Kayla sat on the wooden chair, feeling the sweat drip down the inside of her shirt, wondering how much longer they'd have to sit in this room. "Can I have a glass of water?" she asked Officer Walker.
"Once the homicide detectives arrive, I'll get you something to drink," the policeman said. "Just be patient a little longer, Kayla."
"Okay," she said, trying to find a more comfortable way of sitting on the hard wooden chair. All of this would be much easier to deal with if the chairs in the police station were a little more comfortable, she thought. Instead, she was stuck in this empty room with Officer Walker, who was a nice guy but didn't want to talk very much. He'd said that to her when they arrived at the police station, that they'd have to wait in a separate room and not talk about what had happened at the convenience store until the homicide detectives from the Detective Headquarters Division arrived.
The Hispanic girl was seated on a chair by the door, looking as though she wished she was somewhere else. Kayla understood exactly how she felt.
The silence in the room was making her crazy, she decided. After all the noise of gunshots and screaming, the silence was more than she could handle. "Do you know who that guy was, Officer Walker?" Kayla asked.
"Kayla, I've already said that we can't talk about it, not until the detectives arrive. Please, no more questions."
She sat with her arms folded on her knees, curled up on the chair, until the door opened again. Two more police officers walked in, a blonde woman and a heavyset man. "So, Dale, what did you bring home today?"
Officer Walker stood up. "Consuela Rodriguez was the first person to arrive on the scene, and she called the police. Kayla here was in the store when it happened. She wasn't hurt; none of that blood is hers."
"I'll start with the kid," the woman said. She gestured for Kayla to follow her. Kayla did, wondering what was going to happen next.
They walked down the hallway to another office. The policewoman closed the door after them and turned to a small table with a coffeepot, cans of soda, and paper cups. "Here, take a couple of paper towels; let's get some of that blood off you. Dale didn't even let you wash, did he? Would you like something to drink?"
"Anything with sugar in it," Kayla said, reaching for a can of Pepsi. She opened the bottle of aspirin that she'd lifted from the convenience store and swallowed several of the pills with some soda, then carefully wiped her face and hands with the paper towel.
The woman poured herself a cup of coffee and glanced up at the clock on the wall. "One A.M. Well, this will certainly be a long night. Have a seat, young lady. I'm afraid you're going to be here for a while, and I can't let you talk to anyone else just yet, not even your parents. By the way, I don't think I introduced myself. I'm Detective Cable. You can call me Nichelle, if you'd like."
Kayla gingerly sat down on one of the chairs. Detective Cable set a small tape recorder on the table next to them and took out a small stack of paper forms and a pencil.
Then the questions began.
Forty-five minutes later, Kayla was trying to stay awake as she explained for a second time how she hadn't seen the gunman actually walk into the store, how she hadn't seen anyone outside the store who could've been with the gunman, and that she hadn't heard the gunman say anything until after the police arrived.
I wish Billy was here. He'd know what to say, how to handle this.
"All right," Cable said, stifling a yawn. "Let's go over what happened when your friend Billy was shot. You said you jumped the guy, he knocked you down and you fainted, and . . . ?"
" . . . and I woke up when Officer Walker was asking me if I was okay," she said, not saying anything about the entire "blue lights" situation. They'll lock me up in a padded cell in five minutes if I start talking about that, she thought.
To Kayla's relief, the policewoman switched off the tape recorder. "Thank you, Kayla," she said with a tired smile. "Thank you very much. Now all I need is for you to fill out some paperwork, and then I'll give you over to Elizabet Winters, our resident psychology therapist, specializing in juvenile psychology. She'll want to talk to you a little, make sure that you're handling all of this okay. I know it's been an awful night for you, and you seem to be dealing with everything just fine, but we have to be certain. Elizabet will also call your parents and make sure you get home all right. I'm sure they're worried about you, and will want to know where you are." She set a form and a pen in front of Kayla, then walked over to pour herself another cup of coffee.
Call . . . my parents? Kayla thought in dismay. She looked down at the form and at the second line, where she was supposed to write in her address. What am I supposed to do now?
Maybe if I just fill it out quickly, then I can ask to go to the bathroom or something and get out of the building.
Then I'll find Liane, and we can find Billy at the hospital. He'll know what to do, he always does.
Good plan.
She wrote in carefully: 6925 Hollywood Boulevard. Hollywood, California.
The other questions were just as bad; she put down fake names for her parents, grandparents, school, and everything else.
