A Criminal Magic

by Lee Kelly

  “I’d rather be a fool than paranoid and ungrateful.”

  “And just who’s being ungrateful here?” I snap, before I can stop myself.

  Ruby worms her little arms through her pajamas. “We don’t have to leave, do we, Joan?” she whispers. “I don’t want to leave you again.”

  I sigh, collect myself. The last thing I want is them thinking they’re a burden being around. “I don’t want you to leave either.” I ruffle the top of Ruby’s hair, then steal a glance back at Ben. “But Gunn is not what he seems, all right? I need you to remember that. I need you to be careful, keep your head about you—don’t go getting all mixed up with magic and shine so you forget where we came from, and who we are.”

  “Like you have?” Ben says softly as he plays with the edges of my cotton sheets.

  His words cut right through me. “Excuse me?”

  He closes his eyes and lies back on the bed. “Parsonage was as much a prison for me as it had been for you, Joan. I never want to go back. I want what you have, I want a new start.”

  I can’t fault him for that, can I? “Then you get a real job, outside of this hellhole. There’s plenty of honest places to work up here in DC, plenty of opportunity.”

  “For someone who’s worked in a shining room since he was nine?” Ben says. “If this place is good enough for you, it’s good enough for me.”

  I put one hand over my eyes and take a deep breath. I don’t want to snap again. I don’t want to fight.

  “You okay?” Ruby whispers. She bends down and pushes my fingers away from each other, creates a little window to my left eye.

  I manage a laugh, stand and swing her onto the bed. “I’m too tired to argue with you anymore,” I tell Ben. “We’ll start sparring nice and early tomorrow.”

  “But I want to see more magic,” Ruby says as she kneels on the mattress. “Can you do another trick? Jed never does any tricks at home.”

  “You want magic?” I face the little side lantern on the end table next to Ben. I point at it, close my eyes, and whisper, “Off,” and the lantern flickers out.

  Ruby just giggles. “Too wild.”

  She climbs over Ben as he grunts from the pressure. He steals a pillow and slides down to get comfortable on the rug on my floor, as I settle in on Ruby’s right side, into the sliver of space between her and the wall. It would almost feel like our cabin back home, except the window above my bed glows with light from the outside streetlamps, and the horns and engines on M Street chug a steady hum.

  After a few minutes of silence, once Ruby burrows into her pillow and starts to lightly snore, Ben says from the floor, “You can’t protect us forever, Joan, you know that, right?”

  I wait a minute before I answer, “Doesn’t mean I can’t try.”

  Ben sighs. “I’m more grateful to you than words will ever do justice. But I need to make my own way in the world too.” I hear him turn over. “I can’t go back there, Joan. I can’t keep watching my father spiral into nothing.”

  Of course I understand that. But even still, there’s no way in hell I want him working for Gunn. So I give him the line I’ve been giving him all my life, when we were smaller and in charge of watching the bar with nothing but Jed’s rifle as protection, when Jed showed up a few years back with a knife poking out of his left calf and was blubbering in fits and mumbles—even after Mama died, and I put that hard shell around myself, determined to keep moving forward, to use the future to right the past. “We’ll figure this all out, Ben,” I whisper. “We’ll get through it. We always do.”

  But there’s no answer, except a small sigh from the floor.

  I can’t sleep. I’m so worked up about all of it—our exchange with D Street tomorrow, my family, Gunn’s slow, careful needling, and Alex—that my stomach just keeps tying itself into one long, complicated knot. I feel trapped, even more so as my back is literally up against my bedroom wall. I get a vague, almost primal urge to jump out the window, run and never look back.

  So I turn to face Ruby, to remind myself of who it’s all been for.

  Her face is so soft, peach and plump under the light coming in from the street, and I can’t help but put my hand on her cheek, feel her still-baby softness, her perfection that the world hasn’t stolen away.

  I am doing the right thing, aren’t I?

  Ruby stirs a bit, smiles back at me. “I forgot what your smell was like.”

  I smile. “I smell?”

