Dirty Magic

Book 1: Prospero's War

by Jaye Wells

Genres: Police Procedurals

Synopsis

The last thing patrol cop Kate Prospero expected to find on her nightly rounds was a werewolf covered in the blood of his latest victim. But then, she also didn't expect that shooting him would land her in the crosshairs of a Magic Enforcement Agency task force, who wants to know why she killed their lead snitch.

The more Prospero learns about the dangerous new potion the MEA is investigating, the more she's convinced that earning a spot on their task force is the career break she's been wanting. But getting the assignment proves much easier than solving the case. Especially once the investigation reveals their lead suspect is the man she walked away from ten years earlier-on the same day she swore she'd never use dirty magic again.

Kate Prospero's about to learn the hard way that crossing a wizard will always get you burned, and that when it comes to magic, you should never say never. "Kate Prospero is my new favorite heroine-imperfect, haunted, driven, and dangerous." (New York Times bestseller Kevin Hearne),
"Jaye Wells raises the urban fantasy bar with DIRTY MAGIC, a hard-boiled series debut as unique and surprising as the creatures and characters peopling it. Kate Prospero is charged with policing the Cauldron, a magical world so fully realized, and so gritty, it gets under your nails. Wells is known for deftly weaving non-stop action with no-holds barred humor, but the unique and deeply drawn relationships are the real alchemy here. DIRTY MAGIC showcases seasoned pro, Wells, at the top of her game, and establishes newcomer Kate Prospero as the urban fantasy heroine to beat." (New York Times Bestseller Vicki Pettersson)

Release date: January 21, 2014

Publisher: Orbit

Print pages: 416

Sample

It was just another fucked-up night in the Cauldron. Potion junkies huddled in shadowy corners with their ampoules and pipes and needles. The occasional flick of a lighter’s flame illuminated their dirty, desperate faces, and the air sizzled with the ozone scent of spent magic.

I considered stopping to harass them. Arrest them for loitering and possession of illegal arcane substances. But they’d just be back on the street in a couple of days or be replaced by other dirty, desperate faces looking to escape the Mundane world.

Besides, these hard cases weren’t my real targets. To make a dent, you had to go after the runners and stash boys, the potion cookers—the moneymen. The way I figured, better to hunt the vipers instead of the ’hood rats who craved the bite of their fangs. But for the last couple of weeks, the corner thugs had been laying low, staying off the streets after dark. My instincts were tingling, though, so I kept walking the beat, hoping to find a prize.

Near Canal Street, growls rolled out of a pitch-black alley. I stilled and listened with my hand on my hawthorn-wood nightstick. The sounds were like a feral dog protecting a particularly juicy bone. The hairs on the back of my neck prickled, and my nostrils twitched from the coppery bite of blood.

Approaching slowly, I removed the flashlight from my belt. The light illuminated about ten feet into the alley’s dark throat. On the nearest wall, a graffitied dragon marked the spot as the Sanguinarian Coven’s turf. But I already knew the east side of town belonged to the Sangs. That’s one of the reasons I’d requested it for patrol. I didn’t dare show my face on the Votary Coven’s west-side territory.

Something moved in the shadows, just outside of the light’s halo. A loud slurping sound. A wet moan.

“Babylon PD!” I called, taking a few cautious steps forward. The stink of blood intensified. “Come out with your hands up!”

The scuttling sound of feet against trash. Another growl, but no response to my order.

Three more steps expanded my field of vision. The light flared on the source of the horrible sounds and the unsettling scents.

A gaunt figure huddled over the prone form of a woman. Wet, stringy hair shielded her face, and every inch of her exposed skin glistened red with blood. My gun was in my hand faster than I could yell, “Freeze!”

Still partially in shadow, the attacker—male, judging from the size—swung around. I had the impression of glinty, yellow eyes and shaggy hair matted with blood.

“Step away with your hands up,” I commanded, my voice projected to make it a demand instead of a suggestion.

