by Devon Monk
But I wasn’t planning on going to my apartment. I was planning on Hounding Cody. I just needed to sit for a couple of minutes and get my strength back.
I waited on the corner, watching traffic go by as sirens grew louder. I did not want to be standing on a corner if those sirens really were out looking for me. I either needed to get walking, duck into a building—all of which looked to be shops, offices, or apartments—or I needed to catch a ride.
I dug in the coat pockets. Nola had stuffed some money in them, bless her heart. I hailed a cab, got one to stop on my third try, and ducked in just as the blue and red lights of a police car—two, no, three—came down the street. The cab waited for the police to pass before pulling away from the curb.
“Where to?” he asked.
I had no idea where to go, but I knew the one place I could hide better than anywhere in town. The one place Violet had said their leads had sent them when they were looking for the disks.
“St. John’s.”
As he turned into traffic, the sirens stopped. I glanced back. Sure enough, they had turned up the street toward Zayvion’s apartment.
Maybe someone had reported the gunshots.
Maybe Zayvion had lied and turned me in. A chill rolled over me. Would he do that? Hells, I might do that if someone bled all over my rug and left bullet holes in my walls. He might be telling the truth about working for a secret society, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t human. There was bound to be some sort of reward for my capture. If not on public record, then somewhere, behind closed doors, with the corporations that wanted the tech, and the people who wanted me out of their way to get it.
Could I be more suspicious? It made me feel guilty thinking Zay might do something like that, but I’d been used, influenced, tricked, and betrayed so many times in life, it was hard to trust.
He’d been there for me, my conscience whispered. Every time things had gotten really bad, Zay was there. And now I was breaking my promise to stay put and wait for him.
Maybe I was pushing him away like Nola said.
Well, if those police were looking to arrest me for killing my father, then maybe it was better I didn’t drag Zayvion down with me. I didn’t think our relationship was far enough along to be in the aiding and abetting stage.
Or maybe that excuse was just another way to push him away. Push away a man who’d put his life on the line for me. Someone who’d nearly gotten shot because of me. Someone who was trying to look after me.
I rubbed at my forehead. It made my head hurt. I didn’t know what the truth was, didn’t know how my life had spiraled out of control so quickly. What I did know was that I needed to find Cody. And since this whole thing had started when I Hounded the hit on Boy, that’s where I was going. To Mama’s. If my dad really had set an Offload on Boy, then there was something going on between Mama and my father, or maybe Beckstrom Enterprises and Mama, that Mama was not sharing with me. And I wanted to know what that was. I wanted to know if maybe she too had played me for a fool and tried to use me to get at my dad.
It occurred to me that she could have agreed to let Boy be hit, agreed to call me to Hound him, and been pleased to send me on to my father’s office in a rage. I had thought Mama’s anger and fear were real—that she was truly concerned Boy would die. I thought the news of my father being behind the hit had been a surprise to her. I thought I’d read her right.
But it was a hell of a coincidence that the one day I visited my father in seven years was the day he was killed. And whoever killed him knew I’d be there, and forged my signature on the hit. Mama was one of the people who knew I’d been there. So was Zay.
I was the queen of suspicion today. Go, me.
Raindrops, fat and heavy, splatted on the cab’s windshield, then a few more fell. Pretty soon morning had dipped into a darker gray and it was raining pretty hard. I was really happy I’d taken one of Zay’s hats. Really happy I had a warm coat. And as soon as the cab crossed the North Burlington railroad track, I could have sworn I’d just taken a painkiller. My shoulders relaxed, my neck stopped hurting. I didn’t know what it was, but I always felt better coming up to this side of town. And even that was making me feel suspicious right now.
“This is it,” the cabbie said.
“Thanks.” I pressed a ten into his hand and got out of the cab.
Rain bulleted down, and I impressed myself by jogging across the street. I kept close to the buildings, taking advantage of their overhangs as much as possible. The air smelled of oil, the rot off the river, and the chlorine-clean smell of rain doing no good to wash away the musky decay of wood and asphalt and sewage.
