all the ways I was able to twist and manipulate ley line energy, but I would probably be of more use to a construction or mining company than to the police.
A customer came up to the bar, and I moved away to take his order.
The City of the Illuminati sat on the intersection of two very powerful ley lines. That was the energy Strickland used to destroy the City of the Illuminati, using the crystal as a focus. My new home of Westport sat between two powerful ley lines that intersected east of the city. That was one of the things that drew me there, and that accounted for the large number of paranormals who gathered in that area. A minor ley line ran beneath Rosie’s and on toward the port, directly under my apartment complex as well. I didn’t have to ask why Eleanor built the apartments where she did.
Blair eventually ordered dinner, and when he paid his tab, he asked, “So, you’ll come by tomorrow?”
“Yeah. One o’clock okay?”
“That will work.”
Later that evening, the three mouseketeers came in and took a table near the pool tables. Jenny took their order and came to the bar.
“I’ll take care of them,” I told her. “I want to thank them for last night.”
She smiled and nodded, then headed back to the kitchen.
I took their drinks out to them and said, “On me, and thanks for last night.”
Josh looked almost shocked, the other two showed mild surprise.
“You’re more than welcome,” Trevor said, raising his glass to me. “It was fun.”
I raised an eyebrow. “You have a strange definition of fun,” I said, and he grinned.
“Yeah, not a problem. Thanks for the drink,” Josh said.
Jolene smiled. “I just watched. I let the boys do all the flashy stuff. But it didn’t look as though you needed much help.”
I smiled back at her. “Maybe, but I’m not super woman, and there were a lot of them.”
“You should have taken a weapon,” Josh said, motioning to the tray I held.
I laughed and went back behind the bar.
The following day, I took the bus downtown, and it dropped me off right at the police station. But that wasn’t the address on Blair’s business card. After asking a policeman, I walked three blocks to the District Court building. I couldn’t find anything about the PCU on the building directory, but I remembered Sam telling me that Blair reported to the District Attorney, so I went to that office.
“I’m a little lost,” I told the receptionist. “I’m looking for Lieutenant Blair.”
“Oh, yes. Go out to the corridor, take a right, and then take the back stairs down to the basement. When you get there, walk down the corridor, then take the second corridor to the right. His office is about halfway down, just before you get to the bathrooms.”
So, that’s what I did. The basement was dingy, and about half-lighted. When I finally found an office that said, “P. Crimes” painted on the glass of the door, I was next to the restrooms, and beyond them were two large metal doors spanning the breadth of the hallway with a sign that said, “Loading Dock.” Obviously, Blair hung out in the high-rent district.
I tried the door, but it was locked, so I pushed what looked to be a doorbell. Then waited. After a while, I pushed the button again. As I started to turn away, a voice from a speaker next to the button said, “Yes?”
“I have an appointment with Lieutenant Blair.”
“Your name?”
“Erin McLane.”
“Just a moment.”
I stood there for another few minutes, then a buzz came from the door. When I tried the handle again, the door swung open.
Inside, the office was better lit than the hallway, but still as dingy. A woman in her thirties with orange hair stood behind a counter, and beyond her, I saw a number of cubicles.
“Come with me, please,” the woman said, and without looking back took off down a narrow hallway. I followed her past the cubicles on one side and several doors on the other side until we reached a door at the end.
“Go on in,” she said, turning around and going back in the direction we came from.
I turned the knob and walked into the office beyond. Blair had his jacket off and sat behind a desk piled high with precarious-looking stacks of paper and manila folders.
He glanced up, and said, “Please sit down, Ms. McLane. I’ll be with you in just a minute.”
I sat for five minutes while he typed on the computer and then, finally, pushed the keyboard away.
“Sorry to keep you waiting.” He stood, walked around the desk, and opened the door. “We’ll be doing this in one of the interview rooms.”