Binding the Shadows (Arcadia Bell)

by Jenn Bennett

  I tried to smooth things over. “Because if you’ve stumbled on something good? Boy, we definitely want in on it,” I said, smiling my best flirty smile.

  “ ‘We?’ ” Peter said. “I thought people like you used magick to get everything they want.”

  A quick anger flickered inside my chest. “And just how many magicians do you know?”

  He curled his thumb and index finger into an 0. “Unless I count you.”

  “You don’t,” Lon said.

  “So protective.” Peter reached for the wine bottle and tried to pour a drink, but nothing came out. “If you ever get tired of Killjoy over here”—he pointed the bottle at Lon—“give me a call. I could use a little magic in my life.”

  A long silence fell. I could practically feel Lon’s blood pressure rising. Or maybe that was mine.

  “Let’s cut the shit,” I said. “We know you’re using a bionic drug. We just want the name of your dealer.”

  Peter’s face twitched in about fifty different places. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  A long moment passed. We all stared at each other. Strange noises floated nearby. Sounded like someone was in pain.

  “Bind him.”

  I looked at Lon. “What?”

  “Bind him. He won’t talk unless we make him.”

  Peter straightened in his seat, twitchier and twitchier. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Daytime, remember?” I whispered hotly to Lon. I wasn’t Sunchild.

  “There’s more than one way.”

  Alarm spread over Peter’s face like wildfire. He shot up out of his seat and whipped around the sofa to a low credenza behind it. As he was tugging open a drawer, Lon calmly stood, strode three steps, and slammed the drawer closed. Peter barely got his fingers out of the way in time. The blond man retreated a foot or two. “Stay back or—”

  “Peter?”

  We all looked toward the back of the living room, through an arch that led to the kitchen. A busty girl in a black bikini top held a white towel around her waist. Another girl peered over her shoulder. “The hot tub is done heating,” she said dumbly.

  Peter said nothing.

  “He’ll be there in a minute,” I told them. The first girl shrugged and they both retreated into the kitchen. As soon as they were out of sight, I said, “Who’s your dealer, Peter?”

  “I don’t have one! I swear to God. I went to a party in Morella a couple weeks back, and everyone was talking about bionic knacks, but nobody knew how it was happening. Some girl invited me into a little side party in a bedroom and they were passing around a drink. She said it would make me luckier, so I took a swig. Everyone did. I didn’t feel anything, but I was already pretty drunk. Things got blurry after that. I didn’t think much about it until I tried to play the lottery. And, you know . . . it worked, I guess.”

  “Where was this party at?”

  “I don’t know. Somewhere in midtown. A really nice place. Some rich guy with connections to Morella politicians. I don’t keep track of who’s who in city politics anymore, and this was a friend of a friend—they heard about it when we were out at a bar, and someone drove us there. I was really trashed. I wasn’t paying attention.”

  I shared a look with Lon, and he gave me a reluctant nod: Peter was telling the truth. Great.

  “No one’s offered it to you since?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “And you went to this party two weeks ago?”

  “Yeah. A day before the first lottery win.”

  Which meant the potion lasted a hell of lot longer than I’d hoped. Not exactly what I’d wanted to hear, but it told me Telly was still dangerous.

  Lon gave Peter a long stare. “If you hear of anything else—someone selling it—we’d appreciate a name.”

  Peter glanced at my halo. “Uh, yeah. Sure.”

  “We’ll let you get back to your teenage Dream Team,” I said, kicking the purple panties out of my path.

  We headed out the way we came in and didn’t talk until we were back inside the glass elevator.

  “Why are all your friends creeps?” I asked, a little perturbed.

  “He’s not my friend.”

  I punched the Lobby button several times, then the CLOSE DOORS button a few more times.

  “I have normal friends,” he argued in a calm voice, pulling my hand away from the control panel.

  “Like?”

  “Mick.”

  “The doctor?” I’d only seen him briefly from a distance in the emergency room when Jupe’s tattoo got infected during the chaos around Halloween.

  “His wife is real nice. You’d like her. They’ve got two daughters. One’s Jupe’s age, the other’s a couple years older.”

