by Devon Monk
“What, Davy?” I said, softer now, trying to coax it out of him nice-like, and resisting the urge to just yell at the boy until he told me what the hell was going on. “Tell me what she did, okay?” I could Influence him. It would be easy. A word, a tone, and a little magic, and he’d tell me anything I wanted to know. Would do anything I wanted him to do. But Influence was one of my dad’s favorite moves, and I didn’t want to be my dad any more than I had to be.
“What were you talking to her about? Your breakup?”
He sniffed and rubbed his hand down over his lips and chin.
“It wasn’t about that. We never-she never-wants to talk about that. It’s over, you know?”
“So why did you go talk to her?”
“She’s been mixed up with a guy. I think. And I think he’s using her. She says she Hounds for him. . but she’s-she’s a cutter,” he said, and I nodded to let him know I’d already figured that out.
“She’s doing it more. Worse.” He sniffed again and looked out into the rain. Then, finally, back at me. “Something’s wrong. She’s different. Ever since she started doing things, Hounding for him, cutting for him, she’s just not. Not the same.”
I’d seen this before. It was why I’d never gotten into a relationship with a Hound. Using magic meant it used you back. It caused you pain. Most Hounds could not afford to use a Proxy service, which meant most Hounds had to endure the pain of magic use. That led Hounds to a desperate search for pain relief. Booze, drugs, cutting, self-mutilation, food, exercise. Everything in excess. Anything to get away from the pain. Chronic pain management changed people. Then it left them dead.
“Do you want to talk to Stotts about it? Maybe get her into a program and checked out?”
He laughed, a short, hard exhale. “Right. Mr. Dot the i’s and Cross the Police Procedures? It doesn’t work that way. There isn’t a program for Hounds. Rehabs won’t take her-they don’t take anyone who won’t give up Hounding. And me telling her she’s screwed up didn’t work out how I pictured it.” He gave me the painful smile again.
“Listen,” I said. “I’m done with this job except for filing my report. Why don’t you go home? Get some sleep. Take some aspirin for your eye. Call me when you’re feeling better. I’ll take you out for lunch or something. We can talk about Tomi if you want. Try to come up with some ideas to help her.”
“I wasn’t looking for your pity. . ”
“Oh, for cripes’ sake, Davy,” I said calmly. “I don’t pity you. If you’re dumb enough to hunt down your ex-girlfriend and tell her you think she’s screwed up, while you were drunk-and no, there is no way you sobered up between the time I left you and that evening; I’m surprised you could even walk to find her, and I hope to hell you didn’t drive-then you should have known she would try to deck you.
“But you are my right-hand man in the pack I am now the leader of-thanks to you. You really are a meddler, aren’t you? Don’t answer that. And being my right-hand man means I get to tell you what to do, and you do it. So. Go home, Davy Silvers. Sleep. When you are conscious, call me.”
“And where does
listen to tedious lectures
fit in my job description?” he asked.
“Right after
stop being a smart-ass
.” I smiled, and so did he. Probably one of the stranger working relationships I’ve had, but then, no one before Pike had tried to organize the Hounds into any sort of group. And Pike mostly just made sure they kept tabs on each other. I had other things in mind for the Hounds. Especially with Beckstrom Enterprises’ money behind me.
“Fine.” He pushed away from the tree, carefully, I noted. If I had to guess, I’d say Tomi got in a few other hits besides the one to the face. Girl wore steel-toe boots, and she looked like the type who wouldn’t mind getting in a few kicks to the ribs, if the opportunity presented itself.
“Anything broken?” I asked. “Do you need to see a doctor?”
“Naw. Just bruises.” He grunted as he bent beneath a low-hanging limb.
Just bruises, my ass.
He pushed his soggy hood back and ran a hand through his short hair. His face was pale behind the vivid bruise, and moisture that might have been sweat covered his forehead. Kid was in pain but too damn stubborn to admit it.