“Fuck you, bitch,” the male barked. And then he bolted.

“Shit!” I ran to the woman and felt for a pulse. I shouldn’t have been relieved not to find one, but it meant I was free to pursue the asshole who’d killed her.

My leg muscles burned and my heart raced. Through the radio on my shoulder I called Dispatch.

“Go ahead, Officer Prospero,” the dispatcher’s voice crackled through the radio.

“Be advised I need an ambulance sent to the alley off Canal and Elm. Interrupted a code twenty-seven. Victim had no pulse. I’m pursuing the perp on foot bearing east on Canal.”

“Ambulance is on its way. Backup unit will be there in five minutes. Keep us advised of your twenty.”

“Ten-four.” I took my finger off the comm button. “Shit, he’s fast.” I dug in, my air coming out in puffs of vapor in the cool night air.

He was definitely freaking—a strength or speed potion, probably. But that type of magic wouldn’t explain why he mauled that woman in the alley—or those yellow predator’s eyes. I tucked that away for the moment and focused on keeping up.

The perp loped through the maze of dark alleys and streets as if he knew the Cauldron well. But no one knew it better than I did, and I planned to be right behind him when he finally made a mistake.

As I ran, my lead cuffs clanked heavily against the wood of my nightstick. The rhythm matched the thumping beats of my heart and the air rasping from my lungs. I had a Glock at my side, but when perps are jacked up on potions, they’re almost unstoppable with Mundane weaponry unless you deliver a fatal shot. Killing him wasn’t my goal—I wanted the notch on my arrest stats.

“Stop or I’ll salt you!” I pulled the salt flare from my left side. The best way to incapacitate a hexhead was to use a little of the old sodium chloride.

A loud snarling grunt echoed back over his shoulder. He picked up the pace, but he wasn’t running blind. No, he was headed someplace specific.

“Prospero,” Dispatch called through the walkie. “Backup is on its way.”

“Copy. The vic?”

“Ambulance arrived and confirmed death. ME is on his way to make it official.”

I looked around to get my bearings. He veered right on Mercury Street. “The suspect appears to be headed for the Arteries,” I spoke into the communicator. “I’m pursuing.”

“Copy that, Officer Prospero. Be advised you are required to wait for backup before entering the tunnels.” She told me their coordinates.

I cursed under my breath. They were still five blocks away and on foot.

A block or so ahead I could see one of the boarded-up gates that led down into the old subway tunnels. The system had been abandoned fifty years earlier, before the project was anywhere close to completion. Now the tunnels served as a rabbit warren for potion addicts wanting to chase the black dragon in the rat-infested, shit-stench darkness.

In front of the gate, a large wooden sign announced the site as the FUTURE HOME OF THE CAULDRON COMMUNITY CENTER. Under those words was the logo for Volos Real Estate Development, which did nothing to improve my mood.

If Speedy made it through that gate, we’d never find him. The tunnels would swallow him in one gulp. My conscience suddenly sounded a lot like Captain Eldritch in my head: Don’t be an idiot, Kate. Wait for backup.

I hadn’t run halfway through the Cauldron only to lose the bastard to the darkness. But I knew better than to enter the tunnels alone. The captain had laid down that policy after a rookie ended up as rat food five years earlier. So I wasn’t going to follow him there, but I could still slow him down a little. Buy some time for backup to arrive.

The salt flare’s thick double barrel was preloaded with two rock-salt shells. A bite from one of those puppies was rarely lethal, but it was enough to dilute the effects of most potions, as well as cause enough pain to convince perps to lie down and play dead. The only catch was, you had to be within twenty feet for the salt to interrupt the magic. The closer, the better if you wanted the bonus of severe skin abrasions.

The runner was maybe fifteen feet from me and a mere ten from the gate that represented his freedom. Time to make the move. I stopped running and took aim.

Exhale. Squeeze. Boom!

