Black Market Blood

by Francis Gideon

  Chaz dropped his cigarette in a puddle and hurried across the street, not bothering to wait for the crosswalk. Another flash from the van gave Chaz the cover he needed to swoop into Reggie’s line of vision.

  “Hey, man, what the fuck?” Reggie cried out. A cigarette hung between his lips, nearly down to the filter. “I’m working here.”

  “So am I. I need to ask you some questions, Reggie.”

  Reggie dropped the camera in his lap. His body visibly tensed, but he didn’t book it. The van was off, so it would take more than just hitting the gas to get away. Reggie’s hands were both visible, too, so there was no chance he was darting for a weapon. A quick sweep of the interior of the van displayed a bunch papers and crumbled twenties but no gun. No visible gun anyway. For a guy who was supposed to be a germophobe, his car was a mess.

  “And what the fuck do you want? I have a permit. I can do this,” Reggie said.

  “Let me see.”

  “Show me yours and I’ll show you mine.”

  Chaz grabbed his badge from his pocket and flashed it. Reggie let out a hiss. “Not so fast. Let me read these numbers here, so I know you are who you say you are.”

  “I know who you are, Charles Reginald. Or Reginald Halifax.”

  Again Reggie’s body stiffened, but he still didn’t book it. He eyed the numbers of Chaz’s badge and the name. “Well, Chip MacDonald, I’m glad that the streets are being protected. I have a feeling, though, that other than me jumping the halfway house, you have nothing on me.”

  Reggie removed his PI certification from the visor of the car and showed Chaz.

  “Checks out?”

  “Not likely,” Chaz said. “I suspect you used fake prints on this.”

  “Suspect. Sounds like no evidence. And since you’ve got a bit of a vamp problem in this city, you’ll let me go with my trespasses, yeah? Bigger fish to fry, always bigger fish to fry. Like the mayor’s daughter here.” Reggie held out his camera, flashing it near Chaz’s face.

  Chaz grabbed the lens of the camera and knocked it against the window frame. “Don’t take my picture.”

  “Not you, man. The young thing with the witch. The Bitch and the Witch, I’m thinking for the next article.” He laughed. Chaz slammed his camera down again. The lens cracked with an audible noise and Reggie’s laughter turned to rage.

  “How dare you. I’m going to report you. Write you up as the crazed cop.”

  “No, you won’t. Because I also have you on stolen photo equipment. A fake PI license, plus skipping your halfway house, and intimidating the mayor’s daughter. You’re going down while I’m getting an accommodation.”

  Reggie sneered. “The police are fucking corrupt here.”

  “No, we’re doing the best we can with what we have. And you have something I want.”

  “I do, do I? You can take the damn camera since I won’t be able to take any more fucking photos now.” Reggie sulked in his seat. His dyed hair looked greasy, and his mustache had turned to a full beard. “I think I got enough info on the Witch and her Bitch anyway. I can always make shit up. Do you read the papers, Chip?”

  “The tabloids?” Chaz surveyed the car again and noticed the insignia for the Citizen’s Brigade on the visor. So, Reggie was writing for them. And that’s why he was taking photos—of the witch, not the mayor’s daughter. She was just collateral.

  “I haven’t read them in a long time. But I need to ask you about another photo you took.”

  “Take the camera.”

  “I don’t want the camera. I want your phone.”

  “My phone? What for?”

  “You went to Artie’s house. You took a photo of a worker there. I want your phone and the photo back. Have you sent it?”

  Reggie furrowed his brow, seemingly trying to figure out how or why Chaz knew about all of this. When he didn’t answer, Chaz grew impatient and slammed the already broken camera against the window frame again. “Don’t fuck with me, Reggie. I’ve had a long day. I’ll throw this license in the mud out here, then you’ll have to go down to city hall to get another.”

  “All right, fine. Jesus. Just don’t breathe on me like that.” Reggie ran his hands along the inside of his jacket and produced a burner phone, plus a bottle of hand sanitizer. Chaz snatched the phone while Reggie added a glob to his palm and rubbed it in.

