Pure Blood_ A Nocturne City Novel - Caitlin Kittredge [14]
I reminded myself that she wasn’t insensitive, just dumb as a bag of hammers, and that thought helped me succeed in not killing her until I got to our exit just outside the city.
The dead junkie’s name had been Bryan Howard. The address listed on his DMV record was in the Bottomlands, the swampy former landfill west of downtown along the bay, where the city smoothed out to scrub trees and strip malls. Occasionally a sinkhole opened and swallowed one of the cheap wood-frame houses whole, and a sobbing welfare mother sued the city, and there was a scandal until a story that didn’t involve putting poor people on the evening news came along.
The Bottomlands reeked of tidal flats and that ever-present scent of decay that makes the air heavy and the people hopeless. Howard’s address led us to a shingled duplex rife with damp rot and a yard containing a rusty swing set and an abandoned doghouse. The porch light was shot out but in the dusk no one appeared to be home.
I picked my way between discarded plastic toys and stifled a chuckle when Shelby stumbled and cursed. Night vision came with the were package. I pulled the rusty storm door aside and pounded on the inner. “Police!”
“We shouldn’t be here,” Shelby told me, casting a look up and down the silent street.
“I couldn’t agree more. I’m going to have to burn these clothes when I get home.”
“No,” said Shelby urgently, pointing to a gang sign sprayed on a street-lamp pole. “We really shouldn’t be here.”
I pounded again. “Mrs. Howard? Anyone? Open the door!”
“Hex me,” Shelby muttered. I took another look at the gang sign and felt a familiar twist in the pit of my stomach. It wasn’t a gang tag, it was a sigil—a blood witch marker indicating ownership of the territory.
“Shit,” I muttered, too low for Shelby to catch. Shelby was a caster witch, their natural rival. The bloods would see her as an invader, badge or no.
“So how does a caster witch become a cop?” I asked her to take my mind off the fact that we might die horrible sacrificial deaths before the night was over.
Shelby looked at her feet and kicked a rusty toy fire engine away. “When she’s not a witch.”
I raised an eyebrow. “You didn’t get the blood?”
“No one in my family can figure it out,” she said. “My father practically disowned me—said it must be my mother’s fault.”
How well could I relate to that? The only were in a family of witches. The only child of the drunk father. The only woman in the academy.
“I can’t believe I just told you that,” Shelby muttered. “Forget it, okay? Suffice to say I don’t enjoy my family’s financial favor and I have to make my own way.”
Figuring it was a lost cause, I knocked on the door once more and then let the screen slap shut. “Why Vice? That’s a rough assignment for a woman.”
“Imbalances of power bother me,” said Shelby simply.
“Let’s go,” I said, and saw her shoulders relax. I hadn’t seen anyone else on the street, but she was really fearful. I could smell it rolling off her underneath her deodorant and perfume, like fumes of molten copper. I suppose if I had been raised in a family of witches I might be paranoid too, but with my grandmother, I was more afraid of the magick that she’d showed me existed than of what might be lurking out there in the unknown.
The door behind me swung open and Shelby jumped a mile. I turned fast, hand going inside my jacket to touch my gun.
The stringy-haired woman staring at us through the screen blinked once. “What do you want?”
“Are you Mrs. Howard?” I asked, flashing my shield at her. She looked at it for a few seconds and then back at my face.
“I called in.”
Shelby fidgeted next to me, casting looks back at the street every few heartbeats. I shot her a glare as I said, “Called who, ma’am?”
“Dirk Bukowski, my parole officer. He sent you, right? ‘Cause he said I didn’t call in?”
I didn’t know anything about Bukowski, but it didn’t surprise me that the dirty, skinny woman peering through the rusty door had a record. Her forearms were bruised with circular clusters from large-bore needles, and her fingers quivered