  “You good-smell smell,” she says. “I’ve really missed you, Joan.”

  “I’ve really missed you, too.”

  She looks at me a little longer, her eyes heavy and dreamy. A sudden shadow falls across her face and she stirs, gasps. “Who’s that man outside?”

  I turn around, give a little gasp of my own.

  “Is he real?” Ruby whispers.

  “Hush, don’t wake Ben.” I move quietly to kneel, then press my face against the window. Alex Danfrey is on my fire escape, only an inch of glass between us. He looks like he hasn’t slept since I last saw him. Ruffled hair, shirt a mass of wrinkles, deep bags under his eyes that look almost purple.

  Still, just seeing his face sends a current right through me, lights up every inch.

  “He’s real,” I whisper back.

  Alex finds my eyes through the shaded glass of the window and smiles. He waves me outside.

  “Ruby, don’t say a word, don’t move, you hear?” I say.

  “You’re going out there?”

  “I’ll be right back.”

  I unlock the glass pane and climb out onto the fire escape, and then close the window behind me.

  “Is someone in there with you?” Alex asks as soon as I turn around.

  “My cousin, and my little sister Ruby. Gunn brought them up here, to help remind me of my ‘priorities.’” Then I look away, ’cause I know how that sounds: exactly how Alex pegged it—that Gunn’s manipulating me, has me all turned around. “What are you doing here?”

  “We need to talk.” Alex takes my hand, sits me down on the fire escape. The air is frigid, has to be below zero. My body tenses as I sit, and I wrap my cotton-pajama arms around myself.

  “Close your eyes,” he says.

  I do what he says. It takes a moment, but then I feel it, the icy fingers of January giving way to a warm breeze. The sun grazing my face, my shoulders. The smell of fresh-cut grass. I open my eyes to see the same gazebo Alex conjured for me all those weeks ago, when it was just the two of us in the hall, tricking and flirting with our magic. His manipulation is perfect, so warm and reminiscent, that I find my eyes starting to water.

  “Do you remember this?” he says.

  “Of course I do.” I stare down at the wide wooden planks of Alex’s gazebo, which now run underneath us. “I’ve missed you,” I blurt out. “I haven’t seen you since that night.”

  He wraps his hands around mine. “I’ve been thinking about you too much in that lounge. I’m constantly distracted.”

  My face warms. “I know the feeling.”

  Alex stares at me, like he’s waiting for something, unsure of himself. And then in a rush, he leans in, kisses me deeply, desperate and tender all at once. It’s like a spell, a heady, warm, wonderful spell of its own, and it almost makes the world outside his magic feel like a distant dream.

  He pulls back and sighs. “It’s been a rough few days, Joan.”

  I nod, thinking about all of Gunn’s veiled warnings, my family floating through this place, running my caging spell over and over—“On my end too.”

  “You having second thoughts about the deal?” he says slowly. “About all this?”

  “No,” I say instinctively. I steal a look at him. “Maybe. It just—it doesn’t feel like I expected it would.” I look at my hands. “How am I supposed to do what I’m doing when my little sister’s right upstairs, y
ou know?” I shake my head. “It’s just gotten more complicated. And I have no idea what’s in store for us after tomorrow. I’m trying to get it out of Gunn.”

  Alex runs his fingers through his hair, then inhales real big, like he’s gearing up to sprint. “Joan . . . I need to tell you something.”

  I have no idea what he’s about to say, but his face tells me that I don’t want to hear it. “What’s wrong, Alex?”

  “Before I do this,” he says quietly into his lap, “I need to know that despite all the lies for Gunn, the manipulations we’ve conjured under this roof, that this is real.” He points to me, then to himself. His hands are shaking a little as he does it, which sort of scares the crap out of me. “If you trust me,” he adds with a breath, “just like I trust you.”

  “Alex, seriously, what’s this about?”

  He looks at me sideways. There’s so much brewing in his eyes. “It’s important.”

  “Yes. I trust you, maybe more than anyone,” I say, without even needing to think about it. “Hell, these days I might trust you more than I trust myself.”

