Dirty Magic

by Jaye Wells

  Harry actually laughed in Morales’s face. “Go tell your scary stories to one of the peewees on Exposition, asshole. If a fucking Righty comes at me, he’ll limp away.”

  We were burning gas and daylight, so I pulled the van to the side of the road. We were in Sanguinarian territory, not far from the alley where Harkins killed the woman the night this shit began for me. I couldn’t help but wonder how things would have been different if I’d just let him escape into the Arteries instead of chasing him toward that inevitable conclusion.

  “There’s something else you haven’t considered,” Gardner said. At Harry’s raised brows, she continued, “When we get you to the precinct, the first thing that’ll happen is a search warrant will be issued for your residence. When they find ampoules of Gray Wolf in your house, you’ll go down for that, too. Maybe it’ll get you into Crowley, but you won’t be there long enough to enjoy your status. The federal potion charges plus the murder will get you a one-way ticket to the gas chamber.”

  Harry opened his mouth, but Morales spoke first. “Ah, ah, ah, think for a minute. We’re talking about you being put to death for crimes your father masterminded. Are you ready to die for him, Harry?”

  “Or you can give us the information we want,” Gardner said, “and you’ll be free to pursue your own ambitions without your father interfering.”

  Harry sucked at the front of his teeth for a minute. By this point, we’d been driving around for almost an hour—well past the time when we could claim we’d simply taken a couple of wrong turns. I squeezed the steering wheel so tight my knuckles were white as we waited for Harry’s answer.

  “So what? I give you some sort of tip and you talk to that attorney?”

  “You give us a good tip and yeah, we’ll have the attorney here with papers reducing charges before you finish talking,” Gardner said.

  “And if I don’t, you’ll take me to the precinct to be booked?”

  “We’ll find the evidence eventually to put you away permanently.”

  The white-haired wizard looked down at his hands, thinking it over. The tension in the car was thick as Harry’s musky cologne. When he finally looked up, his expression was unreadable. I turned full in my seat to get a better look. His eyes met mine for a brief, hard moment. His head tilted as he watched me and then the corner of his mouth lifted, as if he’d remembered something suddenly. “You know what?” He finally looked at Gardner. “Fuck you. I’m no snitch.” As the aftershocks of that announcement rippled through the vehicle, Harry started laughing. “Now take me to the precinct or I’ll sue all your asses for kidnapping.”

  I froze and glanced at Gardner. Her expression didn’t betray any of the disappointment she had to be feeling, but her stiff shoulders hinted at her anger. She met my gaze and jerked a small nod. I sighed and turned around. As I put the car in Drive, I met Morales’s eyes in the rearview. He winked at me. We’d planned for this, but Morales looked as if he had been hoping this would happen instead of feeling like a man pushed to use a last resort.

  Our destination was only a few blocks away. On the way, Harry was quiet but the smug look on his face spoke volumes. He thought he’d fucked us but good. Little did he know.

  I pulled the van onto Mercury Street. It took Harry a few moments to realize I was slowing down. When he did, he tensed. “Why is she stopping?”

  The SUV glided easy as you please next to the curb. We parked about half a block away from a group of Sanguinarian dealers huddled around a trash-can fire. They looked up immediately, mistaking the van as the vehicle of a buyer. A short, skinny kid broke off from the group and started in our direction.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” Harry asked. The first notes of panic entered his tone.

  “Now that I’ve thought about it, maybe we were too hasty in nabbing you for that gun,” Morales said. “Probably you were telling the truth about having your permit at home.” He clapped Harry on the back. “It’s getting cold, so we figured we’d take you right to your dad’s front door.”

  As they talked, I kept an eye on the side mirror to track the kid’s progress. He couldn’t have been more than thirteen, but his eyes already had a street-honed hardness. Luckily the car’s windows were tinted so he couldn’t see who was inside. Yet. If Harry didn’t act soon, everyone in a three-block radius would know exactly whom we had in there.

