I don’t know what’s outside the study, but with everyone who was here the streets are going to be filling with emergency vehicles pretty quickly, so I have to move fast. I have my shield spell ready to go and the Browning in my hand. If there’s still security out there they might take exception to the gun, but I’ll deal with that when it happens.

I head out of the study and I’m shocked at the devastation. Overturned tables, shredded chairs, bodies everywhere lying in poses the living can never twist into. It looks like Sastre focused on security and any off-duty cops, but she mowed down anyone who got in her way. There are a lot of people missing, which I hope means they got out before this nightmare started.

I don’t see Letitia or Annie anywhere, but I can feel magic, a spell being maintained. I start looking under tables, moving bodies out of the way. I finally find Letitia under a thin bubble of a shield. I crouch down and look at the pile of rifle and pistol slugs flattened at its base.

Letitia is barely conscious, her entire focus on keeping the shield up. I touch the shield and it pops like a soap bubble. Her gun is up in an instant and the only thing that saves me is that I’m not standing up when she shoots.

“Whoa, hey, it’s me. Eric. You already stuck holes in me in high school, we don’t need a repeat performance.”

“What?” she says, snapping out of the trance she’d put herself into to maintain the spell as best she could. Her eyes go wide. “Annie.” She spins around and there’s her wife, unconscious and the reason’s obvious. She’s been gut shot.

“No, no, no,” she says. “I need, fuck . . . Goddammit. Eric, I—”

“Hey,” I say loudly, snapping her attention to me. “LAPD detective, remember. You have a civilian casualty. You know what to do in this sort of crisis.”

“She’s my—”

“She is a civilian casualty.”

“Right.” She takes a deep breath, does a basic triage. Checks Annie’s pulse, breathing, tags the wounds as best she can. “She needs a hospital. Fuck me.”

“Is there one nearby?”

“Every emergency room and bed is dealing with overflow from the Vernon fire. By the time she sees a doctor it’s going to be too late.”

“Hang on.” I pull out my phone and call Gabriela. When she answers, she immediately starts cursing me out in Spanish.

“Yes, I am a goat’s ass, have a tiny dick, should be butt fucked with a thousand bees . . . though, I have to say I hadn’t heard that one before.”

“My grandmother said it a lot. The fuck, Eric? Why didn’t you shoot her when you had the chance?”