A Criminal Magic

by Lee Kelly

  The knocker raps again, and the door practically bursts from its hinges. I unravel myself from the covers and stand.

  “Joan,” I hear on the other side of the door. “JOAN!”

  Lord. It’s Gunn.

  I throw on the cotton pajamas that rest in my top dresser drawer, as a sharp panic lodges itself in my throat.

  “Mr. Gunn,” I say, after I open the door to find him leaning against its frame. “It’s mighty late.”

  “It’s eleven, Joan.” Gunn’s got that loose, shined look about him, and I’m positive he’s on something magical. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Gunn out of control, not in full, frightening command of himself and everyone else. It’s terrifying, seeing him unhinged, this close, in the doorway of my room. Especially when I think back to that strange, loaded conversation we had yesterday morning.

  “I was asleep.”

  “I was shouting.” Gunn stares at me, unwavering, unflinching. Like if he looks long enough, he can see right through me, to everything I might be hiding inside. “Was someone here?”

  I give a jumpy laugh. “No.”

  He sidesteps his way into my bedroom. The faint brush of his suit jacket on my arm sends something near electric jumping through my skin. Fear.

  No. More complicated, tangled, mixed-up than fear.

  “Is there anything wrong, sir?”

  But Gunn just pushes my door closed behind him. The hairs on my arms stand up on end. “I know you’re lying.”

  Before I can mumble another lie, he cups my face with one hand, arching my neck back. It’s the first time he’s touched me since that night he shook my hand in the clearing, and once more it sets off that complicated, uncomfortable stirring inside. I wonder if he’d have the gall to place his hand on me right now if he hadn’t been lit up with magic.

  Gunn releases his hold on me just as quick and walks to my bureau. “I have an awful habit, when I fall hard for something, of not noticing its imperfections, Joan.” He runs his hands along the top of the chest. “Sometimes I never catch them, and I’m none the wiser.” He flits those white-blue eyes back to me. “But sometimes I find these flaws. And I get so angry at myself for being blind to them, weak, that I go too far in trying to correct my mistake.”

  Quick as a reflex, he grabs a thin splinter sticking out of the bureau top and yanks. It leaves a long, bleached scar along the top of the stained wood. My heart jumps, starts racing—

  Correcting my mistake—

  “I gave you an order, Joan, an order I have my reasons for.” Alex. He has to be talking about Alex. But how can he know? Besides, no matter how turned around this man’s got me, hell, how much I’ve turned around myself, I know that Gunn’s got no right to be talking about Alex. A hot throb of anger starts jumping with my pulse.

  “You disobey my order, and I start wondering: if you’re lying about one thing, maybe you’re lying about others.”

  “I’m not lying.”

  “Problem is, I don’t believe you,” Gunn taunts. “I think it’s time to remind you of your priorities. I think it’s time to remind you of everything that’s on the line here.”

  Everything on the line? I almost scream. I know everything that’s on the line. I know my life, my family’s welfare, the future of this place all ride on whether I win or I fall. And you here, taunting me with it, having the gall to tell me who’s allowed in my room between the days and nights of sweating and bleeding for you, it’s too much.

  Gunn’s studying me with that look again—the one that gives too much away, if only for a second. And all his veiled threats and twisted words, the cage he’s built around me with his secrets and warnings, I let myself forget it exists, just for now. Because I need him to feel what it’s like to be this trapped, to feel this small. “And that’s why you’re here at this hour? To remind me of my priorities?”

  I take a bold step toward him, lift my chin, keep my eyes hard and unforgiving, like I’m showing him back himself. I add with a whisper, “Why are you really in my room, Mr. Gunn?”

  Gunn doesn’t speak for a long while. Finally he takes a quick inhale, shakes his head. Then he snaps a disgusted, put-on laugh and briskly turns to leave—like he’s realized he’s shown his hand, when he’s supposed to have full command of our game.

  But before I can breathe, calm down, regroup, he says icily, “Everyone has a blind spot, Joan.” He grabs the door handle and gives me that penetrating stare once more. “Don’t disappoint me. Don’t crash and burn because of yours.”

