Excerpt: P.O.W.

I closed the door behind us. Jerry crossed to the messy bed, sat down, and shook someone's shoulder. "Wake up, baby."

A woman's voice purred, "Mmmmmm, you're home."

Jerry cast me an apologetic smile, then said, "Yeah, baby, but I got important company. I need a few minutes, 'kay?"

An irritated sigh, and then a tousled blonde head appeared as his girlfriend sat up. Not as young as I expected, but pretty. She looked at me, wrinkled her nose, then looked at Jerry. "He does not sit on the furniture, understand?"

He made some assenting noise, then she swung long legs out of the bed and got to her feet. She wasn't wearing a stitch. One hand reached out, and her long fingers snagged a short satin robe off the coffee table. She slung it over her shoulder as if it were a jacket and laughed at my discomfort in her nakedness. "He can stay as long as he wants, Jerry," she called. "He's safe."

She opened the front door and went out into the corridor still making no attempt to use the robe for what it was made for. I pushed the door shut.

"What'd she mean?" I asked Jerry. "That I'm safe?"

He shrugged and switched on a table lamp in the living room. "You know, that it's okay to talk with you. Really talk with you. Because you're magic."

I opened my mouth, shut it again. Dezane... I said.

He smiled. "But I knew that already. You had to be."

I'd come back to that, but right now, I had more important questions. "What the hell happened in the hotel?"

"I tried. I really tried."

"What happened?"

"I took them to your old room, figuring they'd get caught up checking out the damage, figuring out who did that. But they didn't stop there. Someone must have tipped them off. They insisted on knocking on doors. Your door was open. I mean the room we moved you to. Your friend was in there. And a woman. She was dead." Jerry watched me, as if trying to gauge my reaction, how much I already knew, how much he should say. How dangerous I might get when I heard the story.

"Her name was Anne," I murmured.

That seemed to let Jerry off the hook, and he nodded a little. "So, they arrested your friend and called for an--"

"What?" It took a moment, but his words finally sunk in. "Kyle? They arrested Kyle?"

Jerry nodded. "For her murder. He...." He hesitated again, then shrugged again and went on, "He didn't protest, didn't say he was innocent. Didn't say anything. He was just sitting there holding her hand."

Even in death, he could do more for her than I could. I hadn't taken her cold dead hand in mine. Couldn't. Couldn't hold her. Couldn't even touch her. Not dead. I'd run; he'd stayed. And he'd been arrested for her murder, not me.

"I need to sit down," I said.

"Not on the furniture!" Jerry said, jumping up. "She'd never forgive me. Look. The bathroom's behind you. Take a shower, get cleaned up. I'll get you some clean clothes, okay? You're safe here, honest. At least for now," he added, then grimaced at his own honesty.