Nightmare Ink Read Online Free PDF Page B

ago when she’d still lived with her adoptive mother, Ruth. Isa wanted to see if, in the marriage of magic and the mundane, she could pick up the escaped dragon’s trail.
    Opening to another sense, she studied the basement, concentrating on the path from the studio to the alley door. The gold of her magic permeated the space, spillover from what she’d summoned to make ink, she assumed. But between the studio and the exit, a multicolored path twisted, evidence of people coming and going, unaware of their magic leaking out wherever they went. They’d erased every trace of the dragon’s escape.
    Isa swore. She’d try again in the alley.
    Shifting her other-sight to one side, she turned on the slow cooker and set the timer.
    “Officer Davis?” she said as she limped for the door. “If you smell smoke? Don’t go in there.”
    “Wait. What?” he yelped.
    “I’ll be back to check on it tomorrow,” she said before stepping out into the crispy snow. “If it doesn’t blow up.”
    “Ha-ha. Very funny!” he hollered from the doorway. “That was a joke, right?”
    Isa waved and thought she caught a glimmer of green and gold magic at the corner. She followed. Until it vanished into the energy wash of people using the snow as an excuse to walk to restaurants, grocery stores, and other shops up and down the street.
    Frustrating that she hadn’t been able to go with Steve’s tracking team. Between her injury and the blizzard, Steve had flat refused to let her go after the dragon.
    In the twenty-four hours since Kelli Solvang’s death, Steve’d had his tracking team on the streets. They’d reported tantalizing traces of the creature, but nothing that persisted in the environment to allow them to follow it.
    She needed a plan for what to do when it turned up.
    A knock on her apartment door three hours later brought her out of her chair without thinking, which upset the dog sleeping hunched atop her stocking feet. Her injured quad cramped. She collapsed into the chair with a yelp of pain.
    Gus barked once, then crowded against her legs, his snout on her knees asking if she was okay.
    The door opened.
    Steve stalked into the apartment, bristling with indignation. “What did I tell you about getting off that leg?”
    “I am!” Gritting her teeth, Isa pressed her fingers deep into the muscle fibers in an uninjured spot.
    Agent Anne Macquarie followed Steve through the door at a sedate pace, pausing to close it behind her.
    Isa swallowed a curse. Of course the police had access to the apartment building, but she should have locked her apartment door. She’d left it unlocked because Nathalie had insisted on walking Gus in Isa’s stead. She’d even scooped the cat’s litter box.
    The cramp receded. Something warm and wet trickled from at least one of the puncture wounds.
Great.
    “Agent Macquarie has some additional questions, if you’re up to it,” Steve said.
    As if she could say no without him carting her to the ER. She gestured them into the apartment and shut her laptop. “Sure. What do you want to know?”
    “I’m told you could have prevented that thing from escaping,” she said.
    Gus rumbled a low growl.
    Isa wound a hand in his collar and rubbed one of his ears to silence him. She scowled at the agent. “Been talking to Daniel, I take it?”
    He was the only person who’d known she’d failed to cast a circle. What the hell was he doing? Trying to force her out of business? Did he really think she’d work for him if he managed to run her out of Nightmare Ink?
    “Yes or no, Ms. Romanchzyk?” Anne pressed.
    “True,” Isa said to spite her. “I could have prevented the creature’s escape.”
    “Why didn’t you?”
    “The ritual required to lock the creature inside a magic circle with me would have taken time your witness didn’t have,” she said.
    “I may be at some fault, too,” Steve broke in.
    They looked at him. The surprise written in Anne’s raised eyebrows mirrored Isa’s.
    He