The Left-Hand Path: Prodigy

by T. S. Barnett

  Cora watched him flirt with the manicurist while her own nails were painted an iridescent green, and she couldn’t quite pull her eyes from the easy smile on his lips. He had killed two people this morning. Two human beings with lives and families—and half an hour later, he’d been talking about going to the club for a hookup. So had she, come to think of it. Was she any better? The difference was, Cora hoped, that she was still thinking about them, and Nathan most likely was not.

  The two of them sat outside a small cafe near the bar they’d chosen, holding their coffees with freshly manicured hands and sipping them in comfortable silence. Cora looked over at the man across from her and chewed the corner of her mouth.

  “How many people do you think you’ve killed?” she asked. He tilted his head at her with a curious look in his eyes.

  “Inadvertently, or on purpose?”

  “Both, I guess.”

  “I haven’t any idea. At least twenty, according to the Magistrate’s warning. More than most, less than Stalin?”

  “And it doesn’t...bother you?”

  He set his cup down on the table between them. “You’re asking about those men this morning.” She nodded, and he leaned on his elbows to look more closely at her. “No; it doesn’t bother me. They would have killed me. Or at the very least injured me and tried to take me to jail. They might have hurt you, or Elton,” he added, “and I’m rather fond of both of you.”

  “But they’re still people,” she argued. “You could have just knocked them out, or put them to sleep, or something.”

  “I do admit to having a bit of a temper.” He paused when she didn’t answer. “Did I frighten you?”

  “Of course you frightened me,” she said with an empty laugh. “In Toronto, I was ready to blow that building up and kill everyone in it, just because I was mad. But I wasn’t thinking about what it would really mean to kill someone. I don’t think I could do it.”

  “I hope you never have to.”

  Cora traced the rim of her cup with one finger before looking back at him. “Me too.”

  “How’s your stomach, by the way, speaking of people I’m going to kill soon?”

  She laughed a little despite herself. “It’s sore. But okay. I’ll try not to dance so hard I pull any stitches. I don’t know if they’re the dissolvable kind—I might have to get you to take them out. Tomorrow, maybe, if my poultice works like it should.”

  “That’s my girl. In the meantime, we’ll find you a nice someone to get your mind off of pitiful Mr. Proctor.”

  “My mind isn’t on him. Not like that. I’m just being nice.”

  “If you insist. We’ll be sure to keep it that way, at least.” He folded his arms on the table and drummed his fingers on his biceps. “What would his opposite be? Someone tall, obviously. Blond. Broad-shouldered, well-dressed—”

  “You’re describing Elton.”

  Nathan gave a longing sigh. “Am I?”

  “He’s really going to get mad someday if you keep teasing him like that, you know.”

  “Nonsense. I know his type. He’s so far in now, he’ll put up with me until the end of time, simply because he can’t imagine being without me.”

  “Yeah, I’m not so sure about that.”

  “You know it’s his birthday on Friday. We ought to plan him something fun.”

  “I am absolutely positive that any plans you would call fun, Elton would hate.”

  “He did tell me to forget about it. But he doesn’t know what’s good for him.”

  “Maybe your birthday present can be actually doing what he asks you for once?”

  Nathan gave a great sigh. “I will restrain myself, if you think it’s best. Regardless—we were talking about your hunt this evening. Would someone like Elton be so bad? You had quite the little flame for him not so long ago, if I recall.”

  Cora scrunched her face as she looked down at her cup. “I mean, but now he’s...Elton.”

  “Well I’m not suggesting you try for him, specifically,” Nathan chuckled. “But there is something to be said for the serious, stoic ones. A woman needs a good foil in her life.”

  “I don’t even know if I’m prepared to just pick up a stranger, anyway, stoic or not. I’m not keen on going back to some random dude’s house and getting murdered.”

  “Cora,” Nathan sighed, “you’re thinking like a reg. What could a man possibly do to you? You’re a witch. If he puts a hand somewhere you don’t want it, make him sorry for it.”

