“And you got kidnapped, exposed to Sparkle Dust, and then you nearly froze to death, then overloaded with magic when taking down that null wall. And you came close to dying three or four times when the FBI attacked my brother’s building and your sister’s ex-boyfriend tried to kill you, plus you took on Savannah.” He frowned. “I know there’s more. What am I missing?”
“Okay,” I said, raising my hands in defeat. “Fine. You win. I’m a walking target. But as I recall, all that happened after you forced me to work for you in the first place. So really, it’s your fault.”
“Because you never got into danger on your own before that? Didn’t you tell me you got stabbed—?”
Not a road I wanted to go down. If he knew how many close calls I’d had, his head would probably pop off. It was a good thing that tinkers didn’t leave behind scars when they healed people, or I’d be in trouble.
“All right. I surrender. We’re wasting time. Let’s go.”
I made it sound like he was the one who’d started the argument and caused the delay. My inner six-year-old had to have a little win. I ignored his shit-eating grin as I slid onto the seat behind him and wrapped my arms around his waist.
This time I won’t get near dying, I told myself as Price put the bike in gear.
I should have remembered the old saying about best laid plans and all that.
Chapter 11
Riley
CRISTINA’S TRACE led south and east to Calvera, a depressed neighborhood with high crime.
I wasn’t willing to confess it to Price, but I couldn’t maintain contact with the trace dimension for very long. Just touching it ached bone deep, and every time I checked for her trace, the pain increased. Clearly, my attempt at helping him manage his power had made my situation worse. All the same, it was a small price to pay if we could get Cristina home safe and sound.
Price wove through the lines of traffic. The snarls had not lightened at all, even though midnight approached. Emergency vehicles continued to howl and careen up onto sidewalks and any clear space they could find. More than once, the first responders activated road-clearing magic that shoved vehicles to the sides of the road, sometimes crushing them. If the people inside were smart, they’d know to abandon the vehicle as soon as they saw the lights coming.
After a while, the businesses and buildings around us began to look tired and worn. Trim sagged from porches, and rust chewed at the siding. Our bike made the only noise. If we wanted to be stealthy, we were out of luck. Trouble was, we needed to be able to case the situation without anybody noticing.
Price pulled into a small parking lot in front of a bodega. He switched off the motor, and we both got off. Price started to wheel the bike toward a notch between the little grocery and a sandwich shop. I grabbed his sleeve and pointed toward the corner. He hesitated, then nodded for me to lead the way.
I was familiar with this part of town. I’d had jobs that brought me to the area, but more than that, I’d walked every inch of the city, memorizing it so that I would never be lost, and never without some sense of where to run. I like escape routes. They’ve come in very handy in my line of work.
At the corner of the bodega and the one-lane street beyond, I turned left up a rise. The sidewalk disappeared after about ten steps, and the snow had never been cleared here. It had been mashed down and refrozen who knew how many times. The lumpy bunches of ice and snow were enough to turn my ankle. At least I didn’t fall on my ass.
We reached the top of the rise. I went left again. On the right stood a couple of duplexes, looking neat and tidy despite their obvious age. To the left was a post office. Now closed, collapsible steel scissor gates blocked the front. I pointed to the end at the two blue mailboxes bolted to the concrete. Behind them was a little patch of bushes and a cedar tree. As hiding places went, as long as we got back before the post office opened in the morning, the chances of someone finding and stealing the bike were low.
We followed Cristina’s trace on foot. I could tell when we stepped into Calvera. We’d reached a whole new level of poor and run-down. Graffiti plastered the buildings. Boards covered half the windows, and bars protected the other half. Mounds of snow piled against buildings and over the roofs, pushed aside by the plows clearing the roads. Most of the streetlights didn’t work—whether because they’d burned out naturally or someone shot them out, I couldn’t tell. Bars, strip joints, and bodegas dominated the sparse businesses. The first two outnumbered the last by about five to one from what I could tell.
Everything about Calvera screamed nobody cared. It wasn’t worth anybody’s time or effort. Police didn’t patrol here. Ambulances had to be paid huge bounties just to drive inside. The businesses that survived either paid for protection from the local Tyet boss or went under. Even the homeless stayed out of this area. The Bottoms was starting to look safer than Calvera, and that was saying something.
Price drew his gun. “We’ve got to be careful.”
By which he meant I needed to be. I gave him a sideways look. “Because we weren’t already being careful.”
“How about this, then—try to behave yourself.”
“Define behave.”
He groaned exasperatedly. He bent and gave me a fast kiss, his lips gone almost before they touched mine. “Don’t get dead. How’s that?”
“That is something I can definitely get behind.”
During our conversation, a breeze started picking at my hair and coat. I wondered if Price meant to have summoned it up. Maybe it was perfectly natural. I decided not to ask. At the moment, I preferred blissful ignorance and to focus on the job.
The Calvera neighborhood was big and sprawling. It was in an old area of Downtown, where the Calvera Mining Company had built a company town way back before Diamond City was even getting started. The CMC had brought in thousands of workers and pretty much turned them into slave labor. They got paid less than they needed to live, guaranteed by making workers rent company housing and shop in the company store. Pretty quick the workers ran up debt they could never pay off, ending up in perpetual service to the company.
