Gunmetal Magic (Kate Daniels #5.5)

“You think this is some sort of comedy going on here?” Collins gave him his tough stare.

A little red spark flared in Barabas’s eyes. “Excuse me.”

He struck with preternatural quickness and yanked a five-foot snake from the counter, an inch away from Tsoi’s elbow. Tsoi jumped, clearing half the room in a single bound.

The snake body flailed in my lawyer’s fist. Barabas jerked the snake to his mouth and bit its neck.

“Jesus Christ!” Collins took a step back.

Tsoi clamped her hand over her mouth.

Barabas spat the head onto the counter. “Pit viper—my favorite. Where were we? Ah, yes. You were trying to intimidate me. I apologize for the interruption. Please, resume your staring.”

“That snake is evidence,” Collins growled.

“I would be happy to surrender it to you. Considering that I just saved your partner from being bitten, I had expected more gratitude.”

Barabas offered the headless snake back to Collins. The detective grimaced and took it.

“What sort of shapeshifter are you?” Tsoi demanded.

“He’s a weremongoose,” the ME told them.

Barabas smiled at me. “We’re leaving.”

“No, you’re not!” Tsoi said.

“You can’t hold her. All of us here know that. But just to be sure, let’s review the facts,” Barabas said. “My client, a poor defenseless woman…”

Collins almost choked on his own spit.

“…who came here to browse the merchandise of this shop, was attacked by a monster and killed her in self-defense. She will not be speaking to you any further, because, as we all know, anything she says to you can and will be used against her in a court of law; however, as 801(d)(2)(a) tells us, none of it can be used to help her, because anything she utters to you is hearsay. So speaking to you is of no benefit to her, whatsoever.” Barabas turned to me. “Can you walk?”

“Maybe,” I told him. “I haven’t tried.”

Barabas picked me up, like I weighed nothing. “Will there be anything else, Detectives?”

“She isn’t Pack, so don’t even think of claiming this is a Pack scene,” Tsoi growled.

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” Barabas strode out of the door and into the sunshine.

He walked down the street. “I parked on the side so they couldn’t block me in. It’s a fun tactic they use—they’ll park behind you and try to grill you while they take their sweet time moving their vehicle. Are you okay?”

I nodded. I was so happy to be out of there. “Barabas, if you weren’t batting for the other team, I’d marry you.”

He grinned. “If I weren’t batting for the other team, I would accept your proposal. You had me at ‘No comment.’ If all my clients were this smart, my life would be much easier. Much, much easier.”

He paused by a Pack Jeep, opened the passenger door, and carefully loaded me inside.

“Where are we going?”

“To your office. It’s closer than your apartment and better fortified. Doolittle is already there and he’s awaiting your arrival with all sorts of needles and torture devices.”

“Great,” I murmured.

“He’s very excited. It will be fun,” Barabas promised and started the engine.

As we pulled out of the parking lot, my stomach pirouetted inside me. “You won’t tell anyone about carrying me, will you?”

“It’ll be our special secret,” he said.

“Thanks.”

CHAPTER 10

Doolittle was a very nice man. He looked to be in his early fifties, although he was probably older—shapeshifters lived longer and looked younger than most regular people. His skin was dark, almost blue-black; silvery gray salted his short dark hair; he spoke in a soft voice with a soothing Southern accent; and the glasses he insisted on wearing combined with a slightly absent-minded look in his eyes made him resemble a kindly college professor, someone who specialized in history or anthropology and spent his life in an office full of books. You half expected him to sit you down to have a heart-to-heart about some long-forgotten civilization and reassure you that really a B on your paper wasn’t so bad.

However, the moment any kind of injury, no matter how trivial, manifested itself, Doolittle turned into a stubborn, disagreeable tyrant, who treated you like you were six years old. He served as the Pack’s medmage. He set broken bones, he removed silver and other foreign objects, he sewed up wounds, and generally spent his every waking minute making sure that the shapeshifters of the Pack remained breathing. And he went about it with the dogged persistence that made his animal counterpart so famous. If there were any laws of nature, one of them surely said that arguing with a honeybadger was futile.

The second I stepped across the threshold, Doolittle placed me into a chair. He drew my blood and examined the bite site on my foot and the bigger one on my shoulder, which had acquired a plum-purple swelling. Barabas recounted the scene, while Julie and Ascanio hovered in the background, quiet like two mice.

