The walkways were hot in the late afternoon sun. Insects buzzed in the grass. Cenotaphs marched in long rows, silent sandstone witnesses to the senators and representatives buried in the hallowed ground.
I walked the entire perimeter of the cemetery, making sure I understood its layout. I had to know how to get out of the place if I was going to have any chance of surviving the upcoming confrontation. I wasn’t counting on getting very far, though. Millions of dollars in supposedly stolen drugs was a strong incentive to keep me quiet.
I carried a backpack, loaded down with food I’d snatched from the hospital kitchen, weighty stand-ins for the costly pharmaceuticals I was leaving behind. I’d grabbed a bag of barley intended for beef vegetable soup, along with a sack of cornmeal.
As usual, I’d pulled my hair into a messy bun, anchoring the ends with a pen. But this time, I didn’t choose just any pen. I used the one I gave myself when I graduated from college, the one I’d bought specifically for medical school. It contained a twelve-hour voice-activated recorder—perfect for taking notes in a challenging anatomy class. Or for making patient rounds. Or for catching thieving imperials in a near-deserted cemetery.
I would record my entire encounter with the drug thieves. And if I didn’t make it out, the evidence would still exist. It would be fetched by whichever imperial was dispatched to collect my body, maintaining Magical Washington’s secret existence.The Night Court’s coroner would end up with proof of the thieves’ identity.
When I finished my reconnaissance, I stalked to one of the Victorian monuments near the center of the cemetery. A marble angel stood on a plinth in front of a mausoleum, her robes blowing on an eternally unseen breeze. Wings extended from her shoulder blades, graceful swoops that ended in smooth lines of feathers. One arm was raised, bearing a torch, as if she were guiding lost souls to salvation.
She was as good a bulwark as any. I sank into the shade at her feet and leaned against the reassuring stone. Centering my backpack between my feet, I kept a firm grip on the straps, as if I protected something of real value. I couldn’t know if any imperials were watching me from a distance.
Dog walkers came and went. The sun sidled toward the tree line. The breeze died down, turning a warm evening sultry.
I expected my enemy to appear at twilight. Magical power always resonated in transition times, in the shadows of dusk and dawn. Midsummer Eve was especially appropriate for this encounter—the days were changing from growing longer to growing shorter.
I had no witchy powers to extend, of course, but my eyes were busy, surveying the quiet field around me. My attention was drawn by a squawking crow. By a fat squirrel that chittered over territory. By the scream of a mosquito, dive-bombing my ear.
Dusk faded to night. I was wrong. Or maybe the thieves weren’t coming. At least, they weren’t drawing on the transitory power of the universe.
Stars appeared in the sky, the bright ones that could fight their way through the city’s background lights—Vega and Arcturus and Polaris. I craned my neck to pick out the Little Dipper, extending from Polaris’s bright point in the handle.
“Wishing on a shooting star?”
Nick’s voice was so quiet I didn’t bother to startle. “Go away,” I said.
Ignoring my demand, he closed the distance between us. He wore his motorcycle gear, and the leather of his pants was fragrant in the warm evening. He hadn’t wasted any time getting here after sunset. “You shouldn’t be trying this alone,” he said.
“No reason to drag anyone else into the mess.”
“None of this is your fault.”
I shrugged. “It’s all my responsibility.” I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of telling him to leave again. Instead, I asked, “How’d you know I was here?”
“I’ve had Musker watching you the past two weeks. He took the day shift, and I took the night.”
That explained why my familiar had been sunning in the hallway. Nick must have offered him an all-expenses-paid vacation to the Mojave Desert to make him leave his marble palace.
I shivered, thinking of Nick watching my bedroom door every night. I wondered why I hadn’t seen him on my night-time kitchen raids. He was a vampire, though. He could be stealthier than a powerless witch.
“Stalking’s against the law,” I said, with more bravado than I felt.
“I’ve been worried about you.”
“Why? Did you need a few more details about the Eastern Empire? Maybe your Secret Service buddies had a few follow-up questions?”
