by Rowan Casey
She picked up the framed photo of my sister and admired it for a few moments, her perfect face darkening into a frown. “He offers you something he cannot give. You cannot make right your past. Your sins will forever be there, no matter the deeds you do in his name.” She set the photo back down, slipped her hand into her coat pocket and produced a business card. Light licked across the card, briefly making it flare. She set it down on the coffee table and tapped it with one long fingernail. When she looked up, her green eyes had narrowed. “He cannot bring back the dead.”
And there, she had finally spoken the words I’d hoped to hear. The words that I’d wondered since I’d seen the impossible outside the casino. This woman, whoever or whatever she was, could bring my sister, Kari, back. She could make it right.
My heart thudded too loud and beat against my ribs as I tried to hide rising hope from my face. “You can do that?”
“You will find and claim the artifact, Jazmine. And when the time comes, you will immediately hand it over to my sisters and myself. Do that, and we will grant you what Grimm cannot. We will make right your past. We will bring your sister back to you.”
She left while her words stull hung in the air. I set my glass down beside the bottle and lifted my gaze to the photo. Light snagged on a new crack that sliced through the glass, cutting my sister’s smile in half. Soon I wouldn’t need the photo. I’d have her back and the guilt that had shrouded my soul for two years would be gone for good.
I was getting my sister back.
4
Walking the strip—as the street racing crews called it—had the same ambience as wandering the casino floor during the weekend rush. Relentless chatter rose up in great waves, competing with the throaty rumble and sudden barks of high performance engines. Neon lights blazed.
The strip made up a wide stretch of roadway linking the abandoned Jarvis hospital and the decommissioned Ronaldo power station near Hawthorne Municipal airport. The cops had made this an unofficial racing ground years ago by looking the other way during meets. Or at least they’d done so while the events had been on the down low. I hadn’t been back for years and the gatherings had clearly grown in that time, attracting hundreds of armchair racers, so all bets were off.
With my hood up, I drifted anonymously through the crowds gathered to admire the suped-up cars on display. Most vehicles were European with cosmetic modifications and no guts, ricers. But a few sat low and menacing on fat rubber, eager to eat up the asphalt. It was those I paid special attention to. The man I was looking for didn’t come to these meets for the cred or the drama. He didn’t care for the catch-me-if-you-can game the crews regularly played with the cops. He was here for the thrill of planting the pedal to the metal in a machine that would happily kill you if you couldn’t control it.
Music thumped and every few minutes a thunderous roar sounded, punctured by the wheeze of turbo-dump and squealing tires. My heart thudded fast. I tucked my hand into my pocket and rolled the dice into my palm. A part of me wanted to be here, back among the street racing circuit, but another part, the part I’d made myself into when I’d found myself a casino owner, knew this life was a rabbit hole, and just by being here I was walking its edges, dangerously close to falling back in. But to make right my past I needed that bike, and if there was some kind of mystical motorbike doing the rounds in LA, this would be the place to find it.
Base hammered the air from the nearby trunk of a little German two-seater roadster. I steered around it, feeling the music beat against my ribs, and spotted the car I’d been looking for. The Nissan Silvia looked as though someone had dipped its nose in blue paint and hung it to drip dry, letting the paint crawl down its sides in haphazard drips. She had a few more knocks since I’d last seen her, and up against the sparkling rides here, she didn’t look like much. But her engine had been tuned to within an inch of its life, easily achieving 400bhp. I knew, because I’d helped strip her down and rebuild her. She wasn’t the fastest here, but she could hold her own.
“You lookin’ for Davin?” a female voice asked.
I whirled on a young woman in a lace top that looked as though it had been through a shredder. She arched a fine dark eyebrow and did a head-to-toe once over that felt as though it rummaged around my soul, and finished with a half sneer, clearly not impressed.
She thumbed toward the drag strip. “He’s about to lay some rubber down. If you’re quick, you’ll catch him.”
“Bike or car?”
“Car.” She frowned, like I was a dumbass for asking.