“Pit vipers?” Doolittle asked, checking my eyes.

“Appears so. At least the one I caught was. Not a rattlesnake, though.” Barabas shrugged. “Three-inch fangs.”

“Nauseous?” Doolittle asked me.

“Yes.” I was still sweating, too. The sweat drenched my face and my back, clammy and cold, and my heart was beating too fast. The bite on my arm hadn’t sealed itself either. That was a bad sign. Lyc-V closed most wounds in minutes.

Someone pounded on the office door. Barabas moved to the door, slid aside the metal shutter covering the narrow spy window, and looked through it.

“It’s your lover man.”

“Barabas, open the damn door,” Raphael snarled.

Barabas slid the shutter closed. “Do you want me to let him in?”

“I’m thinking about it.”

Barabas slid the shutter open. “She’s thinking about it.”

“Andrea,” Raphael called. “Let me in.”

“The last time I saw you two together, you were so happy,” Barabas said. “Just out of curiosity, Raphael, how the hell did you manage to fuck that up?”

Raphael’s voice gained that dangerous, I’m-about-to-go-nuts quality. “Remind me, how are things with you and Ethan?”

“None of your business,” Barabas said.

“Let me in and I won’t rip your head off.”

“You won’t rip my head off anyway,” Barabas said. “We’re friends.”

“Let him in,” I said. If we didn’t let him in, he wouldn’t go away. He would just stand by the door and him and Barabas would yell obscenities at each other. My head hurt enough as it was.

Barabas swung the door open, and Raphael marched in. He saw me and turned pale.

“Don’t agitate her,” Doolittle warned.

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” Raphael pulled up a chair and sat next to me.

Doolittle shined a light into my eyes, listened to my heartbeat, and thrust a glass of some murky liquid into my hand. “Drink this.”

I took a tiny sip. It tasted like someone had mixed kerosene with turpentine. “This is awful.”

Doolittle peered at me through his glasses. “Now, young lady, you will drain that glass. If I can drop everything and rush over here, at the very least you can repay me for my kindness by taking your medicine.”

I gulped the drink. It burned my throat and I coughed. “Doc, you’re trying to kill me…”

“Drink a bit more,” Raphael said.

I pointed at him. “You heard what the medic said. Don’t agitate me.”

I bravely took another swallow of the nasty stuff, trying to force it down and keep it there.

“Very good,” Doolittle approved. “I seem to recall that I warned you not to confront that snake.”

“The snake confronted me. That is, the woman with snake fangs confronted me.”

“If you finish the whole glass, I’ll give you a lollipop.”

There was something deeply absurd about this entire conversation. “Stop treating me like a child.”

“I will if you take ownership of your predicament and take your medicine.” Doolittle looked at Barabas. “I don’t suppose you saw the snake woman in question?”

Barabas shook his head. “The second I walked in, the ME blocked her head.”

“Such a shame.”

I took another gulp—I’d never tasted anything more vile; I’d drink warm milk with baking soda before this stuff—and pulled the Polaroid out of my bra.

“Here.”

Raphael took the Polaroid out of my fingers and handed it to Barabas without a word.

My lawyer’s eyes widened. “Why does it say ‘Property of Jim Shrapshire’ on it?”

“Because that’s Jim’s real name.”

“That doesn’t explain anything,” Barabas said.

“If I died, the PAD would claim the scene and the Pack would be locked out of the investigation. There was a good chance that they wouldn’t let the Pack examine Gloria’s body. But when they found the Polaroid on my body, they would show it to Jim and ask him about it. He would know to look for her known associates with retractable fangs.”

“You were bitten and your priority was to take pictures?” Barabas said.

“Don’t agitate her,” Raphael told him.

“It seemed important at the time.”

Barabas looked at Raphael. “How do you put up with that?”

“Job first. That’s the way she’s wired,” Raphael told him.

Doolittle emitted a long-suffering sigh. “You know snakebite emergency procedures. You can’t even claim ignorance. This was just willful disregard of your life, that’s exactly what that was.”

The weremongoose and the werehoneybadger peered at the photograph.

“Folded fangs,” Barabas said. “Like a rattlesnake.”