  THE SKINNY

  ALEX

  What was I really expecting when I went to Joan’s room? A confession of her sorcery sins, right after she performed them for her gangster-studded audience? To convince her with a few words and kisses that she’s thinking about this all wrong? To get her to abandon her magic and jump into my arms, and together we’ll ride a white horse out of the Red Den?

  Joan doesn’t want to be saved. She’s worked herself up the ranks, is now standing at the forefront of the Shaws’ sorcery troupe, with a dark unparalleled trick that will change the face of the underworld. Joan is Gunn’s right-hand girl, not a damsel in distress, but the fucking distress itself. And I know my charge, despite how much I’d give for it to be different, despite how much I wish to God it was anyone else conjuring that dark magic on Gunn’s stage.

  Joan needs to be taken down, same as the rest of them.

  Despite my feelings for her.

  Despite her feelings for me.

  It’s over—she made her decision. You know she can never really be yours.

  I keep to the shadows of M Street, walk a block, take a right, walk another block, get as lost as I can in this dark city. I focus on my next move, on dialing the details in to Frain. There’s a monumental deal going down between two warring tribes for all of DC, and to top it off, Harrison Gunn is staging a coup, taking McEvoy down as he rolls out an unprecedented, shippable sorcerer’s shine. A product so unbelievable, so impossible, that I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it myself. But it’s real. And the magic behind it clearly needs to be contained, because according to Joan, it’s teachable. Shutting Gunn down won’t do the trick by itself. We need to arrest the entire troupe, before that spell ever sees the light of day.

  I force myself to focus on how I’m closing in, how the score is near, and how I’ve exceeded my and the Unit’s expectations, instead of the girl I just left behind. The girl I already miss. The girl who’s still lying tangled up in those covers. The girl who brings on a sharp ache when I even think about losing her.

  Don’t do this. You can’t lose something that wasn’t yours to begin with. Now. Let. Her. Go.

  I duck into a red phone booth on the corner of K and 16th Streets, scan the roads to make sure I’m alone, and grab the receiver. I dial Frain’s home number. The phone cuts to static and then rings.

  “Frain here.”

  I let Frain’s voice be a calming spell, a reminder of what’s most important, what I’m doing all this for. “It’s Danfrey.”

  “Did the demonstration happen? Did you get the details of the deal?”

  I try to catch my breath, calm my nerves. “Yes, Colletto came in tonight, with some of his top D Street men. Gunn was there with the majority of the Shaw underbosses—Kerrigan, Sullivan, Matthews, O’Donnell—he’s won over most of the Shaw leadership.”

  “So D Street and the Shaws are really working together?” Frain asks incredulously. “I almost—I can’t believe it. Gunn, going after D Street, after Colletto put a hit on his father? The man’s inhuman.”

  “And the deal he’s attempting? It’s huge,” I breathe into the phone. “It divides up the whole city between the gangs. The Shaws will control street operations west of Fourteenth Street, D Street will run all gambling, racketeering, and other business to the east.”

  “Like a partnership? Why?
I don’t understand—”

  “The whole thing rests on a shine that Gunn has managed to make shippable,” I interrupt, excitement getting the better of me. “Agent Frain, he’s managed to do the impossible, and make shine last inside a bottle.”

  “What?”

  “It—I—they use magic to bind the bottle somehow. It prevents shine from turning back into water, somehow preserves its magic, so that it can be shipped up and down the coast.”

  For a second I don’t hear anything on the other end of the line but Frain’s frantic scratching of fountain pen on paper. “My God, Alex, this is huge.”

  “The first exchange is fifty gallons for ten thousand. And going forward, Gunn’s prepared to give D Street a monopoly on distributing the product, in exchange for D Street walking away from performance magic altogether,” I continue in a rush. “The Shaws will control all shining rooms in the city. They’ll produce the world’s only eternal shine, and D Street will be the sole distributor. A win-win.”

