Dirty Magic

by Jaye Wells

  As for Danny, he hadn’t said much before we left. Eventually I’d have to figure out how to get him to drop this magic business, but for the time being I was off to arrest the kind of asshole I was terrified Danny would become if he started cooking.

  Unlike his dad, Harry didn’t spend all his time down in the Arteries; Bane needed a man aboveground he could trust. For Morales’s and my sake, I just hoped some of that trust was misplaced.

  “What an idiot,” Morales complained. “We’ve been following this douchebag for fifteen minutes and he hasn’t gone above twenty.”

  “He’s cruising,” I said. “Wants to show off those sweet rims.”

  We were five cars back, keeping our distance for the time being. Eventually, he’d take a wide right turn or forget to use his blinker, but with the time crunch over our heads it was hard not to be impatient. Any minute now Val and the detective on the case would make the connection to the cigarette brand. We wanted to be sure we had our shot at Harry before they figured it out.

  “Tell me something,” Morales said, scooting his ass around on the seat like it was growing numb.

  “Yeah?” I had my eyes on Harry’s taillights, willing one to go out.

  “What’s the real reason you don’t use magic?”

  My head jerked around at the suspicion in his tone. “Isn’t doing this job for the last five years reason enough?”

  “Nope. Every cop I know uses magic in some form.”

  I sighed. “Most cops didn’t grow up in a coven. I’ve seen firsthand the damage cooking can do to people and those they love.”

  He shot me a look that made me shift in my seat. I felt as though he saw the truth through my skin. “Who died?”

  That one simple question had the effect of a small explosion going off in my midsection. Was I that transparent? “I don’t—”

  “Cut the shit, Kate. It’s obvious. You wouldn’t be fighting so hard to keep Danny off the burners and avoiding magic if there wasn’t some deep pain associated with it. Who was it?”

  I clenched my teeth. “My mother.”

  His eyes widened. “I’m sorry.” The shit of it was he sounded sincere so I couldn’t be too mad at him for making me admit it.

  I forced a shrug. “It was a long time ago.”

  “Some pain only sharpens with time.”

  I jerked my head toward him. He was speaking from experience. I raised my brows in challenge. It was his turn.

  He sighed. “Don’t pretend you haven’t wondered about my hand.”

  I nodded. “What happened?”

  “My dad was an Adept. That’s where my sister and I got the gene.” My eyebrows rose in shock. Morales always used his right hand. He lifted his left and clenched it. As he did he grimaced. “Doesn’t work so well anymore. After the accident.” It never occurred to me he didn’t use his left because he simply couldn’t.

  “What accident?”

  “My dad wasn’t formally trained. He grew up poor and his parents were Catholic. They saw his gifts as a curse from the devil and tried to beat it out of him.”

  I cringed in sympathy. Over the years, I’d heard too many tales of Mundane parents who couldn’t handle having Adept kids. They’d tie the kid’s left hand behind his back so he had to use his right—or worse.

  “Anyway, I was pretty young when it happened. Eight. My little sister, Blanca, was only three. Dad was in the basement cooking some potion he said was going to make us rich. He was always trying to invent a formula he could sell to one of the Big Magic companies.”

  I nodded and swallowed, bracing myself for the punch line.

  “When the explosion happened…” He swallowed hard, his throat clicking drily. “My mom was helping me with homework in the back of the house. Blanca was down for a nap. Mom tried to get me out the back door before the fire could reach us, but I ran back in to save Blanca. By that point, the fire was so intense, the front of the house was basically an inferno. Unfortunately, she didn’t get to me before I thrust my hand into the flames.”

  I slammed my eyes shut and cursed silently. “Jesus, Drew.”

  My eyes opened in time to see him smile tightly. “After we buried Dad and Blanca”—he cleared the catch in his throat—“we moved in with Mom’s Mundane family. I learned how to use my right hand, moved to a new school, and started living as a Mundane kid.”

  “So why did you encourage me to let Danny study magic?”

  “I made my own choice.” He shrugged. “My mom, as much pain as losing them caused, never said I couldn’t study magic. She said if I wanted to she’d figure out a way to send me to a real school so I could learn to use it safely, but she let me decide. I chose to live as a Mundane. But Danny should be able to choose his own path, too.”

