by Devon Monk
I wanted to run. I needed to run. I knew he was coming for me. I could feel him moving through the darkness below into the light of Mama’s restaurant. I could smell him. Could smell the rotted stink of magic he’d used on me. I had to leave. Now.
I looked at the window, but some practical part of my mind calmly listed the injuries I’d get if I tried to hero it down the outer walls of this dump. Right. Probably best to escape through the door. Any time now. Now would be good. Before he made it up the stairs.
I swung my backpack over my shoulder and hurried to the door again. I listened for footsteps. My heart was beating so loudly that I had to hold my breath to hear. Nothing. No sound at all from the other side of the door.
I opened the door as quietly as I could and checked the hall in the dim light of a couple low-watt bulbs in the ceiling. Just a hall with a few closed doors, and the wooden-railed staircase going down. And that’s exactly where I was going too. I closed the door behind me and walked over to the stairs, insanely grateful that I’d packed my running shoes. I looked down the stairwell. Pockets of shadow swallowed whole sections of the stair. Anyone could be in those shadows. He could be in those shadows. I hesitated.
What if he were waiting for me on the stairs? I didn’t like small spaces, and especially didn’t like fighting in them.
But there were other ways I could defend myself. Like magic. I was a Hound. I had certain abilities at my disposal. All I had to do was calmly draw upon the magic within me and use it to see where the man was. It was even possible he wasn’t in the building. Maybe he had just walked on. Maybe this was all in my head and I was panicking for no reason.
I shivered even though it was warm and damp in the hall. Instinct told me someone was nearby and looking for me. Instinct had never been wrong about these kinds of things before.
I silently recited a mantra, the one that always calmed me down no matter how freaked out I was. A mantra could be anything you could actually remember in times of panic. Mine happened to be the childhood chant Miss Mary Mack. Miss Mary Mack, Mack, Mack, all dressed in black, black, black, with silver buttons, buttons, buttons, all down her back, back, back . . . and again, all the while listening for footsteps and keeping a nose out for the smell of him. Finally, my shoulders relaxed and my breathing slowed. Good. Now all I had to do was draw upon magic.
Nothing. I felt as empty as a beggar’s pocket. No magic here, not even old copper channels. It didn’t mean it was impossible to tap into the magic—that guy out on the street had done just fine. It did mean it was difficult.
The small magic I carried within me seemed like a tiny flicker of its usual strength—a flame about to go out. I was deeply tired, and even though I’d slept, I hadn’t really recovered from the price I’d paid. I didn’t want to draw magic from the nearest source, which was at least three miles away. For all I knew, that guy out there was a Hound and would spot me the moment I cast a spell.
Fine. I could do this the old-fashioned way.
I headed down the stairs as quietly as I could, my back against the wall. The first landing was empty, and I waited there, breathing through my nose, trying to sniff out a whiff of anything, or anyone, out of place. All I smelled was cold cooking grease, and the tang of meat and onions.
I took the last set of stairs down and paused at the bottom to listen. Still nothing. There was no one in the hall. There was no one out in the dining area.
What a great morning this had been so far. First, I woke up and cried like a little girl who’d lost her mommy, and now I was jumping at shadows when there were no shadows.
I so needed a cup of coffee.
And I wanted to be away from here. But when I crossed the room and checked the front door, it had no less than six dead bolts across it. I could get out, but I didn’t want to leave Mama’s place unlocked behind me. Not with that man out there.
Great.
Well, I could still get coffee, then maybe wake Mama up and ask her to lock the door behind me. I walked behind the front counter and toward the kitchen to see if I could start a pot. I heard footsteps behind me.
“Allie girl?”
I turned around. I can’t say I was surprised to see Mama, wearing a pink robe with red hearts on it, her hair messed from sleep. But I was surprised to see the gun in her hand.
“You robbing Mama?” She waved the gun toward the cash register at my elbow.