The CMC was in the business of making money and didn’t give a shit about its employees. There were always more downtrodden waiting to be sold a bill of goods about a desperately needed steady job. A lot of people died—in the mines, from machine accidents, and from illness. Some even froze to death in the winter when they didn’t have enough firewood to get through the cold.
Another mining company eventually bought out CMC’s claim. Over the years, the neighborhood had seen some attempts at renovation, but mostly it was a sad, dilapidated place. Most people here still worked in the same mines begun by CMC. The houses here were the same shacks the CMC had originally built, which meant they were now Frankensteined with scrap wood, metal, and whatever leftover bits the residents could scrounge to cover holes and keep out the weather. If not for the dole, the residents couldn’t survive. But every month they got a check for living in the city. The dole came from a fund created by the mine owners to make it more “affordable” to live in the city so their workers would stay. The payments were a bargain for mine owners and barely an eyelash of their massive profits.
Gangs cropped up here out of the people’s desperation to belong to something, to have control, a future. Calvera was a fertile ground for recruiting Tyet soldiers. And why wouldn’t it be? Walk away from a dead-end place and a dead-end life and get money, weapons, and the prestige—the security—of being stronger than someone else. From all indications, Ocho was working his way toward just that life. Hopefully we could get Cristina out before she became a casualty of his ambitions.
We kept to the shadows. A cat galloped across the road in front of us. I jumped. Price gave a low chuckle. I caught glimpses of tiny little red eyes reflecting in scraps of light. Rats. Most of the city had magical suppressions in place for ve
rmin. Not Calvera. This was vermin heaven. There weren’t enough cats in the world to handle the offerings.
Price kept a step ahead of me. I’d drawn my gun and kept an eye on our flanks, pushing and tugging on his arm to guide him after Cristina’s trace. Since going on foot, I’d wrapped it around my wrist to keep on track. My head pounded, and I’d started to get chills. If we didn’t find where Ocho had her soon, I’d have to tell Price. Not something I looked forward to.
We passed an old motel on the opposite side of the street. Though clearly closed, club music pulsed into the night from within. Clusters of people stood outside, smoking and dancing. A couple embraced against the building, so drugged up they could barely keep to their feet.
We stuck to the shadows on the other side of the potholed road. Nobody noticed us until the rear door of a van parked just ahead of us flung open and a half-naked man staggered out. His shirt was unbuttoned, revealing a chest full of tattoos and scars. He was buttoning his pants, saying something to whoever remained in the back of the van. We stopped dead, hoping he wouldn’t see us. But we were out of luck.
“Who the fuck are you?” He pointed at us. “Gordo!” he shouted. “We got us trespassers!”
The motel boiled into motion. Price and I started running. We hit a cross street and dodged left, sprinting like Death himself was chewing our asses. The mob behind us revved engines, even as the rapid snap of footsteps followed us.
We didn’t see the giant pothole filled with shadow. We hit it at the same time, both expecting to land on pavement. Instead, we dropped a good six inches into a tiny skating rink of smooth ice. We crashed together as we fell. I heard an ominous snapping sound, and then my head exploded and that was all I knew.
I WOKE TO BRIGHT lights and a dozen hammers banging around inside my skull. My mouth was parched, and my shoulder and knees ached. It took about a second for my memory to come back. My eyes popped open.
I found myself sitting on a wooden chair. They’d tied my hands around back of it, the bindings pulling painfully on the tendons in my shoulders. Across from me, similarly bound, sat Price. His head hung forward. Blood spattered his shirt. Relief poured through me. He was breathing.
I scanned the surroundings and stopped when I saw the face of a young man, though his blue eyes held experiences far older than his years. He looked like he wasn’t quite old enough to drink, with dirty-blond hair, a square jaw, square shoulders, square hands, and probably square feet. He clearly lifted weights. He sat on the edge of a vinyl-covered dining table, the metal legs groaning under his weight.
“Welcome back to the land of the living, Dollface,” he said conversationally. He reached up to scratch his bristled cheek as he cocked his head to the side. “What brings you into my neighborhood?”
“We’re looking for someone,” I said, and winced. I touched my tongue to my lower lip, which had split and swelled. I moved my jaw back and forth, an ache rolling upward to add to the pounding in my head.
His brows rose. “Who?”
“A girl. Fifteen. Runaway. Her family thinks she’s in trouble.”
He considered me a long moment. “You’re telling the truth.”
I shrugged, which wasn’t all that easy with my hands pretzeled up behind me. That’s when I remembered that ominous cracking sound. I wriggled around. I hurt, but not broken-bone hurt. I glanced again at Price. It must have been him. “What did you expect?”
He smiled lazily, and it was actually charming. “Don’t get a lot of do-gooders here.”
“I bet. So are you going to keep us tied up? Can we go?”
He eyed me again, then gave a regretful shake of his head. “Tell me more about this girl. How are you going to find her? Who has her?”