Come to think of it, that was another trait you needed for Hounding. A colossal sense of denial.
“Well, don’t be stupid about it, okay?” I said. “If you need to get checked out, I’ll cover the bill.”
“Wait-you’re paying me now?”
“You’d have to actually
work
for me to pay you.”
“I’ll take that as a yes and go get some sleep like you told me to. On the clock.” He tugged his hood closer to his face. “See ya, boss man.”
I stepped back and he walked off toward the street, holding a hand up over his shoulder to acknowledge Stotts, who was strolling over to me.
“Take care of the kid?” Stotts asked.
“For now.”
“Anything I should know?”
“Not unless you have jurisdiction over teenage love affairs gone wrong.”
“That might be a little outside my expertise,” he said.
A big white box van rumbled up to the curb, then slowly rolled over it and came down the park path. The van parked a good distance from the gazebo, and all the doors opened. Stotts’ MERC crew-or at least the members of his team I had met, two men and a woman-stepped out of the van. They each carried a backpack slung over one shoulder and had on some variation of jeans and dark coats, but that was where the similarities ended.
Garnet, the tall, aging hippy, was probably the oldest of the crew and wore a crocheted rainbow-colored hat over his balding head. He squinted in the pale light like a mole in the middle of summer sunshine.
Next to him and twice as wide strode Roberts, the woman on the team. Built like a shot-putter, she had the look of a weight lifter from the Eastern Bloc. Her cheeks were flushed red beneath her startlingly wide brown eyes. The hood on her coat wasn’t up, leaving her short dark curls free to catch a frost of rain like misty cobwebs.
Julian, the driver, was the shortest of the bunch, about five foot two, and he carried himself with the confidence of a business executive. He wore a tailored black wool coat with a scarf tucked around his neck. He had to be the youngest of the group, fit, good-looking.
“Detective,” Julian said when the three of them were close enough to us. “Ms. Beckstrom.”
I nodded my hello.
“What have you got?” he asked Stotts.
“Spent spell. Physical remains.” Stotts started walking, and we followed. “Dead animal in the bushes over there. Might be someone playing vampire. You know the drill. Pictures of everything. Map the residual of the spikes in magic use off the grid out a hundred feet square. Scrub it down to zero impact-this is a public park and we don’t need the environmentalists on us for sloppy cleanup.”
“Got it covered,” Julian said.
I glanced over my shoulder. Garnet busied himself plunking down orange traffic cones that blocked the pathway to the gazebo, and then farther off, blocking the path along the bushes and trees. Not that anyone was out in this weather at this time of day, but it was probably a good precaution. In Portland, if you aren’t willing to go outside in the rain, you never go outside.
Roberts walked along the path where concrete met the grass in front of the gazebo. In each hand she held witch ing rods. I hadn’t seen those since college. The two narrow lengths of metal were bent and held loosely in each hand; they could be used to detect the presence of water and other energies. They had also proven to be helpful in tracking the natural flow of magic beneath the ground.
I wasn’t close enough to see, but I bet those rods were glyphed up the wazoo, and it was magic, not water, she was searching for.
“You can see for yourself where the spell was located,” Stotts said as we climbed the stairs to the g
azebo.
Julian whistled. “What was it?”
“Might be Conversion,” Stotts said.
“Might?”
“It dissolved before Allie could get a strong read on it,” Stotts said.
Julian arched an eyebrow and looked up at me. “Is that so?”
“Fell apart when I touched it.” That was almost the whole truth.
“Do you need anything else?” Stotts asked.
“Nope.” Julian slipped off his backpack and pulled out a pair of leather gloves and a spray can.
“Then keep the spell use to a minimum,” Stotts said. “We’re already up against the wall with Proxy costs this month and I don’t want to fight with the suits to justify an overage.”
“Tell them to cut us a bigger budget.” Julian shook the can and began marking a circle around the entire inside parameter of the gazebo.
Stotts just grunted. “I’d rather not lose any more men.”
