Dirty Magic

by Jaye Wells

  I jerked my gaze from the window I’d been glaring at. “And?”

  “She wants us to meet her at the gym.”

  I frowned. “Why?”

  “Mez found something from those samples we got at the morgue.”

  My eyebrows popped up. “Good news?”

  “She wouldn’t say.” He glanced over his shoulder at my pouting brother. “What do you want to do?”

  I shot a look at Danny, too. The last thing I wanted to do was let him out of my sight. But the alternative was to take him to work, which didn’t sit well with me, either. Still, I was pretty sure Gardner would be more annoyed by a delay than showing up with the kid.

  I sighed. “Go to the gym.”

  “You’re sure?”

  I looked at Danny as I spoke. “He’ll be on his best behavior,” I said in an or-else tone.

  Danny rolled his eyes but didn’t comment.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Morales said.

  About five minutes later, I realized he was headed in the wrong direction. “You should have turned right back there.”

  He glanced at me with mischief in his gaze. “Figured a little detour wouldn’t hurt.” He pulled to a halt at a stoplight. On one corner of the intersection, a man huddled against a trash can. His skin was blue. Not a subtle tint, like Mr. Callahan’s jaundiced skin at group. No, this was deep indigo.

  “What’s that guy’s deal?” Danny asked suddenly.

  Morales winked at me. I nodded, catching on. He’d taken us to one of the worst parts of the Cauldron to help drive home my point about magic for Danny. Guess my partner finally realized Danny’s interest in magic was a big deal after all. “He’s hooked on an antidepression potion.” I kept my tone casual. “From the looks of it, he’s been using for a while. Before long, the addiction will drive him to commit suicide.”

  “Wh-why would he do that?”

  “That’s how addiction works,” Morales said. “After a while the potion stops being effective, so the user has to go to more and more extreme measures for relief. In the case of the antidepression potion, it makes him more deeply depressed until he can’t stand to live anymore.”

  “Why is he so blue?”

  “Because when you use them a long time they change you at a cellular level.”

  “But that’s just dirty magic, right? Clean magic is safe.”

  I turned fully and shook my head. “Danny, no. Magic is magic, and it all changes you. It’s just that clean magic companies use safer ingredients and are more controlled. There are still side effects.”

  Danny crossed his arms. “Hmm.”

  “And usually, you gotta take more potions to mask the side effects.” I added, “It becomes a vicious cycle, and before you know it, you’re on ten potions for that one defect you were trying to treat.”

  “From the looks of that guy,” Morales added, “he’s been hooked for several years.”

  I turned to see that Danny’s complexion had gone paper-white. “Can’t someone help him?”

  “There are antipotions, but they’re too expensive for most potion freaks to afford since their addictions probably got them fired from their jobs. Some have success with recovery programs.”

  “You mean like the group you and Pen go to?” Danny asked.

  From the corner of my eye, I saw Morales’s head swivel toward me with a speculative gaze. I ignored him and spoke to Danny. “Something like that, but usually they have to go through a really painful detox period. Some people don’t survive that part. But before any of that, the addict has to want to stop.”

  “If it makes him that sad, wouldn’t he want to quit?”

  “Potions change a person’s brain chemistry, Danny,” I said. “He’s not thinking rationally. The addiction is controlling his decisions.”

  The light turned green and Morales slowly pulled forward. As he drove, we passed more addicts. I pointed them out as we went. “That girl over there? With the lips that look like two sausages on her face? She’s addicted to a vanity potion.” I pointed to the other side of the street. “He’s probably hooked on a strength potion.”

  “How can you tell?” Danny asked, almost grudgingly.

  “No human can gain that kind of muscle mass without chemicals,” Morales said. “Soon his body won’t be able to carry all that extra weight and he’ll either have a heart attack or an aneurysm.”

  “Oh, look at that one,” I began, “she’s definitely on a—”

  “Stop,” Danny whispered. “I get it, okay? Becoming addicted to magic is dangerous. Just say no, blah, blah, blah.”

  I turned fully in my seat. “No, you don’t get it. I’m not worried you’ll become an addict.”

