Kate Daniels 04.5 - Magic Dreams

phone. “Andrea, how many years did you spend as a knight?”
    “Eight.” I began pulling my clothes onto the bed: socks, work boots, jeans …
    “How many of those did you spend on active cases?”
    “Seven.” I added a box of ammo to the clothes pile on the bed.
    “That’s why. You’re the most experienced investigator I’ve got who’s not tied up in something, and I can’t ask the Consort to look into it, because A) she and Curran are working on something else and B) when the Consort gets involved, half of the world blows up.”
    Kate the Consort. The title still made me grin. Every time someone used it, she got this martyred look on her face.
    “This mess looks to be complicated and the cops are in up to their elbows. I need you to go down there and untangle it.”
    Finally. Something I could actually sink my teeth into.
    I held the phone between my shoulder and my ear and took a pencil and a notepad off the nightstand. “You’ve got an address?”
    “Fourteen-twelve Griffin.”
    Griffin Street ran through SoNo, one of the former financial districts, sandwiched between Midtown and Downtown. The name came from “South of North Avenue.” It was a bad, unstable area, with old office buildings crashing down left and right.
    “What were the shapeshifters doing there?”
    “Working,” Jim said. “It’s a reclamation site.”
    Reclamations. Oh no. No. He wouldn’t do that to me. I kept my voice even. “Who was in charge of the site?”
    Please don’t be Raphael, please don’t be Raphael, please don’t …
    “Medrano Reclamations,” Jim said.
    Damn it.
    “Raphael is being questioned by some cops, but I’ve sent some lawyers down to make sure they don’t keep him. He’ll join you as soon as they spring him out of there. Look, I know things aren’t good between you and Raphael, but we all have to do things we don’t want to do.”
    “Jim,” I cut him off. “I’ve got it. A job is a job. I’m on it.”

A BOUT THE A UTHORS

    Ilona Andrews is the pseudonym for a husband-and-wife writing team. Ilona is a native-born Russian, and Andrew is a former communications sergeant in the U.S. Army. Contrary to popular belief, Andrew was never an intelligence officer with a license to kill, and Ilona was never the mysterious Russian spy who seduced him. They met in college, in English Composition 101, where Ilona got a better grade. (Andrew is still sore about that.) Andrew and Ilona are the coauthors of two
New York Times
bestselling series: the Kate Daniels urban fantasy series and The Edge, a romantic urban fantasy series. They currently reside in Texas with their two children and numerous pets. Visit their website at www.ilona-andrews.com.

Ace Books by Ilona Andrews

    The Kate Daniels Novels
    Magic Bites
    Magic Burns
    Magic Strikes
    Magic Bleeds
    Magic Slays
    The Edge Novels
    On the Edge
    Bayou Moon
    Fate’s Edge
    eSpecials
    Magic Mourns
    Magic Dreams