by Lee Kelly
Joan sits up next to me, leans her head against the soft green fabric of the couch behind us. The heady dance of before, the shine stripping off our inhibitions, the electric feeling of possibility at being alone with her: that’s all passed. It’s left us with something more honest maybe, but also more uncomfortable. I still want to kiss her, obviously, wrap her up in my arms so bad it almost hurts—
But not right now. Not like this. “You want me to help you get upstairs?”
She gives me a wan smile. “Probably a good idea.”
I help her up, take her arm around mine, and walk her across the main performance space, which is now dark and abandoned, pristine from the stagehands’ nightly cleanup. I glance at the clock hanging above the double doors: almost two a.m.
“Happy New Year,” I whisper.
She smiles up at me. “Happy New Year.”
We cross the space to the other hall, walk quietly side by side. When we pass Gunn’s office, we both notice a dim light reaching out from underneath the door, and Joan’s eyes go wide. She puts her finger to her lips.
That quick, there’s a different energy between us, as if Joan’s awareness of Gunn inside the Den has set her to a new gear. Is she just his best sorcerer? Something more? Is she really involved in the score I’m circling in on, or is there something else—something personal—going on between them?
She pulls me past the door swiftly, to the bottom of the stairs. She mumbles a good-bye and begins to climb the steps quickly, like now she can’t get out of the hall fast enough.
Then, like a second thought, she turns around, descends just as fast. She throws her arms around me. “Thank you,” she whispers.
But before I can figure out how to answer her, she’s gone, and I’m left alone at the base of the stairs.
I wait, look back anxiously to Gunn’s door. This is a gift, a stroke of fortune finding his office closed without one of his sorcerers around to spellbind and protect it. I approach it quickly but quietly, lean in, whisper the word, “Amplify,” and the muffled voices behind the door louden into audible exchanges.
“You really think the troupe can pull off fifty gallons in a few days?” The voice is familiar, low and gravelly. Win Matthews. Win must somehow be involved in whatever’s shaking down too. And fifty gallons . . . fifty gallons of shine? That’s fifty times the amount that we brew for a show. Why?
“They’ll have to. Anything less looks like an amateur operation.” Low, flat, even tone—definitely Gunn. A pause. “Before we go any further, I need each of your words that if this goes through, I have your backing.”
Another pause, a longer one this time.
“You have it,” a third man answers slowly. How many gangsters are behind this door?
“And mine,” another voice, this one higher, tighter, chimes in. “You make this deal happen with Colletto? I can convince O’Donnell to fully step on board too.”
O’Donnell—McEvoy’s underboss who works on the loan-sharking side. Win Matthews and Gunn. My guess is, the rest of the men behind this door must be Shaw higher-ups too. And a deal with Boss Colletto? Just the man’s name sends a familiar, hungry rush of vengeance surging through me. The Shaw underbosses are breaking bread with D Street?
“You’ve got the support of the majority of the underbosses,” Win says softly. “This will happen, Gunn.”
“Hell, you ask me, this is your birthright, Harrison,” the third gangster adds.
There are mumblings of agreement. “We shouldn’t go after McEvoy until we have D Street fully signed on,” Gunn says. “Once we shake hands with Colletto, then we’ll deal with the loose ends, and make the changing of the guard official.”
Go after McEvoy, loose ends, changing of the guard. Christ, Gunn really plans to take McEvoy out—
“When do you want to hold the demonstration?” Win asks.
“It needs to be here. I want Colletto to see the full scale of everything we can do. I want him to buy into all of it, taste and crave all of it. It’s the only way he’ll sign on.”
I close my eyes, pray for another clue as to what this demonstration is about, whether it’s of our troupe’s immersive magic, or something else altogether.
“A live demonstration is going to be tricky, though—we’ll need to close, and that could arouse suspicion,” Gunn adds.
“There’s always Sunday,” the third gangster chimes back in. “You’re closed that night, right? Plus, the Bahama Boys say there’s a smuggling party out on Magic Row: some four-night spirit-raising voodoo bender on the water, right behind the coast guard border. McEvoy, all his top dogs on the smuggling side, they’re all invited.”