What I didn’t smell were the spices and grease of Mama’s restaurant. What I didn’t see were lights in her windows. What I didn’t hear were the sounds of her voice, hollering orders at her Boys.
Maybe barging in her front door wasn’t the best way to go about this. Time for Plan B.
I ducked into the alley beside her restaurant and took a minute to think about what I should do. Maybe Mama’s was closed. Maybe she was visiting the youngest Boy, at the hospital. Maybe I needed to come up with a plan that was something more than “demand Mama tell me the truth and find Cody and get him to the cops.”
One thing I definitely didn’t need was to stand out here in the cold and rain much longer. Hat and coat didn’t mean I was pneumonia proof.
The dark clouds were going black fast, and the wind was starting to gust. The rain shower picked up speed and the temperature dropped. I could see my breath. We were in for a hell of a storm. The change in air pressure, or maybe temperature, made my right arm ache, and stung in the old blood magic scars on my left arm.
I heard the subaudible growl of thunder in the distance, and felt a strange echo of it in my bones. I felt like a string resonating to a distant orchestra. There was magic in that storm—wild magic—and it was coming fast.
The wind shifted, coming hard off the river. A gust filled the alley with a strong peppery odor. I sneezed and looked over my shoulder. I needn’t have bothered. I knew who was standing there, smiling at me, drenched in lavender. Bonnie.
And yes, this time she had her gun out for show and tell.
“Allie! It’s so great to see you. We’re gonna go take a walk, ’kay?” She smiled her bright, cheerleader smile and waved her gun like a pom-pom at me. My stomach clenched and my legs felt weak. Looking at that gun was like getting a drink of the hooch responsible for the hangover from hell. I might not have a good memory of being shot, but my subconscious did, and my body did too—a sensory memory of the smell of metal and gunpowder, of someone standing in front of me with a rod of cold steel in their hand, of pain, of terror.
I seriously needed to figure out why I thought going to North Portland was ever a good idea.
“Bonnie,” I said, trying to get my voice down an octave. “How’s it been going?”
She looped her arm in my arm, and locked down tight, so we were side-by-side like the best girlfriends ever. She held the gun in her right hand, waving it around while she talked. All she had to do was bend her elbow and the muzzle of that gun would be buried in the ribs I had not been shot in yet.
“Oh, it’s just been fine. Just fine,” she said, like we were talking kids and husbands in the aisle of a supermarket. “Got some new clients right now, and the office boy is working out. Oh, I did a little job that the police are very happy about.” She leaned her head in toward me, so she could lower her voice and press the gun against my jacket. “A murder case. Very high profile. Crime of passion. Between family members. It’s been all over the news. Maybe you’ve heard about it?”
“I haven’t had time to keep up with current events.”
She chuckled and started walking toward the back of the alley, and I had no choice but to go with her. “It is so good to see you. And how about you? Where have you been keeping yourself, rich girl?”
“Around,” I said as she marched me down to the back end of the alley. “Tried to ta
ke a little vacation in the country, but that went to hell.”
“I love the country! Fresh air, cute animals.” Wave the gun, jam it in my ribs. “Your friend Nola sure has a nice place, don’t you think? Hope she’s doing okay.”
A thinly veiled threat. At least we’d gotten that out in the open. And while I was scared, I was also feeling morbidly pleased about the situation. I had a feeling Bonnie was going to take me to where Cody was—or at least I hoped so. She was the last person I’d seen with him.
I decided it was the perfect time to work on my optimism and look at Bonnie as one psycho bitch of a silver lining. I couldn’t get Cody and his testimony to the police, or a lawyer, or maybe the FBI, if I didn’t know where Cody was.
And if she wasn’t leading me to Cody, she was either dragging me off to the police, where at least I’d get my one phone call—and I figured I’d use it to call Violet and see if she could release some of Dad’s blood-hungry lawyers—or she was taking me to whoever hired her to find me in the first place.
