Page 159 of The Bones in the Yard

At that precise moment, he was at work, although he’d be coming by later.

Raj huffed a laugh, crossing his arms over his shirt-and-vest ensemble. “Saving your too-pretty ass,” he teased.

“Thanks for that, by the way. And thank Drew for me.” The roaring I’d heard along with Taavi’s barking had apparently been Drew Shao, who was some sort of bear shifter. Xolos and tigers and bears, oh my.

Raj showed me his teeth, which were definitely sharper than a human’s, although they paled in comparison to his tiger teeth. I could see Taavi in his dog pretty easily, but I was having a harder time with Raj and the giant furry face that had hovered over mine in the quarry.

“You’d do the same, if I ever need it,” he pointed out.

“Probably,” I agreed. “As long as that’s one of the things I need to know.” I was only kind of teasing.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” he replied, amused. “If I decide to be a dumbass and hare off to my own death, I’ll be sure to text you first.”

I arched one eyebrow, then winced. That whole side of my face was a mess of stitches, scrapes, and bruises. “At least tell me you arrested Garcia and Pelayo. And fucking Nico.”

“Oh, we did.” He grinned. “You want to know the exciting details?” The jackass was deliberately holding out on me.

“Just fucking tell me, already,” I told him.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out an evidence baggie and handed it to me. I lifted it up, since tilting my head down resulted in pounding pain in my temple. The team that Raj had sent to the Deepwater Hephaestus offices had found Garcia’s bullet.

“Mason Manning seemed to think that this was a pretty good reason to arrest David Garcia all on its own,” Raj remarked, clearly pleased with himself.

“Trying to murder me wasn’t bad enough?”

Raj shrugged, although I could see the glitter in his golden-brown eyes that told me he was about to give me some shit. “I mean, I completely understand why he might try to do that.”

“Funny, Tony.”

“Hey, elves are potentially hazardous. Always leaving their toys and little tools out everywhere.”

“Do I fuckinglooklike I work for Santa?” I asked him.

Raj grinned, showing those too-sharp teeth that now I couldn’t help noticing. “You’d be cute in a little green hat with fur trim.”

“Try me, Tigger.”

“You really think you can take me, Keebler?”

He wasn’t wrong, but I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of agreeing with him. So I made a face at him and changed the subject. “Did you also find the gun?” I asked, my eyes scanning the etchings on the bullet, which to me seemed identical to those inscribed on the bullets we’d found in Picton’s rifle.

“No, annoyingly,” Raj replied. “But Garcia’s our only witch capable of making these bullets, and Manning thinks he’s telling the truth about that, given the complexity of the magic. We’re hoping if we trace things carefully enough, we’ll get a lead on the shooter.”

My forehead pulled together in a frown before I deliberately tried to smooth out the expression to avoid pulling on my stitches. “So is Garcia Ordo, or Culhua?”

“Both, kind of. It turns out,” Raj continued, examining his fingernails carefully, a self-satisfied, smug little expression on his face, “that Garcia is a mercenary little bastard, so he not only turned on the members of the Ordo who hired him to make their magic bullets, but also theentireCulhua.”

“No fucking way.” I tried to sit up to pay more attention, then stopped trying to sit up the minute quite a bit of pain told me that would be a terrible idea. “Fuck.”

“Careful, there, Keebler.” He was teasing, but there was actually genuine concern on his face, so I forgave him for it. “You okay?”

“Goddamn it. Yeah,” I grumbled. “But Garcia turned? On everybody?”

“Mmhmm.”

“Including Vidal?”

“So that was an interesting little conversation, actually. Turns out our lovely little mayoral candidate—who might be having some issues, now that his business partner is going to jail for averylong time, even with a plea deal—hadn’t actually gotten initiated yet, according to both Garcia and Dame Pelayo. Whose daughter-in-law wasnotterribly inclined to help pay either her bail or her daughter’s, much to her consternation.”

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