The fourth answers, “So we need McEvoy, Baker, and Murphy on that boat, and out of your way.” Baker and Murphy—the names are familiar. They’re two of McEvoy’s underbosses—Murphy’s in trafficking, Baker manages a few middling shining clubs somewhere in the city. They’re likely McEvoy’s last two remaining loyal underbosses, from what I’m gathering.
As the men give a round of nervous laughter, I try to figure out my next move. McEvoy’s going to expect my daily check-in—maybe I can avoid him tonight, but there’s no avoiding him for long. Do I tell him, warn him about this somehow? I can’t. He could take matters into his own hands, bring this whole place crashing down, blow this monumental score before Gunn can bring it home and the Unit can bust it.
I agree with Gunn and Win on one thing—McEvoy needs to be out of sight, on that voodoo party cruiser, and out of my and the Unit’s way.
“Well done, Harrison. Never thought I’d see the day, but you’ve proven yourself. You’ve delivered.” I hear the clinking of glasses, the squeak of leather. “To Sunday. To the Gunn legacy.”
They’re wrapping up. I back away from the door quickly, run back through the hall, out of the performance space, and hit the street.
It’s far too late to dial Frain, so I take the walk home to run everything over and through again: Gunn is challenging McEvoy as top dog and already has the support of the majority of the Shaw underbosses. But it all rides on some unprecedented deal with D Street happening, and there’ll be a demonstration to ensure that it all goes down.
But a demonstration of what? The troupe’s performance?
And why D Street?
I stumble to a pay phone, put my obligatory call into Boss McEvoy, pray that he doesn’t answer his phone at this hour, since I’ve got no idea what I’m going to say if he does. I let the phone ring four times, and then I hang up, relieved, and head home to sleep everything off. I’ll sort out what I’m going to tell him, and stop by his house as soon as I wake up. I won’t make it through the day without some rest.
* * *
I dream about Joan. But instead of warm, or even seductive dreams, they’re disorienting. Her teasing me, racing ahead of me, and then turning into a raven right before I can hold her. In one, I follow her through a strange house of illusions until I think she’s around a corner, but instead of finding her, I find Gunn. Needless to say, when I wake to a loud, insistent “Mister, Mister!” outside my door a couple of hours later, I’m not happy. It’s not even seven a.m.
I open the door to find a young boy standing on my crumbling front stoop. He’s in a cap, no more than nine or ten, scrawny and hard in that street-rat sort of way. No coat, despite the weather. He holds a piece of folded stationery, which I take and read:
Be in the back alley in exactly one hour.
After he hands it to me, he bounds down my stairs and runs away.
I study the note again. I’m playing so many parts that I’m not certain who to expect is coming to call. McEvoy? Frain? Joan?
I take a quick bath, get changed, make a cup of coffee, hit the back alley right at the hour mark. A black car pulls up minutes later. The passenger door cracks open two or three inches, and McEvoy calls through it, “Get in.”
<
br /> Nerves on fire, I settle in beside McEvoy and steal a quick glance at him. And then my anxiety doubles. He looks even worse than he did at the Den: faded gray skin, wild, wet eyes, hair that looks like it needs to be washed. I’m not positive, but I think the suit he’s wearing is the one from last night. “I tried calling you,” I say quickly. “I was going to stop by first thing this morning. Have you been up all night, sir?”
“There’s someone behind every door. Watching me, waiting for me, changing the locks,” he rambles. “I need to be all eyes, all ears, all the time.” His hands shake as they grip the wheel. “Can’t sleep. Not with them watching me.”
Christ, he’s high as a kite. He shouldn’t be driving. He’s unraveling, dangerous, a liability at this point. The conversation I overheard between Gunn and the underbosses last night flashes across my mind. The boat party out on Magic Row—
McEvoy starts his engine.
“Sir—”
“I trusted you, Alex.” McEvoy slams on the gas and screeches into the alley full throttle. “You told me you could get to the bottom of this, you could find the monsters for me, but you’re a liar.”
