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Goddamn it.
I started to call him back, but then realized I already had a call waiting.
“Hello?”
“Don’t you dare hang up on me again!”
I sighed.
James.
“I didn’t hang up before; I had another call. And why are we talking about this? I have immunity, and that aside, you were almost finished—”
“You don’t get to decide when we’re finished with a crime scene! You don’t get to decide anything! Particularly when you use your shiny new immunity to aid and abet the escape of a dozen felons!”
“A dozen?” I frowned. “Ten of them were slaves. They didn’t do any—”
“They hid the troll who caused all this! They deliberately used their bodies to hide his signal and that of the woman he’s working with—”
“They didn’t hide anything. Sitting on a floor is hardly—”
“—and as a result, I have a warrant in my hand for their arrest—”
“Don’t be a dick, James! This is on me. They had nothing to do with it!”
“—and another for your friend Fin, who does not, in fact, have immunity.”
“James—”
“I’m not bluffing, Dory. I want the big guy. Now.”
“I don’t have him!”
“Don’t lie. You do it badly.”
“I do it perfectly, but I’m not doing it now.” It was the truth. The freaked-out trucker had returned with a skeptical-looking cop just as I was leaving, and I’d nervously looked back at the waterline—to see exactly nothing.
Big as he was, Blue moved like smoke.
“If you think that’s going to work,” James said ominously.
“I don’t have him!”
“Then your friend is going to enjoy our hospitality until you do.”
“James!”
“I want the selkies, too,” he went on ruthlessly. “No one even had a chance to question them. You bring me the dozen you cost me, and your friend goes free. Otherwise, I’m sure there’s plenty of—”
“You’re not going to lock him up!”
“—counts I can dig up on one of the biggest bookies in this city. He could go away for years. Or even be deported, if we rack up enough charges.”
I didn’t answer that time.
I just sat there for a moment, holding my phone.
Every war mage I knew was a giant asshole. Every single one, except for James. The last time I’d seen him, other than tonight, had been a month or so ago, on one of his days off. He’d been painting his dad’s shop, while his wife cooked burgers in the small courtyard out back, and his youngest daughter wove a wreath out of centaury and feverfew, which he proudly wore while we ate.