  “Tell me more about this product, Alex, the shine that lasts.” Frain’s voice is almost quivering. And he should be scared. A product like this will take the underworld by storm. A product like this could turn this country upside down, if we don’t stop it first. But we will. “How’s it done?”

  “Through magic, naturally—magic somehow spellbinding other magic,” I say. “From what I could gather, the shine gets cursed somehow by a spell, and the bottle gets locked.” I shake my head, trying to chase away the image of Joan on that stage, whispering, harming herself for the sake of the deal. “Gunn claims the dark spell is teachable, given certain considerations. Honestly, I’ve never heard of anything like it, sir.”

  “If the spell is teachable,” Frain says slowly, “it’s imperative that we contain it, shut it all down now. Indict the entire troupe working in that Den.” He says what I was assuming he’d say. Then he pauses, and the scratching of his pen stops. “Is there a key sorcerer?”

  You planned to give Joan up. You need to give her up. And yet as Joan’s name bubbles up from my core, my throat closes, and competing thoughts whisper, You were once as headstrong as Joan, thought the world couldn’t touch you. If someone had tried to stop you when you were working with your father, would you have listened? Or would you have needed a stronger sort of persuasion?

  I picture Joan on our performance stage, under the magic-made stars of our performance space. In the Den’s dark corridors, and then in her bed, the moonlight stretching long across her limbs, that seductive smile of hers teasing me, all the while inviting me in. Am I really going to give up on her, and take her down, without a fight?

  A plan comes to me, quick and loose, like a tangled knot of thoughts and images that I need to unravel: Gunn, Joan, her family, getting her out, walking away—

  And I realize, right here and now, that despite everything else that I’m committed to doing, despite my mission, I have to find a way to save Joan too. I have to believe what we have will survive this somehow, that it won’t crumble despite the lies it might have been built upon. The Unit and I will still get our victory—but Joan and I can have each other, too.

  “Alex, you still on the line?”

  “Gunn’s smart, and cautious.” I close my eyes and plunge in before I can second-guess myself. “He explained the shine’s magic, but then he dismissed the crowd to keep the identity of his key sorcerer secret. I assume he took Colletto aside for a personal demonstration.” This is the last time I play outside the rules, regardless of who’s depending on me to do it. Besides, all I’m doing is stalling, just giving Joan a little more time to come around. It doesn’t change the endgame. “But it has to be a sorcerer from the Den. And everything I’m seeing, feeling, says there’s serious duress involved.”

  “You mean he’s forcing the sorcerer to work for him?”

  “I believe so, sir.” The last time—your days of lying, hiding, scheming—they’ve been over for a long time. “I was told to report to the Den tomorrow and be prepared to stay until the shipment is ready. I think the entire troupe is at Gunn’s mercy, that he’s using personal threats and violence to get his deal done. The sorcerers are pawns, sir, could even prove Unit assets going forward if we cut them deals.”

  “My God, Alex, the man has no limits.”

  “Colletto mentioned Thursday for the deal, as soon as the gallons are ready,” I continue. “So get a team prepared, be ready to bust the Den. I’ll call you as soon as I know more, and then I’ll get you inside. If we move in right at the exchange, we’ll get Gunn and his team, as well as Colletto and all of D Street. You make that call to the coast guard, too, and you’ll pluck McEvoy coming back from Magic Row.”

  Frain pops a nervous laugh. “A hell of a win,” he says. “I’ll wait for your call, and be ready to move in. And Christ, well done, Alex.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  I hang up, regroup. This will work out. And you have done well. Don’t forget that.

  And I try not to. I imagine the day I can let my mother know what I’ve really been up to these past few months, see the relief—the pride—wash over her face. I picture the headlines that will scream that the Unit has managed a huge score, that the city’s been rendered safer because of our operation. I try to focus on the deck I’ve stacked for Agent Frain, on the winning hand I’ve dealt to the Unit—

  Instead of the one card I’ve tucked under my sleeve.

