Magic and Mayhem: A Collection of 21 Fantasy Novels

by Jasmine Walt

  “It's a very long drive.”

  “Well,” he said, and I could see the flash of a smile. “I might not be immortal any more, but I think I have the time. So long as it's with you.”

  Dion opened the door, and sat in the driver's seat. “Hand,” he commanded. Numbly, I complied and he dumped an old car key into my hand. It wasn't just any key though. It was the key to his prized 1978 Honda Prelude.

  “Dion...” I started, choking up.

  “I'd sleep easier knowing that you two have a decent car,” Dion said.

  Decent car wouldn't be how I'd describe the Prelude. It was a weekend project that Dion babied, and he hadn't driven the car for any sort of distance in years, probably because its reliability was a bit spotty. It was far better gift than I could have ever expected.

  What's more, he gave me five thousand dollars in cash.

  “Really, Dion, this is too much,” I protested. The back of my throat closed up and now I really did threaten to cry.

  He responded by putting the wad of money in my other hand and giving me a warm smile.

  “Thanks, Officer Stubbins,” Plutus said with a smile. “It means a lot.”

  I glanced at him sitting in the back seat stoically, but without special powers, he couldn't meet my eyes. The cane Dion had bought him from the pharmacy was gripped tightly across his lap.

  “Thank you, Dion.”

  We hugged each other across the seat. He fondly ruffled my hair. “Now, I have to be up in two hours and you need to get going so you can come back to us,” he said. “Before you go, I need to speak to you, Callie. Alone.” He looked at Plutus pointedly, although Plutus couldn't see.

  “We'll be right back,” I assured Plutus. He nodded, although something like suspicion crossed his face.

  I managed to muster enough strength to drag myself out of the car. Dion met me outside and crossed his arms. “Are you sure you want to do this, Callie?” He sounded as tired as I felt.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You're acting like you're on a mission from God,” he said, his Chicago accent strong on the word “God”.

  I nearly laughed. You have no idea, I wanted to say.

  “I just want to make sure you're in control of yourself.” At my blank look, he leaned forward and gave me an intense look. “That boy in there, you like him, don't you?” He didn't wait for me to answer. “I've worked with you for years, Callie, and you've never acted this way around any of the victims.”

  I sighed and rubbed my forehead, then passed my hand over my eyes. “Nothing can come from it. So there's no point.”

  Dion watched me. “Promise me you won't let your feelings get in the way. You have a job to do, Callie.”

  “I know.”

  “Please don't get carried away.”

  “I know.”

  The look on my face must have been incredibly desperate, because he reached across and hugged me to his chest in a protective, fatherly way. I didn't cry. I'd already cried enough in the Underworld. It was good to be held though. It felt like my dad was holding me, like everything was going to be all right.

  “Don't get yourself killed,” Dion said softly, pulling back so that he could look at me.

  “I'll try not to,” I replied with a bittersweet laugh.

  I hoped that trying would be enough to keep both of us alive.

  Dion opened the garage door to reveal his treasured Prelude. I came around to Plutus' door and opened it. “Come on,” I said tiredly. “We have a long drive ahead of us.”

  I helped him to the passenger side of the Prelude and buckled his seat belt. He gave me a sardonic smile, which I ignored. I went around to the driver's side, buckled myself in and threw the car into reverse.

  And as we drove off, Dion waved at us.

  It wasn't going to be the last time I saw him. I wouldn't let it be.

  16

  There was one more place we had to stop, and luckily, it was still in Oakland. Admittedly, I felt a bit bad showing up on someone’s doorstop at six in the morning but I didn’t have a choice.

  We headed to an apartment that housed a family who was staying in the US illegally. A few years ago, I had stumbled onto the patriarch's business of counterfeiting drivers’ licenses, passports, and Social Security cards for any other illegal immigrant that had the money. He begged me not to arrest him or deport his family. I don't know what it was, his five kids who were absolutely adorable, or something about his story, but I let him off. He promised to discontinue the business, and I've been checking in on them periodically to see if they were all right.