  She paused. The thought was bolstering—she really had very little to be afraid of, as long as she had her bracelet and her wits. “But still, I’m not exactly...you know, taking precautions. I didn’t anticipate getting laid a whole lot on this trip.”

  “Well that was silly of you. Luckily, I’m always prepared.” Nathan leaned back to reach into the pocket of his jeans and retrieved a small plastic bag containing a dark green wad of unidentifiable herbs. He pushed it across the table to her. “Chew that up once you know it’s a sure thing. Guaranteed to prevent diseases and unwanted parasites of every species.”

  “Of course you have weird hoodoo contraceptives.”

  “Magic has to be good for something, my love,” he teased. “Don’t pretend there was nothing like this being passed around at your fancy Magistrate school.”

  “We usually just used juniper tonics.”

  “Juniper berries are for gin, or they’re wasted,” Nathan insisted. “Take the herbs.”

  Cora hesitated, watching the little bag as though it might cement a bad decision, but then she curled her fingers over it and tucked it into her clutch purse, pointedly ignoring Nathan’s grin.

  The nightclub was already dark when they went inside, lit only with flashing red over the DJ booth and the occasional strobe reflecting off of the low-hung drapes creating a canopy over the dance floor. Nathan kept hold of her hand as they weaved through the gathering crowd—even on a Wednesday, the room was nearly full. He didn’t give her a choice when it came to alcohol, but she was glad to take the shot of rum from him anyway. She rarely drank, and she’d only been to bars a handful of times in Vancouver, but she was determined to let the music and the lights wash away her thoughts for just a little while. This was more like what she’d imagined those first nights with Nathan back in Yuma—no responsibilities, having fun, feeling free and wild and powerful. She expected that being with Nathan would feel like constantly having the wind in your hair, but really there was a surprising amount of torture and blood. So this was a nice change of pace.

  She drank the next shot Nathan put in her hand, grimacing through the burn, and turned her head to listen over the music when he leaned down close to her.

  “See anything you like?”

  Cora frowned and pushed playfully at his chest, her brain not yet fuzzy enough from alcohol to be casually scoping out the room. She felt like she’d come a long way from the timid girl who lurked silently in the bar that first night out with Nathan, but sleeping with someone she picked up in a club was still a step outside of her comfort zone. Even so, she would be lying if she said the idea didn’t send a little thrill of excitement through her belly. Why shouldn’t she? She trusted Nathan’s magic, and she looked cute in her new dress. And if she found herself in a dangerous situation—well, that just meant it was a regular Wednesday.

  She held Nathan by his unbuttoned overshirt and stood on tiptoe to talk into his ear. “What do I do?”

  He smiled down at her and turned away just long enough to fetch another pair of shot glasses from the bar. “Pick someone you like the look of,” he answered with his cheek against her temple. “Dance with him. Drink with him. Then tell him to take you home.”

  “What if he doesn’t want to take me home?”

  Nathan urged her next shot glass into her hand and lightly swatted her cheek in place of a scolding. “You’re lovely.”

  “But it’s so loud here,” she argued, already wincing a little against the heavy thump of the bass around them
. “How will I talk to him enough to know if he’s not a jerk?”

  He laughed and downed his own drink before answering. “What do you care if he is? You’ll never see him again.”

  Cora paused a moment, then brought her glass to her lips and tilted her head back to swallow the burning liquid. Nathan seemed to sense her determination and gave her a gentle pat on the head before disappearing into the crowd and leaving her to her own devices.

  For a little while, she just lingered near the bar, the rhythmic bass pumping the alcohol through her blood until she felt herself swaying to the music. The lights and the heat of the crowd were almost as intoxicating as the liquor—but she still ordered herself a rum and Coke, just to further bolster her nerves and to give her something to do with her hands. It was almost too dark to even see the people around her, but she slowly began to make her way across the room, not really sure what it was she was looking for. Her boyfriend at school had been white, dark-haired, and a little bit lanky, with a nice laugh and pierced ears. They had gotten along, but she’d never felt that excited spark she’d expected. She didn’t expect to find it tonight, either, but her skin still buzzed with anticipation as she scanned the crowd moving around her. She could be like Nathan—just a little, just tonight. She could take what she wanted from someone and never think about them again.

