The modern sofas, coffee table, and bookcases in our living room were hand-me-downs from my mother’s last redecoration, but our personalities shone through with throw cushions made of vivid sari fabric that Priya had brought back from India and all of our books spilling off the bookcases. Old university textbooks kept company with her sci-fi novels and my Sherlock Holmes collection that was gifted by my dad shortly before he took off.
Photographic prints of a red phone booth on a London street, sunset over the Colosseum, and dazzling white homes with blue doors in Santorini hung on our walls.
Cozy as it sounded, Priya’s shit exploded everywhere: a pair and a half of shoes abandoned on the floor, a slug trail of video cards, a canister of compressed air, and various tiny tools leading to her extra laptop under a chair.
I pushed aside two discarded sweaters, sat down and ate my breakfast, relishing the quiet. Priya was asleep and the hum of the fridge was soothing. Yesterday had been non-stop personal interactions and while Priya got off on them, they drained me. Throw in the fighting and the not-so-veiled threats and I’d gladly have spent today locked in my bedroom under the covers.
I took my time with my food, steeling myself to retrieve the pouch from my office safe. The melody of my magic addiction was not louder, but rather more insistent in the face of the upcoming proximity to the feather and I shivered in antici… pation. At least I amused myself past these urges.
I savored that precious half hour on my own, but Omar’s case wouldn’t solve itself. Minutes later, my dishes were in the sink, and I was stomping down my apartment building’s stairs in my motorcycle boots and leather jacket.
“What ho, pickle?” Arkady passed me holding a steaming coffee cup and a bakery bag from Muffin Top, owned by two earth elementals with insane baking abilities.
“Do you get any discount as a fellow earthy Nefesh?” I said. “Special line-cutting privileges?”
“No, but I am totally proposing that the next time I go in there.” He brushed some crumbs off his “Let Me Be Perfectly Queer” T-shirt. Of Korean-Canadian heritage and supermodel good looks, his chin-length black hair was loose today, his dark brown eyes half-lidded and sleepy. His jeans and leather jacket added to his badass vibe.
Mine looked like I was hiding stains.
I made goo-goo eyes at the coffee, but he pulled it out of reach. Whatever. I could adult my ass to one of the gazillion cafés here on the Drive.
“Hypothetically,” I said, “if Levi had people dusting for prints somewhere, would you be one of those people?”
“Nope. But I know who would be.”
“Great. Could you pass me the information first?”
“Betray Levi?” Arkady’s full lips fell into a perfect “O.”
Arkady would be devastated if his idol was behind Omar’s attack. If Levi had done it, then I’d be right to expose him and bring him to justice. Not the Queen’s version of justice, mind you. But it would still feel wrong sending a teenhood acquaintance to the slammer.
Even with all my suspicions swirling around him, I wanted to believe in the man I thought Levi to be. The Watson moral center of this crazy world. That pokey toothache feeling throbbed harder.
“I’m not asking you to stab him in the back,” I said. “Just give me a couple hours head start with the information.”
“Pickle, that’s unseemly.”
Spare me from His Lordship’s admirers. “Will you at least tell me when he gets the results so I can harass him for them?”
“No.” He brushed past me and continued up the stairs.
“Blind loyalty is not an admirable quality,” I yelled.
“Nail your next training session and I might care about your opinion,” he retorted and shut his door.
I swung by the Dershowitz estate but no one was there. When I leaned on–i.e., bribed–the maid who’d led me to the crime scene on my last visit, I was informed that the families had gone to Hedon to tell the Queen that the wedding was postponed.
That was either going to be a very short or extremely long discussion. Either way, I’d be better off gathering intel on the feather so I had something concrete to present when I interviewed everyone.
After a quick stop to slam back a double shot macchiato and a slightly longer one to retrieve the metal pouch from my office safe, I eased Moriarty into a spot out front of Freddo’s Buy & Sell.
The boarded up storefront next door was plastered in posters inviting people to a town hall to discuss the Nefesh menace. They’d been heavily defaced with obscenities and taunts against the “Mundane pussies.”