  I knew he was still doing illegal stuff, though I never saw it.

  I was going to him to ask him to help Plutus and me. The irony wasn't lost on me.

  If we were traveling across the entire country to get to New York City, we needed identification. We couldn't use our real identities, so we'd have to adopt fake ones. Fake IDs were only good for some things like hotels and airports. I’d have to be careful not to get pulled over because they wouldn’t check out if the cops ran them.

  I took Plutus' hand and we walked up the steps to the apartment building, up three flights of stairs and stood in front of the only door that didn't have loads of graffiti painted on it. I swallowed, reached out and knocked.

  A little Malaysian girl shyly answered the door, the chain on it allowing only her right eye to peer up at me. Her name was Caroline, and she was four years old and utterly adorable. I'd met her a few times before when I visited her father. She'd always been incredibly shy so I’d never actually heard her speak, but she hovered around whenever I was there. And if I tried to speak to her, she'd run off without a word.

  “Hi, there,” I said, “is your daddy home?”

  Rather than answer, she shut the door with a dull thud.

  Plutus chuckled. “That went well.”

  “She's grown a bit since I last saw her,” I told him, straightening up. “Still very shy though.”

  The door opened again, revealing a tanned man who was about a head shorter than me. He looked at me and his mouth dropped. I'd forgotten how terrified he was of me. No matter how many times I assured him I wasn’t going to bust him, he always thought I might.

  “Hello, Bo,” I said, trying my best to not look menacing. Even though I felt like crap and there was no way I could have looked scary at that point, he watched me like I had threatened to eat his insides.

  “Detective!” he cried. His voice squeaked on the middle syllable. “I didn't—”

  I waved my hand. “I'm not here to arrest you, Bo,” I said.

  He blinked. “Oh?” he squeaked. He paled even more. I could almost see the horrible possibilities filtering through his brain as he breathlessly looked up at me.

  “Do you still have everything you need to make fake licenses?” I asked. “And tell me truthfully, Bo. I know when you're lying.”

  His eyes widened, threatening to pop out. “Yes,” he said slowly. He paled even more, which I didn't think it was possible.

  “I need you to make IDs for us,” I said, gesturing between me and Plutus.

  He went really still for a few heartbeats. “You...” he started, fumbling over his words. “You need license?”

  I nodded. “You're the only one I can trust with this, Bo.”

  He shut the door again. The noise on the other side announced that he was undoing the chain and a number of other locks. Living in this apartment building, I could sympathize that he wanted to keep his family safe.

  He shouted at people behind him in Malay—what he said, I don't know—and finally, the door opened.

  I smiled warmly, trying to alleviate the tension, wrapped an arm around Plutus to guide him, and we stepped inside.

  Caroline peeked at me from behind an armchair. Bo's four other kids were watching us with the same stunned expression. His wife, Yean, shushed their kids and corralled them into the kitchen and shut the door. I had never been a welcome guest here. Today, it actually hurt me
to see them shut away. Bo gestured over to me, still cautious, but growing a bit more used to us being here.

  “What you need?” he asked. He opened up a closet, revealing a computer, a card printer, some other machines, a camera, and a shabby white sheet on the back of the door.

  “I—we,” I corrected, “need fake identities.”

  “Fake identities?” Apparently, a cop had never needed an alias from him before.

  “Yes,” I said. “Some bad men are after us.”

  “Bad men?”

  “Yes,” I said, nodding. “Very bad men.” The worst.

  “Who this?” he asked, gesturing with his head to Plutus.

  I was about to reply when Plutus answered for me, giving him the alias I told Dion earlier. “Paul. Paul Jones.” He held out his hand for a shake towards the general direction of Bo's voice. Bo dubiously took it and shook it.

  That raised some other questions for me. We had to make up some information about Plutus. How old did he look? Where could we say he was born? What did we tell people about why he was blind?