  “Take me somewhere else,” Harry said quickly. “If they see me with you—”

  “What?” Morales raised a brow. “You’ll end up like Marvin Brown?”

  Harry’s mouth snapped shut.

  “You either get out here and receive a police escort to the tunnel entrance or you come with us to the precinct and have a conversation with the US attorney.”

  “I’ll even escort you all the way to the tunnels myself,” I said with a smile. “Wanna bet those assholes will recognize me and wonder if you’re considering defecting from the covens, just like I did?”

  Harry crossed his arms. “You’re bluffing.”

  “Oh yeah?” I unclicked my seat belt. “Remember what happened last time we played chicken, Harry?”

  His eyes widened. Back when we were around ten or eleven, Harry got a brand-new bike from his dad for his birthday. It was a cherry-red ten-speed that was the envy of all the Cauldron kids. My mom couldn’t afford a bike for me, and I was so envious of that fucking thing it burned me. So one day I decided to challenge Harry to a game of chicken. He was to ride at me full speed on the bike. If I flinched, he’d get to punch me in the face. If I won, he had to give me the bike. After my mom came home to find a red bike in our living room, she made me give it back to him. But the few hours that bike was in my possession were some of the happiest of my childhood.

  The look on Harry’s face now was a lot like the one that marred his face when he pulled himself off the pavement that afternoon long ago. Back then, his elbows and knees had been bloody, and tears streaked down his pale skin. Now he was an adult and there were no tears, but the hatred remained.

  Harry’s eyes burned at me. “You will regret this, bitch.”

  “Maybe.” I smiled and reached for the handle. “But it will be fun while it lasts. Shall we?”

  The kid outside was even with the rear bumper of the SUV now. His head was tilted up as if he smelled danger, but the promise of a sale kept him moving forward. Harry glanced back. He popped his knuckles and his knee jostled up and down, betraying his nerves. “Fuck!”

  “Decision time, asshole,” Morales said.

  I reached for the door handle. The sound of the mechanism clicking open lit a match under Harry’s ass. “Close the fucking door and drive!” he shouted.

  I froze and looked over my shoulder. “You sure?”

  “I’ll talk to the lawyer. Just fucking go!”

  I glanced at Gardner. She nodded almost imperceptibly. I pulled the door closed, shocking the shit out of the kid who had almost reached my window. In no time, I had the car in gear and we squealed away from the curb, leaving a confused potion dealer empty-handed at the curb.

  “You made the right choice, Mr. Bane,” Gardner said to the now-dejected Harry.

  “You are all going to fucking die.”

  I met Morales’s gaze in the mirror again. He smiled, but it didn’t reassure me. Because Harry hadn’t just issued an idle threat. His words had sounded like a vow—or a curse.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Later at the station, the door to the viewing room opened and Mez walked in. “What’d I miss?”

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “Patience, Cupcake,” Morales said. Mez shot us a speculative glance at the nickname. “Gardner’s just warming up.”

  “Did Eldritch buy the story?” the wizard asked.

  I glanced around to be sure no one was around but immediately felt ridiculous since we were in a closed room. “Kind of. He looked suspicious, but once Gardner handed over your DNA evidence he stopped asking too many questions.” As part of the booking process, we’d got
ten a swab of Harry’s cheek for Mez to match against the sample he’d gotten off the cigarette. Some quick work on his part in the precinct lab proved without a doubt that Harry had been at the scene where Marvin’s body was found.

  In the interrogation room, Harry and his court-appointed lawyer—he’d refused to call his dad’s lawyer, all things considered—sat at a table across from Gardner, Eldritch, and US Attorney Aidan Stone. The latter looked to be in his mid-to-late thirties, but it was always hard to tell with lawyers, especially those who worked in the public sector. Most of the local DAs I met aged like dogs—for every year they’d served prosecuting the scum of the earth their faces aged seven. I suppose some women might call Stone handsome, with his salt-and-pepper hair and his piercing blue eyes, but I was too distracted worrying that Harry was going to change his mind to pay much attention.

