by Linsey Hall
Maximus appeared next to me. “Which way?”
I pointed toward a creepy-looking street that marked the entrance to Darklane, the part of town where dark magic practitioners lived. The residents weren’t all evil, but many of them could be. Darklane was where you lived and worked if you didn’t want the law looking too closely into your activities. Some types of magic—like the blood magic that Aerdeca and Mordaca practiced—weren’t explicitly evil. It was all about context. If the blood was voluntarily given, it was fine. If not, well, then obviously it was bad business.
“Come on. Let’s go find this Snakerton dude.” I walked toward the main street that cut through Darklane. The air was somehow heavier here, more difficult to breathe. The modern street turned to cobblestones in that part of town, a remnant of the past from a neighborhood that refused to change.
We stepped into the watery golden light that gleamed from the gas lamps and started down the sidewalk. The buildings were all three-story Victorian houses. Long ago, the colorful exteriors had been covered by a soot-like substance, residue of the dark magic that gave this place its name.
Shadowy alleys stretched away into the distance, and I skirted around them.
I squinted into the distance, looking for the street sign for Blackburn Alley. The rain made it a bit hard to see, so I tried harder. Finally, I spotted it and pointed. “There it is.”
“You can read that?”
“Yeah, you can’t?”
“I have twenty-twenty vision, and no, I can’t.”
“Ah, cool. The animals in Artemis’s forest gave me superior hearing, and they must have given me better vision as well.” It wasn’t something I’d noticed right away, because I hadn’t tried using it. But now that I’d tried…well, that was damned cool.
We hurried to the road and took a left turn onto it. The road was more of an alley than anything else, the narrow cobblestone street uneven in places. It was only about six feet wide, and the buildings loomed on either side, their second and third floors hanging out farther than the ones below. It gave the street a tunnel-like feel.
The whole place reeked of dark magic, and the stuff in the shop windows made me shiver. Weird weapons that looked more like torture devices, potions that glittered with an evil hue, and shrunken heads—real shrunken heads—were all for sale.
The rain began to fall harder as we walked, gleaming on the cobblestones beneath our feet. By the time we saw the sign for The Snake Pit, I was chilled to the bone.
Fortunately, it was still open even at this late hour. Though in fairness, most businesses in Darklane were probably more active late at night.
The door creaked as Maximus opened it, and I slipped into the smoky interior. A purple haze filled the space that reeked of herbs. My nose wrinkled as my eyes watered. It was a cluttered little place, with shelves stocked full of ratty old books and vials of stuff that I didn’t want to explore too closely. Most of it appeared to be related to potion making, however, and that piqued my interest.
“Can I help you?” The pompous voice came from the back, and I peeked around a shelf to get a look at the speaker.
He was younger than I expected, mid-thirties at the oldest. Slim and short, his hair was done up in a series of complicated waves. He had the curled mustache of a cartoon villain, and I seriously expected him to start yelling at some meddlesome kids.
And the cologne…
Oh fates, the cologne. It nearly choked me.
Carefully, I breathed through my mouth and said, “We’re here to buy some hespodel.”
He grinned widely. “What a wise and beautiful woman, to request hespodel. You must be very talented with potions.”
I frowned, trying hard not to give him the stink eye. But seriously, what was up with the excessive flattery that came out of the blue? Was he trying for manipulation? If so, it was ridiculously transparent.
“Yep. That’s me. Extremely wise and beautiful.” I smiled, trying not to show too many teeth in case it looked like a grimace or a snarl. Honestly, either would have suited my mood, but neither would get me what I wanted. “So, the hespodel?”
“Yes, yes, just a moment.” He disappeared behind some cluttered shelves. A rattling noise followed. He came out with a little box made of semitransparent gray glass. Within, there was a stalk of hespodel.
He handed it to me. “An intelligent woman such as yourself will see that everything is in order. I’d love to see what amazing concoction you whip up with that.”