  “What then?” He set his jaw in a stubborn line.

  “You need to see that there’s a very real human cost to the potion game. The Adepts who cook and sell potions are profiting off people’s misery and desperation. And in the process, they’re ruining lives.”

  “Kate, I don’t want to sell potions. I just want to learn how magic works.”

  “To what end, Danny?”

  He sighed and leaned back with his arms crossed. The pleading vanished and a ruthless glare replaced it. It was an expression I’d seen on Uncle Abe’s face more times than I could count, and seeing it on Danny made me go cold. “Maybe you’re just afraid I’ll be better at it than you.”

  “You know what? I bet you would be.” I shook my head sadly. “In fact, I’m sure of it.” Danny was a lot smarter than I was as a kid.

  He paused, as if sensing a trap. “Really?”

  I nodded. “Which is why I’m terrified to let you try. If you show talent, it will only be a matter of time before the covens come calling.”

  For a moment the only sound in the car was the echo of the wheels slapping pavement. Morales kept his eyes on the road, but I could feel the tension coming off him as if he was holding himself back from jumping into the argument. Part of me was embarrassed for him to see this personal drama at all, but making Danny see was more important than my pride.

  “You know what your problem is, Kate?” Danny said quietly.

  “No, but I’m sure you’ll tell me.”

  “You assume everyone’s like you.” He speared me with a look. “Just because you couldn’t handle your power doesn’t mean I can’t.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “You know what’s not fair?” he shot back. “The fact that I’ve done nothing but follow your rules, but you still treat me like I’m a criminal.”

  I felt like he’d punched me. I opened my mouth to say—I don’t know what, but he turned away, as though he couldn’t stand to look at me.

  Morales, whose presence I’d forgotten, cleared his throat. “We’re here.”

  * * *

  When we got back to the office, the entire team was waiting for us with grim expressions. Needless to say, when Gardner saw me leading my sulky teenaged brother behind me on the stairs, her expression did not improve.

  “Who’s the kid?” she snapped.

  After shooting Danny a warning look, I walked over and pulled her aside. “That’s Danny, my little brother.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Why isn’t he in school?”

  “Look, I could bullshit you, but the truth is he ran away from school to go see John Volos.”

  Gardner’s eyes widened.

  “He’s been wanting to learn magic—Danny, that is,” I rushed ahead. “When I told him I wouldn’t teach him he decided to go see John.” She blinked. “Sir, I know how this looks, but Danny had no idea we were investigating Volos. He thought he was just going to see an old friend to ask for a favor. Obviously I shut that option down,” I said quickly. “Anyway, I brought him here because it’s too late in the day to go back to school and I don’t trust him home alone given the circumstances.” I would have called Baba to help, but it was Bingo Day at the senior center and she wouldn’t be home for at least another hour.

  Gardner looked as if she could chew th
rough nails. “When I brought you on this team I thought your connections would help our case, but all they’ve done is complicate the shit out of it.”

  “The case was already complicated without my help, sir.”

  Her lip quirked. “Ain’t that the damned truth?” She sighed. “All right, he can stay but keep him out of the way.”

  I nodded eagerly. “No problem.”

  By the time we’d rejoined the others, Morales had already introduced Danny around. When I returned, Mez—today in red dreads pulled back into a thick ponytail—was giving my brother a tour of the lab. Danny’s eyes were huge as he took in all the beakers and burners and gadgets. When Mez spoke, the kid looked at him as if he were his own personal Jesus. Crap. I rushed forward to intervene. “All right, kid,” I said in a forced cheery voice, “we need to get to work. Why don’t you go play one of your games at my desk?”

  Danny looked at me like I’d just walked in with shit on my shoe. “I want to hear the meeting.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “Since when did you get interested in my work?”

  “Since Mez here told me how much he loves being a wizard for the MEA.”

  The look I shot the wiz made him freeze. “I just, uh, meant—why are you looking at me like that?”

  Danny rolled his eyes. “She’s got a bug up her butt because she doesn’t want me to learn to cook.”

