The Truth About Night

by Amanda Arista

“Are you Tricky?” I asked.

  The young man swung around with a half-drunken swagger that came naturally to some. But when he saw me, his casual cockiness turned into wide-eyed fear. “Holy shit. It’s you.”

  “How do you–”

  He was running to the back entrance before I could finish the question. Rafe was nothing but a blur speeding past me as he chased after the kid. He grabbed the extra-large shirt before he could reach the door and threw him into the men’s bathroom.

  I looked around at the other patrons. They were too busy with their philosophy study group or their video games to notice the fray. I slung the strap of my messenger across my chest and readied for my millionth bathroom interrogation. Just another day in the office.

  I walked through the still swinging door to see Rafe cornering the young man.

  “You may not realize that running really makes you seem really guilty.” I locked the bolt on the bathroom door and leaned against it, sliding my running recorder into my pocket.

  “Nah, man. I ain’t done nothin’.”

  Rafe winced. “Except murder the Queen’s English.”

  I caught myself in a chuckle. “Why did you run, Tricky? We didn’t even flash brass or anything.”

  “You. They told me to stay away from you.”

  I beamed with pride. “My reputation precedes me. Who told you to stay away?”

  “Nah, man. I ain’t tellin’.”

  The kid tried to make a run for the door. Rafe caught him easily by the throat and slammed him hard against the wall, rattling the condom machine that sounded fairly empty.

  “You are not telling,” Rafe corrected. “And yes, you will.”

  I walked toward the kid and smiled calmly. “Did you meet a girl named Dot recently?”

  “I meet alotta people.” His voice kept its casual swagger, though wide eyes betrayed his fear.

  Rafe slammed him against the wall again—at this point, his ball cap was the only thing preventing a concussion.

  I reached up and grabbed his chin, forcing his eyes to mine. He tried to pull his head away, but I caught his gaze. The Charm trapped him easily and I locked into him hard. It echoed like a metal jail cell door in my head—a sound I hoped this kid learned very soon for putting Dot in the hospital. “Did you meet a girl named Dot and convince her to go to a club?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you know Benny?”

  The kid smacked his lips and relaxed against the wall. “Yeah, man. I know Benny. He’s the one who told me to chat her up.”

  My insides seized for a moment and I was nearly sick. Benny was the bad guy here? I wouldn’t believe it. He just wasn’t smart enough.

  “Why would they want the daughter of the paper’s editor-in-chief?”

  “I dunno.”

  “Do you know where Benny is?”

  “Nah.”

  “Could you text him to find out where he is?”

  There was a pause and I shoved power down the line of our connecting, startling him into submission, like a mental slap up the side of his head.

  He jammed is hand down into his pocket and pulled out a burner phone.

  “He’s the only number.”

  I cut our connection quickly and turned my attention to the flip-phone. With a few key strokes, I found the contacts. The number was neon across my retinas.

  I knew that number. I’d dialed it a thousand times after I had copied it from Tay-Tay’s phone. This was Benny’s new number. And though he wouldn’t answer my text, maybe he would answer one from Tricky.

  As I was texting, he struggled against Rafe but to no avail. Apparently, all the heavy lifting of textbooks and magical volumes made the professor much stronger than he looked.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Drawing out Benny like he drew me.”

  I hit send just as keys jingled at the door. The kid broke away from Rafe and made his break. I hooked my ankle around his and, thanks to those too large pants and his too skinny hips, he crashed face-first onto the floor, his face smacking the tile and making me wince. Tricky didn’t move. That was more than unfortunate.

  I quickly undid the bolt of the door and the bartender pushed open the door. I pulled Julie’s business card out of my coat pocket. “Call Officer Rutherford. Kid’s dealing drugs out of your bar.”

  I grabbed Rafe and pulled him quickly outside before that bartender did something like remember my face. When we reached the car, I wasn’t ready to get in yet. My body was sizzling and defaulted to pacing in the parking lot. The thoughts ran around so fast, I could barely keep up with them.

