by A. L. Tyler
“Honesty. Yes. Please, stay,” I said. I could already feel the panic rising in my chest, and I was fighting to keep my breathing calm and regular. “I’ll... um, I’m just going to get ready for bed, and I’ll see you tomorrow. Okay?”
He gave a nod as he stepped over the threshold.
I hurried up the stairs.
I barely got the water running before the flames started pouring out of my hands.
Nick was running the vacuum when I finally found my bedroom. I fell asleep to the sound of him moving the furniture. The house creaked and whistled in unfamiliar ways when the wind hit the wavy glass windows, but with Nick there, at least there was something old to hold onto.
He was quickly becoming someone I didn’t want to let go of, and I logically knew that was a problem. I’d only ever been attached to one other person, and I’d turned my world upside down trying to free my father from the Bleak’s grasp.
I became the best breaker they’d ever seen to win their trust. Then I used that trust to betray them, stealing ancient magic beyond my control right out from under a team of some the most dangerous criminals on the books.
Now it was killing me and I had turned away the only help I’d been offered. I couldn’t tell Nick why because I liked him.
He liked me. We were friends, and while I’d betrayed everyone else, I couldn’t bring myself to do it to him.
I was still going to free my father, whatever it took, and it was going to kill Nick when he found out. He wouldn’t want me to throw my life away on principle, but he wasn’t me. He hadn’t grown up orphaned by a corrupt government.
Nick had read his own message into things, but I knew what Angel was getting at, and if treatment meant admitting my plans then the cost was too high.
I needed my power to complete my plans. I couldn’t undergo treatment if it meant losing everything that I’d attained. That was what I couldn’t tell him.
The magic was my father’s ticket to freedom and my revenge.
It was killing me, and it was the only thing I had left to live for.
Honesty. Somehow, Angel knew.
Chapter 5
NICK’S JACKET WAS A custom piece of armor, enchanted and spelled-over by a collection of acquaintances through the years until the magic wove together like a thick-knit shield against attacks. It was an old, dark gray trench coat with about twenty custom pockets and hooks sewn inside to hide the various tools of his trade.
He wore a shoulder holster under it to house his gun and an extra magazine. I only rarely saw it, but he also had an ankle wrap with a knife.
After staying with him for so long, I was intimately familiar with his habits, just as I was sure he was aware of mine.
So when he pulled another holster and gun from the trunk of his car that morning, I knew something was up.
“Millie’s got you spooked?” I jabbed.
He cocked an eyebrow at me over the hood of the car.
I gestured at the extra gun he was clipping to his belt, cracking a smile. “You slept over and now you’re taking a backup. Afraid of Alex Mordley, Nick?”
He flashed a sardonic smile. “You’re making jokes about man with a ruthless killing style and turning your bath into a sauna. I didn’t sleep over for my benefit.”
His eyes twinkled with mischief as I huffed a frown. We got into the car and he drove.
Yes, I was afraid. I was a wellspring of magic power now, but Alex would be counting on it. If he was planning to kill me—and knowing Alex, he absolutely was—he had a way to do it. Something well-planned, and likely something I wouldn’t see coming.
I was suddenly wary of snipers.
“Jette.”
I looked down at my glowing right hand and cursed under my breath. I cranked open the window and let the flames whip in the wind until I could quiet the magic.
“You’re telling me you honestly don’t know when that’s happening?” Nick asked.
I shrugged. “It’s like a song in my head. Sometimes I get lost in my thoughts and I don’t notice the volume is turning up.”
“You can’t feel it.”
“No,” I said in exasperation. “Yes, I mean, sometimes.”
The truth was that I probably had nerve damage by now, what with all the times I’d lit myself on fire.
“Are you going to tell me why you’re delaying treatment?”
I leaned my head back against the seat. One more lecture and I was getting out of the car, whether it was moving or not. “No.”
I refused to look over at him. Part of me wanted him to push me, to fight me—to give me a reason to think of him as the enemy. I needed that separation right now, because eventually...
“Do you want to stop for breakfast on the way?” he asked. “I’m paying.”
Someday, eventually, this was going to hurt us both.
I SLAPPED MY CASE FILES down on my desk and set my breakfast burrito on top. Marge spun slowly around in her office chair to face me.
“Something you want to tell me?” she asked.
I glanced away, thinking. “I don’t think so? Nothing new on the, um... the thing.”
Marge wasn’t my only human friend, but she was the only one who knew about magic. She knew about me and my screwed-up history, and what I did during my hours off. Marge had been the one to tip me off to Millie Corm’s bank robbery.
“You suck at speaking in code,” she said with a disappointed face. “And I wasn’t talking about your missing shoes.” She winked. “I was talking about your new place. You moved in last night, right?”
“Oh.” I sat down and started unwrapping my burrito. “Yeah. Right.”
“Did someone give you a housewarming party?” She used her fingers to make air quotes around ‘housewarming’ and cocked her head. Then she grinned.
I stared at her. “No. Why?”
