by Jaye Wells
The cabbie pulled into a trash-strewn lot near two unmarked cop cars that screamed “Nothing to see here.” The taxi he’d picked me up in was one of those new potion-fueled jobs. I’d been in such a hurry to get there on time, I hadn’t given a second thought to getting inside. I had, however, seen Baba’s curtains twitch as we’d glided away from the curb outside my house. Considering I’d just poured the Sexy Juice she’d given me the day before down the drain, I had a little twinge of conscience over my hypocrisy. Still, potion fuels were clean magic and it wasn’t as if putting a potion into a car’s gas tank was the same as sticking a needle full of dirty magic into someone’s neck to help escape reality. Plus, I was pretty sure if I’d been late, Gardner wasn’t the type to accept excuses.
Still, I had to admit the taxi was a sweet ride. The potion fuel made cars hover above the streets, so the government had given them special lanes on the roads. Being able to fly literally down the freeways meant we avoided all the gridlock caused by the Mundane vehicles clogging the asphalt. We’d sailed across the Bessemer Bridge with a few minutes to spare before I had to report for my new job.
“We’re here,” the cabbie snapped as he threw the car in Park. A whirring sound accompanied the tires lowering to the pavement for landing. “Forty bucks, not including tip.”
I grimaced. While the ride had been pleasant, the expense of the magic taxi left a lot to be desired. “Do you take credit?”
“I guess.” His lips pursed like a schoolmarm’s. “There’s a service charge, though.”
Forget having philosophical qualms about using a magical taxi. The real issue was I couldn’t afford to use them. Especially since I’d spent part of the ride over calling in a favor from my neighbor, Joe the Mechanic, who said he’d give me a discount on the labor and parts for the repair, but that he couldn’t get around charging me for the tow into the shop.
“Fine.” I shoved the card across the seat at the taxi driver. While he ran it through the machine, I glanced out the window and up at the building. Gardner had told me the offices were on the second floor.
“Here,” the cabbie said. He passed the receipt over along with a pen. As he did, I saw that his fingertips were green.
I hesitated taking the receipt. “What’s that?”
“Oh, this?” He held up his fingers and wiggled them. “It’s from the special fuel.” He lovingly stroked the headrest of the passenger seat. “Makes this baby fly like a dream, but you get a little on your skin and you’re green for days.”
“Hmm.” People thought clean magic was safe no matter what. They never questioned the weird little side effects that were sometimes worse than the thing they were supposed to fix. I kept my opinion to myself, though. If he wanted to turn green it was his own business.
I took the receipt and prepared to sign it, but when I saw what he’d done, I forgot all about my impending meeting with my new team and his green fingers. “The service charge is five bucks? That’s bullshit.”
He shrugged. “Convenience is costly, lady. The potion-fuel it took alone cost more than that a gallon.”
“And how do you explain the additional ten-dollar tip you added here?” I stabbed a finger at the receipt.
“For service with a smile?” He grinned, exposing crooked front teeth. “Plus seeing how I got you here so quick since ya had your panties in a twist about not being late.”
That much was true, but my annoyance didn’t reduce any as I signed the receipt. The time I’d gained by taking the stupid special taxi to begin with was burning with each second I sat there arguing with the asshole. “Fine.” I threw the receipt over the seat at him.
“Have a nice day,” he said in an overly friendly tone that made the back of my teeth itch.
“Whatever.” I exited the cab and slammed the door. A muffled “Hey” reached me from inside. I turned my back on the hexed cab and started across the lot. A whoosh of wind flirted with the hem of my skirt as the driver zoomed away.
On my way toward the door, I could feel eyes on me through the cloudy windows. The inspection made me feel self-conscious and I hated that my new colleagues had the benefit of checking me out first. Regardless, I threw my shoulders back and strutted toward the building like I owned the shithole.
The faded sign bolted to the roof told me the second floor used to be an old-fashioned boxing gym. Thugs once worked out their aggression in places like this where they could kick each other’s asses with the law’s blessing. Now that gyms like this one weren’t around anymore, they fought in the streets with guns and potions instead of gloves and fists.