  “How do you know he’ll come?” Rafe growled.

  “You know Demon semantics. I know dealer semantics.”

  I could feel it. The truth. It scampered around like spiders along my skin. I was close to getting answers. I just needed to focus.

  And Rafe MacCallan’s glaring eyes were not helping that process.

  “You did something to that lad. Mind control? Is that your ability?”

  I could only shake my head. “I can’t do this right now, Rafe. We’ve got a direct lead to the man who might have lured Ethan to his death.”

  “I think I have a right to know what I have been working with for the past month.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it changes everything,” he roared.

  “I don’t see how,” I snapped back. “I worked beside Ethan for two years and I never had the luxury of knowing.”

  He huffed in frustration and ran his fingers through his hair. “Because you don’t know anything, Merci. Can’t you see anything that isn’t right in front of your nose?”

  “Fine, Rafe. What do you want me to tell you? Piper doesn’t even know what I am. All I do know is there is this storm in my head and when I focus it on a person, I can get them to tell me the truth. I also have to tell the truth myself.”

  “You can’t lie?”

  “Funny how it works that way,” I said turning toward my car. “I need to go,”

  “Where? Another abandoned warehouse? A corner store? Are you trying to get yourself killed?”

  “No, I’m trying to get information about your brother’s death. Are you going to take a knee on this or take the knife?”

  I watched my words slice into him, it was cruel. I knew it was, but this was Benny. This was the leaf on the wind I needed to catch so badly I could taste it. And I couldn’t stop.

  The I Don’t Know Yet was a particular favorite of mine – and I didn’t even have to lie about the bar’s name.

  Though specifically, we weren’t headed to the bar, but to the illegal poker rooms above it. I pulled out my roll of twenties and the bouncer, Hector, let me in the door and made me promise that Elbow Patches wasn’t going to touch a card. I crossed my heart and hoped to die.

  I walked back to Room 6.

  “Why this place, Merci?” Rafe asked as we made our way down the long, red velvet hallway. It was quiet, but the bulletproofing the owner had done tended to muffle the goings-on in the rooms.

  “This was the first story I bought from Benny.”

  “He knows you’re coming?”

  “If he’s smart, he does.”

  Rafe grabbed my arm and jerked me around to face him. “How could you be so stupid?” Rafe snapped.

  “I’m done with it,” I spit back. “I’m done with the books and the magic, and I’m doing this my way. I’ve been trying to hunt down Benny for a month now, and he’s here. I’m going to talk to him. Warlocks be damned.”

  I tore my arm from his grasp and went to go see what was behind door number six.

  Benny had seen better days. He was gaunt, like he’d been running scared for weeks. And maybe he had. His dark eyes sank into his skull as they darted from me to Rafe to me again. But he wasn’t surprised to see me, wasn’t thrown off that I was the one walking through the door and not Tricky.

  “Sort of shocked you showed up this time,” I greeted.

  “Knew you’d f
ind me eventually. Hoped you wouldn’t be stupid enough to try.”

  Pleasantries exchanged, I waved Rafe in and he pressed himself into the shadowy, velvet walls of the ten-by-ten room. The rooms were meant for two things: playing poker and drink service. Nothing more cluttered the space than the two tables and the necessary chairs.

  Carefully, I sat across the table from Benny, flipped on the recorder in my pocket, and laid my hands out on the green felt of the poker table. The harsh light of the single bulb dangling from the cord wasn’t flattering. It made his black hair greasier and his features more angular.

  I smiled. “Benny. It’s good to see you.”

  He leaned back in his chair. “Aw no. Not that Lanard smile. I’d rather have that guy beat on me.” His eyes darted to Rafe.

  The familiar chill settled around my shoulders and crawled up my neck. My heart wasn’t racing, my focus was on one thing. It was like dancing with a partner you’d been practicing with for years, smooth, without thinking about the steps. If this was a magic show, I was the headliner and Benny had always been my willing assistant. “How are the streets treating you?”