Rock salt exploded from the gun in a starburst. Some of the rocks pinged off the gate’s boards and metal fittings. The rest embedded in the perp’s shirtless back like shrapnel. Small red pockmarks covered the dirty bare skin not covered with tufts of dark hair. He stumbled, but he didn’t stay down.

Instead, he leaped up the gate and his hands grasped the top edge. A narrow opening between the gate and the upper concrete stood between him and freedom.

“Shit!” Frustration and indecision made my muscles yearn for action. My only choice was to take him down.

Speedy already had his head and an arm through the opening at the top of the gate. I surged up and grabbed his ankles. Lifted my feet to help gravity do its job. We slammed to the ground and rolled all asses and elbows through the dirt and grass and broken potion vials.

The impact momentarily stunned us both. My arm stung where the glass shards had done their worst, but the pain barely registered through the heady rush of adrenaline.

Speedy exploded off the ground with a growl. I jumped after him, my grip tight on the salt flare. I still had one shell left, not that I expected it to do much good after seeing the first one had barely fazed him. In my other hand, I held a small canister of S&P spray. “BPD! You’re under arrest!”

The beast barely looked human. His hair was long and matted in some patches, which alternated with wide swaths of pink scalp—as if he’d been infected with mange. The lower half of his face was covered in a shaggy beard. The pale skin around his yellow eyes and mouth was red and raw. His teeth were crooked and sharp. Too large for his mouth to corral. Hairy shoulders almost touched his ears like a dog with his hackles up.

If he understood my command he didn’t show it. That intense yellow gaze focused on my right forearm where a large gash oozed blood. His too-red lips curled back into a snarl.

I aimed the canister of salt-and-pepper spray. The burning mixture of saline and capsicum hit him between the eyes. He blinked, sneezed. Wiped a casual hand across his face. No screaming. No red, watery eyes or swollen mucus glands.

His nostrils flared and he lowered his face to sniff the air closer to me. His yellow eyes stayed focused on my wound. An eager red tongue caressed those sharp teeth in anticipation.

For the first time, actual fear crept like ice tendrils up the back of my neck. What kind of fucked-up potion was this guy on?

I don’t remember removing the Glock from my belt. I don’t remember pointing it at the perp’s snarling face. But I remember shouting, “Stop or I’ll shoot!”

One second the world was still except for the pounding of my heart and the cold fear clawing my gut. The next, his wrecking-ball weight punched my body to the ground. My legs flew up and my back crashed into the metal gate. Hot breath escaped my panicked lungs. His body pinned me to the metal bars.

Acrid breath on my face. Body odor and unwashed skin everywhere. An erect penis pressed into my hip. But my attacker wasn’t interested in sex. He was aroused by something else altogether—blood. My blood.

My fear.

The next instant, his teeth clamped over the bleeding wound. Pain blasted up my arm like lightning. Sickening sucking sounds filled the night air. Fear burst like a blinding light in my brain. “Fuck!”

The perp pulled me toward the ground and pinned me. The impact knocked the weapon from my hand, but it only lay a couple feet away. I reached for it with my left hand. But fingers can stretch only so far no matter how much you yearn and curse and pray.

The pain was like needles stabbing my vein. My vision swam. If I didn’t stop him soon, I’d pass out. If that happened he’d drag me into those tunnels and no one would see me again.

Fortunately, elbows make excellent motivators. Especially when they’re rammed into soft temples. At least they usually are. In this case, my bloodthirsty opponent was too busy feasting on my flesh and blood to react. Finally, in a desperate move, I bucked my hips like a wild thing. He lost contact with my arm just long enough for me to roll a few centimeters closer to my target.

I reared up, grabbed the gun, and pivoted.

The pistol’s mouth kissed his cheek a split second before it removed his face.

Backup arrived thirty seconds too late.



I limped into the precinct a couple hours later. A huge white bandage glared from my right forearm and a black eye throbbed on my face. My blood-soaked uniform had been confiscated by the team that arrived shortly after my tardy backup to investigate the shooting. They’d also taken my service weapon, salt flare, S&P spray canister, and shoes. Which left me feeling naked despite the blue scrubs I’d been issued by the wizard medics.