  I blinked at him.

  “What?”

  “Nothing, I’m just … shocked, I guess. Didn’t mark you for the philosophical type.”

  He smirked at me. “Oh, I got lots of layers, Cupcake.”

  I shook my head at him but couldn’t help smiling. Part of me was relieved to have him back to his cocky self again. The brief glimpse of the sort-of-nice guy hinted at a complexity I wasn’t comfortable handling.

  “Anyway,” he said when I didn’t immediately offer a response, “you’re gonna have to do something about the kid. If he keeps knocking on our suspect’s doors, Gardner’s gonna lose it.” He looked over at me. “You’re a pain in the ass, but it’d be a shame for the team to lose you.”

  “Thanks, I think.”

  Morales put his blinker on to follow Harry right down Stark Street. He slowed and pulled over as Harry came to a stop in front of the Green Faerie. “Well, would you look at that?” He pulled his siren from under his seat. “Our friend just parked facing the wrong way.”

  He lowered his window, popped the light on the roof, and hit the gas. Two seconds later, we pulled in hot behind Harry’s car. The kid had been leaning against the driver’s door of the car, his arms crossed as he talked to a girl. She wore torn fishnets, a plaid miniskirt, and a halter top that said she either went to the sluttiest private school in history—or she was one of Aphrodite’s girls.

  When we pulled up, Harry stood and turned to face us. His mouth curled into a sneer. He took one last drag off a cigarette and tossed it into the gutter. It was hard to tell from my vantage point, but I’d bet big bucks it was a Vice Royal.

  When we got out of the car, the girl’s eyes widened and she took off at a speed I would have thought impossible in her stiletto Mary Janes. We let her go since we had bigger fish to fry.

  “Afternoon, officers,” Harry said. “You lost?”

  Morales lowered his aviators and smirked at the guy. “Are you aware that you’re parked illegally, son?”

  Harry frowned and glanced back at his car. “No, I’m not. The car’s still on. I’m idling.”

  “You can take that up with traffic court.” Morales made a show of pulling out a ticket notebook. Where he’d gotten his hands on that, I didn’t want to know. “License and registration?”

  Harry’s look was full of piss and vinegar. “Why are you harassing me?”

  Morales looked at me. “Are you harassing anyone?”

  I shrugged. “I thought we were doing our part to prevent a traffic accident.”

  Harry swiped his license from his wallet and threw it on the ground.

  Morales’s posture went from loose and jokey to alpha cop. “Pick it up,” he projected. “Slowly. Keep your hands where we can see them.”

  Harry sighed and did as instructed. He handed the card to me, his eyes scanning me up and down in what I guess he thought was an intimidating manner. “The registration?” I asked. “Insurance?”

  “Left ’em in my other pants.”

  “Uh-oh,” Morales said. “We’re going to have to write you up for that, too.”

  “Unless they’re in your glove box,” I said. “Maybe we should check just to be sure.”

  “They aren’t in there,” he
said, his voice dripping venom.

  “I’d feel better if we checked.” I nodded at Morales. “Anything in there you want to tell us about before he goes digging?”

  Harry’s chin came up. “I got nothing to hide.” But his milk-white cheeks reddened.

  While Morales began his search, I smiled at Harry. “He’ll just be a minute.”

  He looked down at the ground and kicked a rock with his boot.

  I glanced through the windows of the car and saw Morales duck his head under the seats. To distract our uncooperative friend, I started chatting. “So how’s your dad?”

  His head came up, forcing his white hair to sway. “Do you have any idea what he’s going to do once he finds out about this?”

  I cocked my head. “I’m dying to know.”

  He muttered something under his breath. I made out the words “die” and “bitch.”

  I put a hand to my ear. “What was that? I didn’t quite catch it.”

  He looked at me with hot eyes. “Enjoy yourself now, Kate.”

  I narrowed my gaze. “Are you threatening me, Harry?” If I could piss him off enough to lose it and threaten me directly, we’d have him.

  He looked away, obviously realizing how close he’d been to slipping up.