“I’m sure you know all about the country,” I said as lightly as I could. “Didn’t you just make a special trip out there?”
Bonnie laughed, and I mean she threw her head back and cackled up into the rain.
They say it only takes a tablespoon of water to drown a person. I was hoping they were right. But Bonnie didn’t drown, which was an amazing shame considering the size of her mouth.
“Sure I did! I took a special trip just to go see an old cow farm.”
Chicken farm, but I didn’t bother to correct her.
She turned down the road less used that ambled up behind Mama’s place. I figured the place had a back door, but had never felt the need to go snooping for it.
The truth of the matter was, I was getting pretty tired. I was cold, wet, hyperaware of every smell, texture, color, and change of light. The storm was looming, heavy as a migraine closing in. I just wanted to sit down somewhere quiet and dark and warm, and wait for the storm to pass. So when she turned toward the back door of Mama’s, I was grateful.
“Now, we’re going to take care of you real nice. Promise. We’re just so excited you came by.” She opened the back door, and the spell woven over the door hit me like a barrel full of bricks. I tasted blood at the back of my throat, and the last thing in the world I wanted to do was walk through that door. I hadn’t felt a threshold spell that strong since Zayvion’s place.
“Come on in. Don’t be shy,” a man’s voice said. “We’ve been waiting for you.”
I swallowed blood and blinked hard. I knew that voice. And when he turned on the lamp next to him, I knew I shouldn’t be surprised, but damn it, I was.
James, Mama’s slick-as-a-snake Boy stood there, grinning at me. But what surprised me more was that next to him stood another smiling man. And that man was Zayvion Jones.
Chapter Fifteen
Betrayal sucks.
My heart felt like someone was in my chest kicking it with steel-toed boots—and that someone was me. How could I have I trusted him? How could I have liked him? Stupid, stupid heart. When I got out of here—and I was so going to get out of this so I could see Zay’s ass in jail—I swore I would never fall for, never trust, and never care for anyone again.
It was going to be all about me from now on. I was going to look after myself alone, and the rest of the world and all the people in it could go to hell for all I cared.
Who needed this kind of grief? Who needed to find out, again, that someone they loved was just a back-stabbing bastard who played me for all he could get?
He had used me.
And I let him.
I didn’t know which made me angrier.
Bonnie shoved me through the glyphs and the door. I felt a hot ribbon of blood pour from my nose. I wiped at it with the back of my left hand. Thunder rolled, still quiet, but coming closer.
“So how’s this going to work?” I asked.
Zay stayed right where he was, the far side of a room that was some sort of storage behind the kitchen. Wooden shelves were stocked with cans, boxes, and bags of things you’d expect to see in a restaurant. The doorway, where Zay was standing, opened to a narrow view of a chopping block and countertop. I was pretty sure that was the kitchen behind him.
James strolled over to me, took my right wrist, and pushed up my coat sleeve. He whistled. “Zayvion told me you survived the visit from my business associate this morning. I’m sorry how that turned out.”
I bet he was. I was, after all, still alive.
“Zayvion also told me you had been burned and could no longer use magic, but I didn’t believe him.” He grinned, showing me all of his dental work. His breath smelled overwhelmingly sweet, like cherry candy. Blood magic. Probably mixed with something else, maybe cocaine or speed. Great. The man was raging.
“My apologies,” he said to Zayvion.
Zay shrugged.
Okay, so if Zay told him I couldn’t use magic, maybe he wasn’t completely on their side either. He knew in intimate ways just exactly how well I could use magic, and how well we used it together. Soul Complements, and all that. Maybe he was working another angle. One all his own.
I tugged my wrist out of James’ hold. Fact one: my arm hurt. It was quickly going from ache to throb. Fact two: I refused to let anyone get handsy with me. Fact three: despite the ache, my arm was also starting to itch, which meant I might still have some sort of chance of drawing on magic if I needed it. One look at James’ happy, glassy eyes and sweat-covered face and I was pretty sure I’d need it soon.