“I am getting to the bottom of this, sir, just like you asked—”
“NAMES, Alex! I need names!” He swerves his car onto P Street, nearly crashing into a Buick as his car rights itself on the road, and a barrage of beeps and honks blare through his half-open window. “Who’s after me? Who thinks they can take me down? Time’s up, Alex. I’m tired of twiddling my goddamned thumbs. Is it Gunn?”
But I can’t confirm Gunn’s involved, not for sure. If I give him Gunn, or hell, Win, or any of the underbosses planning to take him down, then McEvoy’s likely to start a war in this state. And all my work, for nothing. No, I want all these animals behind bars. I want to stand right beside Frain as we lock these monsters away—
McEvoy digs under his seat hastily. He pulls out a gun, snaps it hard against my left temple, and the car goes skidding out.
“Sir, the road!” We nearly jump the curve, drive right into the park at Iowa Circle, but McEvoy manages to swerve back onto the boulevard with one hand. He presses his pistol harder against my skull.
I close my eyes, try and stay as calm as I can as the boss of the Shaws holds me at gunpoint, on a drugged-up joyride through town. Don’t use magic don’t take him down you need to stay in control. Think about the endgame—
“Know what, Alex? I think you’re in on this.” McEvoy spits his words at me.
“That’s not true, sir.”
“I think it is. I’m thinking you orchestrated all of this, that you’re the one working me.”
I steal a quick look at him, see the dust practically pumping through his veins, the paranoia that has him in a choke hold. He’s going to kill me if I don’t give him something, he’s going to shoot, right here right now—
“No, I got a lead last night!” I sputter in a rush. Get him out of the city, out of your way, give him a new scent to track, one of his loyal underbosses— “Apparently Murphy has been working on the side with the Bahama Boys smugglers. He’s going to try and make some kind of deal at a big voodoo party out on the water. He got word you aren’t planning to be there, thinks he can land a score while the big fish is away.” I shoot McEvoy a look and raise my arms higher. “He thinks he’ll get away with it, sir.”
“Murphy.”
I gulp, but keep my eyes trained on him. I remind myself that handing Murphy to McEvoy is only speeding up the inevitable. That the Unit will get all these thugs, for one crime or another. Besides, Paul Murphy’s no angel. Murphy’s smuggled thousands of gallons of obi—a haunted elixir that’s actually scared people insane—into this country. Murphy’s claim to fame is bashing a young smuggler’s face in when the kid decided to sample the island brew himself and came up a little short on a delivery. Murphy deserves no mercy—none of these thugs deserve mercy.
“That’s right. Murphy. Sir, you—you might want to consider being on that boat.”
But McEvoy doesn’t lower his gun. Instead he puts it under my chin, snaps my head back. “A monster’s coming for you, too, Alex. It’s been watching you, waiting for the right time. You think you’re safer than me?” He leans over, his day-old breath wrapping its noxious scent around me. “I go down, I’m taking you with me.”
His dust-haunted words pierce right through my skin. “You get on that boat, sir, and you catch the deal as it happens.” I try to sound convincing. “And then you make a public example of Murphy. He’s the one who arranged for half of Kerrigan’s men to stand down in that Baltimore mix-up. He’s the one who bought the sorcerer off to tell him his real horse forecast at the tracks. I heard it all. I amplified a late-night meeting at the Den.”
McEvoy finally, slowly, lowers his gun. He puts both hands on the wheel, mutters, “Going to rip Murphy’s eyes out.”
He pulls over on some random corner in the heart of Hell’s Bottom—sagging town houses, smashed windows, shouts from inside broken homes. I must be miles from my own place at this point. I don’t know if McEvoy’s so high he doesn’t realize that we’re in one of the most dangerous pockets of the city, or if he doesn’t care.
“Get out,” he says flatly. “Apparently, I have a party to attend.”
My heart is stuttering, clawing up my chest, wants to fly. I barely manage, “Good luck, Boss,” as he screeches away with my car door still half-open, flapping like a doomed bird against the wind.
I breathe, collapse in half, breathe again.
I haven’t prayed in a long time, but here and now, on this corner of hell, I pray that McEvoy does get on that boat. And if the monsters out there don’t get him, that me and my Unit will.
