Read Salt and Iron for Free Online

Square, about six blocks from the Firm’s office in the old part of town.
    In the 1800s Cawdor Square was a hanging square, but the only sign of its lurid past is a little interpretive plaque on one side of the green, though the two old cottonwood trees with their big, spreading branches are still there. Now it’s benches under them, not wooden steps, and people picnic in the park, where they used to howl like beasts at the dying and the dead.
    The shadows are growing long and blue by the time he gets to the station. He goes up the four stone steps and through the old-fashioned glass doors with their curved, old-timey New Glamis Police Station printed in gold, as much for the tourists that flock here in spring when the chestnut trees start blooming as for the aid of the locals. Inside the place is a curious mix of modern and dated. Intricate cast-iron scrollwork on banisters and vents, modern safety-glass and key-card doors. He smiles at the tall sergeant—James can’t remember his name; Kareem, maybe?—on desk duty, signs the register, and waits to be buzzed in.
    He knows his way, but he’s a civilian, so he has to go with an escort. Today it’s a neophyte blue he’s never met before and who’s too anxious about James’s celebrity last name to make a peep while they walk.
    The two of them go down the hallway with its stuttering fluorescent lights and down the stairs to the interrogation rooms. He can hear the noises coming up from the cells on the level below, rumbling of conversation punctuated by the occasional sharp noise, a drunk shouting maybe, or the two guards at the desk sharing a good joke. The whole place smells like bleach and a little like a dentist’s office, and he wonders for the first time who has to clean up all the puke and shit and blood that must get splashed around down here. He might hate his job, but it could be worse.
    The blue lets him into interrogation room number one. It’s the only one equipped for magic users. It’s concrete and iron, and there’s nothing reflective, so nobody will try to pull something through from Shadow or escape into it. If that’s really an escape. There are some things James didn’t pursue when he was studying for his magic certification; the land of Shadow, the sidhe realm of two courts, the seelie and the unseelie, were some of those things.
    He steps past the blue and nods thanks but doesn’t say it because they’re real close and the guy might smell the bourbon on his breath. So he smiles and goes through and takes in the room.
    Interrogation rooms are all more or less the same. Bare. Table molded to the floor so it looks like a mushroom sprung up out of it. There’s a chair just like it on the far side of the table, and that’s where the witch is sitting. It’s the older one, the one James figured was the dad.
    Across from him there’s Gabe, standing with a woman in a suit who James knows from doing a lot of these. She’s Alexandra Ross, duty counsel for the district. He smiles at her and extends his hand. “Ms. Ross,” he says.
    She shakes his hand and smiles right back at him.
    “Mr. van Helsing.” She speaks sotto voce, hardly above a murmur. “I was just telling Mr. Marquez that I have advised Mr. Lennox to say nothing in this matter.”
    “Is that right?” James asks, not speaking quietly. “Mr. Lennox asks for a meeting and then isn’t going to talk?” He looks at Lennox. The guy is middle years, bad haircut, hair going a little thin, gingery in color, cheeks ruddy from the sun. He looks more like a farmer than a witch, but then James is still waiting to take down somebody who actually looks like a Hallowe’en witch. When he does, he’s taking a selfie and posting it on everything . “You wasting my time, Mr. Lennox?”
    “No, I want to talk,” Lennox says, lurching forward suddenly. Chains rattle. The blues are smart. They’ve dealt with a lot of supernatural stuff, and they keep their witches in iron, just in case. “I