Page 61 of A Subtle Scar
There were mostly office buildings to my right, but ahead, there was a doughnut chain, and I decided to make a quick stop. I pushed the door open, and the smell of sugar was strong. Colorful baked goods behind glass beckoned me closer, and I was reminded of a few days ago, when Chandler had almost eaten those poison pastries from that herb witch. He needed minding and protection from danger, protection I and Ronny could easily provide.
I only realized I was growling when a blond in line ahead of me turned and gaped.
I shrugged, flexed my pecs to mollify him. “Sorry.”
He went back to his phone, and I went back to fantasizing about how I would have liked that night to end. It was a shame Chandler had told us to go because if he’d chosen to invite us into his bed instead…I frowned when I remembered the bedding on his couch that night.
“One each of the pink ones and, uhm, five chocolate ones for me,” I told the girl behind the counter.
“Need lots of carbs, huh,” she said.
“I have a boyfriend now. I’m sharing him, but I have to keep up my strength in case he spontaneously calls on me,” I said to the girl.
She stopped, tongs in hand. “Oh, wow. That is the hottest thing a customer has ever said to me.”
I liked this one. “Thank you. Say, maybe you can help me. I’m trying to find the persons who harmed that girl. You might remember the incident. She was thrown out of a van on—” and it hit me. “Fuck.”
“This Monday, right?” the girl said as she collected the doughnuts into a box. “I saw all the commotion outside, and we had lots of police in here that day. Not much else I can tell you though.”
I was only half listening to her. The girl had been murdered and dumped hereon the Equinox.Ronny had made such a big deal out of it, but even he had failed to see it.
“Thank you. So much. Keep the change,” I said when the girl handed me the big box with all the doughnuts inside and I dropped a hundred on the counter.
I left her staring after me. Service people could get confused by big tips unless you were at the right kind of night club, but I had no time to bother with human money now. Coins always clinked oddly in my pants pockets.
I hurried outside, getting out one of the chocolate doughnuts as I went. I could tell at the first bite that these were not as good as my French toast, but they’d have to do.
Traffic was flowing nicely, and I considered whether it would be worth forcing all the cars to stop so I could look at the spot the girl had been found, but humans were aggressive honkers, so in the end, I walked close to the curb where I could overlook the street and feel for magic.
The Equinoxes and solstices were special. In old human magic traditions, when witches sought to make strong spells, they would start them at those times, and on the rarer occasions, they would weave the magic from there through to the next quarter of the year.
It was also common to go on with a spell to the next full moon. Johannes, a court magician in Prague I still thought about sometimes—had always gone on and on about full moons and how important it was to predict them and other celestial events, how much he hated the more senior magician Brahe for guarding his knowledge and thereby hindering Johannes’s own magic. Well, whenever he pleased me, I’d helped Johannes out.
And I’d learned that he liked to mark the start point of a spell, and I’d learned what that felt like, although those points were hard to notice, like a tiny speck of dust on a large window.
I felt for that, out there where the report I’d seen at the police station yesterday said the body of the girl had been tossed out of a van. My eyes widened, and I stopped licking the chocolate off my fingers.
“That’s interesting.”
Without thinking, I teleported.
The interstate next to which the second human girl had been found was a noisy, dirty place, and I closed the doughnut box as I walked through the withering grass next to it.
Soda cans and fast-food bags mingled with rubber. In the distance, I could see a wheel cover half hidden by a bush, the greenery struggling against the adversity of car exhaust. Shreds of police tape still remained a little to my left, but I didn’t have to get all that close.
I narrowed my eyes, feeling for tendrils of a spell. I wasn’t good at this, but I’d slept with enough court magicians ages ago to at least know what I was looking for. In the end, I saw it, a wavering thread, so thin any bigger spell could have broken it to nothing.
I teleported to the next place and made a commuter jump and squeak on the subway platform.
“Hi there,” I said to the guy. Hmm. He looked like a lawyer type with that nice suit, but where I would have asked him for a drink normally, I…simply didn’t. I didn’t even get particularly aroused, looking at him. Lucy had said something about this, about how monogamy had become so easy once he’d bedded his necromancer. I’d doubted him, but maybe the Devil was telling the truth without mincing his words for once. “Fuck; monogamy, huh,” I said.
The guy’s Adam’s apple bobbed. “Yeah, sure.”
“You want a doughnut?”
He pointed at me. “You just appeared. Are you…a magic user?”
I had to give it to him, he sounded curious where a lot of humans managed to sound disgusted. “Nah, I’m better. I’m a god.”