“Because Charlene was out front when you got dropped off, and she popped in here to ask who the guy was. And as I know there’s only one guy in your life right now, and he never drives you to work, and you now live separately, it must mean that somebody slept over with somebody else.”
I didn’t blink. “It was work-related.”
She pointed sharply at my desk. I don’t know what I expected to see, but I looked anyway.
“Breakfast burrito. You never eat breakfast.”
“I skipped dinner.”
“They you would get something at home.”
I picked up a pen and notepad and started opening the files I needed to review. “I haven’t been grocery shopping yet—”
“Ah.” Marge raised her chin. “So, you were at your place last night, and he was, too.”
I furrowed my brow as I started my computer. “He moved some furniture for me while I slept.”
Marge’s eyes went wide. “He’s moving your furniture. Sounds like he’s planning to spend time there. Leisure time. Burrito sounds like he’s taking care of you. You two are playing house.”
I tossed my pen in the air and leaned back in my chair, shaking my head. “Sure. Whatever.”
I turned back to my computer. I picked up my burrito and opened an internet window, navigating to the Bleak’s limited online database. I logged in with my newly reinstated credentials.
“I’m kidding, Jette.” Marge glanced nervously at the door and covered her mouth. “Janet. Janet. Janet—I’m sorry. You know, that’s going to be weird. Can’t you just magic everyone up to know your real name?”
“Memory spells are dangerous,” I said. After my last case with Nick, I was surprised she was even asking. “Constantly laying down new ones every time I want to change something could be catastrophic. My people aren’t great about scientific studies, but anecdotally, I’ve seen people who’ve taken too many rewrites. It’s like Alzheimer’s on steroids.”
“From two memory spells?”
Closer to two hundred or more, but still. “Yes.”
I kept my attention on the screen as I typed in the name: Samson Grift. A m
an named Robert who had taken a few too many memory charms had been sure Samson Grift was my father. The only problem was that Grift was a dirty dealing handler for the Bleak, and my father—Samuel Driftwood—had been a breaker of high prestige, like me.
Robert was dead now. The Bleak’s digital holdings were slim, but Robert’s insistence that I needed the information for some reason beyond the both of us still nagged at me.
“Doubt it. What are you reading?” She scooted her chair closer.
“You are nosy!” I moved my files away and collapsed the window. “It’s a file on George Roost, the victim of the bank robbery.”
“No, I meant—” she grabbed for my mouse.
I slid it away.
Marge looked at me. I looked at her.
“Jones!”
Marge turned around and stood up so quickly that I heard her back crack in two places. “Sarge! What’s up?”
Sergent Beech was an intimidating man with heavy eyebrows and almost no hair on his head. He was also our boss. “Did you do the compulsory impound audit yet?”
Marge nodded. “This afternoon.”
“Have you done dispo for the drug disposal?”
Marge pursed her lips. She cringed a little, and I cringed for her. Since mending her fences with Beech, I knew she was after the senior tech position the department had just approved. It came with a nice raise, and I wasn’t competing with her for it, but I knew they had several applications.
She was fighting hard for that promotion, but she was also covering for me when I couldn’t be there. She was struggling to keep up with the extra work.
“The drug disposal is on me,” I said. “I’ll get it done.”
Beech looked from Marge to me. He held his gaze steady. “I’ve got to drive it out by three, or we wait until next month.”
I nodded. “Understood.”
“Great.” He stood a little taller. “Good work, both of you.”
He turned and left. Marge waited a full five seconds before spinning to hiss at me.
“You cannot finish drug dispo by three,” she said. “Humanly impossible.”
I tapped my files on the counter and stood, handing George Roost’s folder to her. “Read.”
I walked into the back, pulling my key to the drug room from my pocket. I grabbed the drug log from the shelf on my way and threw it onto a cart.
Marge followed me. She opened the file. “Whoa. All of it, or...?”
“Highlights.” I set the cart next to the drug room door and referenced the sheet of cases for disposal that Marge had tucked into the log.
The drug room was a small space at the back of the evidence room. It wasn't much larger than the average kitchen, but it had high ceilings and shelves crowded with brown paper bags that went all the way up. A ladder stood guard by the heavy security door, and just like the drying room next to it (for the rare evidence that came in wet from rain, sweat, or other fluids and needed to be saved from mold and mildew), this room had its own ventilation system to keep the stink down.
Staring at all the paper bags, stacked floor to fourteen-foot ceiling on metal shelves, I was sorely tempted to use Nick’s spell for finding only what I needed. Somehow, I didn’t think igniting that much evidence weed would go over well, though.
Inwardly grinning as I imagined the station filling with smoke, I went about fetching the case evidence one bag at a time, double and triple checking the case numbers on the bags to the ones on my list.
“Okay. Well, George Roost is a pretty boy trust fund baby. It says his parents are wealthy.”
I knew that. Everyone knew that—the Roosts were about as famous as the Rockefellers where I came from. The magic realm didn’t exactly idolize the wealthy the same way that humans did, and as a rule they lived more private lives than some of their human counterparts, but they still made the news.
And they certainly made the gossip.