After sewing up my arm in the back of an ambulance while I’d answered the shoot team’s questions, the wizard had slammed a syringe full of saline and antibiotics into my ass. The shoot team had waited until they’d gotten a good eyeful of my rear bumper before they declared me free to go. I knew better than to believe I wouldn’t be hearing from them again. Especially after they’d warned me to stay within Babylon city limits.

I’d just dropped by the precinct to grab my things before heading home. I’d called my neighbor, Baba, from the ambulance to let her know I’d be later than usual. She’d said it was no problem staying late to keep an eye on Danny. Luckily, she’d been too wrapped up in the show she’d been watching to question me about the reason for the overtime. If I were even luckier neither she nor my brother would notice the bandage on my arm when they saw me, but it would take a miracle to miss the black eye.

My feet felt like they were encased in lead boots instead of flip-flops as I made my way toward the locker room. I caught my reflection in the glass of one of the interrogation rooms and cringed. My one good eye looked unnaturally blue next to its swollen purple twin. I’d managed to get all the smears off my face, but my brunette hair was still matted in spots with Speedy’s blood. I needed a hot shower and a stiff drink—preferably at the same time. But first—

“Prospero, get your ass in here!” Captain Eldritch yelled from his doorway. The entire squad room went silent as cops paused to gape at the unfolding drama.

With a heavy sigh, I dropped my duffel bag at my desk and performed the walk of shame. My colleagues didn’t bother to cover their curious stares and smirks. For the next few hours, this scene would be replayed and analyzed around the watercooler along with the leaked details of the shooting. Cops were worse than housewives when it came to gossip.

“Sit down.” Stress lines permanently bracketed Eldritch’s mouth. His baldpate glowed dully under the harsh fluorescent lights. The desk hid a paunch that betrayed a lifelong love affair with fried dough, but one would be unwise to mistake his generous midsection for a sign of weakness. He’d maneuvered his way up from patrolman to captain in a criminal justice system rife with political intrigue and bureaucratic red tape. For his efforts, he was rumored to be next in line for chief of the entire BPD. In other words, he was not a man to piss off.

“I won’t bother asking if you’re all right because I can see you are. Instead, I’ll begin by asking what the fuck you thought you were doing?”

“Sir, I—”

He slashed a hand through the air. “Don’t bother. You weren’t thinking. Not a damned thing. That’s the only explanation that makes any sense. Because I know you were trained better than to enter a dangerous confrontation with a hexed-out suspect without backup.”

“If I’d waited for backup that bastard would be running free through the Arteries.”

“Thanks to you he’s not going to be running anywhere ever again.”

I leaned forward, my hands up in a pleading gesture. “It was a clean kill, sir.” If you could call blowing someone’s face off “clean.”

He sat back and crossed his arms over his gut. He hit me with his best cop glare—the same one I used on suspects until they broke under the oppressive weight of silence. But I wasn’t a criminal—not anymore, anyway—and I knew I’d done the right thing. In fact, if I had to do it over again I would have made the same call.

“Even if I’d waited for backup the outcome would have been the same.” I looked right in his eyes. “He was immune to every defensive charm I tried. There was no stopping him without lethal force.”

The captain scrubbed a hand over his face and sat up. His chair creaked in protest. “Christ, Prospero. Damned if I wouldn’t have done the same thing.” I opened my mouth to ask why I was getting the riot act if that was the case, but he held up a hand to stall my arguments. “Be that as it may, since this case involved deadly force, the rules dictate that I put you on suspension pending an investigation of the incident.”

My mouth dropped open. “But—”

“There’s not a damned thing I can do about it, so don’t waste your breath. We got bigger issues to discuss.”

I shook my head at him. Forcing a cop to take leave after the use of deadly force was standard procedure, but I wasn’t about to sit on the sidelines with a new lethal potion on the streets. Still, the look in his eyes told me arguing would only prolong the suspension.