  “We’re willing to offer you a reduced charge in exchange for information directly linking your father, Ramses Bane, to the cooking and distribution of Gray Wolf.”

  Harry’s lawyer, a balding public defender by the name of Steve Spalding, dabbed at the sweat on his forehead. It wasn’t every day that a low-level defender got the son of a coven leader as a client. Despite his obvious nerves, he didn’t seem to have too much trouble keeping up. “What is the reduced charge?”

  “We’ll reduce the aiding-and-abetting charge to accessory-after-the-fact. Maximum sentence would be three years. Since Harry never has been convicted of a crime before, it’ll likely be less. But he’s looking at jail time either way—”

  Harry blinked. “That’s some bullshit.”

  Stone continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “Unless he also agrees to testify against his father in court.”

  “Hell no! I’m already asking for a bullet just for talking to you people. I stand up in court and I’ll be dead before I walk back out of the courtroom.”

  Stone had already anticipated Harry’s being a dry snitch, so he didn’t look too shocked by the refusal. “All we’re asking today is that you provide information leading to your father’s arrest in exchange for a reduced sentence.”

  “I don’t want to spend three years in the can.”

  “Then I suppose you better be sure the information you give us today is watertight,” Eldritch said. At first he’d been pissed that Gardner got a drop on Harry, but once Gardner promised to give him the camera time when Bane was brought in, his disposition became downright generous.

  “I don’t know,” Harry hemmed.

  “Did we mention that while we were waiting for your attorney,” Gardner said, “my agents took a closer look at your car? Imagine their lack of surprise when they found a hydraulic trap behind your expensive stereo system.”

  Harry jerked upright. “Yo, if they fucked up my ride, I’m gonna sue.”

  She reached in her pocket. “You might have trouble with that”—she laid the ampoule on the table that Morales and I had found in the hidden compartment—“seeing as how they found this.”

  Spalding snorted. “Please, do you know how easy it will be to prove my client uses that for medicinal purposes?”

  “Why don’t you tell your counselor what potion this is?” Gardner said to Harry.

  He shrugged. “Just a blood potion.”

  “Tell him the street name.”

  “Ain’t got a name.”

  Gardner made a show of flipping through a file folder. “That’s interesting. According to the lab wizards, the potion found in Mr. Bane’s car has chemical components consistent with a popular blood potion sold in the Arteries called Type X.”

  The attorney’s expression remained impassive. “Never heard of it.”

  “It’s for my anemia,” Harry said quickly.

  Gardner chuckled. “Sure.”

  “Agent, I suggest you get to the point.” Spalding’s tone was insulting.

  Gardner smiled and leaned back. Harry kept his eyes glued on the ampoule. “My point, counselor”—her eyes were glued to Harry—“is in addition to the gun charge and evidence linking him to a murder, we have enough evidence here to link Mr. Bane to potion distribution.”

  The attorney laughed. “Based on an ounce? Please don’t insult us. And as for the firearm, he has a permit. It also was stored safely in his glove box. That’s not illegal.”

  “It is if the gun is loaded, counselor.” She glanced down at the folder. “The firearm in question held four bullets.”

  Harry shot a glance at Spalding, who refused to look at him.

  “In addition,” she said, “we are working on a search warrant for Mr. Bane’s residence.”

  After we’d found the ampoule, Gardner called Stone to set the warrant in motion. We were hoping we didn’t need it if Harry started singing, but it was always good to have a backup plan.

  “Go ahead,” Harry said, bravado stamped on his face. “They won’t find shit.”

  “My agents found the trap in your car, Harry,” she shot back. “Do you really think they won’t find the hidey-holes in the house, too?”

  Harry paled. Spalding cleared his throat, a not-so-subtle reminder for Harry to shut the fuck up. “What information do you need on Bane to make this deal happen?”

  “Hey!” Harry protested.

  Spalding slanted him a look but nodded for Stone to go ahead. Morales shot me a grin. I couldn’t see Gardner’s face from my vantage point, but I imagined inside she was high-fiving herself.