I fought my way through the meandering crowd toward the drag strip. Portable floodlights illuminated the quarter-mile stretch of asphalt, backed up by twin rows of cars waiting for their dash. I made it to the front in time to see the starter lift his hands and begin the countdown on the frontrunners. Davin sat behind the wheel of an all-black Nissan GTR. On the outsides, besides a few subtle decals, the car could have rolled off the production line yesterday. Only the internal roll cage hinted at the beast beneath the hood.
Davin’s unwavering attention was locked ahead, already on the quarter-mile marker. His dark crewcut hair was as short as the unshaven shadow covering his jaw. He looked as though he’d sooner slam someone into a wall than talk to them, but with Dav, the macho BS was a front. Unlike his car.
The GTR’s engine growled. It’s body rocked. The exhaust popped like gunshots.
Three—two—
His gaze faltered and out of the hundreds standing around the start line he locked his sights on me.
One.
The starter dropped his arms. Davin’s opponent in a Porsche hooked up his tires and launched the car from the line, leaving Davin scrambling to catch up. The GTR sprang forward, but the glance at me had cost him. The two cars devoured the strip, their taillights holding steady in the gloom as the crowds whooped and cheered.
I rolled the dice around my palm, itching to lend Davin a little luck.
I’m back two minutes and nothing has changed.
Red taillights blazed. Tires squealed. Someone announced the winner; it wasn’t Dav. The race was done. I turned away from the strip and headed back to the little Silvia, swallowing a metallic taste on my tongue.
A few minutes later, the GTR prowled into the place behind the old Silvia. I pushed my hood back and ran a hand through my short hair, shaking it loose. There was a chance he hadn’t recognized me.
“Jaz.” Dav climbed from the car with familiar ease. “You just cost me the race.”
He wasn’t smiling. But he never had been quick to smile. Closing the car door, he leaned back against it and crossed his arms. I’d seen him look at rookie cops the same way, waiting for them to realize they didn’t have a shred of evidence to back up what everyone knew. Davin Carino was a racer, right down to the NOS in his veins and the hunger for speed woven into his DNA.
People milled about us, some drifted in to admire his car, some to admire him. Davin didn’t get caught up in all the drama that went on behind the scenes, he didn’t race for attention. He wasn’t rebelling against anyone or anything. He raced for no other reason than because he loved it. But, the aloofness, the unwillingness to socialize, made him a mystery to most, and the other crews loved a riddle.
“You’ve changed,” he said, deep voice barely registering above a growl.
“Tried to.”
He hadn’t changed at all. He still radiated menace, the same as the car he’d chosen to race. He looked like he held it together on the outside, but there was a fierceness to him that few got to see. Loyal, driven, stubborn—each to a fault.
Finally the corner of his lips twitched. He shoved off the car door, strode toward me like he was on a mission, then tugged me into an alarmingly warm but equally rock hard embrace, hard enough to crush the air from my lungs. “We thought you were gone for good.”
He smelled of engine grease and warm leather, just how I remembered. “That was the plan.”
He pulled back and held me at arms-leng
th, but his smile soon died. “Shit, I’d forgotten how much you look like her.”
The comfort I’d felt at being home twisted into a vise-like grip around my heart. “I’m not staying. I just…I could do with your help. I’m looking for a motorbike.”
He stilled. “I haven’t touched bikes for years.”
Neither had I. But now I didn’t have a choice.
The girl from earlier bounded in with a few other groupies. They fell about the car like eager puppies and called Davin over, berating him for losing. He tossed them an easy smile and opened his mouth, probably to introduce me, but I no longer belonged. A part of me wondered if I ever really had. It wasn’t racing if you couldn’t lose—if luck was always on your side.
“Yah know, I’ll catch you another time,” I said, backing up.
“Jaz…”
I turned and waved over my shoulder. I’d been wrong to come back. There had to be another way to find the bike. Maybe Grace had some contacts with the police. I shoved through the crowds, tired of the music hammering against my skull and the smell of burned-out tires. What had I been thinking stepping back into this world?