“The ME identified your perp.” The lightning-fast change in topic nearly gave me whiplash.

“And?” I frowned.

“His name was Ferris Harkins.” The female voice surprised me from the doorway.

I swiveled to see a tall woman in a smart navy pantsuit. Her brown hair was cut in a no-nonsense bob. The lines between her brows told me they were used to frowning, and the steel in her gaze hinted at a razor-blade tongue. She wore her watch on her right wrist and her briefcase was clutched in that same hand. Whoever she was, she was definitely a Lefty—just like me.

I glanced back at Eldritch. He didn’t look surprised by the new arrival so much as resigned to it. He pasted his best politician smile on his lips and rose to shake her hand. “I was about to inform Officer Prospero of your interest in the case.”

“That’s a diplomatic way to phrase it, Captain.” She turned to me. “Special Agent Miranda Gardner.”

I frowned at her. “Which agency?”

She smiled tightly. “MEA.”

Something heavy bounced off the base of my stomach. If the Magic Enforcement Agency was involved, things were about to get… complicated.

After a moment’s hesitation, I rose and offered her my left hand. I usually offered my right to Mundanes to avoid awkwardness, but she offered me her left, which confirmed she was an Adept.

Her handclasp was brief but firm enough to tell me she meant business. When I looked down at our hands, I noticed a cabochon ring on her middle finger.

“Nice ring,” I said. “Tigereye?”

She nodded and pulled her hand away. “The stone of truth and logic.”

And she wore it on her Saturn finger—the finger of responsibility and security—which meant she wanted a boost in those areas. Interesting.

She tipped her chin at my wrist. “And your tattoo—Ouroboros?”

I placed my right hand over my wrist, as if the snake might jump off my skin otherwise. “A youthful transgression,” I said in a flippant tone that disguised the massive understatement it really was.

Eldritch cleared his throat. I looked up to see Gardner watching me with a too-wise gaze. Either she already knew the snake swallowing its own tail was the emblem of the Votary Coven or she merely smelled the lie on me. Time to change the subject.

“Why is the MEA interested in Ferris Harkins?” I glanced at Eldritch, but he looked away.

“What your captain was about to tell you before I interrupted,” Gardner said, “is that the man you killed tonight was an MEA informant.”

I closed my eyes. “Fuck. Me.”

“Funny, that’s exactly what I said when his name popped up on ACD two hours ago as deceased.”

ACD stood for the Arcane Crime Database, a federal clearinghouse of all magic-related criminal activity in the country. Actually, that’s not entirely true. ACD just kept track of the illegal dirty magic. The corporate labs that produced legal, “clean” magical products, aka Big Magic, bought their legitimacy through lobbyist bribes and the generous tax revenue they generated for Uncle Sam.

I opened my eyes. “Were you aware when you recruited him that he was a hexhead with a hard-on for murder?”

“He wasn’t a hexhead when we recruited him.” She handed over a picture of a male. Mid-twenties, scruffy with a hardness to his gaze that hinted at life on the street, but no noticeable signs of magic use—dilated pupils, scabs, etc. A far cry from the gaunt, savage creature I’d killed. A scribbled date at the bottom told me the picture had been taken a week earlier.

“Are you sure we’re talking about the same guy?”

“Positive. I’ve just come from IDing the body.”

Usually potions took several months—sometimes years—of heavy use to transform normal people into freaks and monsters. “You expect me to believe a potion turned this guy”—I held up the picture—“into the beast I shot in less than a week?”

She removed her cell from her briefcase and flashed another picture. This one was taken at the morgue. There wasn’t enough face left to compare so it was impossible to use that to verify whether the identity matched the first shot. But then Gardner tapped the image to indicate a tattoo of a skull with the words Et in Arcadia ego underneath on the dead man’s left wrist.