  She spotted Nathan occasionally while she sipped her drink, his hands on a pale-skinned woman’s hips or in her hair as they danced, and once she saw a man approach them and whisper in Nathan’s ear with a hand on his shoulder and a tiny fold of plastic between two fingers. Nathan turned his head enough to see it, gave the woman in his arms a brief kiss on the cheek, and disappeared with the man into the darkened back of the sprawling room.

  Maybe she shouldn’t try to be too much like Nathan.

  Cora let herself dance, knowing she wasn’t particularly graceful on her feet but freed from caring by the alcohol. She felt electric and alive, her skin heated by the movement of the crowd around her, the bass from the speakers pounding in her ribs. She saw Nathan once more, a laughing smile on his face as he held the pale woman around the waist—and then beyond him, she saw the one.

  The man was standing off to the side of a larger group, looking uncomfortably out of place. He was dark-skinned and frowning, with thick black curls around his ears and a broad chest obvious under his button-down. He had a half-empty drink in his hand, but he didn’t seem inclined to dance despite the urging laughter of the others with him. Cora’s gaze traced the line of his wrist and forearm up to his rolled sleeves. There was something to be said for the serious ones. She felt a smile pulling at her lips as she started to weave through the people separating them.

  12

  Elton had Maduro’s pages in his file practically memorized by now. He had most of the pages memorized, if he was honest. It was easy to see the reason why some of these people were protected—they were relatives of Magisters or politicians or held official mundane titles themselves. One of them was even a pop star Elton recognized. What wasn’t made clear in their files was what exactly they were doing that might draw the attention of the law in the first place. He assumed some of them were preemptive, just in case anyone important stepped out of line before something could be swept under the rug, but most of them had to be involved in things Chasers would normally investigate. Elton would just need to find out what.

  In Maduro’s case, his inclusion was a little more of a mystery. He didn’t seem to have any connections to Magistrate high-ups that might protect him, and his relatively small rope manufacturing business on the Miami docks could hardly profit anyone enough to be worth the blatant human trafficking Elton had seen proof of in Maduro’s emails.

  He paused with his notebook open on his lap and let out a sudden scoff that startled the girl on the opposite bed. “Rope,” he murmured. “Of course.” He’d been too distracted by the brain-wiped slaves to see the obvious connection. Binding rope meant to dampen magic, woven with agrimony and soaked in angelica oil, was standard kit for every Chaser. It was one of the things Elton was certain he was going to miss while traveling with Nathan. It was useful but difficult to make effective—the simple fact that it was meant to dampen magic made it frustrating to create. If Maduro was producing the rope meant for Magistrate distribution, it made perfect sense that he’d be protected.

  Elton cupped one hand over his frown and sighed through his nose, paying no attention to the staring girl nearby. Why would making the Magistrate’s binding rope mean he had to lead some sort of human trafficking ring? There was no reason for it. With the right cleansing, the average witch would see no long-term ill effects even from prolonged exposure to the dampening components. It wasn’t necessary to use fas workers, and it definitely wasn’t necessary to make people fas just for that purpose. What benefit was there? Witches who had suffered the ingnas to the extent that Nichole had might be better suited to blindly following commands than the average person, but you’d be giving up complex tasks, long-term memory, and a great deal of common sense. Not exactly ideal workers.

  The reason, Elton had to assume, was greed. He could put the workers up himself in whatever condition he pleased, feed them poorly, treat them like they were expendable. Maduro could keep costs low and allow himself to live in luxury. Elton swallowed down the anger rising in his chest. He needed evidence first.

  “Nichole,” he said, turning to face her as he let his hand drop back to his lap, “how long did you work at the factory before Rafael took you to live with him?”

  She pursed her lips in thought and laid down on her stomach with her chin in her hands. “A little while.”