  He adjusted in the chair. “Fair shake.”

  I nodded pleasantly. The nice thing about looking for someone is you have enough time to really whittle down the answers you needed. I didn’t need my notebook or anything to help me count the questions. “What happened to the last crew you were running for? The Lone Dawgs?”

  “I started asking around, like you asked.”

  “What happened?”

  He sniffed. “I found the new outfit you sent me after.”

  He’d found them? The whispers Ethan and I had heard. My instincts had been right – there was a story. “And their payroll is better than mine?”

  “It had a different set of perks.”

  I remembered Atlanta saying that Benny had been rolling in money lately. But that didn’t explain why he looked like he hadn’t eaten in two weeks. “All I need is one name and whoever it is will get their day in court.”

  Benny snorted. “He’ll never see a courtroom, Lanard. No matter how many exposés you write.”

  I needed that name. A chill ran down my spine as I leaned forward. Slowly, carefully, I found that open spot in Benny’s dark eyes. I slipped in and locked the Charm into place. Just like that. Like I had thousand times before with Benny, before magic was in my vocabulary, when all this was just a compulsion to find the truth.

  “Who is he?”

  The answer popped out of him like a ping-ping ball. “Cartwright.”

  It all clicked into place. The clear picture flooded through me and created a sizzle in the connection between us. “Cartwright. Jeffrey Cartwright as in Cartwright Construction is the new ring leader?”

  “Yes.”

  “So this has ties to City Hall?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is he responsible for the decrease in gang activity lately?”

  “Yes.”

  “What about the missing girls on the Trade Streets?”

  “Yes.”

  All three? Benny was confirming that all the shadows lately had been connected, all the little side stories in my journal were connected. City Hall I could deal with, had dealt with, but the fact that Cartwright’s reach was already permeating the other lower layers of the city – that was terrifying.

  And it was all under my nose.

  Rage began to boil through my veins. I wanted to punch him, but that really wasn’t the best way to get the information that I needed. I had to keep it together. I needed answers. I needed the truth, which meant that I was perfectly fine using my magic to get it.

  The contact I had with Benny sizzled like a live wire in the rain; I held on to it tighter.

  “Why did you call me to meet you that night?”

  Benny struggled against our bond but couldn’t break it. Or didn’t want to. “Cartwright knew about you, needed to get you alone. Paid me to get you there.”

  “So you did rat us out?” I confirmed.

  “I didn’t know anyone would die, Merci. You have to believe me.”

  I did believe him. Benny didn’t know that Cartwright was going for the jugular, at least not at the beginning.

  “Why did he want to get us alone?”

  “He didn’t like how you jacked up the bids for the city planning.”

  This had to be more than just business, right? What about the mark, what about the other bodies, what about the Shadow Men? I had to calm the questions down for a moment. I didn’t need to reveal everything I had learned about in the past three weeks – I just needed to get him talking.

  “So you call me knowing that I’d come, and Cartwright sends men to rough up Ethan and me for exposing him, but it goes south and they run?”

  “He told me later that he only wanted you dead. Ethan wasn’t supposed to be there.”

  “Me? I was the target?”

  I thought I was going to be sick. The guilt washed over me in thick, green waves. I had gotten Ethan killed. My work. My insistence. My obsession. Rafe had been right this whole time.

  Benny continued. “He wanted to use you as an example of someone who crossed him, but after that night, it changed hardcore.”

  There were several people who were not in the Lanard Fan Club, but enough to kill? Like Rutherford I said, I was more like a yappy dog than a wolf, more of an annoyance than a threat. Why would I be a target? What could I have possibly done differently from every other story I had written? Was were so special about those construction bribes?

  “What changed?”

  “Everything. After that night, it wasn’t just business anymore. He kept talking about how the soul of the city was his.” Benny sniffed and leaned forward on the table. “He wanted you, like wanted you.”

  The magic zipping around in my brain started to sputter and short-circuit. I closed my eyes for a moment, recalibrating. I’d questioned people when I was juiced like this before, but I had never been so desperate.