Okay, weirdo. I took the box and squinted hard at the hespodel, trying to see through the milky gray glass. It didn’t look quite right. I opened the little box to inspect it closer.
Yep. That plant was a medium tone purple, not pale purple. And were those tips painted on?
I scowled, then looked up at Snakerton. “This isn’t hespodel.”
He put on a confused expression and looked down at the box. “But of course it is!”
“I know my hespodel, and that’s not it. The colors are wrong.” And I’d bet twenty bucks that his dumb flattery was an attempt to distract me from noticing that he was shady. I hated manipulators.
Too bad for him, he was terrible at it.
“Do you have real hespodel?” Maximus asked, his voice sharp.
Snakerton jumped slightly, then looked up at Maximus, who loomed over him. His expression turned sour. “I must have made a mistake. Let me check.”
He repeated the procedure with going behind the shelves and making a bit of noise. The compliments started flowing before he’d even reappeared. The dude couldn’t seem to help himself.
“In your esteemed wisdom, I’m sure you’ll see that this is the proper variety of hespodel.” He walked around from behind the shelving and handed me another box.
Even before I opened the box, I knew it wasn’t hespodel. I checked anyway. The plant was too curvy. I snapped the box shut and looked at Snakerton. “Why are you giving me the wrong plant?”
“Wh-what?” he sputtered. “I’m not!”
Maximus stepped forward, looking even bigger when he was up close to the little snake. I’d have tried intimidating Snakerton myself, but I could already tell he was the kind of guy who respected men more. Maximus was the right choice for this particular job.
“Why?” Maximus asked. “Answer her question.”
Snakerton alternately turned white and red, going from fear to anger and back again. “I’m just trying to get ahead, okay? The world is an ugly place, and I’m just doing what I can to make it.”
“By cheating people?” I asked. That was what he’d been trying to do. Pass some cheap stuff off as the expensive stuff and charge me more for nothing.
He shrugged. “So what? People aren’t me, so they don’t matter.”
My brows rose. “Straight to the point. And boldly said.”
He leered at me. “I’m a bold man.”
“Oh, dude, putting it on a little thick,” I said.
Maximus gave him a condescending stare.
He deflated.
“Seriously,” I said. “Do you have hespodel? I’ll buy it if you have it, but I’m not giving you that much money for an inferior product.”
He got a calculating look in his eye. “I do have it. But now I don’t know if I want to sell it to you.”
“Because I didn’t play your little game?”
He sulked. Man, this guy was a piece of work.
“What do you want for the hespodel?” Maximus asked. “Sell it to us, and we’ll leave you alone.”
“You really want it, huh?” A cunning gleam entered Snakerton’s beady eyes. “Well, then. You’ll have to fight me for it.”
“Fight you?” Maximus looked him up and down. “You’re sure that’s the way you’d like to go?”
“Not a physical fight, you Neanderthal.” Snakerton puffed up his chest. “But I could take you if I wanted.”
Maximus didn’t bother replying.
“We could just search your shop and take it,” I said
. “It’s not my normal style, but we’re desperate.”
“You’d steal from me?” His brows rose.
“No, we’d leave money on the counter.” It was actually not the worst idea. We could pay double to try to make up for it. I stepped toward the back of the shop, and my foot stopped in midair.
Snakerton grinned, his expression slimy. “You can’t steal from here. My shop is protected against it.”
“We’d leave money,” I said. “Double. And I mean it.”
He shrugged. “I don’t care. And the charms on the shop don’t care, either. They know you’re going to take it without my consent.”
I tried to move my foot again, but it was stuck solid. Damn, these were some good protection charms. “What do you want, then? It really is an emergency.”
Snakerton mulled it over, tapping his chin. “We’ll have a friendly little competition. Me and the lady here. She clearly knows her stuff. I know my stuff. We’ll each try to make a potion that is meant to levitate a heavy object. If hers can make a heavier object float high off the ground, then she can buy the hespodel. If I win, then she gives me the money for the hespodel but leaves empty-handed.”
