by Devon Monk
Jamar just shook his head and smiled. “Damn, girl. You gotta get a different job. You sound like you’re starting to enjoy sniffing corpses.”
Bea, still giggling, gave him a huge smile and shrugged, her hands up, like who could blame her.
“I’m working a new section of MLK Boulevard for the police,” Jamar said. “Mostly day work, looking for trap and trigger spells, illegal Offloads. Gang crap. Nothing I can’t handle.”
“They going to open that up for another Hound to work it with you?” Pike asked.
Jamar pushed his glasses back up on his nose. “I asked maybe a month ago. Don’t think they have it in the budget.”
Pike noted that and then waved his pen at Whiskey Guy. “Jack?”
Jack exhaled smoke. “City called me in for some piddly things. Public nuisance illusions, screwing with the art in the parks, stink spells in public halls, that sort of shit.”
“Okay,” Pike said.
And that left me.
“Allie?” Pike looked over at me.
“I have a job for the police. Tonight. With Detective Stotts.”
At the mention of his name, the body language in the room changed. There wasn’t a person in that room who liked Stotts. Interesting. Apparently his cursed reputation had proceeded him.
“Has anyone ever worked for him?” I asked.
Sid, next to me, rubbed at the side of his nose. “I Hounded for him. Once. Spooky shit happens around him. People die.”
“So I’ve been told,” I said. “But since I’ve been out of the loop with all this”—I waved my hand to include them all—“Hound bonding stuff, I was hoping someone here could tell me what’s so dangerous about working for him. Maybe give me a couple examples of what happened to other Hounds.”
No one said anything for so long, I figured the Hound bonding stuff didn’t include sharing the details with the new girl of how one another died. Or maybe they didn’t know.
Then Jamar spoke. “I heard about a guy, name was Piller, I think. He worked a serial murder case for Stotts. Some lowlife robbing old people, killing them, and dumping the bodies up in the coast range. Used a lot of Binding, Hold, and Influence spells. There was always a mark of magic left behind in the old people’s houses. The killer liked to leave a ‘note,’ you know? Anyway, on the third time out, Piller was Hounding back a spell—getting close, real close to the killer. But just before he could pin the guy, Piller walked off the Steel Bridge and died.”
“Walked off the Steel Bridge?” I asked.
“That’s what I heard.”
Bea piped up. “Remember Rosalee? She took a job with Stotts. Illegal tapping into the cisterns of magic beneath the city and Offloading the price of using that magic onto some unregulated S and M joints—killed a few politically influential customers while they were doing some back door ‘negotiations.’ ”
She giggled, and several other people chuckled. “I would have killed to see that! Anyway, Rosalee took her money and left the state the day after the job was finished. They found her dead at a truck stop in Nebraska.”
“That could be a horrible coincidence,” I said with little conviction.
Sid snapped his fingers. “Wasn’t Herm—Har—What was his name? The Swedish guy?”
“Herlief,” Dahlia chimed in.
“Right,” Sid said. “Herlief. He worked a couple cases for Stotts—maybe three or four. Did okay. Until his head fell off.”
“Oh, come on,” I said.
Sid put one hand over his heart. “I swear, it’s true. He was Hounding for Stotts. I don’t remember what the case was—” He looked around the room.
Jack stabbed his cigarette toward Sid, leaving a trail of smoke behind. “Magical coercion—someone trying to make people join something, give all their money to something. . . .”
“Right,” Sid said. “So it wasn’t even dead body and kinky sex stuff. Herlief traced the spells back to the perps, and then the next day while he was getting coffee, a cable from a construction site snapped, whipped down, and bam!” He snapped his fingers again. “Severed his spine. Took his head right off.” He chuckled.
Okay, this was one sick group of people. Still, I understood the laughter—gallows humor. It could have been anyone of them, anyone of us, in those Hounds’ shoes.
As a matter of fact, tonight, it was going to be me.
“But no one actually died during their Hounding job, right?” I asked.
Pike shrugged. “It’s happened. Death is a risk when you work for the police. Any of them.”
And his understated acceptance of that did more to calm me than if he had told me there was no chance anything would go wrong. After all, Pike had been Hounding for the police for years. And he wasn’t dead yet.
“Okay,” I said, bracing myself for my next question. “Any of you ever seen a ghost?”
The easy smiles stalled out, and even Davy opened his eyes and leaned forward to give me a weird look.
“I have a possible client who says he’s seen a ghost,” I said with a straight face, because Grant might someday be a client, and he told me he’d seen a ghost once. I know, I was lying and justifying my cowardly behavior. But I didn’t feel the need to come off like one hundred percent wacko at the first meeting.
“He’s seen full-body apparitions and glyphing that appeared on a wall and then disappeared. He thought the glyphs were warnings.” I left out the Death glyph part.