  A slow smile breaks across Alex’s face. But he still looks nervous.

  Wildly, jumpy, out-of-his-skin nervous.

  He starts rubbing the inside of my palm. “I know you think you need to do this, that this shine deal is the answer for you and your family,” he says, “that there’s no other way out but working alongside Gunn. But you’ll be no good to your family rotting behind bars.” He pauses. “Tomorrow night—it isn’t going to happen. The Feds are onto it. The deal might start, but it’s going to end with the largest Prohibition Unit bust in history. You need to get out now, while there’s still time.”

  I shake my head. What Alex is saying is so far-fetched, it sounds like a story, one of the fairy tales I used to ramble on about to Ruby at night. “Alex, why are you . . . what—how would you even know this?”

  “And I have a way,” he talks over me. He starts breathing heavier and slower. He lets go of my hand, and then his words come out in a rush: “Colletto’s gang is due here sometime tomorrow. The troupe’s to make sure that all the shine we’ve brewed over the past few days, the glass quarts that you’ve been binding, are packed and ready for loading in the VIP lounge. That’s where the deal is going down,” he keeps talking, “but before D Street walks out of there, we clue in the rest of the troupe to what’s going on and spellbind the room. If we time it perfectly—not too early to risk betrayal, not too late that we miss our chance—we force the troupe on board. And then we lock both gangs in like sitting ducks for the Feds.”

  “Alex.” I finally find my voice. Lord, he’s really starting to unravel, to lose it. “What’s gotten into you, how on earth would the Feds—”

  “I promise the Unit will cut a deal with you. I’ll make sure of it.” His words are soft, but now assured, and he keeps his eyes trained on a random spot to the left of my head. “We say that Gunn was the mastermind, that he had you and the rest of his sorcerers working like dogs for him, that he was blackmailing you—at the end, that’s what it’s been like, it’s not too much of a stretch from the truth. We’ll tell the troupe the same—have them corroborate the story. They all think there’s something else going on between you and Gunn anyway.”

  He steals another breath as my head starts spinning. “If you give up Gunn and his team and everything you know, you’ll walk. But it needs to be all of it, Joan—everything about the eternal shine, anything Gunn’s said about his plan for expansion, plus D Street’s distribution routes. And that spell, Joan—it can’t get out, you need to tell the Unit everything, we need to contain it. You give all that up, and I promise your family will stay safe. I’ll make sure the cabin stays yours if that’s what you want. Maybe the Feds will keep you under surveillance, but you’ll be free.” He pauses, then adds in a more tentative voice, “Or you and your family could stay here in DC with me.”

  I can’t speak. The world feels like it’s opening up underneath me, and that I’m falling, unable to hold on to any of his words, descending down down down. “What are you—Alex,” I stutter, “how the hell do you know this?”

  He shakes his head.

  He looks pitiful. Repentant. Afraid.

  And then the pieces start falling into place.

  Or maybe the picture has always been completed, and I’ve just been too blind—too willfully blind—to see it.

  “Are you . . .” I close my eyes. I can’t look at him anymore. “Are you a cop?”

  “They had me, Joan, over a barrel,” he rushes, squeezing my hands, “all my old crimes. At first I was doing it because I had to. But then I started to understand everything that magic is capable of, all the darkness of this underworld, and I met you, and—” He stops. “I believe in what I’m doing now, more than ever. I want to end Gunn and the rest of them. I want to save you. Please, please let me do both.”

  A cop.

  Alex is a fucking cop.

  Of course, this all makes sense, looking back at the full picture. His cloudy past, his questions about Gunn, the way he kept burning bright, right through the Shaws. But even still, it feels like the greatest magic—the one I’ve come to know as real, the one I’ve come to build my hopes and dreams on top of—it all teeters, then comes spiraling, crashing down.

  “You piece of shit.” I close my eyes. The tears come hot, fast, and overwhelming. “You liar. You’ve been playing me this whole time?”

  “I never played you.” Alex rushes to grab my hand again, but I jerk away from him, stumble to the edge of his gazebo manipulation. I want to tear it down with my nails. Alex. Alex is a cop.

