Blood Rock Read Online Free Page B

out because we didn’t get the shopkeeper’s permission to search. Another case went sour when two witnesses convinced each other a house’s blinds were up when the cruiser’s camera showed them down.”
    “And them?” I said, motioning to the officers milling about. “Aren’t they witnesses too?”
    Rand looked up sharply, seeing McGough yelling at an officer who had peeked under the tarp. “This is a fucking mess. You shouldn’t have been here. He shouldn’t have been here—”
    “Who is the little toad?”
    “Head of Magical Crimes Investigation, the Black Hats,” Rand said, still staring. “Homicide normally calls them after whatever’s gone down.”
    “Come to think of it, Revy wasn’t—” I began, then stopped. I didn’t want to say Revy wasn’t already dead out loud; my mind hadn’t wrapped around that yet. But my question remained: “So … why was Homicide here?”
    “To get you,” Rand said simply, and I leaned back to stare at him. “You attracted a lot of attention with your little stunt at the Masquerade a couple of months back, and I owe McGough a favor, so … when he couldn’t handle this, he called me, and I called you.”
    “Thanks,” I said. “Now I know how a marker feels—called in.”
    “I’m sorry,” Rand said. “If I’d known that fang … that Revenance wasn’t going to make it, I wouldn’t have called you. This is why McGough suddenly turned into a dick. Having someone with magical training at the scene of a magical crime creates a horrible mess.”
    “Why?” I asked. “Seems like you’d want the knowledge—”
    “If we ever do catch the guy,” Rand said grimly, “his lawyer will argue you did it.”
    “ What? ” I said. “ Me? How? You called me after it was already started—”
    “People don’t understand magic,” Rand said. “ Anything sounds plausible. If they can’t pin it on you, they’ll try McGough next, and he couldn’t even do a card trick—”
    “The largest School of Magic in North America is five miles from here,” I said. “Emory University—a billion dollar endowment, my alma mater? Maybe you’ve heard of it? There are plenty of expert witnesses you can get who can explain magic.”
    “Not to a jury,” Rand said. “Not so they’d understand. And defense lawyers know it. And the only thing that scares juries more than a wizard on the loose is a cop with a wand.”
    I sighed. I just wanted to create art, to fill the finest canvases on Earth with marks of beauty. Ours is a great world, full of magic and wonders, and yet there I sat, mourning a friend, my skin still tingling with stray mana from the spell that had killed him.
    “Why,” I asked, “do people have to go fuck everything up?”
    And then McGough was yelling at Horscht, who was … holding a spray can.
    “Oh, hell,” Rand said, rising—and I followed. “This is why we clear first responders—”
    “What do you mean, put it down?” Horscht said, jerking the can back from McGough protectively, making the little gnome even madder. “This, this is evidence—”
    “But where did you get it?” McGough barked. “Did you take a picture? Did you make some notes? Did you bother to use a glove or a baggie before getting your stupid paws on it—”
    “No, I didn’t have one,” Horscht said, jerking it back, but I noticed he was holding it with a piece of paper so his fingerprints wouldn’t get on it. “And you don’t either. I came to get an evidence bag. This is important . He had to use this to spray the tag—”
    “It wasn’t spray painted,” I said, cocking my head back at the mess that was left of the tag. “Hard to tell now, after all that fire and water, but it had to be infused oil chalk.”
    McGough looked over at me sharply, then back at the tag. “You’re right,” he said slowly, “he couldn’t have … or could he—”
    “Horscht, put it down before McGruff the Crime Dog bursts a blood vessel,” I said. “I’m sure he wants