  “Well, well, well,” Morales said, standing up with something in his hand. “Let me guess: You left your permit for this in your other pants, too.” He raised the pistol high, balancing it on the end of a pen so he wouldn’t get his prints on it. It was one of those flashy numbers. The overly large, shiny chrome barrel and inlaid mother-of-pearl handle were probably compensating for Harry’s low-caliber pocket pistol.

  “That ain’t mine,” Harry said in a bored tone. “I think you planted it.”

  Morales laughed. “Then why are your initials engraved in the barrel?” He nodded at me. “Also found these.” He held up a purple and gold cigarette box.

  “So what? Smoking isn’t illegal.”

  “Neither is being an asshole, but we’re taking you in anyway,” Morales snapped. “Cuff him.”

  * * *

  Twenty minutes later, I looked in the rearview mirror, expecting to see red and blue at any second. Morales was in the back with Harry and I was driving. We were miles from the precinct and getting farther away by the second.

  “You’re going the wrong direction.” Judging from his bored tone, he knew exactly what we were doing, but he wasn’t about to let us see him worry about it.

  “Oops,” I said, “sorry. I get so turned around down here.” Which was bullshit, of course. I’d learned to drive on these streets just as Harry had.

  “Turn right here,” he said.

  I turned left.

  “What the fuck?” Harry said, finally losing his cool. “Where are you taking me?”

  “We told you,” Morales said, “the precinct.”

  Harry looked as if he were ready to spit acid. “When my lawyer finds out about this he’ll have your badges.”

  “Since when is it illegal to have a poor sense of direction?” Morales said. His cell in the console started buzzing. “Hold on, Harry.”

  Our guest gritted his teeth and muttered, “Hieronymus, asshole.”

  Morales ignored that and spoke into the phone. “Yeah, we got him. Yep, almost. See you in a minute.” He looked up and nodded to me. As agreed beforehand, I turned toward Lake Erie. “Hold tight, Harry, we gotta see a friend about a thing.”

  Two minutes later, I turned the SUV into a weedy parking lot near the water. This section of town hadn’t felt the healing touch of Volos’s money. Instead of high-rise apartments and expensive boutiques, the shore was lined with cardboard condos and littered with dirty needles. A beige Camry was already parked in the lot. I pulled up alongside the driver’s door. Gardner rolled down her window. “Any problems?”

  I shook my head. She nodded resolutely and exited the car. The wind lashed at her hair and clothes as she walked toward the SUV. Things weren’t much calmer in the vehicle’s interior. Harry saw Gardner and went stiff. “Who the fuck is that?”

  Morales smiled. “That’s Special Agent Miranda Gardner. Over in Detroit they call her the Velvet Hammer.”

  Harry frowned. “Why?”

  “Because she’s got a way of making people talk who don’t want to.”

  Harry swallowed hard. “I want to speak to my lawyer.”

  “Relax,” Morales said, patting him on the shoulder. “We’re just giving her a ride to the precinct.”

  Gardner pulled open the SUV’s side door. The cold wind whipped through the small space like a nor’easter. “Gentlemen,” she said, nodding to the two in the back. “Prospero, take us to the precinct.”

  Harry blew out a long breath. “Thank Christ.”

  Gardner smiled. “Drive slowly.”

  I nodded and put the SUV in Drive. As I drove, I chewed on my bottom lip and kept checking behind me. What we were doing was highly unethical. Even Gardner, who had come up with the plan, looked tense. Only Morales appeared to see the whole thing as some sort of joyride.

  “Mr. Bane, I need you to understand that once we reach the precinct, you will be arrested.”

  Harry jerked in his seat as if she’d stuck him with a hot poker. “What? I already told them that gun wasn’t mine.”

  She shook her head. “It’s not about the gun. In the last couple of hours, my team stumbled on some evidence linking you to the murder of Marvin Brown.”

  Harry’s face morphed into a practiced mask, but his complexion had paled about five shades. “Who the fuck is that?”

  Gardner tilted her head. “He was a Herald for the Votary Coven before he was brutally attacked and his body left on the premises of Volos Towers.”

  “So?”