  Benny. Ethan. It was like trying to harness a tornado in my brain to help pull the answers. I needed control. Focus.

  I opened my eyes back up; Benny was right there, ready to be put on the hook again. “So, you’ve seen him? In person?”

  Benny nodded. “It’s like looking into a void. He’s not human anymore.”

  Not human? Like a Warlock?

  I took in a deep breath. It was time for a big push. If my magic could hold out for a few more questions. “How does Tay-Tay fit into all this?”

  The little color he did have in his face fled and water filled his eyes. “How you know about that?”

  “I went looking for you after that night in the store. Make sure you were okay. Instead, I found her. I made sure she got a proper burial. Paid for it myself.”

  He gulped, his scrawny neck only highlighting the slow descent of his Adam’s apple.

  “What happened to her, Benny?”

  The words crawled out of his mouth like a bag of nails, rusted and painful. “New guy drives a hard bargain.”

  “Magic does come at a price, doesn’t it?” Rafe finally spoke.

  The moisture on Benny’s forehead started to bead and run down his face. I wasn’t sure if I could handle these two stories actually intersecting, but the look in Benny’s eyes was unmistakable.

  “So, you know?” Benny asked.

  My stomach reeled, but I kept myself stone still, hands still splayed out wide on the poker table. Ethan and magic. They were connected. Of course, it was all connected.

  “I know enough to know it’s dangerous.” I looked straight into his black eyes. The foreplay was over, the storm in my head needed to be sated. “Question is, is Cartwright a warlock?”

  Benny frowned and nothing came out. Maybe Benny didn’t know the details, the breeds and the semantics.

  I tried again, being as specific as possible. “Did he kill Tay-Tay by sucking the life out of her with a spell that was carved into her arm?”

  A tear
streaked down his grimy cheek, leaving a clean trail in its wake. His voice cracked with pain. “Yeah. They got my princess. I tried to convince him that with your partner’s death, you wouldn’t come snooping around, but …. He wanted you so bad … When I said I didn’t want to help him anymore, they took her, right in front of me.”

  I looked back down at the table, breaking the connection; afraid I might actually pull out some of his pain and not just the truth. Tay-Tay had died because Benny didn’t want me dead. Was he trying to protect me too?

  “Two guys held her down and carved something into her arm and then she was gone.”

  I traced my own white mark down my forearm and shivered, overcome with the tragedy of it all.

  Rafe saved me for a moment, stepping up behind my chair and resting his hand on my shoulder. “What do you know of the other victims, John Mitchell and Beakman?”

  Benny only shook his head. “That wasn’t on me. I’d managed to keep my head down for a few days before he caught up with me. Before Tay-Tay.”

  Rafe kept on with the interrogation as I recovered. “How did he find you?”

  “It’s like he sees everything. Weird shit like talking mirrors and chicken scratch into walls. Its why I didn’t reach out. He couldn’t find you and I didn’t want to lead him to you, even after he killed my Princess. I lied to him, said you left town after Ethan died. I deleted your contact info, burned your business card. But you are just so damn persistent.”

  Settled, I finally looked back up at him again, ready for a final push of truth, a final admonition to finish this, to get the information that I needed. “Why did you go after Dot?”

  Benny shook his head. “I didn’t want to, Merci. I’d been trying to get him more people, used my ins with dealers to find him more followers. Used my contacts with the gangs to get him muscle, but he still wanted you. I bought you as much time as I could, thinking you would figure it out.”

  His faith in me hurt, like a small, smooth blade slicing into my midsection a centimeter at a time until it was up to the hilt. It was difficult to breathe.

  “But in the end, he wanted to draw you out. I didn’t want to offer up the girl but … he’s got punishments worse than death.”

  He pushed up his sleeves and laid them out between us. There were marks up and down his arms. Dark needle punctures ran up the inside of one arm and disappeared into his hoodie. There were also carvings, some still weeping blood, some looked like they had been there for weeks.