The crowd spat me out at its fringes, away from the noise and chaos. I lifted my hood and plucked my keys from my pocket, and saw her.
The same hazel eyes and tight blond ponytail. Even the same white leather jacket she had worn so much it had faded and cracked beyond repair.
My sister, Kari.
She smiled and turned away, her ponytail bouncing as she headed deep into the crowd.
It can’t be!
I was moving forward, pushing through the people before I could stop to consider what this meant. She couldn’t be here, but she was. It was her. Had Siobhan come through already? The roaring engines and popping exhausts sent a dull ache beating through my head and down my neck. My heart raced too fast, driving impossible thoughts.
The crowd parted and Davin’s black GTR skidded to a halt so close that its nose almost touched my legs. I ignored it and searched the startled faces for any sign of Kari. She had to be here. I’d seen her. She had been so close.
The car door swung open. “Get in,” Davin said, leaning over the passenger seat.
“I…she was...”
There, the white jacket. I blinked, clearing too much moisture from my eyes. The hair wasn’t right, nor the proportions of the face in profile. It wasn’t Kari. Just another girl. Someone else’s sister, daughter, girlfriend. My thoughts spun, fear, adrenaline and nerves conspiring against me. Was I losing my mind?
“Jaz…c’mon,” Dav urged. “Don’t disappear again. Let’s talk.”
People stared. Whispers circulated. Lady luck...they hissed, accusing. Did they know I was the lucky sister who had survived the fatal crash two years ago. Did they remember that I was the one that walked away unscathed?
Davin’s steely eyes softened. “Get in,” he repeated.
I stepped into the car and slammed the car door closed, sealing out the world. Dav worked the manual shift and planted the accelerator, launching the car away with enough boost to shove me back into the seat. With just the growl of the engine and the feel of the car cocooning me in familiarity, I closed my eyes and sank into the seat.
5
A sign outside Dav’s workshop glowed an incandescent green: Carino’s Limo Hire. Two-bay wide panel doors inched up. Dav rolled the GTR inside a two-story high workshop space devoted to all things street-racing, and the doors rumbled closed behind, sealing us inside.
I climbed from the car and breathed in the familiar metallic smells. An engine block lay cracked open on a workbench and stainless steel exhaust manifolds and headers hung on the wall where most people would place works of art. The air tasted faintly of metal dust and coffee; Dav had just started brewing the coffee next to an array of power tools.
Just like the man, this place was exactly the same as the day I’d left.
We hadn’t spoken in the car, probably because there was too much to say and neither of us wanted to be the first to say it.
“I’m looking for a bike,” I began, a little startled by the sound of my voice after such a lengthy quiet.
“You mentioned that. Sugar, right?”
“Sure.”
He planted a mug of hot coffee on the workbench between us, sloshing its contents over the rim, and then immediately picked up a clean rag and an O-ring and started wiping the ring down. I figured the piston ring was from the engine block currently in pieces and spread about his workshop in various stages of being reconditioned.
“It’s for the Silvia,” he explained. “The belt went right after you left. Piston hit the block, nearly tore itself apart. Cate helped replace her engine with stock to keep her on the road, but this will do her justice.”
“Cate?”
“New to the shop. Her dad’s a son-of-a-bitch, brother’s MIA, assumed running with the La eMe. Her family doesn’t much care where she is. Smart mouth on her but she’s got an eye for problem solving. She was at the strip.”
I nodded, understanding all too well how Dav seemed to attract the hopeless cases. My sister and I had a similar story after Kari crossed Dav’s path during a minor run-in with the police. While the three of us had been holed up in police waiting cells, Kari had offered to help buff out his bodywork. He’d taken it literally. The next day we were applying filler to the Silvia’s panels and buffing it out, ready for a trip to the paint shop.
And its engine had blown right after Kari’s death. Somehow, I wasn’t surprised. After the week I’d had, I was immune to surprises.