Cable took the form from her, scanning it quickly. Kayla sat and waited, trying not to look nervous. The policewoman walked to the door with the form still in her hand. "I'll be back in a minute, Kayla," she said, and left the room.
Maybe I should try to get out of here now, Kayla thought, then decided against it. Somebody would probably stop her before she could get to the front door. No, waiting until the right moment, that was a better idea—wait until someone was taking her home, she could just walk away and then head back home, to Suite 230.
Home. Once upon a time, that had meant something better than an abandoned office building in downtown Hollywood. She thought about what the policewoman had said about calling her parents and fought back the sudden tears that threatened to escape from her eyes.
I wish you could call my folks, lady, she thought. I just wish you could.
Elizabet Winters set down the case folder, rubbing at her eyes with a tired hand. Too many blank pages left to fill out . . . the file on that last runaway child would keep her here for another hour, when all she wanted to do was go home and get some sleep. At least there'd been a happy ending to that story, unlike most of them. She and Lieutenant Simmons had escorted the boy to the LAX airport, where she'd seen him off on the midnight plane to Chicago, knowing that the boy's anxious parents were waiting for him on the other end of the line.
Sometimes these things worked out.
Sometimes they didn't. Elizabet didn't want to think about Marie, a lovely sixteen-year-old who'd been brought in to the station for child prostitution at least five times. The last time, they'd taken her to the county morgue instead, with five knife wounds in her. No suspects in that case yet, and Elizabet doubted they'd ever find any.
"Hey, Elizabet, you got a minute? I need some help."
Elizabet looked up, to see Nichelle Cable from Detective Headquarters Division. Nichelle looked just as tired as Elizabet felt. "What's up?"
"I have a girl who witnessed a double homicide tonight on Sunset Boulevard. I didn't think there was anything unusual about her until she gave me this." Nichelle held up the witness identification form and pointed at Line 2.
"So, she lives on Hollywood Boulevard? What's strange about that?" Elizabet asked.
"I wouldn't have thought anything was weird about it, except that when I was in high school, I worked in a particular movie theater for a few months. This girl gave me the address of Mann's Chinese Theater." Nichelle smiled. "I ran her name through the runaway database, and it came up cherries. Kayla Smith, state ward. She's been in Juvie twice for shoplifting and is currently reported missing from a foster home in Orange County. She ran away two months ago. God knows what she's been doing since." The homicide detective dropped the form on Elizabet's desk. "She's all yours, Elizabet."
"Thanks," Elizabet said with a wry smile. "Anything else I should know about this child?"
"She's bright and obviously thinks fast on her feet. Doesn't look like she does drugs, though she's wearing a half-trashed denim jacket that would cover any tracks. No terminal case of the sniffles or jitters, anyhow, so I doubt she's a crackhead. Maybe you can do something for this one."
"Maybe." Elizabet stuffed the case folder in her briefcase. "Is she in a holding room or one of the offices?"
"Simmons' office. There's still some fresh coffee in there, if you need it." Nichelle yawned and stretched, smiling tiredly. "I'm calling it a night. You might want to buzz Collins and get him ready to process this kid. I doubt anyone would want to drive her over to Juvie at this hour."
"You're probably right about that. Thanks for the coffee, Nichelle, I'll need it. Good night."
"Good luck," the policewoman said with a grin.
Elizabet picked up her briefcase and her jacket and headed over to Simmons' office. Ten feet away from the office door, she stopped, closing her eyes for a brief moment.
She knew.
She'd felt it earlier, an "incident" in the city, magical power like a flare going off, as someone called down magic with all the subtlety of a high-explosive rocket. She'd wanted to go investigate, but with the boy to escort to the airport, there had been no chance. But now . . .
It was this girl. She could feel it already, even though she couldn't see the girl through the closed office door. But even at this distance, the sensation of power sparked around her, tingling and alive. Whoever this girl was, she was a little powerhouse, and probably remarkably dangerous because of it.
Maybe she was the cause of the double homicide?
No . . . she could sense the child's power, and it burned clean and incandescent. The girl was bright with power and promise, with no taint of death around her. Instead, it was something else that she sensed, something that she only saw dimly sometimes when looking in the mirror, moments when she could see herself and her own magic glowing within her. . . .
The child has magic!
Elizabet opened the door and walked into the office. The girl looked up from where she was seated with her elbows propped on the table. She didn't look like much, just a street kid wearing jeans and a denim jacket over a stained T-shirt, long tangled brown hair, and large green eyes. Those eyes followed Elizabet as she draped her blue suit jacket over the back of the chair and then sat down across from her.
