Page 39 of A Subtle Scar
I had to agree, but instead of getting into a conversation I didn’t want to be in, I took a look around.
There weren’t a lot of people on the floor here. I counted three at the far end, dressed in the black lab coats that were standard in lab magic. They had three people in one shift, a mere skeleton crew normally reserved for holidays and nights for a police station this size. That told me exactly how direly short-staffed they were. It should have been a dozen at this time of day, at least.
“I’m a half-decent herbalist if I have to be, and I have basic rune knowledge. Other than that, I’m all analytical spellwork,” I said.
Rice looked at me. “I have no idea what that means. Here.” She walked to one of the techs, a Black woman wearing a daring shade of barium yellow lipstick that worked on her. “Dr. Madison Williams is the department head. I don’t think you met last time. Madison, that’s Chandler, the FIS mage I hooked with the IIAT for this case.”
Madison looked up from a microscope and beamed at me. I beamed right back, turning the charm on high. Hermes growled, and Charon took half a step to the left so he was in front of me. It wasn’t often I met guys taller than me, and having two of them flanking me now, one growly and tall, the other brooding and tall, it was surreal and a condition I needed to remedy as soon as humanly possible without turning into a shouting cis-gendered alpha-douche with entitlement written all over his bared teeth.
“And who are these immortal boys? Just like the other one, so protective. Although…the other one was so well behaved, and so very handy,” Madison said, not giving Hermes and Charon an inch.
“We’re very handy,” Hermes said. And then he put his hand on his hip, and since he was standing in front and to the left of me, that drew my attention to his ass, and was he pushing that ass out in my direction and flexing that gluteus?
Eyes above the neckline, Chandler. “These are Hermes and Charon, who seem to have generously offered to help. If there is anything that we need them for,” I said.
“I want him to have a look at what we found on the victims,” Rice said with a head tilt in my direction.
Madison nodded. “Not a lot of mages in law enforcement. Does the Collegium even train you for that?”
She walked to another table in the back, and we followed. The other two techs looked up from what they were doing. It wasn’t every day that you got to see a mage at your place of work, nor did immortals occur that often, and both at the same time had to be quite something.
Madison stopped in front of a worktable. There were evidence bags on it, all of them in a low plastic box, which was warded to detect any kind of movement that crossed the perimeter of the box. It was a standard kind of warding in magical evidence collection and ensured chain of custody could be maintained.
Personally, I’d always thought that this kind of warding should be implemented for all evidence, not just the magical kind, but of course there was pushback. Of course the non-magical cops and agents argued magic could be tampered with, and they would never know. They argued smaller departments would be at a disadvantage because they’d need access to a magic user. They argued it would harm investigations and misdirect funding to non-essential elements of the process.
In my opinion, these people could fuck off permanently, or they could go and look at some statistics. Departments with high diversity, including magic users, had better clearance rates, period. Rice’s homicide unit was a stellar example, and the fact she deigned come down here herself instead of just sending me told me she did that on the regular, so her success wasn’t just due to one powerful necromancer who could raise any corpse he happened upon. No, it was good leadership and teamwork, something that a lot of cops just didn’t seem to want to learn.
I did my best to get the preachy voice out of my head. This was not the place, and just because two nosy immortals had upset me didn’t mean I suddenly got to be angry at the world when I worked so hard not to be on a daily basis.
Madison had asked me a question. “Never been to the Collegium. I went to school in Geneva and studied at the Academy of Magical Arts and Studies. They do train for law enforcement, and the FIS snatched me right up about ten minutes into my interview.”
Madison’s barium lipstick underlined the surprisedohthat escaped her. “That’s quite a résumé. What are your specialties?”
Good. Madison didn’t just let anyone fuck around in her lab, even if they were a mage.
“The kind of résumé those of us who end up with rich parents can easily build. I am a full Magus of course and have a Magister Magicae in analytical spellwork. Baccalaureatus Magicae in psychometry and wardcraft.”
Madison nodded. The immortals exchanged another look, but I ignored them.
“Excellent,” Madison said. “I don’t have enough people who can do detailed spell analysis, and we don’t have anyone for psychometry at all, although there’ve been issues with psychometric evidence getting tossed out during court cases.” She pulled a keyring from the pocket of her lab coat that held not keys but talismans in the shape of elongated oval coins. She found the one that broke the custody warding. “Let’s show you what we found in the victims’ throats.”
I cocked my head at Rice. “That’s what you wanted me to see?”
“Yup,” she said. “That’s it.”
Chapter Eleven
Ilookedupthatmagic academy in Geneva while Chandler was slipping on black rubber gloves and began opening bags under a bright work light. Hmm. Geneva looked nice. The view across the lake was wonderful, and there were good restaurants. Why had Chandler not stayed there? I wasn’t complaining, because if he had, I might not have had the fortune of running into him at Lionel’s party, but why swap excellent espresso for second-rate chain coffee?
Ronny stood next to me and focused intently on Chandler. “What are you doing?” he asked our boyfriend.
I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. Chandler wasn’t doing anything yet, and we could both tell.
“Opening the evidence bags,” he said.
The herb doctor laughed. Oh, I had smelled the herb magic on her right away. I wasn’t sure whether she was trying to seduce Chandler, but something in me needed to stake a claim.
I glanced at Chandler’s hands in those black gloves. That was sexy, wasn’t it? I had experimented with a bit of latex of course, who hadn’t, but I had never seen what was so great about it, but seeing my boyfriend’s strong hands in those gloves…
