Page 52 of Goblins Don't Count
“That does narrow down our suspect list.”
“You really think one of the custodians killed him? They couldn’t get into his office, either. It was locked from the inside.”
“Hm. That does make the case quite tricky.”
I wriggled around until I was facing him, pulling back my face mask so I could see his face, still lit by the faint light from his palm. His mask was open so I could see his glimmering golden eyes. “I guess we’re done here.”
“The end to our date has come so soon? I suppose the day has been long enough.”
I hesitated and then leaned into him, tilting my head like I was going to kiss him. Because I was going to kiss him. That’s how you ended a date, and I was feeling like I could definitely use a distraction from this futile operation.
He leaned back the moment before my lips touched his.
“Good-night kisses are how you’re supposed to end dates,” I said defensively. He hadn’t minded kissing me when he was dress-drunk, but sober was another story. How humiliating.
He nodded then pressed against me, pinning me against the wall while his own head was against the stone above my shoulder. “Do you hear that?” he whispered. Oh. He was hearing something. That’s why he was so close to me, not because he wanted to be close to me.
“I can’t hear anything.” Other than my pride being smashed into smithereens. I concentrated and then heard it: crying. It was coming from the direction between the two first deaths.
I closed my eyes and pinpointed that sound and then mentally stuck it to Sashimi’s courthouse blueprint. That sound was coming from the men’s room, which was precisely between the two first deaths.
In my line of work, the worst murders I saw were the ones used to cause further chaos, such as summoning a demon. To summon a greater demon, you’d need death, and you’d need someone who knew what they were doing. The classic summoning circle was a five-point star, with a death or massive amounts of blood-letting at each point. If someone had killed here for more than revenge, if this was the beginning of a greater summoning, then we had to stop it to save more than lives. Our city would be wiped out if a greater demon was successfully summoned.
“Sashimi, we need to get to the men’s room. Now!”
“Lady Justice has spoken. My sister tells me that no date is complete without an explosion of some kind. Brace yourself. Probably close your face mask as well.” He wrapped his arms around me and I clung to him, braced for the impact.
ChapterFifteen
The explosion was surprisingly low-impact, considering that it blew through the stone wall in almost the perfect oval shape for us to scramble through. It hadn’t even been very loud.
“Your bomb wasn’t very loud,” I said as I straightened on the other side of the hole, orienting myself according to the blueprint in the large vaulted hall. My ears weren’t even ringing, so I could still hear the crying.
I broke into a run, Sashimi beside me, keeping up effortlessly.
“Naturally. It wasn’t meant to be loud, or was it? Next time, you’ll have to let me know the specs before I set one off.”
“Next time, maybe I can set it off.”
His rumbled laugh almost distracted me from my panic. We hit the doors to the men’s room, and there was Lieutenant Joss holding a gun to his temple, tears running down his cheeks as he struggled against the compulsion.
My boss? What had he stepped into? That’s when I noticed the shadow behind his shoulder, a glint of red eyes, a flash of fangs. I pulled my taser and threw it at the hand that held the gun, right as my boss pulled the trigger.
The gun made no sound, but Joss jerked and fell to the floor, blood pooling around him from his neck wound. Neck, not head. I’d managed to throw off the demon-controlled Joss’s aim. By the amount of blood, he’d hit an artery, but wasn’t dead. Yet.
I was already moving as I cried, “Get the demon!” to Sashimi. I needed to stop the blood and call for an ambulance. I had my phone out of my suit’s pocket and was calling while I ripped up Joss’s shirt, wrapping it around his neck while I started on my best healing spell. Flickers of purple spilled from my hands and onto Joss’s wound like I’d seen other witches who performed real magic do, but that hadn’t ever happened to me. Right. I was more powerful than before. Good. I needed all the power I could get if I was going to keep my boss alive.
“I need an ambulance at the courthouse,” I said as clearly as possible while I pressed the wound, vaguely aware that Sashimi was fighting with the mostly incorporeal demonic creature.
A sink exploded, and water struck my back, knocking me over on top of my boss. I struggled before I regained my balance and the pressure I was keeping on his neck.
“What’s the problem?” the nasally operator asked.
“A demon and a man who got shot in the neck. Second floor. Men’s room.”
“Oh. You shouldn’t be in the men’s room.”
I hung up because I had no patience for stupidity at that moment. I wove the spell while I glanced up at Sashimi, who was struggling to contain the incorporeal creature. The demon flexed his red, shifting aura, while Sashimi held it in his grasp of bubbling energy waves. Now that was fancy magic. That took years of study as well as high levels of raw magical power. The demon flickered, and I saw the entire form of it, and then it turned to look at me.