"I'm Elizabet Winters," she said. "Elizabet is a mistake on my birth certificate that I've lived with all these years. You're Kayla, right?" She extended her hand. The kid didn't move, just sat and watched her with those terrified eyes. Elizabet withdrew her hand, wondering how to handle this.
"Who are you?"
The girl's voice was surprisingly soft, Elizabet thought. "I'm a psych therapist working with the police department," she said. "Usually I help the relatives of victims of crime, or work with people who have been through a traumatic experience. Like what you went through tonight. Do you want to talk about that?"
Yes, I'd like to talk about it, but I also don't want to spend the rest of my life in a padded room, Kayla thought, looking at the woman across from her. Elizabet Winters was a beautiful black woman in her fifties, black and silver hair coiled up in a braid. She sat silently, apparently waiting for Kayla to say something.
What am I supposed to say? That some guy killed two people in front of me and shot my best friend, and I created this weird light show to get rid of the bullet holes? No way.
"I've—I've had a bad night," she said at last, choosing her words carefully. "I'm okay, but I'd like to go home."
The older woman nodded. "That's a problem, unfortunately. Detective Cable wanted me to lock you up here for the night and maybe send you to Juvenile Hall in the morning, since it's a little impractical to take you back to the foster home in Orange County in the middle of the night."
"What?" Kayla sat upright in shock.
"I think I have another alternative," Elizabet continued, "since neither a midnight trip to Orange County or a night at Juvenile Hall seems to be the appropriate answer."
"Terrific," Kayla said, and slumped back down in her chair. "So are you going to send me back to Mr. and Mrs. Davis? I know it doesn't matter what I think, but I don't want to go."
"Obviously, or you wouldn't have run away from them." The black woman smiled. "Kayla, if you could do anything, what would you do?"
"I—I don't understand," she answered uncertainly.
"I'll rephrase this. Pretend for a minute that you don't have to go back to that foster home, or Juvie, or anything like that. If you could choose where you wanted to live, what you wanted to do, what would you choose?"
Who is this lady? Kayla wondered. She isn't like any cop or social worker I've ever met before. "I don't know. I guess . . . if I could have anything, I'd want to live with my parents again. But that won't ever happen, I know that." At Elizabet's questioning look, she added, "They disappeared when I was twelve years old. I was at school, Mom never showed up to take me home." The memory of that afternoon was still burned into her mind: how she'd waited and waited at the school, then walked home, to find the police at her house. "Nobody knew how to find any of my relatives, so I ended up in a foster home." She thought about it for a few moments longer. "If I could do anything, I'd want to live with people that understood me. Good people, not like Mr. Davis. People who like to talk about real things, and treat people right, and . . . and read books. People who do more than sit around drinking beer and watching TV."
"You like to read?"
In spite of herself, Kayla blushed. "I love reading," she said, looking down at her sneakers. "Sometimes it's the only way to escape, get away from everything."
"Have you thought of going to college?" Elizabet asked.
"Yeah, sure, but there's a snowball's chance of that, you know? You have to graduate high school before they'll let you go to college."
"Maybe I can help you with that." The woman stood up, pulling on her blue jacket and picking up her briefcase. "Time to go, child."
"To Juvie?" Kayla's voice quavered, and she hated it for that. She clenched her fists, trying to keep her voice steady. "Is that where you're taking me?"
Elizabet Winters smiled. "No, I have another idea. I'll need to find Lieutenant Simmons first, but I doubt he'd have any objections."
Curious, Kayla followed Elizabet out of the office. Elizabet led her through the corridors and open office rooms of the police station.
"The lieutenant's downstairs with our new psychopath," one officer told Elizabet, and she led Kayla down a flight of stairs to a brightly lit row of holding cells. A sandy-haired policeman stood a few feet back from the rows of concrete-walled rooms, from which Kayla could hear someone screaming curses and obscenities. There was one small iron-barred cell next to the larger holding cells that had several prisoners in each, men that were mostly sitting around quietly. In the smaller cell was the man from the QuickStart, wearing a stained white shirt and jeans instead of the long black leather coat.
In spite of herself, she stared at the killer. Another man, wearing jeans and a plaid shirt and seated quietly on a bench in the next cell, was watching her through the open bars. She avoided his curious eyes, looking instead at the man who'd tried to kill her.
