I have a sad: there’s a minor character later in this chapter who I now don’t want to kill off. But she must! Even if I wrote her an excellent introduction. Perhaps I should change her last name to ‘Darling.’
There were five folders in front of me. Five folders, five lives, five deaths. All of it, all of them, turned into a few pieces of paper. I doubted any of ‘em expected to end up here, but they never do.
I normally treat orders from the Flatfoots as well-meaning suggestions, but Foster sounded serious enough that I decided that right away meant just that. Captain Gannon was still in the office when I got there, but that didn’t mean anything. He liked to work late and his wife didn’t mind, since she was his secretary and it meant more overtime for her.
We went through the usual bits of small and trash talk while I poured us both drinks, but he wasn’t feeling the mood tonight. “It wasn’t a great time, Tom,” he said as he passed over the files. “But the word came down: there aren’t any mages in Cin City, so there can’t be any mage wars in Cin City. Simple as that.”
“That bad, huh?” I started to flip through the files.
“It got worse as it went on,” Gannon said. “We’re still not sure we found all the victims. I mean, it’s a big city, right?”