A NIGHT OF CHANCES
JOAN
In the morning, right before practice, Gunn pulls me into his office and shuts the door. His eyes are so bright, they’re practically glowing. “It’s happening, Joan,” he says. “I won them over. All of them. And Colletto’s ready to initiate a deal for our new shine—all we need to do is show him that the product is real, and everything falls into place.”
Colletto, D Street—I still don’t fully understand, but I’ve never seen Gunn so lit up before. My relief, my nerves, it all comes to a head, compounds the shine-induced high I’ve been trying to ignore all morning. “When, what’s the deal?”
“Colletto wants fifty gallons by next Thursday.”
I gasp before I can help it. Fifty gallons means fifty sacrifices of blood, fifty blood-spells—and that’s assuming D Street wants the shine stored in gallons. “Sir, that’s a lot, in not a lot of time. I’m going to need to train the troupe to perform the caging spell too, and the double-edged trick, of course, so we can divide and conquer and get this done. There’s no guarantee all of them will be able to pull it off, either. Blood-spells require a particular mindset, absolute control—”
“That’s why you’re doing this entire round,” Gunn says flatly. “I don’t want any mistakes. Our entire future rides on this shipment. The troupe will brew the shine, and you’ll bind each container. You’ll get relief after this, I promise you.”
I’m doing all the spellbinding. Fifty spells, fifty sacrifices. If not more. My body shrinks away in response. It’s too much.
“McEvoy has poisoned relations between the Shaws and D Street these past few years, so naturally, I understand Colletto’s insistence that he see our magic happen in the flesh.” Gunn looks up at me. “So he’s bringing his underbosses in for a demonstration tomorrow. I’ll have my top men too.” My top men. Not McEvoy’s, I notice. And yet, that doesn’t surprise me, not when I think back to all the little jagged pieces Gunn gave me to the puzzle. Of course this isn’t about a huge deal for McEvoy. This is about a huge deal that lets Gunn take everything away from him—though how D Street plays into this, and why, I still don’t know. My God, when I think about the risk Gunn took wi
th this deal, the risk I was forced to take just by working with him, what would have happened had either of us failed—
“The deal I offered Colletto is a complete partnership, so we’re giving them a demonstration of everything we have to offer,” Gunn cuts through my thoughts. “I want you to put on the immersive performance of your lives, show him the strength of the troupe’s shine, and then you’ll blood-cage one of the bottles to make it last. His team will take the sample, confirm that it survives magic’s shelf life, make sure we’re legitimate,” he says. “When they come back to shake hands, our fifty gallons will already be waiting for him. I want this to be flawless. I want us to wow him, just like we’ve wowed and surprised everyone else. And nothing, no one, is standing in my way anymore.”
Gunn really managed to pull this all off. You pulled this off. The deal is real. The deal is happening.
“Perform the caging spell discreetly, Joan, so Colletto doesn’t get any funny ideas like going off to replicate it on his own.” Gunn puts his hand on his desk, inches from mine. “But if he tries to claim our magic without paying for it, he knows he’s starting another war. I’ve got almost all the Shaw underbosses backing me, ensuring that this deal gets done.”
But Gunn’s scheming, his secrets, how he’s managed to turn a failing shining room into a chance to play boss of the Shaws, all of that pales in light of his word choice, our magic. The words are simple ones, but they drive home just how far I’ve come, how much I’ve given away, how in bed with Gunn I am. Long ago there was a family magic, a mother’s magic, a secret to keep from the world—
“And our deal, sir, your promise if this all comes to pass?” I scrub my mind clean of what’s been done, what can’t be changed, force myself to focus only on the future. “You promised me ten percent.”
Gunn crosses his arms over his chest and gives me that faint smile of his, the one that barely manages to break through his smooth, cold facade. “You’ve become quite the deal maker yourself, haven’t you?” he says slowly. “I keep my promises, Joan.” Then he clears his throat, adds in a softer tone, his eyes never leaving mine, “And I’d like to think there would be other promises, if this all works out like I intend.”