Tricky bastard. Levitation potions were quick to make, but they were tough. Like, really tough. And he thought I wasn’t up to it.
I grinned. “Show me the hespodel first.”
He looked offended. “You don’t trust my word?”
I just laughed.
He harrumphed and went to the back of the shop, then returned very shortly with another box. A quick glance showed that it actually was hespodel. A little dried out and old, but it should still do the trick.
“Fine.” I held up the box. “But I want to put this outside of the protection charm, just in case you go back on your word.”
He scowled, clearly offended.
I held my ground, glaring.
“Fine.” He pointed to the door. “Put it in the planter out front. No one will bother it this time of night. No one will even see it.”
I hurried out the door and onto the stoop, spotting the planter immediately. It held some spikey black plants, and I stuck the little box behind it where it was well hidden.
I returned, dusting off my hands. “Let’s make this quick.”
“You can use anything in the shop.”
“Sure thing.” I moved away from him, quickly grabbing vials and ingredients. Thank fates I’d been practicing my potions so much to make up for my lack of magic.
I might have magic now, but this was still coming in handy. I made a point to mix the potion behind a bookcase where he couldn’t see me, primarily because I didn’t want him spotting my secret ingredient. A splash of healing potion from my utility belt. It was a little secret I’d picked up in a dusty old book in the library. A splash of highly concentrated healing draft could enhance the power of most potions.
When I was done, I brought the little bowl of liquid out from behind my counter. Snakerton was still busily mixing away. He’d put on some funny little goggles and was moving his wrists with serious flair.
Overkill.
“Almost done?” I asked.
He looked up and glared. “That was fast.”
“Come on, I bet you can keep up.”
“Keep up? Keep up!” he sputtered.
“So that means you’re done with your potion?”
He mixed it again with one quick flick of his wrist. “Yes!”
I gestured to his potion. “Gentlemen first, then.”
“But it’s ladies first.”
“We don’t need to stand on ceremony, do we, pal?”
He thought for a moment, then shrugged, picked up his bowl of potion, and walked to a bookshelf that stood chest high. It was the second largest piece of furniture in the room. “I will lift this bookshelf. It weighs at least a thousand pounds.”
He poured his potion on top of the bookshelf. Magic sparked in the air, and the thing began to levitate, lifting two feet off the ground. I glanced at Maximus, who watched intently. He didn’t look impressed.
Snakerton thrust out his hands in a gesture of carnival showmanship. “Beat that!”
“No problem.” I pointed to the biggest bookshelf in the place. It was twice as tall as the one he’d lifted and stuffed full of heavy books. Since it was the only thing bigger in the room, I’d have to try to lift it if I wanted to win. “How heavy do you think that is?”
“At least three thousand pounds.” He scoffed. “But you can’t lift that.”
“Sure I can.” I poured some of my potion onto an empty shelf. The whole thing began to levitate, but it stopped abruptly only an inch off the ground.
“See!” he crowed. “I told you!”
“It levitated,” I said. But not as high as I’d expected. Which was weird.
“Not high enough,” he said.
“We didn’t establish those rules,” I said. “It just had to levitate. You can’t change the rules partway through so that you get what you want.” But why didn’t it go higher? It really should have gone higher.
Maximus crouched low on the ground and peered under the shelves. He made a disgusted noise and stood. “Cheater.”
“What?” I crouched low and checked. There was a hollow space in the bottom of the shelf. At each of the four corners, a heavy chain connected the bookshelf to the floor. I looked up at Snakerton, disgusted. “It’s not even clever. You should have made the chains invisible.”
His jaw dropped.
I drew my electric sword from the ether and sliced through each of the chains. The bookshelf floated higher.
I stood, grinning. “There, I officially win. Now give me the hespodel.”
He glared. “Fine. You owe me eighty-five dollars.”