  “I didn’t send the kid’s photo to anyone.”

  “I’ll confirm that, thanks.” Chaz skimmed through Reggie’s contacts and noticed the same number for Igby, the reporter, interspersed with Chinese takeout and pizza places. So this guy really did work for the Brigade. Huh. Chaz didn’t recognize anything else on the phone, and there was no data plan whatsoever. No way for the photo to be sent. When he found the image of Sully, his heart sank. Though the image was small and the quality awful, Sully was clearly shocked. He was only wearing his black boxer briefs and the camera caught his profile. The next one, where Reggie had told him to smile, had Sully bearing his teeth but not smiling. There was no way that could be counted as a smile.

  “There. You happy?”

  “No,” Chaz said. “Why the hell did you take these?”

  “I take a lot of photos. Gets lonely out here waiting for people to show. You know….” Reggie made a slow motion with his hand. Jerk off while waiting. Great. Chaz skimmed through the other folders and saw even more photos of men without shirts. Some of them looked familiar, but he couldn’t be sure.

  “You get around.”

  “I get lonely. Are we done?” Reggie said, gesturing between the two of them. “Because my girl is gone and you should be out fighting vampires.”

  Chaz furrowed his brow. That was the second time now Reggie had mentioned vamps. “You keep mentioning vamps. You worried about something?”

  “I don’t know. Are you guys worried?” Reggie grinned and tapped his Citizen’s Brigade insignia. “I look into stuff for Igby.”

  “Well, then. What do you know?”

  “Only that you got a vamp out on the loose. And he’s targeting other vamps.”

  “But the first victim…,” Chaz started to argue, but Reggie just shook his head.

  “Everyone knows about Patrick Mortimer. Mermaid boy. He went to live in a den before his body was found.”

  “How do you know that?”

  Reggie shrugged. “I get around.”

  “Fuck you. We need that information. You need to call us.”

  Reggie cut Chaz off with a dismissive wave of his hand. “I don’t work for you. I work for the people. And anyone who pays me. I have no obligation to report to you.”

  Chaz clenched his jaw. He couldn’t believe he was about to say this, but he was desperate. Everything about today made him desperate. The woman who got away was the last straw. “What if I paid you?”

  Reggie laughed.

  “I’m serious. If I hired you to find information about vamps in the area, would you?”

  Reggie assessed Chaz with a quick flick of his eyes. “And why would the good-old-boys club of the detective agency pay me?”

  “You know they wouldn’t. There’s no point in investigating monster-on-monster crime.”

  “I know that. But why do you personally, Chip MacDonald, want me to investigate? You’re part of that boys club, so why are you suddenly standing out now?” Reggie tilted his head. His gaze skimmed over Chaz’s body. “Is the boy on that phone a vamp and you’re worried about him? Want him all for yourself?”

  “Fuck you,” Chaz said. “You know he’s human.”

  “Yeah, he tastes pretty good too. But I think you already know that.”

  “Shut the fuck up. I’m asking you to look for vamps because I want the streets clean. I want the city to be safe again.”

  “I can’t make the city safe. Sorry. Not in the job description.”

  “But finding vamps is.”

  Reggie shrugged. He didn’t say anything else, but Chaz knew he had him. He worked for Igby, not a cartel, and that made all the differ
ence. He was trying to make the streets safe in his own roundabout way. Chaz felt better with the burner phone in his possession, and though it was super creepy that Reggie was taking pictures of workers to jack off to later, he wasn’t killing them. If money got Chaz what he needed, he could pay him.

  “Look. Find me this person, okay?” Chaz wrote down Fatima Aleem and a quick description. “She’s a vamp who acted as a liaison between some church sanctuaries years ago. If I find her, I’m sure she’ll help me figure out the connections between the victims who are being killed now.”

  Reggie took the card and tapped it against his chin. “And you’ll let me write the story?”

  “Igby’s gotta be your editor. But sure.”

  Reggie smiled, bearing blindingly white teeth. They offset his entire grungy image. He tucked the card away in his visor and asked for payment information. Chaz had some cash on him and handed it over, along with the phone number for his apartment.