  “What? That’s”—Mez glanced at me and cringed—“probably for the best. This job is, uh, superboring.”

  “But you just said—” Danny started to protest.

  “Everyone circle up!” Gardner yelled.

  “My desk, now,” I said. “And wear your headphones.”

  Danny’s face morphed from confusion to resentment. He muttered “Bye” to Mez and stalked over to my desk. I watched to make sure he put the headphones on before I turned to the wiz. “Thanks.”

  He shrugged. “No sweat. Maybe later you can tell me what that was about?”

  “Now, people!” Gardner sounded ready to nail some asses to walls. Instead of replying to Mez, I rushed out of the lab. Gardner stood in the ring with Morales and Shadi. Judging from her look, this wasn’t going to be a fun talk. Maybe that’s why she’d decided to deliver her news in the fighting ring.

  “Okay, now that we’re all here,” she began, “we have a lot to cover. Mez, why don’t you start?”

  Gone was the jokey wizard I’d been talking to a few minutes earlier. Now he looked like a doctor about to tell someone they had six months to live. “I analyzed the samples Prospero and Morales gathered yesterday. The good news, if you can call it that, is that Marvin definitely had fur under his nails, which supports the theory this was another Gray Wolf murder.”

  “You’re sure it was fur and not just hair?” Shadi asked.

  Mez shot her a quelling look. She flushed and muttered an apology. “Anyway,” he continued, “the bad news is that the DNA I got from the fur didn’t match anyone’s in the ACD.”

  A few years earlier, the Arcane Crimes Database added DNA sampling to the fingerprint and criminal histories they kept on file. Problem was, it took time to collect and process DNA samples from all the Arcane criminals in the country. Mostly it had samples from crooks who were already in jail, which wasn’t so helpful because if they were behind bars, chances were good they weren’t guilty of current crimes.

  “Shit,” Morales said.

  Mez held up a hand. “Not so fast. As it happens, Prospero’s friend in CSI at BPD is a real peach. This morning, she faxed over her preliminary report from the crime scene.”

  My eyebrows popped up. “Does Eldritch know about that?” I asked Gardner.

  She shrugged. “Not our business.” Which meant, no.

  “Anyway,” Mez continued, “according to her, there wasn’t enough physical evidence to support the theory that Marvin Brown was killed at Volos Towers.”

  “His body was moved?” Morales asked, glancing at me.

  “Wait,” I said, recalling the gruesome scene, “no way his head was bashed in elsewhere and moved.”

  “According to Val, it happened postmortem.”

  “Someone didn’t want the cops to have an easy time of identifying Mr. Brown,” Gardner concluded.

  Mez nodded. “Unfortunately, the surveillance cameras weren’t much help. They show a black van arriving at 2:08 in front of the building. But soon after there’s a blackout in the footage.”

  I sighed. “So whoever did this is organized and resourceful.”

  “Not so fast,” Mez said with a smile. “Val sent over a few stills taken from the footage just before the cameras went dark.” He pulled them out of the file to pass around.

  I looked at the first one he handed me. The van he mentioned was maybe twenty feet from the camera. There were no identifying marks on the vehicle and no license plate was visible. Likewise, the windows were too tinted to see inside. Next couple of images were the same. By the fourth, I was getting antsy that Mez was just fucking with us. But this one showed a person dressed in black from head to toe exit the driver’s side, which was closest to the camera. The suspect was slim in build, but tall—lanky. The only part of his skin that showed was the mouth and chin as he finished a cigarette. The next still showed him pulling down the mask and tossing the cigarette on the ground. Another figure was coming around the van, but he was wearing a mask, too.

  I passed the last image to Morales, wondering what I was missing. Then it hit me. I snatched the picture back from Morales and spun around to Mez. “Tell me you got it.”

  “What?” Morales asked, frowning.

  Mez smiled at me. “Val had her team get it. She sent it to me because she knew I could rush the DNA.”

  “Hello?” Shadi snapped. “Anyone want to fill the rest of us in?”

  I turned and held up the picture. “This asshole was smoking a cigarette when he got out of the car.”

