Unsympathetic Magic - Laura Resnick [19]
Given the various strange problems that had beset our short-lived relationship, Lopez was so often exasperated with me that I sometimes forget that patience was actually one of his virtues. He was obviously convinced there was nothing here to find, but nonetheless willing to poke around the dark street as long as it would take for me to feel more comfortable with the bizarre images that the night’s events had inflicted on me.
And considering how rattled I still was, I appreciated his calming presence.
Lopez and I had first met when he was a precinct detective handling a missing persons case; Golly Gee, a surgically-enhanced, D-list pop star had vanished in the middle of an off-Broadway musical that I was in.
During those events, I had also met Dr. Maximillian Zadok for the first time. Max was Manhattan’s resident mage and local representative of the Magnum Collegium—a secret, worldwide organization dedicated to fighting Evil. (Yes, Evil.)
The circumstances of Golly Gee’s disappearance were deeply weird—and the ultimate explanation for her disappearance even weirder. Eventually, Max saved half a dozen lives—including mine—by defeating the demented sorcerer who was causing a series of supernatural disappearances throughout New York City.
As one might suppose, those events drastically altered my previously mundane worldview.
Lopez, however, thought Max’s theories about the case were crazy. He also thought that I was crazy—or at least alarmingly gullible—for believing those theories.
A lot had happened since then (such as Max and I subsequently getting involved in a series of supernatural mob slayings in Little Italy shortly after Lopez was transferred to the Organized Crime Control Bureau), but one thing remained constant: Lopez thought that Max was dangerous—especially to me—and that I might be insane.
This had put quite a damper on our abortive attempt to have a relationship.
Meanwhile, when I say that Max “defeated” the sorcerer who had tried to make me, Golly Gee, and a number of other performers vanish in a permanent and fatal way, I mean that Max killed him. And I helped.
This was something that I was perpetually anxious to keep secret from Lopez.
In fact, what Max had done to Hieronymus, the demented sorcerer (and, incidentally, Max’s apprentice), was actually “dissolution,” not murder; but since Hieronymus’ life was over, either way, I tended to view that distinction as being theoretical rather than—oh, for example—legal.
There was also no denying that, while more recently trying to avert a mystically-manipulated mob war in Little Italy, I had said and done some very strange things. In context, those things made perfect sense—that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. But since Lopez didn’t accept the context, he simply thought Max and I were . . . well, lunatics.
So, all things considered, it was pretty nice of him to humor me tonight—after I had dragged him out of bed, embarrassed him with other cops, and told him such a bizarre tale—by searching a darkened street in Harlem in the middle of the night for a body or some other evidence that he was certain didn’t exist.
Despite the haunting images in my mind, I was also starting to doubt there was anything to find. I was just beginning to entertain the idea of telling Lopez I was ready to quit when I rounded the bumper of a car and startled a small flock of birds that were gathered near the vehicle’s curbside front wheel. I flinched and made a sound halfway between a gasp and a shriek as they cawed and flew away in a noisy flutter of black wings that gleamed darkly under the streetlights.
Lopez quickly rounded the other end of the car to see what had frightened me. “What it is?”
“Nothing.” I put a hand over my pounding heart as I looked down at the spot the birds had just vacated. Feeling silly, I added, “Some birds. Crows, I think. They were eating something.”
Lopez was standing