  “Hmph.”

  The elevator began descending. I crossed my arms over my middle and considered what Peter Little had just told us. “He said the party he went to was swank. Someone connected to politics in Morella. So this bionic elixir is being distributed to rich politicians. I don’t think they’re buying it from homeless gutter punks like Telly.”

  “They probably bought it from Telly’s distributor.”

  I groaned in frustration. “So much trouble for a stupid punk kid. I just want to get him locked up.”

  “What if he just tears down the jail cell?”

  “It’s got to wear off eventually.” I hoped.

  “But if the elixir stays on the market, there’ll just be another Telly. It’s not safe, Cady.”

  Damn him for being right. “Well, I’m meeting Hajo tonight, so we’ll soon see if he knows who’s distributing it.”

  Lon scowled. Guess it was his turn to be grumpy now. Because he definitely wasn’t the only one with creepy friends.

  I was supposed to meet Hajo at a pub, but he texted me as I was driving into Morella and asked if I’d come to his place instead. I hesitated, until he told me he was having some people over that lived in his high-rise. That sounded safer than meeting him alone, and to be honest, I was a little curious about his fancy apartment.

  Hajo owned a condo on the twenty-second floor of one of the tallest buildings in downtown Morella. He’d first told me about the penthouse pad a month or so ago, at which time I accused him of being a showoff—he lived down the hall from a semi-famous professional football player with a five million dollar contract. Hajo claimed the real reason he bought it was because it was so far above all the dead bodies.

  Hajo is a death dowser. That’s his Earthbound knack. He can track death trails all over the city and pinpoint where bones are buried. Though he’s tall, dark, and handsome, he spends most days being miserable, highly aware of every dead rat in the sewer.

  Hajo is also a dick with a capital D.

  Lon hates his guts, and he has plenty of reasons to resent the guy. Hajo has few scruples. He can’t keep a girlfriend because he has a fatalistic notion of fidelity and will fuck anything that doesn’t have the backbone to fend off his less-than-romantic come-ons. And yet, he’s too depressing and brooding to be a swinging, happy-go-lucky playboy. You almost feel sorry for him. Almost.

  Around seven that night, I pulled the Jetta into the high-class parking garage below Hajo’s building. I was surprised Hajo was actually allowing me there, as he’s fiercely protective of his privacy. Like I’ve said, he won’t discuss anything illegal on the phone and prefers to meet in shady places. Comes with the territory, I suppose; drug dealers have to be on guard. And judging from the fancy digs, he was way better at his job than I’d first imagined.

  I tried to text Lon and tell him about the change in the meeting place, but there was no reception in the elevator. He could’ve come with me, but in the end we decided that it wasn’t cool to ask his in-laws to babysit Jupe while we headed off to meet a drug dealer. Better to tell the smaller lie that I had to step out and take care of something related to the bar. He did warn me, as he always did when I met Hajo, that if I wasn’t back in two hours, he was coming to get me and poss
ibly calling the police. I’d never tell Hajo this, of course; he’d probably take it as some testosterone-fueled compliment that Lon saw him, however remotely, as a potential threat.

  The penthouse hallway had a modern art deco feel to it, with plush green carpeting and gold chevron uplit sconces on the walls. An even fancier gold elevator sat in the middle of the floor, manned by a building attendant. I found Hajo’s condo and swung the gold knocker against the door several times. It opened, and some waif of a girl stood on the other side. She looked up at my halo and said in an unidentifiable European accent, “Oh. He’s inside.”

  Low, atmospheric trance music pulsed as I entered. I expected to see a few people. I didn’t expect to see a freaking party. Then again, it was the holidays. Thirty or forty people were buzzing around the large, dark apartment. The only light came from scattered candles, a few low-light lamps, and the entertainment: a video projector shining a Kenneth Anger film ten feet high across one wall. Jupe would shit a brick if he could see this setup. It was like the kid’s beloved drive-in, just indoors.