There was something wrong with him, she could tell, even at this distance. Something broken inside that made him crazy this way. Her hands tingled, and she glanced down quickly, making sure that her fingers weren't glowing again. They weren't, fortunately. Kayla looked back at the crazy man, wondering just how one would fix something wrong inside somebody's head; it wouldn't be like fixing a gunshot wound, that was more like patching things back together. No, this would be like reaching inside and changing something. . . .
Elizabet began speaking in a quiet voice to the policeman; with the lunatic screaming at the top of his voice, Kayla couldn't hear what she was saying.
"Hey, chickie." The gunman's voice suddenly dropped to a whisper. "I know who you are, I know what you did."
Kayla moved closer so she could hear him. "What?"
"It's magic, did you know that? I've seen magic, and that's what you did."
Elizabet spoke sharply from behind her. "Kayla! Get away from—"
The man reached out and grabbed Kayla's arm, yanking her toward him with inhuman strength. "Devil!" he screamed. Kayla was pulled hard against the metal bars, struggling to get free. The man's other hand clamped onto her throat, tightening painfully.
Elizabet's hand was on the man's arm, trying to pull him away from Kayla. A split-second later, Kayla felt a shock of hot fire go through her hands, a sudden pain like a knife. The man yelped and leaped back, falling onto the floor of his cell.
Elizabet pulled her back from the cell, blocking the lieutenant's view of Kayla with her own body. Kayla glanced down, and saw why: a handful of blue sparks, flickering like fireflies on a Southern night, were fading from her own fingertips as she watched.
"Are you all right? Did he hurt you?" Elizabet asked urgently.
Kayla shook her head. "I'm okay, really." She looked at the man cowering in his cell, clutching his left arm. "Did he—?" She turned quickly to look at the police officer, hoping he hadn't seen anything.
"Good use of pressure points, Elizabet," Lieutenant Simmons said, motioning for them to stand further back from the cell. "I've seen Ms. Winters do things like that before," the police officer continued. "It's some Japanese martial art, isn't it?"
Elizabet's eyes never left Kayla's. "I know a few useful tricks, Jeff," she said.
"Yes." The police officer nodded. "In any case, Elizabet, my answer is yes. I don't see why you can't foster this girl for a few days until a judge figures out what to do for her. Just make sure the correct paperwork ends up on the captain's desk."
"That's what you were asking about?" Kayla asked, her eyes wide.
"Only if you don't mind, child. If you'd rather go elsewhere, we can make other arrangements," Elizabet said.
"No, that's okay by me." Kayla didn't know what else to say. She thought about being locked up in Juvie, and decided that it would be a lot easier to get away from this lady than the cops at Juvie. Because all she could think about right now was running away, running as far away from all of everything that had happened tonight, until she didn't have to think about it anymore.
Then she thought about a warm bed, and maybe a chance to take a shower, maybe even get some clean clothes. I'll see what her place is like, Kayla thought, And then I'll decide. Maybe I'll want to stay there tonight, maybe I can steal some stuff that I can get some cash for . . .
Maybe this lady is all right. I mean, she saw what just happened, and she didn't freak, or even say anything about it. Maybe she can answer some of these questions . . . maybe she can explain what in the hell is happening to me.
She followed Elizabet out of the holding cell area, making a wide berth around the crazy man's cell. When they were outside the police station, she couldn't hold back the questions any longer. "You saw, didn't you? Why didn't you tell the cop? I don't—"
"Not here," Elizabet said. "We'll talk at my house." They walked to one of the few cars left in the parking lot next to the station, an old white VW Rabbit convertible. "We can stop by Cedars Sinai Hospital and check on your friend Billy if you'd like," she offered.
"We don't have to. I know he's okay," Kayla said without thinking.
Elizabet smiled at her. "Yes, you would know that, wouldn't you? All right, then we'll just go straight to my house."
She knows! Kayla thought. She knows exactly what happened!
"Bitch!" the man screamed as the police lieutenant left the room. "She's an evil bitch, she's the Devil's daughter!"
Carlos Miguel Hernandez listened to the man's raving for another few minutes, then uncurled from his position on the jail cell's wooden bench and moved to the corner of his cell, as close as he could get to the other man. "Why do you say that little puta is the daughter of the Devil?" he asked conversationally. "She's just a child."
"I saw it, kid!" the man shrieked. "I saw it, I saw it!"
"Please, amigo, calm down. Tell me what you saw."
Carlos listened intently to the man's descriptions of the evening's events, and nodded thoughtfully. "Can you prove that this happened? Do you have proof?"