  “He need passport card,” Bo said. And he vaguely gestured to Plutus' eyes. “No driver license for him.”

  Right. I should've known that. I wonder if the knock on my head really did impact me.

  “Can you make passport cards?”

  “’Course,” he huffed, a bit of feistiness coming through. Now that he knew I wasn't here to arrest him, he was all business. “I do everything.”

  He snapped our pictures with the camera and told us to sit on the couch while he put together our identities. Plutus was now going to be Paul Jones, aged 31, which was believable. My fake license said that I was Kelly Smith. It somehow made me feel even more uneasy because the name was so close to Callie. I did feel a bit smug though; if Plutus had to call me by my alias, he'd have to say something close to “Callie”. I was going to get him to say my nickname yet.

  Bo assured us that it would take only an hour to get everything done. I made idle chit chat with Bo while he worked. Mostly I was glad for the rest. We had a long drive ahead of us and even the thought of it exhausted me. I was fighting how badly my coma had impacted my body, but I wondered how long my resolve would last.

  I must have looked tired because Bo yelled something in Malay to his family in the kitchen, and a few minutes later, Caroline came out with two mugs of coffee. It was like drinking tar, and probably not good for my zonked brain, but it snapped me out of my daze.

  “You don't have to do this,” Plutus said softly. He wouldn't turn his head towards me.

  “What?” I asked, grimacing at my coffee.

  “This,” he said. “You've already done too much for me, Callista.”

  “Kelly,” I corrected with a laugh.

  He smiled, which I marveled at because even though he was no longer a god, he was still extremely good-looking. “Seriously, Callista,” he said, the smiling fading. “You can walk away from all this. Go live your life and forget about all this. Please.”

  “What would happen to you then?” I whispered so Bo couldn't hear me. He didn't answer, although I saw that his hands were clenched so tightly the knuckles were white. “You're mortal now, Plutus. And you're stuck here until you figure out how to go back to the Underworld. So no, I can't not do this.”

  A muscle in his jaw clenched. “Why?” he asked. “Why are you doing this?”

  Now it was my turn to be silent. What was I supposed to say? The cop in me was absolutely appalled at myself. Then there was the part of me that was the scared, insecure girl who watched her father die, had no friends, and was absolutely shattered when she broke up with her boyfriend several months ago. And that part of me wanted to be loved by the god sitting next to me on the couch. I couldn't say it because I didn't know where we would go from there.

  Luckily, Bo interrupted our conversation. “Done!”

  I got up from my spot on the couch. My legs had turned to jelly after sitting for an hour. How was I going to be able to drive with legs like this?

  Bo held out the new IDs. A shiny Michigan driver’s license for me and an American passport for Plutus.

  I took them and inspected him. Granted, I looked awful and Plutus' picture didn't fit the requirements of a passport card (the colors were slightly off and he wasn't looking directly at the camera), but the quality of the job was decent enough, and as long as another cop wasn't looking at them, they would pass as legitimate.

  “Nice,” I said. “They're very good, Bo.”

  He blushed scarlet, obviously proud of his handiwork. “The best for Detective,” he said.

  “How much do I owe you?” I asked.

  He looked appalled that I'd even offered. “No charge,” he said, shaking his head. “You been nice. No charge.”

  I didn't know what to say to that, so I nodded dumbly, said a few thanks, and Bo practically kicked us out of his home.

  “Well,” Plutus said. “That was interesting. He had a lovely family.”

  “I feel like I used him.”

  “You've shown him kindness when he needed it,” Plutus said. “You didn't deport him. I think he was trying to say thanks in his own way.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Yeah.”

  We got into the Prelude. I took a deep breath, feeling the weight of the impending drive upon me.

  “All right, let's do this.”

  17

  Eight hours later, at a little past three in the afternoon, I pulled the car into a seedy motel on the outskirts of Las Vegas. While the hotel definitely wouldn't have been my first choice, the thought of another five minutes behind the wheel was enough for me to stop anywhere and sleep on a cactus.