He winced, but he stood his ground. “You don’t understand.”
“It doesn’t seem too complicated. You were turned. I fell for your stupid pickup lines. You passed on information I had no business sharing.”
“It wasn’t like that.”
“How was it, then?”
He looked over my head, as if he were reading a placard at the angels’ feet. “The Service investigates every credible threat against the president.”
“So I’ve heard.”
“About six months ago, someone reported their upstairs neighbor in one of those pre-war buildings on Connecticut Avenue. They said they heard a man shouting about killing the president. He set off fireworks on the roof. He wore a lot of camo.”
“Let me guess. You raided his apartment.”
He nodded. “The guy was a real nut-case, a total truther. His walls were covered with newspaper print-outs—Ruby Ridge, 9/11, Sandy Hook, complete with photos and string and all that crap.”
“Yay. I bet you got a promotion.”
“Nope. We couldn’t prove he was actually breaking any laws. After a lot of interviews, we cautioned him and let him go. But we started following up on the files he’d left lying around. Most of it was the usual prepper garbage—except he was into werewolves. Said they were taking over the Rappahannock River Valley.”
“The Washington Pack keeps a place on the Rappahannock,” I said. I knew because I’d patched up one of their cubs after an unfortunate incident with a barbed wire fence.
Nick nodded. “The guy had a whole folder on them.”
I knew what he was going to say next, so I filled in the blanks. “The folder on your nightstand.”
He nodded. “I started poking around. I had the paper in that folder analyzed. It was cotton rag, really high quality. Not a lot of it’s delivered to DC. But the courthouse got boxes of it, sent like clockwork, every other month.”
“The Night Court…”
“The Night Court,” he agreed. “So I started investigating what goes on there. It took a couple of months—they’re good at covering their trail.”
He didn’t know the half of it. He didn’t know he’d been drugged with Lethe, made to forget what he’d discovered on six separate occasions. That’s what James Morton had said.
Nick went on. “The night I finally put it all together, one of the security guys came after me.”
“The vampire,” I said. “The one who was supposed to execute you. I know the rest of the story.”
“No you don’t,” Nick said. “You don’t know the end.”
“This is where you tell me about your big promotion.”
“This is where I tell you I’ve left the Service.”
“What?”
He’d surprised me. I’d expected him to make excuses. To remind me that he’d promised his father. He had to save the president, had to secure the country against whatever threats he found.
“I left.” He shrugged and sank to the ground beside me, dangling his hands between his knees. “Or maybe I should say they fired me.”
I just stared.
“Yep,” he said. “I’m the jackass who managed to get fired from a freaking federal job. But I disappeared without leave for two straight weeks. I came back insisting I’d only work night shifts. I refused to answer questions about where I’d been—”
“You didn’t tell them?”
“What was I going to say? A Secret Service agent ranting about vampires and werewolves and witches would be front page news. And if there’s one thing the Service hates more than a security threat, it’s a scandal.”
“Nick…”
I couldn’t think of what to say. I knew what the Service meant to him. It was his entire reason for living—had been, since he’d left Plummer, South Carolina. He had the seal tattooed on his body. It was supposed to be his life forever.
“I’ve been waiting to tell you for the past two weeks. So when Musker said you’d finally left your room, I didn’t waste time getting over here.”
All those days I’d spent, watching Law and Order. All those tears I’d shed, thinking I’d been betrayed. All those Saltines and yogurt cups and cubes of red Jell-O…
And all that time, he’d been giving up the most valuable thing in his world.
“You could have called!” I said.
“Would you have given me a chance to explain?”
He had a point.
I turned to him, raising a hand to the bristles on his cheek. His flesh was cool, and his jaw was set, but my fingers felt like they’d gone home for the first time in days. “I’m sorry,” I said.
He answered by leaning close and brushing his lips across mine. I caught my breath, realizing how much I’d missed him, how much I’d needed him.
Before I could kiss him back, an earthquake rumbled through the cemetery.