Unsympathetic Magic - Laura Resnick [10]
I started trying to wave down a car, hoping I could convince someone to stop and let me use their phone. But the cars on Lexington just kept careening past me. I was terrified that Darius would die from his wound before I got help for him, or that those vicious gargoyles would return to attack him as he lay on the sidewalk, alone and helpless. Frustrated, confused, and panicking at the prospect of Darius dying because of my failure to summon help, I waded out into traffic, boldly—or quite stupidly—trying to force cars to stop if they didn’t want to be responsible for running me over.
Only later did two important things occur to me.
The first was that, considering my costume that night—which I had by then completely forgotten about—my behavior was bound to be drastically misinterpreted.
Indeed, it didn’t take long for two cops in a squad car to find me. Given the way I looked, my misunderstood aggression toward the passing strangers whom I stopped, my lack of ID, the crazed things I was babbling, and the fact that, in my frustration, I struggled physically with one of the cops, the results were probably predictable: They cuffed me, arrested me, and tossed me into the squad car.
The second important thing that finally occurred to me, as I was being taken to the Twenty-fifth Precinct to be processed and locked up, was that despite the gruesome severity of Darius’ injury, there had been no blood at all.
3
I was leaning against the cool bars of my jail cell in the Twenty-fifth Precinct, exhausted, angry, crazed with worry, and also plagued by a vague feeling that I should start singing the blues . . . when Detective Connor Lopez entered the detention area.
He flashed his gold shield at the female cop on duty, introduced himself, and said he’d like to talk to me. She grinned and said they’d all been looking forward to his arrival. Then she announced she was taking a coffee break and tactfully left us alone. (Well, “alone” unless you count my only cell mate, who seemed to be sleeping off quite a bender.)
Lopez looked roughly the way you’d expect a guy to look after being hauled out of bed by an urgent summons in the middle of the night. His straight black hair was rumpled, he needed a shave, and there were circles under his blue eyes. He had evidently dressed in a hurry, just grabbing the first items at hand when he’d staggered out of bed: cut-offs, a faded SUNY T-shirt, and flip-flops. Oddly, the overall effect of his untidy fatigue made him look younger than his thirty-one years, more like a grad student during exam week than a police officer dragged from his bed to bust me out of stir.
He’d inherited exotic good looks from his Cuban immigrant father and clear blue eyes from his Irish-American mother. I noticed that his golden olive skin was darker than usual. Maybe he’d spent some time out at the beach this summer, or maybe he’d been helping his parents with yard work at their home in Nyack, just north of the city and across the Hudson River. Or perhaps he had taken a vacation since the last time I’d seen him. Which had been in May. When he had told me he couldn’t date me anymore.
My relationship with Lopez, though short- lived and unconsummated, was complicated. So I had been extremely reluctant to ask him to come to my rescue tonight. By the time I had decided to do it, I was out of other feasible options.
Besides, he had said that if I ever needed his help, I should call him.
And this was certainly an occasion when I needed his help.
Lopez’s thick- lashed gaze traveled over me now, taking in the black high- heeled boots, purple fishnet stockings, and embarrassingly short vinyl skirt. When he got to my tight, leopard-patterned top, he lingered on my well-exposed cleavage, which looked noticeably more impressive than usual;