  Damn, Hajo. His drug den was ten kinds of awesome: big and showy, with high ceilings and a long balcony stretching over a stunning city view. Way nicer than Peter Little’s place, actually. Lots of rich purple and golden green. Low, sleek furniture and pillows scattered everywhere, like some Middle Eastern palace. I wondered how many of the girls walking around with no shoes were part of his harem.

  The waif left me on my own. I felt a little nervous around people who were way richer and hipper than me, drinking and smoking God knew what. I smelled valrivia, and weed, but I didn’t smell the very distinct burnt-soil scent of sømna, the highly addictive fungi-derived drug that Hajo was addicted to. Possession of any amount of the drug would get you slammed with the harshest drug laws in the state. He told me he never smoked it at home for that reason. He also told me he was in control of his addiction. I had no idea how true that was, but I never saw him out of control or strung out.

  I asked someone if they knew where he was and was pointed in the direction of a room next to the balcony. A long column of golden light stretched from a crack between double doors. I figured if he wanted privacy, he’d shut them all the way, so I pushed one of the doors open and stepped inside. It looked like it was supposed to be a library or home office, with built-in bookshelves, crown molding, and a Persian chandelier in the center of the ceiling. Only, the bookshelves were filled with objets d’art instead of books, and there was no desk. Just some stuffed chairs and more floor pillows.

  Three large paintings of women were propped against the bookshelves at the far end of the room. With his short, dark hair combed back all Rebel Without A Cause, Hajo stood in front of them, his tall, lean frame dwarfing a man at his elbow. The waif who’d answered the door was draped around his shoulders, her small halo looking pale against Hajo’s ultra-watt blue one.

  “I like them all, but I only have room for one,” he was telling the guy, who was either the artist or the art dealer. From the way he was dressed, in expensive slacks and a button-down shirt, I was going to assume the latter.

  The paintings were life-sized: a redhead, a blonde, and a dark-haired Asian woman wearing a surgical mask and a nurse’s cap. They were painted with angry strokes, and none of them were particularly attractive. In fact, I’d go so far to say that they were dark and depressing.

  “I like her the best,” I said.

  Hajo turned to look at me, dark, heavy brows lifting. He had great bones and miles of sooty lashes that ringed his eyes like kohl. “Hello, Bell. Which one?”

  I pointed to the painting of the Asian nurse.

  “Interesting. Why her?”

  I studied the paintings. “She doesn’t seem as lost as the other two.”

  “Interesting,” Hajo said. He kept his dark sideburns styled into diagonal points, which seemed to stretch when his chiseled face drew up into a slow smile. Then he spoke to the buttoned-up man. “Let me look at them tonight and I’ll give you a decision tomorrow.”

  The man scribbled something on a card. Hajo glanced at me while he waited for it. Light from the punched-metal and glass chandelier cast shadows on his elongated face that made his cheekbones seem impossibly sharp. He could trace his paternal ancestry to the missing Roanoke colony, like the majority of Earthbounds in the US, but his mother was Turkish, or so he said. His mismatched heritage combined pretty pleasantly.

  He took the man’s business card and jerked his head toward the door. “Out.”

  The guy looked a little put-out, but he made no comment and retreated as Hajo pried the waif’s hands from around his shoulders. “Go on,” he told her.

  “Hajo—”

  “Are you deaf? Get the fuck out of here. And close the door behind you.”

  The girl seemed genuinely offended, and not for the first time, I thought it was kind of a shame that all this tall, brooding handsomeness went to waste on someone so miserable and douche-y.

  Hajo’s chest and shoulders broadened as he crossed his arms, stretching the dark fabric of his shirt. His jeans were expensive and Euro-trendy, sitting low over his flat, polished loafers. Everything about his look projected the image that he was some sort of continental business mogul who ordered five-hundred-dollar bottles of champagne in the VIP section of a hipster nightclub. It was the first time I’d ever seen him without his black leather racing jacket. Guess this was Hajo in his natural environment. Or maybe the other Hajo was real, and this was show. Hard to tell.

  “Why are you having a party if you don’t want to socialize?” I asked as the doors clicked shut.