On the ground floor, a small bodega clung to existence by the quicks of its nails. A door next to the one for the grocery had faded gold lettering, which told me the place upstairs used to be called Rooster’s Gym. Under that someone had spray-painted the word cock with a helpful graphic of a penis for the illiterate. I pushed it open and was faced with a tall set of narrow wooden steps. As I climbed, the scent of old sweat and decayed wood assaulted my nose.
My low heels clomped on each riser and echoed through the space above no matter how much I tried to have a light step. When I reached the top and found my new team waiting for me, I wasn’t all that surprised. I’d made enough noise to raise the dead.
The room behind them opened up like a cathedral. The large windows made up two walls. Two doors led off the back, maybe to an office and a john. The old ring still stood in the center. Its ropes were cracked and smelled of old vinyl and even older sweat. The once-white mat was now yellowed with age and boasted some dubious stains. In the center, they’d placed a large table and a whiteboard—a makeshift war room.
To the left of the ring, a couple of desks were pushed in a corner. Each had an ancient laptop chugging away on the surface. Along the opposite brick wall, beneath large metal-framed windows, speed bags, punching bags, a few pairs of cracked gloves, and a couple of jump ropes made up what passed for the workout room. In the front right corner of that same wall, slabs of plywood separated the rest of the space from what appeared to be a lab, if the beakers I spied through the cracks were any indication.
I took in all of that quickly and turned my attention to the agents who were staring me down. Since I was coming onto their turf, I went ahead and spoke first. “Special Agent Gardner around?”
A petite female with the spiky black hair and cocky posture that screamed she had whatever the chick version of a Napoleonic complex was jerked her chin up. “Who wants to know?”
“Officer Kate Prospero, BPD. She’s expecting me.”
“Hey, Morales,” she called over her shoulder.
From further back in the room, I spotted a dark-haired male with his back to us. He sat on a stool reading a paper at a makeshift coffee bar. “What?” He didn’t turn around.
“Gardner say anything to you about expecting company?”
One wide shoulder rose toward his ear. “Nope.”
“You sure you got the right address, girlie?” This from a tall Asian guy with dreadlocks. Each strand was decorated with beaded charms and small potion amulets, and a pair of lab goggles was perched on the top of his head. The alchemical symbols tattooed up his left arm marked him as a wizard—probably the team’s lab wiz. He wore black jeans, a white T-shirt, and a vintage embroidered vest. As he spoke his dark eyes sparkled with mischief and a smile flirted with his lips.
I realized then that I was the only one in the room wearing a suit. The chick wore jeans, a concert T-shirt, and combat boots. Morales, from what I could see from this distance, also wore jeans and an untucked plaid shirt with scuffed motorcycle boots. Looked like I’d misunderstood Gardner’s instructions when she’d told me to dress as though I belonged in the MEA. My damned suit couldn’t have made me look more like I didn’t belong.
I crossed my arms and tried not to let my embarrassment show. Looked like MEA cops liked hazing new recruits as much as the BPD did. “How about you stop fucking around and go get your boss?”
Sile
nce. Heavy, damning silence.
Morales stiffened and turned slowly in his chair. The room pulsed with tension for what felt like a full minute before Morales stood up. His chair’s creak sounded like a scream in the silence. His boot heels made ominous thumps on the stained wooden floor. Finally, he pushed past the chick. She looked up at him with something resembling worship, and I figured he was most likely Gardner’s number two.
He looked like the kind of guy whose cologne was made from gasoline and whisky. The dark scruff of beard was probably a look he used for undercover work, but combined with his full lips it was hard not to think about work under the covers. Broad shoulders and large hands that looked as if they weren’t strangers to making fists. The kind of cop who’d laugh if a suspect punched him. Then smile as he applied a boot heel to the perp’s neck.