I really didn’t want to pay this dick, not after the trick he’d pulled. After cheating, he didn’t deserve it. But I wanted to get out of here without a fight, so I pulled a wad of cash from my pocket and walked toward the door. He followed.
I stepped outside and retrieved the hespodel, making sure it was still the proper ingredient and that a trick hadn’t been pulled. It looked fine. I gave him the bills.
Quickly, he fanned through them, then squawked. “There’s only sixty here!”
“Yeah, I docked your pay for cheating.” I grinned. “See you later, Snakerton.”
We walked out into the rain.
“Nice work,” Maximus said.
“Thanks. I hate it when cheaters like him win.”
“Don’t we all.”
Together, we hurried out of Blackburn Alley and onto the main street. The rain had lightened to a drizzle by the time we approached the Apothecary’s Jungle where Aerdeca and Mordaca lived and worked. I climbed the narrow stairs as the sign over our heads swung and creaked in the wind.
Quickly, I knocked on a door that had probably once been purple but was so thickly covered in dark magic residue that it was hard to tell.
Beneath my hand, the door creaked open.
I looked at Maximus. “That’s weird.”
“They normally open it themselves?”
“I don’t know. I’ve only been here once. But yeah, I would think they’d normally open it themselves. They’ve got a lot of valuable stuff in here. Plus, they live here.” I turned back to the door and squinted through the gap. All I could make out was a dark foyer with cobwebs in the ceiling.
Then a scream tore through the house.
Chapter Twelve
My heart leapt into my chest at the sound of the scream, and I sprinted into the foyer, skidding on the black and white tiles. The ornate black velvet wallpaper sucked up all the light from the dusty old chandelier, and I had to squint to find an exit.
The scream sounded again, one of rage rather than terror.
“It’s coming from that way.” Maximus pointed to a narrow hall that led off of the foyer.
We sprinted down the hall, past old oil portraits that seemed to watch us.
Another scream. Then another.
I rushed into an ornate living room just in time to see Aerdeca and Mordaca throw a bucket of gray water on a poltergeist. The creature looked enraged, its transparent face twisted in a snarl. When the water hit it, the beast hissed and disappeared, driven off by whatever was in the potion.
Aerdeca and Mordaca stood in the middle of the living room, panting.
“Glad I got here in time to help,” I said.
They turned, each wearing their signature outfit. Mordaca’s midnight hair was done up in a bouffant, rising high toward the ceiling. It matched her slinky black dress that revealed so much cleavage she could probably rest her chin on her boobs if she tried. Okay, exaggeration. But not by much.
The black tips on her nails and the heavy black makeup around her eyes completed the look. Elvira-chic, I liked to think of it. She smiled a wicked smile, her red lips parting to reveal white teeth that might as well have been fangs.
Aerdeca was her opposite, in a sleek white pantsuit with blonde hair that flowed like water over her shoulders. Her makeup was natural and her expression serene. Nude polish on her nails would have looked like something on the girl next door, except that they were filed into vicious points. All in all, she looked cool as hell.
The uninitiated might think that Aerdeca was the nice one because she wore white and had a sweeter voice.
They’d be wrong.
Neither of them was nice.
But you could count on them to do what you paid them for. And in a pinch, they’d have your back. I’d heard whispered rumors of them in battles, fighting on the side of right, but hadn’t seen it myself.
“I thought you specialized in potions,” I said. “Not poltergeists.”
Mordaca got a slightly shifty look in her eyes, which surprised me.
“Of course we do.” Her voice was whiskey-rough and low.
“Just a little trouble with an unwanted guest,” Aerdeca said.
Hmmm. From the glance they shared with each other, there was more to the story. But no way I’d press for it.
Their secrets were their secrets, after all. Just like mine were mine.
I held up the little box. “I got the hespodel.” I hiked a thumb toward Maximus. “And this is my friend Maximus. Maximus, this is Aerdeca and Mordaca.”