Whatever happened to live and let live?
I entered Freddo’s Buy & Sell to find the man himself behind the counter. Short with Popeye-like biceps, Freddo looked almost exactly like he had when my dad used to bring me here years ago. The only thing that had changed was that Freddo’s combover had gone from brown to silver.
“Help ya?” He blew canned air into a keyboard, his customary toothpick lodged firmly in the corner of his mouth.
“Remember me? Ash? Adam’s daughter?”
Freddo set down the canister. “Little Ash. Go figure. How’s that charming bastard? Haven’t seen him in years.”
I shrugged. “Me neither.”
Freddo shook his head. “Nah. Don’t believe it. You were your dad’s whole world. Come on, between you and me. He’s laying low, right? A con gone wrong?”
“I haven’t seen him since I was twelve.”
“Shame.” He sucked on the toothpick. “What can I do for you?”
“I’d like to continue the business relationship between our families.”
“Go on.”
“I need to find out what type of magic is on an artifact, but it’s a bit of a tricky situation because it has an adverse effect on people who get too close. Can you do it?”
Freddo was a Typecaster, with the ability to identify magic. Houses kept them on staff to verify magic types and strengths, but any good fence hoping to trade in magic artifacts honed that ability as well. I could have asked Levi to borrow his, but he wasn’t in the clear yet, so I was forced to analyze the feather the more expensive way. Why couldn’t he have given me some ironclad alibi and been done with it?
Freddo scratched his stubbled chin. “Five hundred.”
I winced. That was more than I’d anticipated and I hadn’t discussed expenses with the Tannous family. “Three hundred. Friends and family discount.”
“Three hundred,” he agreed. “Plus another two for danger pay. A read like that’ll knock me out of commission for a couple days. Man’s gotta make a living.”
“Half up front,” I said. “Half once you deliver the magic type.”
“Deal.”
I hit up a bank machine for his deposit. Upon my return, I startled Freddo, who was typing intently on his phone. “Got the cash,” I said.
“Then here’s to a long and fruitful business relationship.” He locked the front door and flipped the sign to “Closed.”
After replacing his toothpick with a fresh one, he led me into his storage room where metal racks held pawned items under the glare of a bare bulb. He pulled a large cardboard box off a shelf and set it on a battered metal table.
I placed the pouch next to the box. “Brace yourself. The compulsion is strong. It seems to work in a three-foot range and tempts you with your heart’s desire.”
“Got it. Ah. Here we go.” Freddo pulled a blindfold, a lead apron, and a tin foil hat out of the box.
“Is this a joke?”
He propped the hat on his head, smoothing his combover, because a man had to look his best no matter what the occasion. “Nope. Family tried for almost a hundred years to find a better way, but tin foil does the trick. See, compulsion artifacts work in one of two ways. Sometimes both. Head and heart. Foil negates the effect on the brain.”
“And the lead apron? It’s for X-rays, not magic.”
“Doctored. Protects the heart.” He put on the apron, laughing
at my skeptical expression. “Relax. Used this combo for generations with zero problems.” He put a finger to his lips. “Family secret, no sharing. There’s a brisk business in compulsions.”
“I’m family?”
“Adam was a good friend.”
“In that case, I wouldn’t dream of it.”
He held out his hand. “You got the cash?”
So much for family. I gave him two hundred and fifty dollars which he tucked into his shirt pocket.
Freddo tied the blindfold around his eyes, twisting his head to make sure he couldn’t see. “Works best if I do this unprejudiced by sight. Ready when you are.”
I opened the pouch and let the feather flutter into his outstretched hands. The call of its magic knocked me back a few steps and I dabbed at the sweat on my brow.
“The force is strong in this one.” He stroked it, he licked it, and he smelled it. He even prodded it with the toothpick.
“What’s it telling you?”
“Need more power,” he grunted. He pulled out a switchblade and cut the tip of his finger, dropping blood on the feather.
His magic smelled like a summer Sunday afternoon, part grass and part sunshine with a hint of smoke. Swallowing, I gripped the table, trying not to focus on the smear of blood on his skin. There was too much magic in this room on offer. I skittered back even further, my hands in tight fists behind my back.