Julian shook his head. “Speaking of which.” He held up the spray can. “You might want to step back.”
Stotts nodded at me and we both walked out of the gazebo, passing Garnet and Richards on their way up the stairs.
The three of them recited a mantra, and the air suddenly felt a lot heavier.
I paused, but Stotts pulled me forward so I couldn’t watch anymore. I could still feel the magic they were using. The air was heavy with it, the rain so thick that for a second I wasn’t sure there was enough air between drops for me to inhale. Then they cast the spell-a spell I’d never experienced-and the rain broke free, a cloudburst, colder than natural rain, with a disinfectant smell to it.
“They clean up after magic by using more magic? That’s a smart idea.” I could not keep the sarcasm out of my tone. Probably because I didn’t try to.
“Funny,” Stotts said, “you don’t seem like the kind of person who should tell me how to do my job.”
“Don’t I?” I blinked innocently. “If that’s a problem, you might want to reconsider that job you offered me.”
We’d made it to the car by now. “I might. Get in.” He didn’t even wait for my reply before opening his door and sliding in out of the rain.
I took another sniff of the air, sneezed at the soapy chemical stink that filled my nostrils. No fireworks, no flash or sound came from the gazebo. I hesitated a moment more, heard what sounded an awful lot like a handheld vacuum cleaner whir to life. A vacuum cleaner? To clean up unquantified and possibly dangerous magical residue? Seriously?
Today was just full of surprises.
I pulled the door open and got in out of the rain.
Chapter Seven
Instead of taking me to the station, Stotts let me give him my statement in the car while he drove me home. Which was good. Because it hadn’t stopped raining, I hadn’t eaten since this morning, and the coffee at the police station wasn’t fit for human consumption. Using magic always made me hungry, and I was tired. Plus, that Disbursement I’d set to pay for Hounding the spell-a nice juicy headache-was in full force.
Stotts dropped me off in front of the building with a promise to contact me if he needed further information. I promised him I’d think about the job offer and let him know soon.
I trudged up the three flights of stairs to my apartment and paused at the top of the third-floor landing. A whiff of onions and beef and bacon made my mouth water. I didn’t know which of my neighbors was cooking, but I seriously considered tracking them down and inviting myself in for a bite.
I stopped at my apartment door, put one hand on the smooth surface, and without drawing on magic, listened for movement. It was a habit I picked up thanks to my less-than-calm last few months in the city with a variety of magic users trying to kill me.
More than movement. I heard singing. A woman’s voice. Nola.
Duh. I had company.
I unlocked the door, feeling like I’d jumped on the idiot train a day early, and walked into my home.
The delicious smell was stronger here, and my heart did a happy little leap in my chest, even though it made my head hurt more. Nola had been cooking!
She stood on tiptoe on a chair at the round table in my living room, her back to me. Her hands were full of vines from the potted plant that was now draping over my no-longer-plain vinyl blinds and white sheers.
On the other side of the wall-sized window was a bushy tree-plant thing-did I ever mention that I do not have a green knuckle in my body, much less a thumb? — which took up the empty space in the corner.
There were other touches that told me she’d been busy. A couple candles, three new throw pillows, and all the roses that had been in the kitchen sink now arranged and placed throughout the house in every vase, mason jar, and wine bottle I owned, plus a few more containers I could only guess she’d bought today.
I didn’t want to startle her, but wasn’t sure if she’d heard me come in. So I made some noise opening the door and shutting it more loudly behind me.
“Welcome back,” she said without turning. “I heard you come in the first time.”
I laughed and hung my soggy coat on the back of the door. “I didn’t want to send you tumbling to your death,” I said. “How was your day?”
“Good. I did some shopping. Hope you don’t mind.” She finished adjusting the vine, some kind of philodendron, I think, over the valance, where it obliged her, as all green living things seemed wont to do, by draping in a perfect waterfall of leaves like an interior-decorating magazine photo shoot. “You really needed some living things in here.”
