Micah - Laurell K. Hamilton [40]
I turned back to Micah. “Your turn.”
I saw the tension in Micah’s shoulders ease. He released my wrist, and I let the machete point at the ground. He smiled. “Which arm do you want?”
I smiled and shook my head. “You’re right-handed, so left. Always better to use the nondominant hand for it.”
I looked back at Fox. “If you could hold the jackets for Micah?”
Fox took them from him without a word. A very cooperative man, especially for FBI. They tended to argue, or at least question more. Micah took off his own suit jacket and laid it on top of the growing pile in Fox’s arms.
Micah’s shirt had French cuffs, which meant he had to undo a cuff link before he could roll up his left sleeve. He put the cuff link in his pant’s pocket.
“What are you doing, Marshal Blake?” the judge asked.
“I’m going to use Mr. Callahan’s blood to walk the circle.”
“Use his blood?” This was from Beck, the court reporter, and her voice was several octaves higher than when she’d said hello.
The judge looked at her as if she’d done something unforgivable. She apologized to him, but her fingers never stopped typing on her little machine. I think she’d actually taken down her own surprised comment.
I wondered if the dirty look from the judge got recorded, or if only out-loud sounds counted.
“My understanding is that if you were going to use the chicken, you would behead it,” the judge said in his deep courtroom voice.
“That’s right.”
“I assume you aren’t going to behead Mr. Callahan.” He made it sort of light, almost joking, but I think that his prejudice was showing. I mean, if you’ll raise the dead, what other evil are you capable of? Maybe even human sacrifice?
I didn’t take it personally. He’d been polite about it; maybe I was just being overly sensitive. “I’ll make a small cut on his arm, smear the blade with the blood, and walk the circle. I may have him walk beside me, so I can renew the blood from the wound as we move around the circle, but that’s all.”
The judge smiled. “I thought we should be clear, Marshal.”
“Clear is good, your honor.” I left it at that. The nights when I would have gotten insulted because people hinted that all animators did human sacrifice were past. People were afraid of what I did. It made them believe the worst. The price of doing business was that people thought you did awful, immoral things.
I’d cut other people before, used their blood to help me or combine with mine, but I’d never held their hand while I did it. I stood on Micah’s left side and interlaced the fingers of our left hands together so that our palms touched. I stretched his arm out and laid the blade’s edge against the smooth, untouched skin of his arm.
The underside of my left arm looked like Dr. Frankenstein had been at me. Micah’s was smooth and perfect, untouched. I didn’t want to change that.
“I’ll heal,” he said softly. “It’s not silver.”
He was right, but . . . I simply did not want to hurt him.
“Is there a problem, Marshal?” the judge asked.
“No,” I said, “no problem.”
“Then can we move things along? It’s not getting any warmer out here.”
I turned to look at him. He was huddled in his long coat. I glanced down at my own bare arms, not even a goose bump in sight. I gazed up at Micah, in his shirtsleeves. Being a shapeshifter, he wasn’t really a good judge of how cold it was, or how warm. I took a moment to glance at everybody. Most of them were buttoned up, some with hands in pockets like the judge. There were only three people who had their coats open, and, even as I watched, Fox began to shrug out of his own trench coat. The other two people were Salvia and Franklin. Franklin I’d expected, but not Salvia. If he was that sensitive, it could explain his fear. Nothing like a little psychic ability to make you not want to be around a major ritual. I might raise the dead on a regular basis, but magically it’s a big deal to breathe life into the dead. Even temporarily.
“Marshal Blake,” the judge said, “I’ll ask one more time. Is there a problem?”
I settled my gaze back on him. “You want