The Roosts had decided to keep it out of the rumor mill, but the Bleak’s records didn’t lie. George had married Mabe Corm, probably without his parents’ blessing. Then three months later, he had divorced Mabe Corm—that was probably with his parents’ blessing. Probably with their pressure, influence, and a big, fat bribe, too.
Gossip wasn’t always true, but the Roosts were always made out to be a snooty family concerned with keeping their fortune undiluted. They wouldn’t have wanted their son marrying someone like Mabe Corm, who came from lesser means.
Even when I had been running with my former crew, things that Marcus said led me to believe that the split had not been pretty. The file stated in sanitary, government jargon that George’s parents had not approved of his marriage. Whatever had actually happened was between George, Mabe, and the Roosts, though, because even the Bleak’s records didn’t cover the divorce in detail.
However, it was what happened after the marriage that concerned me now.
George had been seen with Mabe a few more times after their split, and sometimes in compromising situations. By all formal accounts, they weren’t together anymore. That must have cost the Roosts a pretty penny.
Then, Mabe vanished.
George was questioned after Millie Corm reported her sister missing, but it was no surprise to me that he wasn’t considered a person of interest. Doubtless, another bribe from the Roosts had assured that George was nowhere near Mabe at the time that she disappeared. According to the official record, he hadn’t seen her in years.
Funny how that account directly clashed with the Bleak’s knowledge that they had been seen together at a restaurant in Vancouver two weeks prior. No one called them on the contradiction. George was cleared of all suspicion in Mabe’s disappearance, he’d been estranged from his parents since the incident, and the Roosts went on with their lives.
Until now, apparently.
At the time of her disappearance, Mabe had almost certainly been with George. The last photograph of her had been taken of them together exiting a swanky diner, but several friends had spoken to her after that encounter. They said that Mabe was agitated. Worried, even. Mabe had visited a former friend, Alexandra Foote, to ask if she could move in for a while.
That suggested that everything wasn’t going well in her relationship. It didn’t look good for George.
Alexandra had been by the apartment that Mabe shared with George—allegedly shared with George—and had seen a bag filled with money. Some of the currency she recognized, but the rest was foreign.
Mabe had been intending to run, and probably to run very far. She was definitely afraid of someone.
“How the heck does this guy get away with this?”
My train of thought derailed and I set down the bag of drugs in front of me. I looked over at Marge.
“This asshole obviously did it. He gets to walk?”
“Money talks,” I shrugged. It did bother me, but that was the way things were. I had seen it too many times to be morally outraged anymore. “Same there is it is here.”
“You’re telling me that you have magic to help you solve these crimes, and people are still getting away with stuff?”
Once again, I shrugged.
Marge spoke slower, as if I must’ve misunderstood her. “You have magic...”
“And, we have money,” I said with finality. “And reputations to uphold. And a corrupt government. Where I come from, police work is more about making sure the people in power stay happy. People like Mabe get their justice occasionally, but not if the murderer is someone like George Roost.”
“That’s messed up,” Marge said. “You think she’s dead?”
I blinked.
“You said ‘murderer’. The file only says she’s missing.”
I exhaled a slow breath, staring around at all of the bags that I still needed to get through. Marge was right. There was no humanly possible way that someone could finish this job in time.
Luckily, I wasn’t human.
“It was years ago. She hasn’t turned up. By both our standards and your
s, she is assumed to be dead now.”
I cleared an area on the cold linoleum before me and set the list in the space. I glance over the case numbers again and closed my eyes, taking a deep breath.
“What are you—?”
“Shh.”
I tried to focus on the noise coming from the magic I had absorbed. It was usually contained within me, humming and quiet like a low, rumbling engine. Now, I called it out, letting one note hum until it spread and multiplied like an orchestra warming up. The sound filled the room and I held both of my arms out and ready, reminding myself to breath.
It was times like this that I really loved my synesthesia. This was me, not as a breaker, but in my natural element—just letting the magic flow and conducting it to my need.
I opened my eyes and let my gaze slide down the list of cases, making the magic hold the rhythm as I called each one to the floor around me. My urgency made it ring out like an eerie version of Tchaikovsky’s Russian Dance from the Nutcracker.
As I heard several bongs shatter in their paper bags on impact, I frowned. Next time, I would aim for a less frantic tune.
Marge cringed and recoiled as each bag crashed into the ground. “God damn, Janet!”
I started picking through the wreckage and double-checking the case numbers scrawled on the bags. What a mess. Then I glanced up and called forth one last handful of notes.
Sometimes, a witch needs a broom.
Chapter 6
“YOU’RE SURE YOU ONLY brought down the right cases?” Marge said dubiously. “Because if some asshole with a green card comes in here looking for his hand-blown custom bong—”
I cocked an eyebrow. Ever since medical marijuana had passed in the polls, we’d been dealing with an extra share of aging hippies coming in to show their official prescriptions and reclaim the items that had been confiscated from them when they were arrested in their underwear while stargazing from the fifth hole on the local golf green. Because, like, he didn’t realize it wasn’t public land, man. And there wasn’t anything indecent about it because it was dark. And he needs that swag for his psoriasis.