  “Give me a week,” Reggie said. “And you’ll get your answers.”

  “Good. And stay away from Artie’s place, okay?”

  Reggie made a face but nodded. He sighed at the broken camera in front of him and reached into the back. He pulled out a brand-new camera and went back to work staking out the nightclub. If not for the next gaggle of witches who came out the door, Chaz would have thought Reggie was wasting his time. It seemed obvious, even more than before, that all Reggie had to do was park somewhere and wait. All kinds of stories would come to him that way.

  Chaz slid the flip phone into his breast pocket. One problem down but still so many more to go.

  Chapter 17

  SULLY BRACED himself for nightmares. Now that he’d acknowledged out loud what happened with Reggie, the familiar feeling of his skin not belonging to him crept its way back into his consciousness. The reprieve with Chip had been a blessing, sure. Chip gave Sully back parts of himself and the promise of having the phone—his picture—was good. But Chip had also broken down in his arms, and fuck, Sully wasn’t prepared to help someone so soon after he’d been scratched raw by his own memories.

  So he braced himself for inevitable nightmares, like the kind that had haunted him the first few weeks at Artie’s.

  That’s the shitty part about trauma. It never gets you in the moment; in the moment you survive. Trauma waits until you’re safe and then reminds you what you’ve lived through. Tabby had described her life before Artie’s as bright neon colors, like blood in the film Suspiria. Sully didn’t know the movie, but he’d heard the line about the neon color story before from several other people coming out of the tunnels and safe houses. He’d never understood the analogy, though. Maybe because he was human and most of them were supernatural, so their memories took on a different patina when they thought about their trauma. Sully’s life was always in black-and-white, a sepia-tinged photograph, or Francisco Goya painting.

  His nightmares consisted of someone sitting on his chest and crushing his lungs in the dark, and the person was always nameless and faceless. The person was an amalgamation of everyone he’d ever met who made him scared to breathe. Not bright colors. Only darkness, like a bruise.

  “Bruises heal,” Sully said aloud, alone in his room. That was the point of trauma too. It would heal—it had to. After he’d arrived at Artie’s and all he did was sleep for weeks on end (hoping each time he closed his eyes the faceless person would be gone), she knocked on his door and asked if he was okay.

  “I’m fine. I’ll work… eventually. I’m just tired.”

  “You’re healing, so that tires you out. Did you know that in Greek the word trauma translates into wound?”

  “No, I don’t know that much Greek.”

  “But you clearly know some languages,” Artie said. “I saw you talking in Czech to some of the new people who came in. How did you learn that?”

  Sully hadn’t answered and Artie didn’t push. She told him she had worked as a translator in the early days of the house, so he didn’t need to worry about sex work while staying there. He could take all the time he needed until his psychological wounds healed. Because they would. Like the body heals its cuts, his memories would scab and smart with pain when poked, but it would go back to normal. Eventually. In the meantime, Artie brought him book after book in Czech until he finally told her he knew Slovak better. Then Trina had talked to him about translating a spell she’d found in an old Kabbalah book, and because he knew Hebrew as well, he helped out. A week later, a guy came in with only one leg, who was too shy to see anyone in Artie’s house, and since he knew Slovak, Sully took him to his room. They didn’t have sex until the fifth time he came to visit. Instead he and Sully talked about the one Slovak crime writer who was super famous but always penned his stories anonymously, and the surrealist painters who were full of shit.

  Then everything went back to normal. Poof. No more nightmares. The wound was healed. It scarred, sure, but Sully had been shocked. He could go to bed at night and dream in different colors again. He didn’t have to get drunk or beg tea from Trinity to help him sleep. He could just… sleep.

  There had been blips in his recovery since then, but nothing that shook Sully to his core like Reggie had. And Reggie only took your photo! God, you’re losing your edge. You should be tougher…. Sully sighed. He repeated the words “bruises heal” and opened up his translation book. He was going to put off sleep as long as he could.