  Morales’s eyebrows snapped up. “Guess they were right—smoking is bad for your health.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Tell me you got a hit,” I said to Mez.

  His face fell. “Not exactly. The DNA isn’t in the ACD.”

  The mood in the room plummeted. “Oh ye of little faith,” Mez said. “I may not have the asshole’s DNA, but I have his number.” He held up an evidence bag containing the cigarette butt. The filter was gold and the body of the cigarette appeared to be covered in purple paper.

  My stomach started doing jumping jacks. “Fuck. Me.”

  “This, my friends,” Mez said, “is a Vice Royal cigarette.”

  “Never heard of them,” Shadi said.

  “They’re a specialty brand. Costly,” Gardner said. “Rare.”

  “So we just need to track down people who smoke that brand,” Shadi said.

  I knew only two people who smoked Vice Royals. One was locked away in Crowley Penitentiary. The other was—

  “Don’t bother,” I said. “I already know who it is.”

  “Well?” Gardner said. The other three turned to me with expectant expressions.

  “Looks like Volos wasn’t lying.” For some reason that realization made me feel more relieved than it should have. “The only asshole on the streets I know who smokes that brand is Hieronymus Bane.”

  Morales frowned at me. “The son of Ramses Bane?” At my nod, he whistled low. “Fuck me.”

  “You’re sure?” Gardner asked.

  “Sure enough to investigate, anyway.”

  “There’s no way State Attorney Stone will give us a warrant based on a cigarette butt,” she said.

  “We don’t need one for a routine traffic stop,” Morales said. “Maybe if we put a little pressure on the prick he’ll spill something his daddy doesn’t want us to know.”

  “Guy like that has to have something in his car that would allow us to detain him long enough.” I nodded. “It could work. Thing is, Harry’s loyal to Bane, but there’s also bitterness there. He’s been angling to start his own crew for years, but Bane won’t allow i
t. We could maybe play on that.”

  “Right,” Gardner said. “Play that up with him. Tell him we’ve got enough evidence to put him away unless he gives us something solid on Daddy Dearest.”

  “We’ll have to be careful, though. If he asks to lawyer up, we’re toast.”

  “Do it,” Gardner said. “Shadi, I want you to pull everything you can find on Hieronymus and Ramses Bane. Maybe once word gets to Bane that we’re targeting his kid, it’ll rattle his cage enough to make a mistake.”

  “What about me?” Mez asked.

  “You call the CSI lady and tell her you couldn’t find DNA on the cigarette. Don’t tell her we’re targeting Bane’s kid. We don’t need Eldritch interfering until we have what we need.”

  “Sir,” I said, “are you sure? If we’re right here, this information could make their murder investigation.”

  “Fuck ’em,” Morales said. “If the tables were turned Eldritch wouldn’t give us the lead. In fact, he’s probably off giving the mayor a hummer as we speak.”

  Gardner sighed but nodded. “He’s right. Keep it tight until we have what we need.”

  I clenched my jaw. Part of me wanted to call them out for perpetuating the bullshit politics. On the other hand, the prospect of blowing this case wide open without Eldritch’s interference appealed to my competitive nature. So I kept my mouth shut. I just hoped that when the dust of this case cleared and Eldritch found out what we’d done, I’d have already secured my spot on the task force for good.

  “You guys need me to call DMV to find out Harry’s license plate and car model?” Shadi asked.

  I shook my head and smiled. “I don’t think that will be a problem.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  An hour later, we were in Morales’s SUV, following a neon-green Trans Am through the Cauldron. The license on the pimpmobile read WIZ-LIFE. Deep bass thumped from its open windows and T-tops. Occasionally, puffs of smoke would escape, too.

  I’d called Baba before we left the gym. She had been home celebrating her twenty-buck victory at bingo and said she was happy to keep an eye on Danny until I could get home. When we’d dropped him off, Baba was very interested to meet Morales. She’d pulled me aside and said, “I see the Sexy Juice is already working.” I didn’t bother correcting her. Mostly because it was funny to see Morales get all uncomfortable when Baba waggled her eyebrows at him and checked out his butt.