  “We need to know where Ramses is cooking the potion and the location of the stash.”

  “I don’t know that shit,” Harry said in a disgusted tone, but his words lacked conviction.

  Spalding elbowed Harry. “If you could just give me a minute to discuss your offer with my client?”

  Gardner, Eldritch, and Stone rose. “You have five minutes before this offer is off the table,” the attorney said. “I’d advise you to take this deal, son. If you say no, you’re going away for a very, very long, hard time.”

  * * *

  They joined us in the viewing room thirty seconds later.

  “Think they’ll go for it?” Eldritch asked before Stone could even take a breath.

  “I sure as hell hope so.” He raised his brows and sighed. “We’re running out of time. The longer this takes the more likely it’ll be for Bane to find out we’re on his trail and close up shop.”

  “You didn’t ask him who is helping Bane,” I said.

  Several pairs of eyes swiveled in my direction. “Why would we do that?” Eldritch snapped. “Bane is the big fish.”

  “But we know he couldn’t have come up with Gray Wolf on his own. What if Volos—”

  Eldritch waved a hand. “That again? Look, we know Bane is involved, we just need evidence linking him directly to the crime. Once we nab him, we can try to get him to confess who helped him come up with the formula, but most likely it was some desperate Votary wiz looking to make some quick cash.”

  I opened my mouth to keep arguing, but Gardner cleared her throat and shot me a look. Pushing Eldritch on this might hurt our chances of continued cooperation. But damned if I didn’t feel like brushing Bane’s alchemical accomplice to the back burner didn’t worry the hell out of me.

  Once I backed down, Gardner turned to Eldritch. “We need to have a team ready to go in.”

  Eldritch nodded. “It’ll have to be in the morning.”

  “Why not tonight?” Morales asked.

  “The Arteries are too dangerous at night,” I explained. “Even for an army.”

  “Which is what we’ll need,” Eldritch said. “Those tunnels are ambushes waiting to happen. I’ll call in a favor to the sheriff’s office to lend us some of their tactical wizards.”

  “Once he gives us the location, I’ll get the paperwork started for the no-knock warrant.”

  “How long will that take?” Mez asked.

  “Usually not too long, but Judge Akins is on duty today.”

  “Who is that?” Morales asked.

  Stone frowned. “They c
all him Judge Dread. Likes to watch harried attorneys jump through hoops.”

  “Just do what you can,” Gardner said. “Morales, you and Prospero will need to take lead on our strategy for the raid.”

  “Now hold on,” Eldritch cut in. “This will be a BPD operation.”

  Gardner raised a brow. “Bullshit. We brought you the evidence, the perp, and the deal that will secure the evidence we need to prove it’s Bane.”

  Eldritch crossed his arms. “And you’ll need BPD and county personnel to pull it off.”

  Gardner gritted her teeth. “I’ll let you make the statement at the press conference once Bane’s in custody.”

  Eldritch’s mustache twitched as he considered the deal. Seeing the back-room negotiation for camera time left a bad taste in my mouth. “Fine,” the captain said finally. “I also get to do the perp walk.”

  Gardner’s eye twitched. “No dice. My bosses will want the MEA to get some camera time.”

  Eldritch shrugged. “Let’s just say whichever agency nabs him gets to do the walk.”

  She nodded curtly. “Acceptable.”

  Stone made a world-weary face. “Now that that’s settled, we just need to hope this little shit comes through.”

  As if Stone’s words summoned him, Spalding rapped three times on the two-way mirror to indicate they were ready for us. Behind him, Harry slumped defeated at the table. Gardner smiled. “Shall we, gentlemen?”

  * * *

  Ten minutes later, Harry was in cuffs and being led out of the room. Eldritch, Gardner, and Stone all shook hands with Spalding and then with each other.

  Stone nodded. “I need to get back to my office to get the paperwork rolling. In the meantime, you can put him in lockup.”

  Morales, Mez, and I went into the hall to watch Harry be taken back to booking. “See ya around,” I said as soon as Hanson led him past.