“What? No. No, of course not. I was going to make coffee.” I shifted the backpack on my shoulder and turned away from the register so it didn’t look like I was casing the joint. “I really just want to go now. The door’s locked and I didn’t want to leave it unlocked behind me. I need to take care of some things.” Like getting some coffee and sanity. In that order.
“You in trouble, Allie girl?” She had not lowered the gun.
For a fleeting moment I wanted to say, well, yes, there’s this woman who is pointing a gun at me, and I don’t do guns before coffee. But Mama was the one who put me up yesterday and let me lie low, and Mama was the one who woke up in the middle of the night to check on me. So what if she was checking on me with a gun? She was just the overprotective type.
“I’m going to be fine,” I told her. “How is Boy?”
Mama lowered the gun. The sleepy look in her eyes turned to worry before she shrugged one shoulder. “Doctor say he stays for a week. But he is sleeping good. Breathing good. Strong.”
There was a strain in her voice, the tight tone of a parent whose child was hurting, maybe dying, saying the hopeful things as if she believed them. Maybe saying them so she could believe them, so they could be true.
“He’s at the hospital?” I asked.
She nodded again. “He comes home soon. Soon.”
“That’s really good. You did the right thing.” And I meant it. I didn’t expect someone as little as Boy to survive such a hard hit, much less recover so quickly. But Boy was strong. Just like Mama said he was.
“Who did this, Allie?” Mama asked. “Who hurt my boy?”
And that’s when it hit me. I hadn’t told her. I had been so angry, then so shocked that my father would be behind this, that I hadn’t told her he was the one who put her son in the hospital. I wondered if she would believe that I’d forgotten to tell her. I wondered if she would hold me hostage and demand money from my father once I told her. I wondered if I wanted to risk telling her anything while she was holding a gun.
Hells. I did not like to negotiate for my life before coffee either.
“I know who it is,” I said.
“Who?” The gun came up, casually aimed at my stomach.
“I am not going to tell you while you’re holding a gun.”
Her eyes narrowed and I knew she was suddenly much more awake than she had been.
“You don’t trust me?” She did not put the gun down. “Tell me.”
“Not with the gun.” I was a lot more awake right now, too.
I could tell it was a hard decision for her. She had, as far as I knew, raised a multitude of boys on her own, in the poorest part of town. Asking her to trust me enough to put down a weapon was like asking magic not to follow a perfect casting, or a river to flow backward.
“Did you do it?” she asked.
Oh. I hadn’t thought of that. No wonder she wasn’t putting the gun down. I shook my head. “No, Mama. I hate that someone hurt him. He’s just a little kid.”
And she must have heard the sincerity, because she walked over to the counter and put the gun down. She did not step away from the counter, but she did fold her hands in front of her so I could see both of them, which was thoughtful of her. It would give me just enough time to surrender if she decided to grab the gun and fire it at me.
“Who?” she asked again.
“My father.” I’d never told her who my father was, but I figured she knew. I’d spent enough time in the public eye when I was younger, and I looked enough like my father that it was hard to find someone who didn’t know we were related. On
top of that, Mama was smart. Smart enough to know who she hired to Hound her personal problems. Maybe she hoped some of the Beckstrom fortune would eventually find its way into her pocket.
Mama scowled. “Why? Why my boy?”
“I don’t know. I went to him. I told him we knew. Told him he would have to pay for everything, hospital, damage, and more, but he didn’t tell me why he did it.”
“He say he did it?”
“No. He denied it. But I know his signature. I know what he can do.”
Mama considered that for what felt like a long time. Long enough that I started feeling tired again, started wishing for a cup of coffee down at Get Mugged. Started thinking about the big man I’d seen in the street and wondering whether or not I should mention him to her. Yeah, right. Like telling her a strange and possibly dangerous man was in the neighborhood would be news to her.
“He agree to pay?” she asked.
“I didn’t give him a choice. He hit Boy, Mama. And he has the money to pay. You should take him for everything you can get.”