“You didn’t pay for all this, did you?”
“It’s not that much,” she said as she stepped off the chair, flashed me a smile, then walked far enough back so she could look at her handiwork. “I found a nice secondhand store just down the street for the little things.”
“They were selling plants?”
“No. But the flower shop around the corner was. Think of it as payment for putting me up on such short notice for a few days. Soup’s ready. Did you have lunch?”
“Didn’t have time. I’m starving.” I headed into the kitchen, where I found on the stovetop soup filled with veggies, and bread wrapped in a dish towel on the counter beside it. Heaven. I filled a bowl, took a couple pieces of bread, and headed back into the living room.
“How did the job go?” Nola asked. She sat on the couch, and I sat at the café table. Nola had opened the blinds enough to let in the dull afternoon light. And with the cascade of green leaves in the corners of the room, the light no longer seemed as dreary.
“Good,” I said around a mouthful of the best beef veg gie soup I’d ever put a spoon to. “Any luck with Cody’s stuff?”
She folded her hands in her lap, and I realized I had rarely seen her that still, no knitting in her hands, no bills to pay, no charity items to sort, no chickens to tend, alfalfa to bale, heck, not even her dog Jupe’s big head to scratch.
It was the first time I’d really thought about how lonely her life might be.
“I went down to talk with the supervisor. She wasn’t available, and no one else seemed to have any information except that he was in the care of a psychologist for tests he needs before he can be released. They said that’s customary with cases that deal with the handicapped and their misuse of magic.”
“The forgeries he did when he was younger? Or him being used as part of my dad’s murder?” Cody hadn’t been the one behind the scheme to kill my dad, though he had been a part of forging my dad’s signature on the hit on the kid in St. Johns, and my signature on the hit on my dad. As far as the law was concerned, James Hoskil was the brains behind the crime.
But the law did not know about a lot of things going on in this city, like the Authority, and weird half-dog men running around. Even I didn’t think James Hoskil was powerful enough to take down my very powerful father.
My dad fluttered behind my eyes. I ignored him.
“I don’t know,” Nola said. “They won’t say more than that. I’m gue
ssing it’s from the most recent crime. He was in custody before that. Those records, of why he was jailed for a short time, I can’t find. I’ve tried looking up newspaper articles, courtroom documents, but there are no reports in the news. It’s strange. The courtroom documents aren’t even public. I don’t understand what all the cloak-and-dagger stuff is around this poor kid, and I’d like to know what crimes he committed before I take him in.”
I took another bite of soup. The Authority was probably behind the secrecy. They had put the hush on the circumstances of Lon Trager’s death, Frank’s dark magic shenanigans, and my dad’s stolen corpse. None of those ever hit the news. Maybe the Authority had pull, or people, in the courts as well.
Nola didn’t know much about the Authority, and I was inclined to keep it that way for now. Telling her about the secret society of magic users meant putting her at risk.
I refused to do that.
“I’ll ask Violet if she knows anyone that can help us with this,” I said. “Are you going to call Detective Stotts and see if he can help?”
She twisted her fingers together. “I think I will. What do you think about him?”
I sipped the remainder of the broth out of the bowl. “I only met him a couple weeks ago. He seems to be a good police officer. Dedicated to his job. Determined. Said he grew up in the Northwest. Raised by his mom mostly here in Portland. Has good taste in coffee, so that’s something in his favor.” I smiled.
“I didn’t know his wife had passed away though. I thought the ring. . well, you know.”
She nodded. “He could be lying about that.”
“How very suspicious of you,” I said approvingly. “But I don’t think so. He didn’t smell like he was lying. Oh, one more thing. He’s cursed.”
I took a huge bite of bread, white with a hint of garlic and Parmesan. Delish.
“What?”
I talked around the mouthful of bread. “Cursed. Hounds who work for him die very unusual deaths. Weird, huh?”
“My God, Allie. How can you joke about that?”