  “Did a lot of people work there?”

  The girl nodded. “But nobody for very long.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “People get hurt sometimes. In the machines. Or they get sick. Or if they...try to leave, sometimes they don’t c—don’t come back. Some people you just don’t see anymore, and you don’t know what—happened. So there were always—always new people.”

  “And you said the workers stayed in a dorm? And they fed you?”

  “Mhm. Not very good food. That’s why people got—people got sick, I guess.”

  Elton’s lip twitched into a faint frown. There was no reason to use fas workers at Maduro’s factory—except that they were expendable and free. No reason except greed.

  He left the file behind on the bed and scooped his suit jacket up from its folded place on the chair. “I need to go out for a little while,” he said as he slid the jacket over his shoulders. “I need you to keep the door closed and locked, and don’t open it for anyone except me, Nathan, or Cora. Absolutely no one. Just stay here until one of us gets back. Can you do that?”

  Nichole gave a small nod. She didn’t seem concerned enough to ask where he was going. Elton buttoned his jacket with one hand while he unsealed the wards on the door with the other, and he paused to check the paper talismans in his case on his way out.

  “Just stay here,” he said through the crack in the closing door, “and call me if anything happens.”

  “Okay.”

  He hesitated a moment more, silently questioning the wisdom of leaving the girl on her own, but then he set his jaw and sealed up the door behind him. He needed to hear what was going on straight from Maduro’s mouth—and if he didn’t like what he heard, he would solve the problem before anyone else got hurt.

  Elton opted for taking a taxi to the factory’s address rather than stealing a car, but he still felt a twinge of guilt at using a glamour to pass off an old receipt for cash. Maybe Cora had it right after all, even if her way of making money was less than noble. He supposed it was better to swindle willfully ignorant people into buying hokey charms than it was to actively cheat taxi drivers and cashiers.

  The building that matched the address on Maduro’s business card was low and sprawling, made of mottled stonework and brushed stucco in an off-white color Elton wasn’t sure was intentional. He s
potted the matching two-story building attached at the rear, which was substantially more dilapidated. Small windows lined two adjacent walls, and tattered curtains did a modest job of hiding the interior from the intrusive beams of the street lights. He guessed those were the dorms Nichole had mentioned. He would check those next, though he shuddered to picture the conditions inside.

  The factory was dark and quiet as he approached, but when he placed his hand on the door, he could feel an unnatural chill through the metal. The place had been warded. The barriers weren’t for keeping people out, though—Elton broke through them easily enough with a single talisman pressed against the gap between the double doors. These wards were to keep people in.

  Elton slipped inside, easing the heavy door shut behind him, his eyes already scanning the room ahead. The warehouse was crowded with tall machinery—rusted pulleys, towering spools, and thick hooks for twisting the rope into shape filled the space, leaving only narrow passages for the workers to walk though. He could imagine it was easy to get a stray sleeve stuck in a whirring engine while trying to maneuver. To the far left of the massive room, a set of metal stairs led up to an office, its walls almost entirely made of glass—no doubt so that Maduro and his “bosses” could watch over the workers from the safety and quiet of the elevated room. The light was still on inside.

  Elton wove through the passages toward the stairs, his steps barely sounding on the concrete floor. The chill he felt on the door was still in the air, pooling a faint layer of mist near the floor that swirled as he moved through it. There was movement in the office ahead of him, so he pressed forward, laying one hand lightly on the handrail as he started up the serrated metal of the stairs. As he drew near the top, he saw a profile he recognized sitting at the corner desk. Rafael Maduro sat in front of a computer monitor, hunched in his desk chair and scrolling through a spreadsheet. He was tan, with dark, slicked hair and a hooked nose, and his girth seemed to be testing the fortitude of the buttons on his brown suit jacket. Elton watched him run a palm over his forehead and wipe it on the leg of his pants, but the man froze when he locked eyes with Elton through the glass. The rest of the factory still lay silent as Elton turned the handle on the office door and stepped inside without bothering to keep quiet.