“This bike?” he asked. “You must want it bad to come back here.” I couldn’t have missed the irony but I wasn’t sure if he was implying I was somehow debasing myself by stepping into his workshop again, or if there was some kind of layered threat in there.
“Look, I didn’t leave because of you, or the crew. Okay? It was me. I just…I couldn’t be here, and the casino came up.”
“Ah, yeah. I heard the rumors. Only you could win a casino from its owner. I heard it was poker?”
“Texas Hold ‘Em. It’s the only kinda poker I know.”
He snorted. “I taught you to play.”
“Yeah, ya did.” I remembered those insane nights, filled with dusk to dawn runs of luck, too much alcohol, and so much laughter I would wake aching in all the right ways.
Dav’s slightly rasied eyebrow hinted that he recalled the same. “You always did have crazy luck. Aces High Casino is doing well these days. Funny how that is when you have no experience of managing a casino or any kind of business.”
“It’s doing okay,” I replied carefully. He didn’t know exactly how I deliberately used luck, but he sure knew how it followed me around.
“Kari wouldn’t have cared for that place. Too many stupid rich assholes throwing their money away.”
“Kari didn’t care for much of anything beyond squeezing the most bhp from a CPU remap as she could get.” I held his gaze. “And you.”
He glared right back, his defiance daring me to call him out. “Yeah, well.” He tossed the rag and piston ring on the workbench and busied himself searching for something in a box, turning his back to me so I couldn’t see his face and what would probably have been a whole array of emotion there. “Didn’t do her much good.”
Two years and the ghost of my sister was right here in the workshop with us. It felt like yesterday we had spent hours inside these walls, working on whatever project Dav had us focused on to keep us off the streets. Rebuilding engines, blown manifolds, cracked suspension, turbo upgrades.
“This bike…” I sighed and tucked my hands into my pant pockets. “I just need to know if there have been any unusual or…strange incidents happening around bike races.”
“Unusual or strange how?”
Oh, ya know, maybe something to do with demons from another world, or some kind of magical vehicle. It sounded a whole lot more insane every time I tried to come up with a reasonable explanation. “I d
on’t know, anything different.”
“A different superbike?” He frowned over his shoulder. “And you’re asking about it now because?”
He hadn’t dismissed me as nuts, so there was that. But the last thing I wanted to do was drag him into my current mess. We had both moved on. It was better that way.
“I just need to find a particular bike and its owner. Are you going to help me or are you going to continue being an ass? Because if you’re wasting my time, I may as well just leave right now.” I set the coffee down a little harder than I’d meant to.
Dav had always been stubborn and we hadn’t exactly parted on the best of terms. He was within his rights to be annoyed, I had walked out on him and the crew and never looked back. They hadn’t come to me, either. I figured I had deserved the cold shoulder.
He wasn’t answering. And he wasn’t about to back down either. He never did know when to quit.
“Fine,” I sighed. “I’ll let myself out and grab a taxi.”
I was two steps away from the door when he said, “I know the bike you’re after.”
A look over my shoulder revealed Dav’s subtle smile. He’d probably known from the second I first mentioned a bike when we were back at the strip.
“There’s a guy named Liam. He appeared on the scene ‘bout six months ago…” Dav leaned against the workbench, wiping his hands on the rag. “Came in out of nowhere and wiped the floor with the SoCal crew. Some of them—ya know the ones, they’ll do anything to dissect a racer’s set-up, they’ve been trying to get the low-down on him and his bike, but he’s not biting. His bike, an’ this is where it gets weird…”
I drifted back to the bench and wrapped my hands around the warm coffee mug.
“I didn’t pay him much mind to begin with,” Dav continued. “Since Kari, I don’t touch the superbikes. Then word reached me, this guy was breaking records on a stock bike.”
“Stock?”
He shrugged. “Right. So I got a closer look at his wheels and so far as I can tell it’s a stock GSXR-One Thousand. I mean, sure, it’s sick. As stock she’ll do a quarter-mile in ten seconds. But no mods. Nothing. There’s no way he should be shaving whole seconds off the best times.”