  “The football quarterback suggested it,” he said dourly. “I’m worried he knows I deal. He asks too many questions. He’s got a coke habit and is also looking for a steroid hookup.” Hajo gestured to the party outside the door. “I’m trying to placate him. Get him introduced to people who can steer him away from me. I don’t need a high-profile client with a big mouth.”

  “Tough to be you.” I glanced around. “Your place is . . . really freakin’ nice.”

  “Don’t act so surprised.”

  “Well, geez. The first time I met you was in that hellhole in Waxtown.”

  His chin lifted as he made a vague noise of acknowledgment. “Cristina’s place. She was a pig.”

  “I’m sure she wasn’t the only one,” I muttered.

  His lazy gaze rambled over my body. “Oink.”

  “Don’t start.”

  “You’ve got a little extra something going on tonight, Bell,” he said, waving his hand up and down between us. “Your energy’s sharper. What’s up with that?”

  Hajo once told me that he could sense living energy trails, not just dead ones. Said my energy was different and he could probably track it, which scared the bejesus out of me, truthfully. And now that he’d noticed something different, I thought of my moon magick and my mother. A dull panic surfaced. “What do you mean?”

  “It’s just busier. More potent. Riper.”

  “Maybe you’re just higher,” I said.

  “Maybe. Have you gained weight? Your breasts are starting to balance out that big ass of yours.”

  I think my mouth fell open. Sure, Kar Yee’s shirt made a ridiculous show of my boobs, but this was my own T-shirt. Was I really getting fat? And, oh my God, why was I even listening? Who says this kind of stuff?

  “It was a compliment,” he explained. “Your ass is marvelous.”

  “What’s the matter with you? Stop saying shit like that.”

  “Me? What’s eating you? You’re in a horrible mood.”

  Pfft. Like I was going to tell him. I grumbled to myself and jerked my head away, but he just stared at me, waiting. “Lon’s ex-wife is in town.”

  He whistled. “The hot supermodel.”

  “She’s way hotter in person.”

  “Nice. I mean, not for you. That blows. Are they getting back together or something?”

  “Over my dead body. Or hers.”

  “
Mmm, smells like jealousy,” he said with a smirk.

  “Shut the hell up.”

  He shrugged and looked at the paintings again. “So, what did you want from me?”

  “Nothing, now.”

  “Oh, come on. Tell me what you’re here for. Another dowsing job? That last one didn’t turn out so well. I’m not all that jazzed about stumbling into magical cockroaches again.”

  “Me neither.” I reached into my jacket and pulled out the red vial. “Do you know what this is?”

  His eyes narrowed. “Looks like an elixir. Already gave one of these back to you, though I’m still fuzzy on why, exactly.” He shook his head and swallowed, momentarily lost in remembering. He hadn’t figured out that Jupe persuaded him with his knack. I’d definitely like to keep it that way.

  Music spilled into the room. I looked up and saw someone standing in the doorway, a man about my age with long blond hair pulled back into a tight ponytail. One of the barefooted girls roaming Hajo’s place had her hands all over him, trying to get his shirt unbuttoned.

  “Do you not understand what a closed door means? Get the hell out of here, Darren,” Hajo snapped. “And don’t even think about heading to my bedroom. Go bang in your own apartment.”

  “Sorry,” the man mumbled, high as a kite. I held the red vial behind my back until they retreated and closed the doors again.

  “Asshole trust funder,” Hajo said under his breath.

  “Not a friend, I take it?”

  “He lives on the floor below. Always begging me for shit. Spoiled asshole. Just like everyone else here. I hate every last person who lives in this damn building.” He nodded to the hand behind my back. “Anyway, you were saying?”

  “This isn’t my brew,” I said, showing him the vial again. “You really haven’t seen this?”

  He held out his hand. “May I?”

  My fingers brushed his when I passed it to him. A little burst of static electricity almost made me drop the bottle.

  He sucked in a breath. “Oh, Bell. One of these days . . .”

  “One of these days you’re going to fall for someone who’ll want you back. And if you’re lucky, they’ll be patient enough to stick around while you wean yourself off the sømna.”