Freddo examined the feather in a brusque, business-like manner, then grunted. “I can’t get a read on its type.”
“Give me something.” I kept a wary eye on Freddo, but his cockamamie anti-compulsion get-up continued to do its thing.
“It feels like it came from the beginning of time.”
I feigned surprise since he believed me to be Mundane and I wouldn’t know this fact otherwise. “That’s impossible. Magic isn’t that old.”
“That’s right and this can’t be either. It’s part of its trickery.”
“Is it Nefesh magic?”
He popped the toothpick back in his mouth. “All magic is Nefesh magic. What kind of question is that?”
“Could it come from some creature we haven’t realized exists? Like a vampire… or an angel? Uh, can you take off the blindfold? It’s weird talking like this.”
He whipped the blindfold off and slung the strip of black cloth over his shoulder. “Magic takes different forms, so it all feels different, but there’s still an underlying similarity to it. A foundation that marks it as Nefesh. You follow?”
I nodded.
“This has that same foundation. If other creatures existed, they’d have their own foundation.”
And buh-bye, Angel of Death. Though I was still totally keeping “The Curious Incident of the Angel of Death” as the name of this case because it sounded way cooler than “The Asshole Who Shoved a Feather Down Someone’s Throat.”
Since this was Nefesh magic, our attacker was human, and while Nefesh couldn’t fly, they could make you think they did. Fuuuuuck. “Anything else odd about the feather?”
He gave a long pull on the toothpick like it was a cigarette. “Artifact magic, no matter how potent, feels like a diluted version of ours. Same foundation, mind you. Makes sense because someone had to imbue the artifact with their magic. But this?” He tapped the feather. “More concentrated. Way more concentrated.”
“Best guess as to its type?”
“No clue. Too strong. All I read is magic in screaming capital letters with no details. It’s all big picture. Can try one more thing.” He mumbled something.
The feather’s magic flared: stardust and a hot sandstorm.
Spiky blood armor flickered in and out over my body. Desire warred with survival instinct, because if I wore the armor, I couldn’t use my powers to ride that magic. I struggled to lock the armor in place because I couldn’t go there again. I’d lose myself.
Freddo said something else under his breath and the blood he’d dripped on the feather sent up a column of smoke. He startled and jostled into me.
His hat was knocked askew.
A strange light slithered through his eyes and he let out a breathy sigh, gazing at the feather in adoration.
Oh shit.
Feather in hand, Freddo tore off the lead apron and sprinted for the open door.
I ran after him, grabbed him by the collar, and tossed him across the room. My blood armor was still going haywire, so I used the edge of my jacket and every drop of willpower to pick up the feather and seal it in the pouch.
Someone grabbed my right hand and my fingertips turned to ice.
No, not ice. Stone. My hand grew heavy as veins of black rock snaked through my palm, numbing my sense of touch and turning my flesh into dead weight. My armor flickered out entirely.
The pouch fell from my grip and clattered to the ground next to Freddo, who groggily rubbed his head.
Think, Ash. This is invasive magic. I destroyed it in other people with the third-party smudges, I could do the same for myself. I tried to hook into it but couldn’t. My magic merely chipped off flakes of the obsidian mass spreading like a pernicious weed through my body.
A man in a balaclava brushed past me. “Hand over the feather, old man.” His low gruff voice was totally exaggerated to disguise his real one.
“BBQ,” I said. My arm hung limply at my side, half of my forearm turning to stone thanks to Medusa magic.
The thief frowned. “Huh?”
Freddo, you betraying little douche baguette.
“Corn nuts, meathead.” I grabbed for him, but the dead weight of my arm threw me off balance and he sidestepped me.
The employee blinked at the corn nuts residue on his fingers. “Shit, man. She’s made us.” He grabbed the pouch, then extended a hand to Freddo.
The shock on the employee’s face when Freddo pulled out his own switchblade and stabbed his accomplice in the leg was an expression I’d cherish for years to come. Provided I was still alive.