I expected maybe a smile out of her. Instead, “You don’t care for your own father?”
Good question. Only I had no good answer for it. “I don’t know. I don’t like what he is.” It was the best I could give her.
“Then we sue,” she said. “I have lawyer.”
“A good one?”
“Good, bad.” She shrugged. “I just need hungry.”
“Then you shouldn’t have a problem.” I shifted the weight of the backpack straps again. “I’m going out of town for a while, a week at most. You filed a report with the police, right?”
“I take care of it.”
Which meant she probably hadn’t. I’d need to stop by the station and file a Hounding report. But not before coffee.
“You really need to contact the police about this, Mama. It will make a difference when you go to court.”
“I take care of it.” She picked up the gun. “You do good for Mama. I do good for you.” She walked over to me, the gun balanced in the palm of her hand, grip toward me, like she was offering it to me.
“No thanks. I don’t do guns.”
She scowled. “Did I say I give you gun? Think with your head.” She said it in the same tone she used with her boys, and for no reason at all it made me happy she would be so gruff with me.
“You are good Hound, Allie,” she said, “but you can be more. Better. I see it here.” She pressed her fingertips against my sternum. Warmth spread out from her fingers and dug down deep, like roots looking for water. I felt magic—it had to be magic, though I didn’t know Mama had ever learned to cast—branch out through my veins, wrap my bones, and then drain away, down my arms, stomach, hips, legs, dripping out my fingertips and the bottoms of my feet.
I felt refreshed. Awake. And suspicious as hell. That magic didn’t feel like anything I’d experienced before—too clean, too soothing—and it was gone so thoroughly, it was like it had never happened. I couldn’t even catch a scent from it. It certainly didn’t feel like the magic stored within the city. Didn’t feel like the magic harvested from the wild storms.
But there was no other kind of magic in the world. If there were, it would have been exploited. And if a new kind of magic were going to be found in the world, it sure wouldn’t be here, in the rundown section of Portland, a city where every tap of magic was carefully regulated, monitored, and doled out in billable minutes. And it wouldn’t be discovered by a woman who, as far as I knew, didn’t even have a high school education, much less a higher ed in magic, called all her kids the same name, and wore clothes scrounged from the women’s shelter.
“What was that?” I asked.
“I say if you try hard, you be better. Here.” This time she poked my chest, and all I felt was her bony fingers. “And here.” She tapped my forehead. “Think with your head. Get a real job. No more Hound.”
I rubbed at my forehead. “What else?” She knew what I wanted to know. What kind of magic had she touched me with. Or what kind of spell or glyphing had she cast. I wasn’t an expert. There were spells I’d never experienced before. “What about that magic you just used on me?”
Mama scowled. “No magic. If I had magic, would I be poor? Would my Boy be in hospital dying? Would I live here?”
I gave her a noncommittal shrug. Mama was smart and tough. Tough enough to take a few hits, or live with less if it meant hiding what she had from those who would want to take it. She was also smart enough not to wave magic around in front of someone she didn’t know very well—me.
“I don’t know what you’d do if you had magic,” I said quietly. “Maybe you would be poor and Boy would still be hurt.”
I was very aware of the gun in her hand. And of the fact that she and I weren’t exactly best-buddy girlfriends.
“No magic,” Mama repeated, flat. Final. But she didn’t smell right. I didn’t think she was telling me the truth—or at least not all of it.
The door handle rattled behind me. A key slipped into the first lock and the dead bolt snicked.
I moved to one side of the door. Mama tucked her gun into the pocket of her robe.
“Boy?” she yelled.
“Yes, Mama,” said a man’s voice. “It’s me.”
Mama seemed happy with that, but I wasn’t feeling nearly as confident. I could smell the man, a heavy musk and spice odor.