Davy was the only one who spoke. “You Hounded a ghost sighting?”
“No. Look, I’m just asking if any of you have had any experiences involving ghosts.”
Everyone shook their heads. But it did not escape my notice that they had all become awfully quiet and sober at the change of subject. Strange. Ghosts could startle them to silence, but people’s heads popping off—that was comedy.
Or maybe asking about ghosts meant I was nuts. I mean, I had a reputation too. Besides my being the daughter of Daniel Beckstrom, it wasn’t exactly a secret that magic knocked holes in my memory. It didn’t take a genius to wonder if magic took potshots at the rest of my mental facilities.
Screw it. I so didn’t care what they thought.
“Okay,” I said. “Thanks.”
Pike gave me an I’ll-talk-to-you-later look. That, at least, was something.
“Anything else?” he asked the room in general.
More head shaking.
“Good. Anyone Hounding for non-police want backup?” No one answered, including me, because I didn’t know what he was talking about.
“Looks like we have Sid, Jamar, and Allie doing police work,” Pike said, referencing his notes. “Who volunteers for backup?”
“I’ll take Sid,” Jack said, exhaling smoke. “I’m on call, but I already did a job today. Don’t think they’ll call me back until tomorrow.”
“That’s okay with me,” Sid said. “So long as you keep a low profile. And stay downwind with those cancer sticks, okay? They kill my sniffer.”
Jack just gave him a crooked-tooth smile. “You won’t even know I’m there.”
“Theresa,” Pike asked, “do you have time around your Nike duties to take Jamar?”
“This week, sure,” she said.
“Don’t know that I like that,” Jamar said. “It can get dicey in that part of town. Lots of drug movement over there.”
“You do your job,” Theresa said, “and I’ll do mine.”
Jamar just took a deep breath and let it out while shaking his head.
This looked like some sort of weird buddy-system, job-shadow matchup.
“Anyone want to tell the new girl what’s going on?” I asked.
Pike continued as if I hadn’t spoken. “Who wants to take Allie?”
“Take Allie what?” I said.
“I’ll do it,” Davy said.
“Do what?” I asked again.
Tomi stiffened and stopped chewing her gum. She glared at Davy.
Davy looked across the room, made eye contact with her
. “I’m not doing anything tonight,” he said to Pike, though it was obviously aimed at Tomi. “And the college doesn’t need me for a few days. I’m free.”
Tomi held very still, her face blank. But she was young. She hadn’t figured out how to keep the pain out of her eyes yet.
She did know how to recover quickly though. She tossed her bangs and muttered something that was ninety-five percent obscenity and five percent poetry. She looped her thumbs in her belt and stared Davy down, daring him to challenge her.
Pike broke up the little lovers’ spat by speaking up so Davy would have to look at him. “Drink and eat something first. I don’t want to hear about Allie tripping over you or her worrying about you being out there.”
“Wait,” I said. “Out there? Do you mean when I Hound for Stotts tonight? No. Absolutely not. No way. I work alone. I always Hound alone.” I so didn’t want this kid on my tail. Especially if Trager were after me.
“Settle down, Beckstrom,” Pike growled. “He’s not going to do any Hounding. And you don’t owe him a cut on the job or any favors, unless maybe someday you want to volunteer to shadow him. He’s just going to be in the neighborhood while you’re doing your job. An extra pair of eyes and ears. Someone to call for help if things go wrong, that’s all.”
“That’s all?” Okay, why was I the only one in the room who thought this was a massively bad idea? “People die when they Hound for Stotts, remember? Heads fall off?”
“I’m not Hounding for Stotts,” Davy said. “You are. All I’m going to do is be on the same street or block when you’re working, keeping an ear out in case something comes up.”
“Well, good luck, because I’m not going to tell you where I’m Hounding.”
Davy grinned, and some of the pale sick look seemed to leave him, revealing a mischievous, disarming twinkle in his eye. He was young—maybe as young as seventeen—but he was also very clearly a smart, ambitious man. “You won’t have to tell me. Finding you will be half the fun.”
I opened my mouth.
“And,” he said, cutting me off, “I’ll stay so far out of your way you won’t even know we’re in the same city.”
“That’s it, then,” Pike said. “We’re done.”
Everyone pushed away from walls and chairs and started toward the door. They all filed out, no one touching each other, not even inadvertently. No one talking.
Too damn weird.
Pike was the last to get up, which was good. I had some talking still left in me.
He pulled his coat off of the back of the chair and put it on while he strolled over to me. “Glad you could make it.”
“Pike,” I said. “This is crazy.”
He paused in his effort to zip up his jacket and gave me a hard look. “You have some problem with me trying to make sure people stay alive?”
“No.”
“Then I don’t want to hear it. You don’t like it, don’t show up next week.”