My entire right arm was now stone, causing me to list sideways under the weight, and the blackness was spreading down my hip and into my leg. I dragged myself forward to get to Freddo, but I was too slow.
Ignoring both me and the crumpled howling employee bleeding out on his floor, Freddo grabbed the pouch and made his getaway.
“Freddo,” I croaked. I could barely hear myself over my heartbeat thumping in my ears. The stone magic continued to spread. If it got to my heart or my throat, I was toast.
Freddo turned.
“Help me. For Adam’s sake.”
His gaze flicked from the pouch to me.
My right side had gone dead. Unless I got this magic out of my system, I would be, too. “You kept a stash of Dad’s favorite lemon candies, but you’d never share them with him. You saved them for me. Remember?”
I held out my left hand to him. “Don’t let me die.”
He hesitated and I swayed on my feet. Not totally an act. I was trapped in my own body, being buried alive and suffocating. Tears leaked out of my eyes. “Please.”
Freddo bit his lip, then he came close enough to lay a hand on my cheek. “The magic is too fast-acting. You won’t suffer long.”
Relax, you’ll be dead soon. That’s what you had for me?
I snaked my hand out and grabbed his wrist, pulling it up to eye level. Blinking blearily, I sent my magic into his still-open cut and rode his blood.
We swayed together like waltz partners. Drunk waltz partners, though that might have been the blissful high from his magic. A dreamy cast engulfed the world, and the grassy taste of his magic tickled my throat, but it slid down smoothly.
As with Omar, there was no trace of compulsion magic inside him.
Freddo thrashed against me and I stroked a hand over his head, murmuring soothing words. The boost allowed me to penetrate the stone magic, cracking it enough for my red forked branches to snag it, but I didn’t have enough power to call forth the white clusters to finish off the Medusa magic. I required more juice than Freddo had in hi
m.
I turned my sights on the employee, who sagged against the wall, trying to staunch the bleeding in his thigh with blood-soaked hands.
Perfect. He was already primed.
I gasped. What was I doing? I wasn’t a third-party smudge, harming innocents for my own gain. There had to be another way.
Body shaking, I shut down our connection. Freddo’s magic snapped into him, still intact. My red branches trembled, barely holding strong and keeping the stone magic from spreading.
“What are you?” Freddo recoiled from me and hurt flared in my chest as one of the final connections to my father fractured.
“No one you want to fuck with. Give me the pouch.” I couldn’t have fought Freddo if he resisted because while my right half was still stone, my left half was wracked with vicious spasms from abruptly stopping the sweet, sweet process of draining his magic.
Luckily, his exposure to the feather had been fleeting, and the compulsion had faded. That or his terror of me overrode it. Given his wide eyes and the way he tried not to touch any part of me, from this day forth, I’d be a monster to him. He’d never know what it cost me to withhold my full monstrosity and let him walk out of here whole.
He shoved the thin pouch under my left arm. Freddo would be fine. Physically fine.
My mirror-facing abilities had taken a hit.
I pulled out my phone. “Call me a healer.”
Freddo knocked my cell out of my hand and fled. The cell flew sideways and I landed on my half-stony ass in a puddle of the employee’s blood with a loud thunk. Magic tingled up through my fingertips.
I licked my finger and raked a considering glance over the employee.
His eyes widened. “Don’t touch me!” He stretched out his hands to give me another infusion of Medusa magic but was too far out of reach, so the idiot yanked the knife out of his thigh to attack, and immediately fainted.
I had to tourniquet his leg or he’d bleed out.
The blindfold lay nearby. I rocked on my ass until I got enough lift-off to thump over to it. By the time I’d bandaged him, those branches of mine only had the most precarious hold on the obsidian blackness. Splaying my hands into the spilled blood, I Hoovered every bit of magic out of it with no harm to the employee. Sucking his power out this way was akin to magic dumpster diving, but beggars couldn’t be choosers.
Death & Desire: A Snarky Urban Fantasy Detective Series (The Jezebel Files Book 2) Page 11