I thought I knew all of Mama’s Boys, but the man who walked through the door was a stranger to me. Lighter hair than the other Boys I’d met, his dark eyes glittered in the low light, hard and glassy against the deeper tone of his skin. He looked more like Mama than most of her boys. I was pretty sure he was actually her son and figured he was older than me by maybe ten years. He looked like he’d recently taken a shower, and was clean-shaven and polished in a casual corporate way, all the way from his button-down white shirt, dark tie, and gray khakis to his loafers. He smiled and there was a smooth, slick coldness about him that made me think of reptiles. Or politicians.
“I didn’t know we had company.” He extended his hand. “James.”
It took everything I had to put my hand out. I might have been raised by wolves, but I still had social graces. I shook his hand and pulled mine away as quickly as possible. His hands were cold and smooth, and I had a real desire to wipe my palms on my jeans.
“I was just leaving,” I said. So what if I didn’t give my name. Sue me.
His eyes narrowed and the smile slipped. “That’s too bad. You look familiar . . . have we met?”
I got that question a lot, and I had zero intention of telling him I was Daniel Beckstrom’s daughter. But here’s the thing. He didn’t look familiar to me at all. His voice wasn’t ringing any bells and neither was his face. But his scent was familiar. I may not have met this man before, but I had been around him. Close enough and long enough that the smell of him—musky to the point of being sour and peppery—was imbedded in my memory. He carried other odors too—he’d been somewhere with organic death, like at the edge of the river, among fish and rotted things. He smelled of sweat too, like he’d recently done something very physical. What creeped me out was that he also carried the slightest stink of formaldehyde, very faint, like he’d brushed against someone or something that carried that scent. Maybe the big man in the street?
Despite the overriding smells, I knew I knew him. Or had known him. But I couldn’t remember him.
This is where the extra hit—the random double price magic sometimes takes out of me—really sucks. And there was a bad stretch in college where it happened every time I used magic—pain plus memory loss. I shrugged it off at the time, and yeah, I’d turned to booze and drugs to try to handle it. But it didn’t change anything. Unless a person was very diligent about always Offloading to a Proxy, magic left marks. It scarred. And I hated coming face-to-face with my own failings. Knowing I was missing memories, maybe even days or weeks of my life, was the sort of thing that gave me nightmares.
Not to me
ntion the fact that I did not like this man, Mama’s Boy, or no.
“No, we haven’t met,” I said. “Unless you went to Harvard.”
He did a fair job of looking surprised and confused. “The college?”
Right. So we weren’t going to really find out how we knew each other. I’d had enough of this. “Listen, I don’t care what your game is, but tell your buddy out there to keep his hands and magic off me or I will report you both to the police.”
From the corner of my eye, I could see Mama stiffen. James’ face flushed with a fury he dampened with aplomb. “I don’t know who you’re talking about. I’ve been alone tonight. And there is no magic here. Not in this part of town.”
“No magic,” Mama repeated firmly. “You go now, Allie girl. Go.” She shoved me toward the door, and opened it for me.
“No magic,” she said. Mama was sweating even though the air outside was cold enough to sting my eyes. She was afraid, or lying. I glanced back at James. He stood with his hands in his pockets, relaxed, cool on the outside and burning on the inside, watching me watch him. He was hiding something. I figured Mama knew too, but for her own reasons didn’t want to admit it. I also figured she had a gun and it was time for me to go.
I stepped through the door. Mama closed it so quickly behind me that the doorknob literally hit me in the hip. Every lock snapped into place.
“You go to those men again?” Even through the thick wood door I could hear her yelling at James. “Those worthless men, huh? You go to them? Do what they want like dog to them?”
“My business dealings are my own,” James said.
“Your own! What you do, you do to family. To Mama.”
“Then you should be happy,” James yelled. “I’m the one who’s going to get us out of this hellhole. Don’t you want that? Don’t you want to get away from this rotted dump? Have some money, some power?”
“No. Not if that man hand it to me on gold and diamond platter. There is no paying back his kind. They will use you. That kind always uses. We are dirt to them. You are dirt to them.”