Kate Daniels 02 - Magic Burns

world. Unfortunately, the world refuses to comply, so you have to settle for trying to control yourself, your habitat, and your friends.
    â€œI’m just worried about a lot of things,” I said.
    â€œJulie?” he guessed.
    â€œYes.”
    I wished I could have called in to check on them, but I had no clue where I could find a working phone line and with the preflare magic, the phone probably wouldn’t work anyway. Andrea had promised to stay with her. Barred from the field or not, Andrea could shoot a squirrel in the eye from across the street.
    â€œIt’s hard for you,” Derek observed. “To rely on other people, I mean.”
    For a moment I wondered if he had developed telepathy, too. “What makes you say that?”
    â€œYou said you were worried about Julie and then your face looked like you had a hemorrhoid attack. Or a really hard…”
    â€œDerek, you just don’t say things like that to a woman. Keep going this way and you’ll spend your life alone.”
    â€œDon’t change the subject. Andrea is cool. And she smells nice. It will be okay.”
    Apparently I was supposed to sniff people to determine their competence. “How do you know?”
    He shrugged. “You just have to trust her.”
    Considering that the two men I had most loved and admired spent my formative years drilling into me that I could rely on myself and myself alone, trusting other people was easier said than done. I worried about Julie. I worried about Julie’s mom, too. Since I’d gotten the liaison position with the Order, I made it a point to hang out in the knight-questor’s office, because I knew next to nothing about investigative work, and he, being an ex–Georgia Bureau of Investigations detective, knew pretty much everything. While there I had picked up a few vital crumbs of information, and I knew the first twenty-four hours of any investigation were crucial. The more time passed, the colder the trail grew. In a missing person case, that meant the chances of finding that missing person alive dropped by the hour.
    The first twenty-four had come and gone. The first forty-eight were waving good-bye from the window of the “you suck at your job” train. None of the normal procedures applied in this case: canvassing the neighborhood, interrogating witnesses, trying to determine who wanted the person to be missing, none of it applied here. All the witnesses were missing with her.
    I had no clue where Julie’s mom had gone. I wished she was safe back at her house. I had left a note on her kitchen table, explaining that I had Julie, she was safe, and asking her to contact the Order. Until she showed, all I could do was to tug on the tail of the only lead I had—the cauldron and Morrigan—and hope there wasn’t a woman-eating tiger on the other end.
    We turned to the left onto Centennial Drive, following Ghastek’s vampire. A solid wall of green towered along our left, blocking the view. Pre-Shift, the park was open and airy, a large lawn, sectioned off by paths and carefully planted trees into predefined areas. You could stand on the lookout at Belvedere and see the entire layout of the park, from the Children’s Garden to the Fountain of Rings.
    Now the park belonged to the covens of the city. The witches had planted fast-growing trees, and an impenetrable barrier of verdant green hid the mysteries of the park from prying eyes and sticky fingers. The park was larger, as well. A lot larger. It had swallowed several city blocks previously occupied by office buildings. All I saw was a wall of green. It must’ve quadrupled in size.
    The fact that so many covens had banded together to purchase a park was always a puzzlement to me. If you piloted vampires, you belonged to the People, and if you didn’t, they would quickly make a very persuasive financial argument in favor of your signing up with them. If you were a merc, you belonged to the Guild, because you wanted 50 percent off your dental, 30 percent off your medical, and access to a Guild lawyer. But if you were a witch, you belonged to your coven, which usually topped out at thirteen members. Witches had no hierarchy outside of their individual covens. I always wondered what different covens had in common. Now I knew: the Oracle.
    It’s a good thing Saiman was high on magic. God alone knew how much this information would’ve cost me under normal