“And if you’re allies with an asshole who’d take a fifteen-year-old girl from her family, what then? Kill us?”
He wouldn’t, because I’d drag us into the spirit realm before he could.
“Business is business.”
“Yeah, well, your business sucks. People matter, you know.”
Again that long solemn look. “I know.”
“He’s going to hurt that girl. Beat her, rape her, kill her. Do you want that on your conscience?”
Our captor sighed. “Who?”
There wasn’t any point in holding out. “Goes by the name Ocho.”
He gave a silent “ah,” clearly unsurprised.
“An ally,” I said with no doubts at all. “You keep shitty company.”
“Yes, I do,” he said, standing and going to a dented-up refrigerator. It used to be green, but now looked dirty gray. He reached in and took out a bottle of water. He twisted off the lid and came toward me. “Want some?”
I wasn’t proud. I nodded. He tipped it gently. I hissed as it hit my swollen lip.
“Sorry.”
I just pushed a little forward and gulped. Icy cold ran down my chin and dripped onto my shirt, but I didn’t care. I drank half before pulling away.
“Thanks.”
“No problem.”
He returned to his perch, scrutinizing me again. “You look familiar. Why do I know you?”
“Maybe you caught my centerfold issue in Playboy.”
The corner of his mouth quirked, his gaze running over me and back up. “I wouldn’t have forgotten that.”
He went quiet, waiting for me to speak. I could have kept my lips shut forever. I’m good at doing exactly what other people don’t want me to do, but I didn’t have time to waste. Maybe I could convince him to let us go.
“I’m a tracer. I’ve been in the papers.”
He got that “aha” sort of look and nodded. “That’s it. You’re really good, too, right?”
I blew out a breath. “Yep.”
“And him?” He nudged his chin toward Price.
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but you really don’t want to piss him off,” I said.
“Is that a threat?”
“Didn’t I say don’t take it the wrong way? And there you go, doing exactly that. When he wakes up, he’s going to be in a lot of pain if that cracking noise I heard was one of his bones like I think it was. He’s also going to be afraid for me. He’ll totally freak out. When he freaks out—” I shook my head. I wasn’t going to tell thug-boy Price’s talent, but I had to convey the danger. “You’d be smarter to let us go. At least untie us and let me try keep the shit from hitting the fan.”
Once again, thug-boy studied me. His hair fell across his eyes. “You’re telling the truth,” he said again.
“What are you? A human polygraph?”
He grinned. “Just good at reading people. Have to be. It’s the only way to stay alive.” He dug in his pocket and pulled out a blue pocketknife. He flicked it open and came around behind me, slicing through the ropes. I awkwardly swung my arms around in front of me, groaning as blood ran back into my hands.
He went around and cut Price free. “What’s his talent?” he asked as Price’s hands fell down to dangle beside him.
“Better you don’t find out.” I stood. I ached from the fall and getting tied up. I stiff-walked over beside Price and lifted his head. A knot lumped on his right temple. A bruise circled his left eye. Damn. I should have asked Dalton for a couple heal-alls. Note to self: put together a danger pack for my adventures and include heal-alls. I pulled Price’s hands up into his lap and gently rubbed the back of his neck.
“Gimme some water, will you? Do you have a towel? What is your name, anyhow?”
He grinned again. “Tiny.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“My uncle called me that. It stuck. Better than the real one.”
“‘We called the dog Indiana,’” I muttered under my breath, and then snorted. How did dangerous situations always bring out the
snark in me?
Tiny opened the refrigerator again and took out another water. He grabbed a handful of fast-food napkins from the counter and handed them to me.
“Thanks.” I poured the chilled water onto the napkins and then sponged Price’s forehead and cheeks, then moved to the inside of his wrists. It took a few minutes before his lashes fluttered, and his slack body stiffened with consciousness. He let out a moan.
“We’re okay,” I said, gripping one hand as I rubbed his neck with the other. “Hear me? We’re okay.”
I repeated it until his eyes opened and he lifted his head. Sweat shone on his forehead and grooves cut deep along the sides of his mouth. His gaze locked on mine, searching for confirmation. Sapphire blue. I breathed a sigh of relief. He still had his power under control, then.
He grimaced and then scowled. “What happened? Where are we?” He twisted to look around, body going rock hard when he caught sight of Tiny. “Who the fuck are you?”
“He goes by Tiny,” I said. “We’re his captives and he is friends with Ocho.”
“Allies,” Tiny corrected. “Not friends.”
“What’s the difference? You’re in bed together.”
Price looked at me again. “You’ve got an odd definition of being okay.”
I tightened my hand on his. “We’re alive and breathing.”
“And captive to some wannabe Tyet thug.”
“Gotta have goals,” Tiny said. He seemed perfectly relaxed as he watched the two of us.
I didn’t sense any active magic on him or in the room.
“Jesus fuck,” Price said as he started to stand. He fell back into the chair. His face had gone white.
“Your leg? I heard bone crack when we fell. Which one?”
“Right,” he said through crimped lips.
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