  PART FOUR

  THE SHINE

  TIES THAT BIND

  JOAN

  It’s been two nights and three days since I’ve talked to Alex. First thing Monday morning, he and the troupe were funneled into the VIP lounge, tasked with the job of brewing sorcerer’s shine again and again, so that Gunn has his shipment of fifty gallons by Thursday—and the troupe isn’t allowed to leave until it’s done. Me? I’m in Gunn’s office, toggling between thinking through the logistics of bottling and transporting the shine, and sealing each and every quart-sized bottle. Which means sacrificing far more than any one person should have to sacrifice to a spell.

  But Gunn wants me, and only me, handling the caging spells for this shipment. He says now’s not the time to be training and opening ourselves up to mistakes. He also says I should stay back here alone to rest in between. So that my focus isn’t compromised. So I can keep my stalwart heart. But after that night he came to my room, it’s obvious—I think to both of us—that he’s got other concerns with my heart. Him calling on me in the throes of his shine-high, me standing up to him, at least in a way I never have before: it’s like an elephant in his office (that of course neither of us has addressed) and just adds one more dreaded question mark to how all this is going to play out.

  Stock, and the troupe, their rumors and whispers—they were right all along.

  My mind drifts again to the troupe, and what they’re talking about in there. I wonder if Alex has mentioned me, if the troupe is poisoning him with more rumors about me and Gunn. I want to see Alex, talk to him, the way we ended things leaving my stomach twisted in an ever-tightening, delicious knot. Hell, I want to see all of them, especially Grace. Apologize for how I refused to trust her, or let her in—

  “Joan,” Gunn interrupts my thoughts, “your take?”

  I look up from my self-induced stupor to find Gunn across his desk, and Win Matthews on my right side, staring at me.

  “We’re talking about realistic shipments, Joan,” Gunn says evenly.

  “I know, I’m following, sir.”

  Gunn leans across his desk, and his leather chair squeaks in protest. “You told me you deserved to be a partner for your efforts. If so, your place is here with us, thinking big picture.” He looks at me, head cocked, eyes narrowing slightly. “But maybe you were wrong.”

  I shake my head. “No, sir, I can do this. I’m sorry, I think the blood-spell is taking its toll.” But it’s not the magic that has a hold on me.
Alex has been on my mind for three days straight, and I’m starting to think I’m never going to kick the addiction.

  “Are we on target for tomorrow night?” Gunn turns his focus to Win.

  Win looks at the paper of scribbles in front of him. “Since you closed the Den till Friday, we’ve now got all six sorcerers brewing around the clock. So if each of them brew twelve ounces a trick to ensure the optimal high, and can manage four tricks an hour, give or take, twelve-hour days . . .”

  Gunn writes the calculations into his own notebook, pauses. “Oh, we’ll be more than ready.” His smile breaks open wide, and he and Win start laughing. They’re beyond excited. They’re electrified. And understandably so. We’ll be rolling in cash by the end of the week, and based on what Gunn said at the demonstration on Sunday, it sounds like money is just going to keep pouring into the Den. I should be laughing too—this means even more opportunity, a chance to give my family everything.

  Instead it feels empty, and sad, like even though it’s a party, I’m in the wrong room, celebrating with the wrong people. And I just can’t ignore all the question marks still surrounding the deal. From what Gunn told Colletto, it sounds like these shine shipments are going to continue getting brewed. But who’s going to be brewing them around the clock? I sure as hell don’t want it to be me, or the troupe. Gunn also mentioned a monopoly on performance magic—does that mean he’s going to open other magic havens? So will we have competition? Will the Red Den not be the main show? What really waits for me on the other side of Thursday? Am I looking at a future of “thinking big picture” and helping Gunn build a shine empire—being attached to his side forever?

  I’ve always focused on one step at a time—never really let myself think past the spell, then cracking the puzzle of our eternal shine . . . and then the D Street deal. Now that all our schemes are coming to fruition, cold, hard reality is settling in. I don’t want to be here, with Gunn, separate and apart from what I’ve come to love. I just want to keep performing. I want to keep making magic with my troupe.