Frowning, I lifted the old picture again. Sure enough, the same tattoo was on Ferris Harkins’s “before” picture. “The tattoo’s the same. But that’s hardly conclusive.”

“True. However, as you’ll see in the file, the identity was also confirmed through fingerprints.”

I blew out a deep sigh. “Okay, so how did this guy”—I held up the first shot—“end up like this?” I held up a screen shot from the file that had been taken from my vest cam. In it Harkins looked like something from hell: a wild-eyed hellhound with bloodstained teeth.

“Four days ago, we sent Harkins to do a buy,” explained Gardner. “He was supposed to meet up with one of my agents an hour later but never showed. We’ve been looking for him since. At first we figured he ran off with the buy money, but then this.” She motioned vaguely at me as if I was the this in question.

My mouth fell open. “You gave a CI cash and then set him loose in the Cauldron? What the fuck did you think was going to happen?”

“Prospero,” Eldritch warned.

“Sorry,” I grumbled. “But what was the MEA doing setting up a buy in the Cauldron to begin with? And why didn’t we know about it?”

“Forgive me, Officer,” Gardner said, laughing. “I wasn’t aware the federal government had to ask your permission to run investigations in Babylon.”

I crossed my arms and sucked at my teeth to prevent more expletives from escaping. Eldritch wouldn’t meet my eyes at all—so much for support from that quarter.

“Your actions tonight have complicated the shit out of my case,” Gardner continued.

“Seems like you complicated it yourself when you lost your snitch, Special Agent.”

Her eyes narrowed, but she didn’t rise to the bait. “A few weeks ago, one of our agents working undercover in Canada reported that an illegal shipment of antimony was being sent to Babylon.”

Antimony is a common metalloid used in everything from cosmetics to the treatment of constipation to the manufacturing of ceramics. Gardner’s mention of a shipment was notable, however, because the element was also used in a lot of potions. In fact, it was so commonly used in alchemy that the government had started regulating its sale a decade earlier to try to limit street wizes’ access to it.

“I don’t suppose they gave you a delivery address?” I asked in a dry tone.

Gardner’s lips pressed together. Guess she wasn’t a fan of sarcasm. “No, but we got our team in place shortly after and have been watching things since. About a week ago, Captain Eldritch called to tell us there had been a couple of unusual assaults.”

“Nothing like what happened tonight, but pretty violent,” Eldritch said. “The victims had each been bitten multiple times.”

“Why didn’t you put it in the debriefing reports?” I demanded.

His face hardened at my challenge. “I didn’t want to alarm anyone unnecessarily.”

I swallowed my retort. If I had to bet, Eldritch hadn’t made the report official because then his precinct would have gotten some unwanted attention from the chief and the mayor, who was up for reelection. “So you told the MEA instead?”

“Ever since Abraxas went to Crowley, the MEA has been keeping an eye on Babylon,” Eldritch offered, “waiting to see who would step up to fill the power vacuum.”

I snorted. “No one would be dumb enough to do that while Uncle Abe’s still alive.” As I spoke I kept a careful eye on Gardner to see her reaction to my casually claiming Abraxas Prospero as kin. She didn’t even blink, which meant she’d known who I was before she walked into that room. Part of me was relieved not to have to explain the connection or how I’d walked away from Uncle Abe and his coven a decade earlier. In fact, the last time I’d seen him was when I watched his trial on TV with the rest of the city. During the testimony, he’d smiled at the camera like he’d been savoring a juicy secret. I shivered, shaking off the memory.

“So you figure whoever ordered that antimony is trying at least to consolidate the Votaries.” I crossed my arms and tried to sort through all the angles.

Votary is another name for wizards who specialize in an alchemical form of dirty magic. In the dirty magic food chain, Votaries are at the top, followed by the Os, who specialize in sex magic, and the Sanguinarians, who deal in dirty blood potions.

“That’s one of our theories.” Gardner was watching me carefully now that she knew I had criminal blood in my veins.