  I didn't mind sleeping at a place as dirty as this one. They had an hourly rate, which told you the caliber of the motel.

  A bed—any bed—was calling me, and I wanted to sleep soon, so I parked the Prelude, told Plutus to wait, and went into the office and checked us in. A trucker and what I could only assume was a prostitute passed by me on my way back to the car. Please have clean sheets, I told myself. That was all I wanted. Although, if I was completely honest with myself, I didn't even care about that.

  The room was on the first level. Considering the way both of us were walking wounded, I was relieved we weren’t going to have to tackle another flight of stairs. I collected Plutus from the car, went to our room, and crawled into the lone double bed. If I had been more conscious of it, I would have asked Plutus if he wanted the bed or the couch.

  I fell asleep as soon as I hit the pillow.

  Thankfully, Plutus didn't disturb me as I slept. I could have kissed him for that.

  Then again, there were lots of reasons why I wanted to kiss him.

  When I opened my eyes, Tisiphone was peering down at me. I shrieked and scooted away from her. We were in the courtyard of the palace, sunlight streaming too cheerily to be real.

  I was back in the Underworld. My stomach threatened to hurl that Big Mac I picked up before we left the state of California.

  Instead of asking if I was all right, she just laughed.

  “Where the fuck am I?” I asked. I felt like I had a headache, and a part of me was panicked that I was back in the Underworld. Had everything been a dream then? Was I back in Hell?

  Tisiphone was still laughing, which made me even more irritated.

  “Why am I back in the Underworld?”

  “You're here in spirit, Callie,” Tisiphone chided. Before I could ask what she meant by that, she pushed a hand through my shoulder. It passed through me, like I wasn't really there. “You apparently passed out early, if I'm up to date on the time zones.” She gave me a toothy grin. “A little worn out from acting like a superhero after waking up?”

  I groaned. “I'm dreaming.”

  “Something like that.”

  “I can't even rest when I sleep,” I muttered.

  “Nope,” she agreed. “Not when you're in charge of watching the God of the Underworld's son.” She leaned over me. “
Who's mortal now. Tell me, Callie, is he still incredibly good looking? All of us girls down here want to know.”

  “Tisiphone…” I groaned.

  “Have you boinked him yet?” She made a jealous face and sat back. “Is that why you're tired?”

  “Tisiphone!” I barked, fighting the blush coming onto my face. “Why am I here?” Let me sleep in peace at least. “Is Plutus here?” I looked around me.

  Her features darkened and she shook her head. “No,” she sighed. “You're here in spirit. Since Plutus doesn't have a spirit, we can't bring him here, not like you.”

  One thing about Tisiphone, it was amazing how quickly she could change between topics.

  “You guys are being chased by a madman,” she continued. “Whatever you're going to do, you'd better do it.”

  “Tell me something I don't know.”

  “Well, if you want to be a pain,” she huffed. She crossed her arms and looked away, trying her best to look offended, but I knew better. “I was simply trying to let you know that you guys are on your own.”

  “Yeah, I know,” I said. I pushed myself up to my feet and stood up. I wiped imaginary dirt off me. Of course nothing had stayed on me since I was some sort of spectral spirit, but that didn't stop old habits.

  “No, I mean, you're really on your own,” she corrected. “No gods are meant to help you on your way. Zeus has declared it so.”

  Zeus. Even the Greek legends said he was a dick. “And that's different how?” I threw my hands up. “When have the gods ever helped us?”

  “Well, two have already helped, and you've only been awake for twelve hours,” she said, sobering me. “So I wouldn't scorn them just yet if I were you.”

  “Two?”

  Tisiphone counted on her fingers. “One, the goddess Tyche has given you two the gift of good luck. She kinda...swayed the odds so that Plutus would be brought to your hospital and that you'd get him out safely. And two,” she held up another finger, “Dionysus aided by giving you money and a car.”