He walked past me, waiting for me to leave the room so he could turn off the light and shut the door.
“Until then, you’re stuck with Davy keeping an eye on you tonight. Don’t underestimate the kid; he’s good.” Pike started down the half-constructed hallway.
“I work alone,” I grumbled behind him.
“Allie.” He sighed and stopped. He turned to me. “We all work alone. Having Davy watch you isn’t about the job. It’s about you. He’ll have a cell phone on him. If something goes sour, he’ll call 911. Easy as that. So stop whining and shut the hell up. You kids drive me batshit.”
I laughed. I don’t know why. I guess it was I’d never thought Mr. Tough Guy would willingly set himself up for babysitting duty.
“I bet you’re a real hit with the grandkids,” I said.
Pike nodded. “I am.” He started walking again. “So talk to me about seeing ghosts.”
“I didn’t say I’d seen a ghost.”
“You can’t fool a nose. Lies stink.” He glanced over his shoulder. “You stink, Beckstrom.”
“Gee,” I said, “if I knew I was going to get such a great pep talk, I would have come to one of these things a long time ago.”
“Fine. Don’t talk.” We had reached the door at the end of the corridor, which the other Hounds had closed behind them. He rested his hand on the latch to pull it open.
“Wait.” I rubbed at my forehead and gave up on trying to decide if I should be honest with Pike. Who else could I trust? At least I knew he wanted what was best for Hounds. And I was a Hound. So maybe he wanted what was best for me. And if not . . . well, I’d just deal with that.
“I have seen a ghost.”
Pike let go of the door and crossed his arms over his chest. He leaned back on a bare stud, patient as a stone.
“I saw my father’s ghost. He said, ‘Seek the dead,’ and he touched me. He smelled like wintergreen, Pike. Just like when he was alive.” I kept my tone and gaze level, even though thinking about it made me feel like I needed to wash again. I was sure Pike noticed my elevated heartbeat, the acrid smell of my cold sweat.
“I saw more ghosts too, but they were different from my dad. Sort of pale pastel colored, with black holes where their eyes should be. But they were still people. I could count the buttons on their shirts, see the laces on their shoes. They touched me too, and it burned. . . .” I pressed my lips together and then let out a frustrated sound. “Don’t just stand there and stare at me. Do you know anything about ghosts? Do you know anything about them messing with magic?”
He frowned. “What do you mean?”
“They, some of them, the watercolor ones, suck. Magic,” I amended. “Spells. I could see them when I cast Reveal, and they pulled my spell apart and ate it like it was cotton candy.”
The silence that stretched between us would have been comical if I wasn’t worried that there were things out there—ghostly things—that could do that kind of shit.
“What are you using to manage the pain, Allie?” he asked.
Sweet hells. He thought I was hallucinating.
“Aspirin. Tylenol. Bactine.”
He sniffed but could smell no lie on me.
“I’m not joking, Pike. And believe me, I don’t like standing here in front of you and sounding like an idiot. I prefer to be an idiot in the privacy of my own home.”
Pike looked down at his shoe. “I’ve seen . . . things. Ghosts, I suppose you could call them. Heard voices, all that.” He looked back up at me. “But I’ve been in wars, Allie. And wars either blind a man or open his eyes to things he can never look away from. I figure some of the things I’ve seen have more to do with that than actual spirits. You seeing your father, I can understand. It’s hard to lose a parent.”
“He said, ‘Seek the dead,’ ” I said. “Does that mean anything to you?”
He shook his head. “Not enough to go on. Maybe he was trying to tell you we all end up there—dead—someday. No way to know.”
“I guess not,” I said.
“Now, the other ghosts you’ve seen—the magic eaters? I’ve been around this town for almost as long as magic has been in use, and I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
“I know what I saw,” I said.
“Didn’t say you didn’t. So let’s assume you saw ghosts—or something—that could take apart a spell like cotton candy and eat it. If there really is something out there like that, then we might just have a problem on our hands.”
Had a real flair with the understatement, that man.
“Have you talked to anyone else about it?”
“I mentioned ghosts to a friend of mine. I didn’t talk about the magic eating thing.”
He stared off in the middle distance, obviously rolling options around. “I’ll ask some people I know. But I think the best way to find out what you’re experiencing might be to ask Stotts about it.”
“Yeah, that doesn’t work so good for me,” I said. “I have a strict rule: only one person per day gets to find out how crazy I am. Plus he’s s
igning my paycheck. I don’t need him thinking I’ve gone insane.”
“I see,” Pike said. “When you decide to stop being such a pansy ass and worrying about what people think about you instead of your own safety, talk to Stotts. He has the inside track on a lot of the weird shit that happens in this town.”
“Anyone ever tell you you’re a jerk?”