It had been five years since Abe earned his all-expenses-paid trip to Crowley Penitentiary. Before his downfall, he’d been the grand wizard of the Votary Coven and the godfather who’d kept all the other covens in line. Once he was behind bars, no one had the balls to come forward and declare themselves the new kings of the Cauldron, so the covens splintered, which resulted in lots of turf battles. If Eldritch and Gardner were right about someone’s trying to make a power play, we were looking at a lot more dead bodies piling up before this was all said and done. But that was a pretty huge if.

“Antimony has lots of uses besides alchemy, Special Agent.”

She crossed her arms and smirked at me. “That’s true, I suppose. But we’ve checked the official shipment manifests of every freighter that’s come into Babylon in the last month. No shipments of antimony showed up. That means whoever received it was trying to keep it off the record.”

“Look, even if you’re right and the antimony was used in the potion Harkins was on,” I countered, “it doesn’t mean we’re looking at consolidation of power. It could just be a new wiz who wants to make his mark.”

“You could be right.” She nodded. “That’s one of the reasons we sent Harkins to make a buy. We were hoping that once we knew who was dealing the potion we could convince them to flip on the distributor.”

“But he got hooked before he could report back to you,” I said.

She nodded.

“What’s the potion called?”

Gardner exchanged a tense glance with Eldritch, who’d remained tellingly silent during the exchange. No doubt about it. Special Agent Gardner was in charge. “The street name is Gray Wolf.”

“Clever,” I said.

“Why?” Eldritch asked. He’d worked the Arcane beat for years, but he was still a Mundane. Sometimes the intricacies of the craft eluded him.

“The gray wolf is the alchemical symbol for antimony,” Gardner explained.

“Shit,” I said. “If this stuff takes off, we’re toast.” From what I’d seen, Gray Wolf created both immunity to defensive magic and a ravenous craving for human flesh. Plus it acted incredibly fast on the user’s body chemistry.

“And now that Harkins is dead, we’re back at square one,” Gardner said.

My stomach dipped. I didn’t regret killing Harkins, but I was sorry my actions made getting the potion off the streets more difficult. “How can I help?”

“Nothing beyond a detailed report on your altercation with Harkins. Maybe you saw something we can use.”

I nodded absently. “You mentioned that you thought Gray Wolf was alchemical. Does that mean you had a wizard analyze the ingredients?”

“Yes, off a blood sample we gathered at one of the crime scenes. But our team’s wizard has only had a chance to do preliminary tests.”

I chewed on my lip. I’d love to get my hands on that sample to figure out what made Harkins change so quickly. A new thought arrived hot on the heels of that one. “Wait, do you have any BPD officers on your task force?”

Since the 1980s, the MEA had been partnering with local police agencies by bringing local cops in on cases. It benefited the agency because it got access to locals who understood the dynamics of their cities, and the cops benefited because the MEA paid generous overtime. In other words, if they were hiring, I wanted in.

Gardner frowned at the change of subject. Then she exchanged a glance with Eldritch.

“I’m putting together a list of candidates,” he said, not meeting my eyes. Translation: I wasn’t on it.

“Look, I know you don’t know me from Adam,” I said. “But I’d love a chance to consult on this case.”

Her eyebrows rose at my audacity. When she didn’t laugh, I forged ahead.

“I was the last one to see Harkins alive”—I counted the reasons off on my fingers—“I grew up in the Cauldron, and, as we’ve already covered, I was raised in the Votary Coven.”

She glanced at Eldritch, who suddenly looked very uncomfortable. “Officer Prospero, I wouldn’t need extra bodies on my team at all if you hadn’t killed my star CI tonight.”

I snapped my mouth shut.

“She’s right, though,” Eldritch said, shocking the hell out of me. “She knows these streets. Plus, when you asked for that list you said you wanted Adepts. There are only a handful on the force.” Usually Adepts in law enforcement went the CSI route because of the lab work.

Gardner raised a brow. “So why wasn’t she on the list already?”

Eldritch glanced at me with an exp