Letitia Watson and I met in the equivalent of mage high school. Until we’re old enough to not spontaneously set shit on fire, most mages are homeschooled. Then, to hopefully not have us all turn into a bunch of sociopathic little shits, which usually happens anyway, we go to school and learn to interact with other human beings.

Letitia and I weren’t friends. We didn’t know each other so much as knew of each other. Mage school is less Harry Potter and more boot camp. The important thing isn’t to help you grow your magic, it’s to help you not blow yourself up.

“Detective? You took a job as part of the Cleanup Crew?”

“Sort of,” she says. “Not quite. And it’s voluntary. Somebody needs to fix the messes people like you make. It’s in all our best interests.” I’m about to say that she sounds like a brochure when we hit the bottom of the stairs and bounce into a football field, the truck’s tires blowing out chunks of sod behind.

Mages give a fat fuck about the normals’ business until we have to. If too many normals really believed in magic, they might want what we’ve got, and we’re not into sharing. We don’t want too much out in the open.

But that’s unavoidable. So some of us go into jobs to help keep this shit under wraps. Police, politics, journalism. They spend a lot of time covering the tracks of fuck-ups.

If that doesn’t get the fuck-up to pull their head out of their ass, you’ll see one of the rare times mages work together, and that’s to curb stomp that motherfucker into paste.

Huh. I just realized. Today, I’m that motherfucker.

“Who the hell did I run over?”

“Attila Werther,” I say. Her eyes go wide.

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“Do you think he saw me?”

“No, but I’m sure he can find you. I mean, it’s Werther. And he’s looking for me. And I’m with you, so . . .”

She slams her hand on the steering wheel. We tear through a chain-link fence and into the school’s parking lot. The parking lot that’s completely filled with cars.

“Goddammit,” she says. “This whole thing was not supposed to go this way. You have your seatbelt on, right?”

“You’re asking me now, after we did a Dukes of Hazzard down the stairs?” I pull the seatbelt across my chest and click it in, wincing. The crash in the Caddy’s left some serious bruises where the seatbelt caught me. Maybe I’ll get lucky and get a matching set on the other side now. The Bruise Bandolier. All the cool outlaws will be wearing them this year.

“I figured now’s a good time,” she says, “since we’re probably gonna crash.”

Chapter 7

We don’t crash. Not as such.