Despite the dark and dangerous exterior, his brown eyes sparked with intelligence that told me he wasn’t a typical muscle-bound idiot. Looked like Pen had been right about the eye candy. But then, I’d always been attracted to assholes. They were so much less complicated than nice guys.
“Officer what?” His voice was as calloused as his hands.
I raised my chin. “Prospero—Kate.”
“Officer Prospero, were you born this way or has working patrol for the BPD forced your head up your ass?”
My jaw fell open. “Excuse me?”
“One, no cop with any real tactical experience would show up to work on a task force wearing a cheap suit and high heels.” He ran his fingers over the lapel of my jacket.
The chick laughed. “Aw, snap!”
I swatted his hand away only to receive his nose in my face. His voice lowered to a menacing tone. “Two, no one with half a brain would walk into a room full of veteran MEA agents and insult them unless they’re begging for an ass kicking.”
The Asian guy frowned. “Drew,” he said in a warning tone.
Morales shot a look at him and crossed his arms. When he looked back at me, he leaned in and whispered, “You want to play with the big boys, Cupcake? Stop acting like an idiot.”
I stared him in the eye. Looking away would have been like offering up my backside for an alpha dog. He might be hot, but there was no way the cocky bastard was coming anywhere near my ass.
“That’s quite enough, Special Agent Morales.” Gardner’s voice cut through the room like a gunshot.
The corner of Morales’s mouth lifted. He hooked a finger in my necklace and flipped it up. “Nice pearls, by the way.”
My cheeks flared with a mixture of shame and anger. A thousand words burned like fire at the back of my throat. Before I could spit any of them at him, Gardner’s voice rang out like a shot: “Prospero, my office—now!”
Chapter Nine
Gardner’s office was really little more than a storeroom in the rear of the gym with a desk wedged in among metal shelving and file boxes. Dishwater-gray light filtered through smudged glass in the rusted window frame. The only decoration in the room was a plaque on her desk that read NO BULLSHIT BEFORE 5 P.M.
“Sit,” she snapped.
It wasn’t that I’d expected a warm welcome, but I hadn’t anticipated so much outright hostility. “Did I do something?” I lowered myself into the folding chair across from the desk.
She threw a file folder on her desk and blew out a sigh. “Little advice, Prospero. You want to be a member of this team, you need to try to make friends, not enemies.”
“You might want to remind your team of that. Where I’m from—”
She held up a hand. “I know exactly where you’re from.” Her tone was heavy with subtext. “But this is the MEA, not some dirty magic coven where your street cred is your destiny. Here you earn respect through professionalism and good police work.”
I ground my comeback between clenched teeth. Saying it wouldn’t get me anything but more headaches, and I already felt a tiny ice pick tap, tap, tapping away behind my left eye. “Understood. I’ll try not to hurt their feelings anymore.”
Her eyes narrowed, but the corner of her mouth twitched. “All right. We need to discuss some details of your assignment.”
I sat up straighter, glad to put the awkward meeting with the team behind me—for now.
“This is a trial run, not a permanent gig. You want that, you’ll have to prove you’ve got the chops to work at the MEA level. You can’t keep up—you’re out. You can’t follow orders—you’re out. Got it?”
I nodded.
“That said,” she continued, “this case is only the first in what I hope will be a long-term mission to rid Babylon of the dirty magic trade altogether.”
“Question,” I said. “Why did you agree to give me a try?”
“Honestly? There were a couple of other qualified Adepts on my list, but not one of them is related to Abraxas Prospero. None of them used to cook potions before they were old enough to read. And none of them have that hunger in their eyes.”
I tilted my head. “Hunger?”
“Desperation to prove yourself.”
My jaw dropped. “Screw you, lady.”
“You’ve got some balls, huh?” She smiled like I amused her. “That’s good because this job will test you on every level.” She crossed her arms and leaned back. “Judging from the high scores on your tests combined with the lack of promotions, I think it’s safe to assume you’ve had some issues at BPD because of your background.”