  An hour passed with him hunched over the photocopies of the original play. When he’d looked at the publication information, Sully was shocked to realize that the play was based on a short novel called The Night Walkers (or Noční Chodci in Slovak) written in 1927. The circulation had been so, so low and the author, Michaela Petrovicova, was long dead. So what were the chances of finding it? Sully huffed as he scrolled through the library’s catalogue, then the rare book dealers he’d found online. Nothing. Maybe Artie knew someone who could help, but it was late to bug her now and she was probably working on her own research anyway. Sully was about to get angry when he remembered Trina sometimes had finder spells she gave to clients. Usually to help them find their keys, wallet, or small things like that. But what about a book?

  Sully rose from his desk, a photocopy under his arm. He took the elevator down to the second floor and waited outside Trinity’s door. There was no marker on the door itself, so no work was being done. When he listened, he heard the low rumble of 1980s synth pop music. Trina tonight. Definitely.

  He knocked twice before she yelled over the music, from the other side. “Sorry, sorry. I know it’s loud—I’ll turn the music off but let me enjoy the stylings of Eurythmics a little longer.”

  “Trina, it’s me. Let me in and we can both listen.”

  “Oh!” Trina shut off the music and appeared at the door in two seconds. Her lips were pink, her blonde hair pulled back in a loose ponytail. It looked as if she’d kept her hair in braids for a long period of time and then let them out, because her hair was crimped. She wore a soft-pink shirt that read BAD WITCH in pale purple letters tight across her breasts, and a miniskirt that had a bunch of stars and moons on it. “Come in, come in, Sully. It’s late, but we can still have some fun.”

  She gestured to a chair by her bed. Her desk had been moved to the center of the room, and she’d set up two purple candles next to the CD player. A deck of cards was in the center of the desk, facedown. Her bed was unmade and full of clothing, as if she’d done a fashion show and discarded the unwanted items all while listening to “Sweet Dreams.”

  “Are you in the middle of a reading?” Sully asked. “I can come back. I know you need concentration when you do this.”

  “No, no, this is perfect. The cards have been giving me attitude. But you—you’re a pure soul. Sit down, now. They’ll treat you better than me.”

  Sully furrowed his brow at her “pure soul” remark but sat down anyway. “You know purity is a myth, right?”

  “The best one.” She winked and sat down on a desk chair across
from Sully. She shuffled the deck and laid out a card, then scrunched up her nose and put it back. “No wonder that was a shitty reading. No music.”

  She flicked Play and the music filtered back into the room. The Eurythmics soon turned to a song by Prince, one Sully had to admit he liked a lot. When Trina caught him bouncing along to it, she smiled and he ceased his movements.

  “Always so shy,” she teased. “You doing okay, though? I think I heard about a dick customer through the grapevine.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it. I need you to find me a book.”

  Trina assessed Sully with a keen glare. Sully took out the photocopied publication information and laid it down on her desk. “A finding spell. I want to know where the closest copy of this book is. Can you do that?”

  “You know it.”

  “Good. Do you want payment?”

  “You know, normally I’d say just do my cleaning duties, but Artie has a big problem with that.” Trina rolled her eyes, but she didn’t seem upset. “So you’re going to tell me something.”

  Sully huffed. “Am not.”

  “Hey, sweetheart. Not asking about bad customers. I want to hear how my Chocolate Chip is doing.”

  “How do you know the bad customer wasn’t him?”

  Trina quirked a brow in a come-on expression.

  “Fine. Chip is doing good.” Sully’s face involuntarily twisted into a smile. “I mean… he’s a mess like you said.”

  Trina laughed, loud and hearty. “Oh boy. What happened? He tell you how much he misses his grandmother yet?”

  “No, actually. He cried.”

  “Yikes. About what?”

  “Um…. Just about his ex, I guess.” Sully shrugged. Saying anything more felt too personal. The story Chip had told him still felt too strange to be real, but he’d still told Sully in confidence. It was an odd gift, and Sully wanted to keep it for himself for a little while.

  “He really have a lot of exes?”

  “I don’t know. But he was upset and, well, I comforted him. Not sure how good I was, though, since I was still freaking out over my last john.”