"I'll show you, kid, but you have to give it back to me, you have to promise!" the other man said shrilly.
"I promise, I promise," Carlos snapped impatiently. "And do not call me kid," he added. "I'm nineteen years old, I'm a man."
For an answer, the man's hand reached out through the bars, holding out his shirt. Carlos pulled it into his cell and looked at it curiously.
"Look on the right side, you'll see the mark," the man said.
Carlos turned the shirt in his hands and saw the bullet hole. The bloodstains around the hole were fresh, not yet darkened to the red-brown color of old blood. He brought the shirt closer to his face and sniffed. Yes, fresh blood.
"I have a hole in my jacket, too," the man said. "But no bullet wound. She healed me, she's the Devil's daughter!"
"I believe you," Carlos said. "If you were still hurt, you would be in the security ward of a hospital, not here in county jail." How remarkable, he thought, And how very useful. Though if that child is the Devil's daughter, it is a kind and gentle Devil who would save the life of someone trying to kill her.
I want to see this miracle for myself, this child who heals friend and enemy alike.
"Do you know who she is?" Carlos asked. "Do you know where she lives?"
The other man mumbled a negative. Carlos pushed the shirt back through the bars of the cell into the other man's grasp and sat down on the bench to consider what he had learned.
She could be very useful indeed, this healing child. Tomorrow morning, he would stand in front of the judge and pay his fines to leave this place. After that, he could begin searching for this child. Somehow he did not doubt that he or one of his homeboys, the Tyrone Street Boys, would find her, one girl in all of the city of Los Angeles. He stretched out on the bench and listened in silence to the incoherent words of the man in the cell beside him. Tomorrow, he would find her. . . .
"Nice place," Kayla muttered, looking up at the darkened house. She glanced at Elizabet. "How much does the police department pay you, anyhow?"
"I also have a private practice," Elizabet said, unlocking the front door. "Besides, child, I bought this house fifteen years ago, before the rich folks decided that Laurel Canyon was the perfect place to build a fancy house. You'll see, it's not much on the inside."
Maybe you think so, Kayla thought, walking into the wood-paneled room, But I can sure spot a few things that would get me some good bucks at Mel's Gun and Pawn. She paused to look at a collection of crystal dolphins on a shelf in the hallway. I wouldn't even think of hocking those—they'd probably break when I was carrying 'em out. But the VCR, that looks like it's new, and it's one of the better brands . . . that could be worth something. . . .
A moment later, she noticed something else: the house was quiet. Not just from noise, but from the jangling pressure she'd felt for the last months, the sensation that the world was tightening down on her and making her crazy. Her headache faded as she looked around in surprise. Totally weird.
"I'm getting something to drink from the fridge. Would you like anything?"
"A glass of milk would be great," Kayla said, and Elizabet walked away. Kayla studied one of the crystal dolphins; it seemed to float in midair, caught forever in a leap out of the water. Only the tip of its tail touched the cut-glass water, the dolphin sculpture delicately balanced on that point.
"Do you like that one?" Elizabet asked, walking up behind her with two glasses of milk. "I like to think of it as a representation of life, balanced perfectly at a single moment."
Kayla took the offered glass from Elizabet's hand. "Thanks." She sipped the milk, then looked wistfully in the direction of Elizabet's kitchen.
"Of course, you must be hungry, child. I probably have some sandwich fixings in the fridge. I'll show you where everything is."
Kayla followed her into the kitchen, and as Elizabet took out a plate and silverware from the cupboards, she asked, "Why did you say, 'of course'?"
Elizabet was silent for a moment. "Make yourself whatever you'd like to eat, then we'll sit down and talk."
"Yeah, sure." Kayla decided not to be polite about the fact that she felt like she hadn't eaten in weeks, and made a huge sandwich out of a whole wheat roll and several different kinds of cheeses. She sat down across from Elizabet at the kitchen table, alternating quick bites of the sandwich with swallows of milk. The older woman watched without speaking as Kayla finished the sandwich. "So, what did you want to talk about?" she asked hesitantly, uncomfortable with Elizabet's long silence.
"We have a few things to discuss," Elizabet said thoughtfully. "Like what happened to you earlier this evening."
"You read Officer Cable's report," Kayla offered. "It has everything in it. Did you want to know about something else?"
Elizabet lifted her hand; white-gold light flickered over her fingers, glittering in the cold light of the kitchen.
"This is what we have to talk about," Elizabet said, the light brightening around her hand as she spoke. "This is magic."