I nodded stiffly. “So?”
“So I want you to know that the BPD might not see the advantages of having an Adept on their squad, but I do. That’s why I convinced the MEA to set up this task force. To leverage the magical knowledge of Adept law enforcement officers to fight the dirty magic problem.”
I glanced at the door. “You mean, everyone’s—”
She shook her head. “Just Mez. And me,” she added almost as an afterthought, “but you already knew that. Shadi’s Mundane and Morales is a … special case.” I already knew who Morales was. I wanted to ask what was special about him besides his being an asshole, but I resisted. I assumed that Shadi was the chick, since she basically screamed Mundane. That meant I’d been right about the guy with the dreadlocks—Mez?—being a wizard.
“Does this mean you’re planning on recruiting more Adepts?”
She grimaced. “The MEA and BPD want to see what we can do with what we have for now.”
Translation: No more resources until we get some collars on the books.
“I’m surprised the MEA agreed to this at all. Most federal agencies refuse to even hire Adepts, except as lab geeks.”
“Well, it wasn’t easy.” Her dry tone implied she wasn’t just referring to how hard it was to get an Adept cop on her team. The fact she’d been able to work her way up to special agent in charge of an MEA task force spoke volumes about her own skills and tenacity. “Have you heard of Sun Tzu?” At my frown, she continued. “The Chinese military strategist. He wrote a book called The Art of War?”
My night-school degree hadn’t covered Chinese military strategy. I grimaced and shrugged.
She waved a hand. “Anyway, he said many smart things. One of which was, ‘If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.’”
I squinted at her. She watched me expectantly, so I smiled and nodded. “Right on.”
“The point is that Adepts understand how magic works better than any Mundane ever could. And you, Kate, you understand our enemies more than anyone else in this city.”
“I’m thrilled you are willing to give me a shot to prove that’s the case.”
“I hope you do. This task force is a sort of pilot program. If we have success, Eldritch agreed to give us more bodies for the team. Plus there’s a possibility the agency will create Adept teams for other hot spots—New York, Boston, LA. We may finally have a real chance to cripple the covens across the country.”
My pulse kicked up and pressure pushed down on my lungs. Suddenly this wasn’t just about my caree
r ambitions or making enough overtime to buy Danny new sneakers. Gardner was talking flipping the script on the entire war on magic.
She slapped her palms on the desk, as if to dispel the heaviness that had settled over the room. “Now, since you’re on the team, you need to know that I only have two rules. First, no excuses. I’m not your mama so I don’t want to hear why you’re running late or that someone else is to blame for your fuckup.” She pointed to the sign on the desk to emphasize her point. “I discourage bullshit after five, too, just so we’re clear.”
“Understood.” I raised my chin.
“Second, we do things by the book here.”
I opened my mouth to tell her that wouldn’t be a problem, but she held up a hand.
“I’ve read your file, Kate. The fact you made it through the academy and came recommended by Eldritch goes a long way to make me ignore your past associations. But please understand: We solve crimes using police work. Mez is the official team wiz. You need a defense potion or evidence analyzed—you go through him. No magical shortcuts to get evidence and no cooking potions—dirty, clean, or in-between—period.” She looked up from the papers she’d been arranging into a neat stack. “No reading potions, either, Prospero.”
I cringed. She really had done her homework on me. Back in the day, I’d had a talent for reading a potion’s energy to figure out the ingredients and sometimes even the identity of its maker. But I could tell from the look in her eye it wasn’t any use trying to explain that I didn’t touch any magic at all anymore. She wouldn’t have believed me anyway.
“Do things by the book,” she continued, “or you’ll find the book thrown with great force at your ass. Am I clear?”
Transparent was more like it. I’d hoped for a fresh start on the task force, but it appeared that the specter of my past haunted this gym just as it had the precinct. Gardner might be an Adept, but she clearly wasn’t letting that shared trait soften her attitude. I didn’t point out to her that my jaded past was part of the reason she’d hired me in the first place.