Small Magics by Ilona Andrews Page A

the fire raging inside color her irises.  Yes, I’m still mad at you.
    Most people froze when confronted with that orange glow. It whispered of old things, brutal and hungry, waiting just beyond the limits of human consciousness.
    Adam smiled.
    Idiot.
    She looked back at the file.
    He opened the top drawer of his desk, took out a small paper box, and set it on the desk.  Now what?
    Adam pried the lid open with his oversized fingers and extracted a small brown cupcake with chocolate frosting. It looked thimble-sized in his thick hands. “I have a cupcake.”
    He had lost his mind.
    Adam tilted the cupcake from side to side, making it dance. “It’s chocolate.”
    She clenched her teeth, speechless.
    “It could be your cupcake if you stop—”
    She dashed across the room in a blur, leaped, and crouched on the desk in front of him. He blinked. She plucked the cupcake from his huge hand with her slender fingers and pretended to ponder it. “I don’t like a lot of people.”
    “I’ve noticed,” he said. He was still smiling. Truly, he had a death wish.
    Siroun examined the cupcake some more. “If you die, I will have to choose a new partner, Adam.” She turned and looked at him. “I don’t want a new partner.”
    He nodded in mock seriousness. “In that case, I’ll strive to stay alive.”
    “Thank you.”
    Knuckles rapped on the door. It swung open, and the narrow-shouldered, thin figure of Chang, their POM coordinator, stepped inside. Chang looked at them for a long moment. His eyes widened. “Am I interrupting?”
    Siroun jumped off the desk and moved back to the bed, palming the cupcake. “No.”
    “I am relieved. I’d hate to be rude.” Chang crossed the office, deposited another leather file in front of Adam, and perched in a chair across the room. Lean to the point of delicate, the coordinator had one of those encouraging faces that predisposed people to trust him. He wore a small smile and seemed slightly ill at ease, as if he constantly struggled to overcome his natural shyness. Last year, a man had attacked him outside the POM doors with the intent of robbing him. Chang decapitated him and put his head on a sharpened stick. It sat in front of the office for four days before the stench prevailed, and he took it down. A bit crude, but very persuasive.
    “That’s a beautiful bottle,” Chang said, nodding at the Bombay. “I’ve never seen you drink, Adam. Especially dry gin. So why the bottle?”
    “He likes the color,” Siroun said.
    Adam smiled.
    Chang glanced at the flat screen in the wall and sighed. “Things are much easier when technology is up. Unfortunately, we’ll have to do this the hard way. Please turn to page one in your file.”
    Siroun opened the file. Page one offered a portrait of a lean man in a business suit, bending forward, looking into the dense torrent of traffic of cars, carts, and riders. A somber man, confident, almost severe. Slick lines, square jaw, elongated shape of the face inviting comparison with a Doberman pinscher, light skin, light blond hair cut very short. Early to mid forties.
    “John Sobanto, an attorney with Dorowitz & Sobanto, and your target. Mr. Sobanto made a fortune representing powerful clients, but he’s most famous and most hated for representing New Found Hope.”
    Siroun bared her teeth. Now there was a name everyone in Philly loved to despise.
    New Found Hope, a new church born after the Shift, had pushed hard for pure human, no-magic-tolerated membership. So hard, that on Christmas day, sixteen of its parishioners walked into the icy water of the Delaware River and drowned nine of their own children, who had been born with magic. The guilty and the church leaders were charged with first-degree murder. The couples took the fall, but the founder of the church escaped without even a slap on the wrist. John Sobanto was the man who made it happen.
    “Mr. Sobanto is worth $4.2 million, not counting his investments in Left Arm Securities, which