Thunder rolled somewhere over the city, and James pointed toward the door to the kitchen.
“Why don’t we step inside. Maybe I can get you a drink?” he offered.
“Water would be fine,” I said. I walked across the room, James in front of me, Bonnie and her gun behind me. Zay just watched with a neutral expression, pulling the Zen act.
“Bastard,” I said as I walked past him.
“I told you to stay there,” he said, plenty loud enough for James and Bonnie to hear. “You could be in a nice holding cell right now, telling the police a story about people who disappear into thin air and plot to overthrow your father’s fortune, and that you have no alibis for your whereabouts when he was killed. And you know why you aren’t? Because you are too damn stubborn to do anything anyone tells you to do.”
My mind went blank. Then it filled with fury. I leaned back and punched him in the face with everything I had.
Zay’s head snapped back and hit the wall behind him. He yelled and grabbed at his nose and slid down the wall. I stepped up to swing at him again, but Bonnie caught my arm and shoved the gun so hard against my spine I could feel a bruise spreading. My fist hurt too—I was pretty sure I had broken my pinky, but that pain, I had to admit, was way worth it.
“Funny,” she said, “but stupid. Do that again and I’ll shoot you.”
Zay got on his feet and those tiger eyes of his were really burning now. If I weren’t deeply in hate with him, I might think he didn’t look all that angry. I might even say he looked pleased. That he was happy I’d done that. That maybe he was trying to tell me something else with that look, something secret.
“Bitch,” he said.
Well, that was no secret.
“Fuck you, Jones.”
Bonnie shoved me toward the kitchen. I couldn’t tell if Zay followed, because he was too damn quiet for me to hear and the thunder was close enough that it had gone from an intermittent rumble to a deep growl. Besides that, Zay was only a small part of this surprise party. My heart sank as I saw Mama’s other Boys, four of them in total, leaning against the kitchen counters, and over there, rocking on the floor in front of the refrigerator, was Cody. Mama herself stood in the middle of the room, looking angry and worried.
Oh. Hells. I was so screwed.
I quickly went through my options. Trying to get out of this alive was priority one. Trying to get out of this alive with Cody was priority two. If they want
ed to negotiate, I’d negotiate.
I pushed panic down, and grabbed hold of my confidence. I could handle this. I was a Beckstrom, and if there was one thing we were good at, it was Influencing people to get our way. If ever there were a time for me to give in and act like my father, this was it.
James was at the sink and strangely true to his word, filling a plastic cup with water for me.
“Hello, Mama,” I said. She looked away and would not make eye contact. Wasn’t that interesting? Maybe she wasn’t the center of this affair after all.
I gave each of the Boys a look. Like matching statues of didn’t-give-a-damn, they looked back at me, and made no other move.
James walked over and handed me the cup of water. “Here you are.” He strolled back to the sink and leaned against it, his arms crossed over his chest.
I was glad he hadn’t filled it all the way to the top, because my hand shook and my pinky was so swollen it made it hard to keep the cup steady. I did my best to cover all that, and took a sip. I was thirsty enough I could drain the river. Both of them. But I wanted to have something in my hand I could use to delay my responses—it was an old board-meeting trick I’d learned from my dad—so I resigned myself to the fact that I might need to make this cup of water last a very long time.
The lights flickered, a blink of darkness. The storm was coming.
“The situation is fairly simple, Ms. Beckstrom—may I call you Allie?” James asked.
“No.”
He smiled. “Good. As I was saying, Allie, there is only a small thing I need from you, something Zayvion has assured me you will have no quarrel with.”
“Really? I don’t recall hiring Zayvion to speak for me. Is this a legal matter? If so, we should both have lawyers present to protect our interests.” I tried putting some Influence behind my words, but was too shaken to do much good.