Dragon Justice by Laura Anne Gilman Read Free Book Online Page A

room staged with a secretary’s desk, padded guest chairs,
and some anemic-looking potted plants, waiting for some bright but world-wise
dame to answer the phone, while the detective slept off a bender in the back
room.
    Danny didn’t have a receptionist, and he usually slept off his
hangovers at home.
    A weary voice called out, “What do you want?”
    Or, maybe not.
    I took myself all the way into the back room and shut the door
behind me. “You look like hell.” Danny was a good-looking guy, the product of an
attractive woman—I’d seen pictures of his mom, stern but lovely in Navy
blues—and an unknown, unlamented faun who, like all of his breed, had the
strong, stocky body that Danny had inherited, along with the short, curved horns
that were only barely hidden by his thick brown hair. Right now, though, Danny
was slumped in the chair behind his desk, cowboy boots up on the aforementioned
desk. His eyes were closed, and his face was lined and gray, like he hadn’t
slept in a week.
    He might not have, for all I knew. We hadn’t had a chance to
schmooze lately, with the workload Stosser kept handing the pack. I felt a flare
of bad-friend guilt.
    “Are you okay?” I had no idea what a fever would feel like on a
mixed-breed, but moved forward to touch his forehead, anyway. He batted my hand
away and opened one eye enough to glare.
    “I’m fine, Torres. It’s just been a crappy week. What do you
want?”
    I didn’t want to lay anything more on him, but there wasn’t any
point in walking away without at least asking.
    “I have a case I was hoping you could help with. It’s about a
missing kid.”
    Danny’s boots hit the floor so fast and hard I didn’t even see
him move. “What kid? When? How old?”
    Whoa, hadn’t been expecting that. A bit of an overreaction,
even for Danny’s known soft spot. I stumbled my reply, then recovered. “Seven
years old. Missing a week now.”
    “Oh.” He settled back a bit then, his shoulders not exactly
relaxing, but no longer looking like he was about to leap out the door at a full
run. “Not mine, then.”
    Oh, fuck. The pain in my stomach got worse. “You have another
missing kid?”
    “Two, actually. Probably dusted.”
    That was slang for being lured by one of the more seductive
fatae breeds—like Danny’s.
    “One almost fifteen, the other a legal adult, just turned
twenty-one, but parents still worried.”
    The difference—and that they were older—made me feel slightly
better, and I relaxed, too, pulling one of the client chairs around the desk so
I could sit next to Danny, not be separated by the expanse of wooden desk.
“Nope, mine’s seven, like I said.”
    “Boy or girl?”
    “Girl. Yours?”
    “Girls, too.”
    That still didn’t mean any connection. “Do boy-children or
girl-children go missing more often?” I’d never wondered that before.
    “NISMART numbers say slightly more males than females, out of
about a million-plus reported every year. Most are runaways, teenagers, or
known-adult abductions. Only a small but ugly percentage are nonfamily
kidnappings.” Of course Danny would know. “Most are white. Yours?”
    “No. Mom’s Asian, dad’s Caucasian.”
    Danny frowned. “Mine are mixed, too. Statistically that’s odd,
although within range for New York.”
    I thought about that and let it go. “Even if we had a
full-scale kid-snatch going on, which I doubt, I can’t think of any fatae breed
who would be looking for the full range of age and—”
    Something ticked in my brain, and I pulled out the file again,
flipping through. “Seven. Fourteen. Twenty-one…”
    “What?” Danny was watching me intently now, his skin still
tired-looking but his eyes alert and focused, his usual energy back.
    “Magic.” I said it like a curse word. It fit, damn it. It all
fit....
    “What?”
    I forgot sometimes that Danny was fatae, not Talent. They
looked at—and reacted to—things differently than we did. Also, they got told
different