  “Please, Joan, me and you—that’s the only thing that’s always been real.” His voice cracks. “I can’t deny that I lied about some things—I had to in order to survive—but there’re some things that you just can’t lie about. You know that’s true.”

  I don’t look at him. Alex tries to angle around, force me to, but I turn away. But he gently grabs my hand and pulls me around to face him. I want to resist again. I want to tell him to leave me alone. But his look, his face. This, right here, right now, there’s no trick.

  “I’ve made sure the Feds don’t know your name yet, but they know about the eternal shine,” he says slowly. “I told you, I’ve got it all figured out. We’ll get ahead of it, and spin your story—we’ll tell them that you were coerced, that Gunn forced you to use your blood-magic. Like I said, we’ll use the troupe to back it up. If they cooperate, they get off easy. Besides, we’ve always been after the gangsters, not the sorcerers—Gunn and Colletto are the masterminds.”

  When I don’t answer, because I can’t, because everything I might say is stuck like a thick, knotted ball in my throat, he leans in and whispers, “I would never give you up, don’t you see that? You were right, Joan. We’re the same, we deserve this—we deserve each other.”

  Those words. They’re the right words.

  Maybe, despite all things, they’re the only words that matter.

  “Please, Joan,” he says. “Think of your family, of yourself. Hell, think of me.” He takes my other hand, so that both of mine are wrapped in his. “This is the only way you get out of this. Please. Please tell me you’re with me.”

  I study Alex Danfrey, this man I know intimately and yet apparently, don’t know at all. This expert sorcerer who’s about to take down everyone I’ve worked with, everything I’ve worked for, all in one night. One bust. This double agent who’s crossing his own agency just to carve a path that lets me walk away.

  We’ll get ahead of this—the only way you get out—we deserve each other.

  Maybe . . . maybe we could start over, in another city—Alex, me, Ruby, and Ben. And once we clear our names with the Feds and move on, maybe . . . maybe we bury the caging spell like Alex said, keep it a secret as Mama always meant for it to be, and we get back to our performance. Alex and I ha
d true magic on our stage, that’s something you can’t walk away from. We could open our own place. A different place—without the violence, without the Gunns of the world breathing down our necks—just a place to make magic together. Alex says he’s working for the Feds, but I’ve seen him in action. And I know what he can do, what he won’t be able to live without forever, despite how much he’s turned himself around otherwise.

  We’ll work it out, we’ll figure it all out, together.

  “Promise me you’ll take care of my family after all this is through?” I say slowly, as I wipe a tear from my eye. “And my name is never tied to any of it. As far as the papers, anyone is concerned—Joan Kendrick never existed.”

  Alex rests his hands on my shoulders. “I will, Joan. I promise. It’s what I want.” He glances toward the window. “Stay up here, get some rest if you can. I’ll be in the lounge with the others tomorrow, finishing up our shipments, just to avoid tipping Gunn off that anything’s wrong. You do the same. You act like everything he’s been planning is finally coming together. Soon as I know when Colletto’s coming, I’ll phone it in to the Feds,” he says. “And when the gangsters exchange the cash and the goods, we pull our final trick—we clue in the troupe, and lock those thugs in the VIP lounge. Then the Unit arrives to take them down.”

  I nod slowly, wipe my eyes with the back of my hand. “I understand.”

  He presses his lips gently to my forehead and pulls me into him. And I smell his scent again, that mix of soap and cologne. I breathe it in. “We’re in this together, Joan,” he whispers. “We always have been.”

  We both climb through the window, Alex angling around Ruby to make his way to the foot of the bed. “Until tomorrow,” he says, after I break my spell on the door.

  And then he’s gone.

  I lie back down. I toss and turn, running it all through, praying to God that Gunn doesn’t get a whiff of this and break Alex apart, only to break me next. I’m angry, more scared than I’ve been in a long time, so twisted around that sleep is now a dream. But there’s one thing I know deeper and truer than anything: