Gunmetal Magic: A Novel in the World of Kate Daniels

turned and walked out.
    “This isn’t over,” Tsoi said and left, the two uniforms in tow.
    Nobody said anything until Sandra at the window announced, “They are getting into their cars.”
    “I told you,” Jim said to Barabas. “I know Collins, he’s a reasonable man.”
    Barabas sighed. “But I was looking forward to a fight.”
    Suddenly things made sense: somehow Jim had discovered the cops were coming to pick me up, and he’d brought his posse over to keep them from taking me off.
    “How did you know they were coming?” I asked Jim.
    “I have my ways.”
    “You bugged the PAD station.” Sonovabitch. If he got caught, there would be hell to pay.
    Jim smiled without showing his teeth. “Something like that.”
    “They are under heavy-duty pressure from above to solve the case,” Barabas said. “People with snake fangs made somebody in the mayor’s office really nervous. Almost makes me wonder if they know something that we don’t and they want to put a lid on this whole thing as fast as they can. The plan was to pick you up and sweat you a little for information. We can’t let them do that—you have things to do and there is no reason you should be wasting time in their interrogation room. Since your phone was out, we decided to show up before they did.”
    “We take care of our own,” Lucrezia said.
    But I wasn’t their own. Well, not officially. And yet they had come here to back me up. I looked from face to face and realized they would do it again and I would do the same. In their heads, I already belonged.
    Wow.
    For once in my life I didn’t have to hide who I was. They had my back and that was that.
    Half an hour later everyone filed out of my apartment. Kyle took the computer with him. On the way out, Sandra stopped by me. “Aunt B wants a word. Today at ten at Highland Bakery. She said not to be late.”
    The gentle paw of the Bouda alpha. “I’ll be there.”
    Jim was the last to exit. He paused at the door. “I’ve got thelegwork. My people will do the background and they’ll dig up whatever dirt Anapa has.”
    “Aha.”
    “I know Collins. He is competent and thorough. When you leave your apartment, you’ll have a tail. I need you to do nothing for twenty-four hours or so. You know how the game is played: you’re the lightning rod. Lead them around, don’t lose them, go have lunch with Aunt B, visit a market or something. Be anywhere but near Anapa or White Street. Let the cops concentrate on you, so my people can work in peace. You can use a day off anyway. You look like hell.”
    “You’ll spend your life a bachelor, Jim.”
    “Stay away from White Street.”
    “Fine, I got it.”
    I hustled him out the door and locked it. I had phone calls to make.
    At eleven o’clock I walked through the door of Highland Bakery wearing black pants, a black shirt, my steel-toed combat boots, and crimson lipstick. It matched the new me much better. My clandestine police escort conveniently parked right across the street.
    Located on Highland Avenue, the low brick building that housed Highland Bakery had survived magic’s jaws mostly intact. This area was called the Old Fourth Ward. Before the magic took Atlanta apart, the Fourth Ward was a happening place with historic buildings from the beginning of the previous century, defunct factories converted to loft apartments, and renovated shotgun shacks—long, narrow, rectangular structures, once reminders of poverty transformed into trendy housing. Supposedly the name came from the structure of the house: if you fired a shotgun through the front door, the pellets would fly through the whole house and out the back door.
    The Old Fourth Ward was home to the Boulevard—a place where more drugs passed hands than in most other areas of the city combined—and Edgewood Avenue—where dozens of bars and restaurants had offered drinks, music, and other pleasures of the nocturnal variety.
    Now with Downtown in ruins to the west and Midtownequally ravaged, the Old Fourth Ward had quieted down. The bars and restaurants were still there, but they catered to working-class patrons. It was a place where carpenters, masons, and city employees came for lunch, and Highland Bakery was the place where they stopped on the way home when a craving for sweets struck them.
    I had checked the outdoor area, but Aunt B wasn’t at any of the black wrought-iron tables, so I went inside, past the counter filled with confections of chocolate, berry, and