  “So, we know you were there, Mr. Bane. At the very least, you conspired to move the body onto Mr. Volos’s property in an effort to frame him for the murder.”

  “You can’t prove that.” Harry looked too sure of himself. No doubt he was thinking back to how he and his partner had disabled the video cameras. Also, he happened to be correct. We couldn’t prove shit yet, which was precisely why we were applying the heat in the hopes he’d crack.

  Gardner looked at Morales, who handed an evidence bag to her. She held it up high so Harry could see it. “Vice Royals. It’s your brand, right?”

  He frowned. “Yeah, so?”

  She reached into the briefcase she’d brought with her. “This bag contains a cigarette butt found at the crime scene.” She paused and let that hang there for a good thirty seconds. Even from my vantage point, watching everything unfold through the rearview, I could see the large beads of sweat that appeared on Harry’s upper lip. “Did you know that the MEA’s lab techs can now process DNA from crime scenes in less than twenty-four hours, Mr. Bane?”

  His mouth worked like a fish trying to dislodge the hook Gardner had just wedged in there nice and tight. “Me being there isn’t proof I killed that asshole.”

  Boom. Morales and Gardner exchanged a quick victorious look. Now we had the proof we needed that Harry had been the one dumping the body.

  “Regardless, we’ll be able to pin an aiding-and-abetting charge on you. Combined with the gun charge, you’re looking at a nice, long vacation.”

  “So?” Harry laughed. “I’m Ramses Bane’s son. I’ll be treated like a fucking prince in Crowley.”

  “You won’t be in Crowley,” Gardner said. “I already checked with State Attorney Stone. The murder rap doesn’t fall under federal Arcane statutes. You’ll probably go to a Mundane state prison.”

  Morales whistled low. “Ouch. Better start limbering up your jaw now, son. You’re gonna make sweet cell candy for some Bubba.”

  Harry swallowed audibly. “This is bullshit. I want to see my lawyer.”

  Look, I didn’t like this guy at all. Harry had been a pain in my ass since we were kids. He used to throw tantrums whenever all the kids got together to play Wiz versus the Fuzz. If he didn’t win, he’d t
hrow these ridiculous fits. He was so easy to rile up, Volos started calling him “Harry” just to watch how his face turned purple with rage. Plus, given what we knew now, I was reasonably sure he was knee-deep in the Gray Wolf bullshit, along with his father. Still, watching him get shaken down by Morales and Gardner left an acrid taste in my mouth. The one thing that separated the cops from the criminals was that cops followed the rule of law. Those principles were the razor-thin line between them and us. But watching Morales and Gardner work, I felt as if they hadn’t just crossed the line but leaped over it with abandon.

  On the other hand, I knew that if we granted his request and delivered him to the precinct without getting what we needed, we’d be sunk. His daddy’s high-priced lawyers would have him out on bail by nightfall and then he could disappear. Or worse, he and his father could take the next step in whatever their fucked-up plan was to create havoc in the Cauldron.

  As I navigated the tricky morality of the situation, I aimed the SUV in tighter and tighter circles nearing the station. Every now and then, we’d pass a BPD cruiser and my fingers would tighten on the steering wheel. “Guys, we need to wrap this up.”

  Gardner looked up and nodded. “The problem is the murder is the BPD’s case, but they don’t have the same evidence I’m sitting on. See, my goal is to find the person behind Gray Wolf. If I hand the evidence to the BPD, you’re going down, but I’m left empty-handed. Unless…” she trailed off. “Never mind.”

  Harry sat up straighter after a brief struggle with his cuffed hands. “What?”

  She sighed. “Well, it’s like this: The US attorney assigned to this case has a real hard-on for getting the guy behind Gray Wolf. So if someone had good information about the wizard behind it, the attorney would be very grateful.”

  “Don’t insult me.” Harry pressed his lips together. “You just saw what happens to snitches in the Cauldron.”

  “You ever heard of the game they play in Mundane prisons? ‘Scalping,’ they call it.” Morales waited for Harry to narrow his eyes before he explained. “It’s where they see who can cut off more fingers from the left hands of Adepts. They call it ‘scalping’ on account of it’s like how the Indians used to collect scalps from the gringos who tried to take over their land.”