Black Market (Black Records Book 2)

by Mark Feenstra

  Sure enough, they scurried down a small embankment to where a trickle of water flowed into a culvert. The poorly crafted cloaking spell couldn’t handle the extra details of the more varied terrain of the small stream bed, but they were now far enough down the embankment not even a passing pedestrian or cyclist could possibly see what they were doing. It was only by scampering down the slope behind them that I was able to continue observing them. Even then, I held my breath and laid flat on the hill to avoid being spotted if one of them happened to glance in my direction.

  Not willing to risk the light of my phone giving me away, I decided against photographing them while they disposed of the body. Seeming to have learned from their previous carelessness, they lowered the body to the opening of the culvert so they could slide it inside. One of the kids grabbed the victim’s feet, shoving him as far into the narrow tube as he could manage. Only when they’d done all they could to slide him out of sight did one of them burn a bit of energy to push the body even deeper into the narrow section of corrugated drain pipe.

  Although the kid holding the cloaking spell was nearly out of supernatural gas, he held the spell in place until they all scampered up and over the embankment. Once they were gone from view, I made myself count to fifty before slipping my phone from my pocket to send an email to the police tip line with details on where to find the body. Chase had set me up with what he’d claimed was an untraceable anonymous account. I hoped he’d done a good enough job to keep them from tracking me down. The last thing I wanted to do was explain to the cops how I knew where such a freshly killed body had been stashed. Then again, I wasn’t about to let it rot for what could be years before it was eventually discovered.

  Taking a hint from the kids, I wove a small concealment spell around myself before setting off after them again. It wouldn’t be enough to keep them from spotting me if they looked directly at me, but it would keep me hidden from any nearby security cameras or dash cams mounted on passing cars when the police checked in the course of their investigation. I just had to hope I hadn’t done anything stupid enough to compromise myself before that moment.

  The street opened up into a more residential area, and I had to hang back quite a ways in order to follow my quarry. As I’d guessed, they seemed to be heading back to the SkyTrain station. I followed them to the next intersection, then turned off and half sprinted along an alternate route in the hopes that I could rendezvous with Chase before they arrived. It wouldn’t be easy for us to follow them on the nearly empty trains running at this time of night, but if I burned a bit of energy, I figured I could probably use a few tricks to keep us from being noticed long enough to get on and off the train.

  “What the hell, Alex?” said a startled Chase when I tapped him on the shoulder.

  “They ditched the body back there,” I said, a little breathless from the effort of getting ahead of them. “They should be coming back here any second.”

  “Which way do you think they’ll go? This would be easier if we could get to the platform before them.”

  “No clue.” I scanned the street, squinting for the magical glow that was masked by the numerous artificial lights shining around the station.

  The five kids snaked into the path beneath the SkyTrain, stopping right at the spot where Karyn had dragged Chase into the bushes to cast her illusion on him. They hesitated for just long enough to drop the cloaking spell, then re-emerged as though they’d simply walked out of the path from the other direction.

  “Clever little bastards,” I muttered. “Let’s hang back and follow them up. It’ll be tricky, but if we time it right, I think we can get on the train behind them.”

  The closer the group got to the safety of the station, the more they returned to their rambunctious selves. One of them cracked a joke, breaking the tension enough for the rest of them to laugh and begin horsing around as they slipped through a broken fare gate that hadn’t closed properly. Chase and I waited for them to reach the stairs leading up to the westbound train before following after them, but they were so wrapped up in their own goofing off, I wondered if we couldn’t just walk up behind them without being noticed.

  Still best to play it safe, I figured. We hung back near the top of the steps until the light of an incoming train shone in the distance.

  “Last train of the night,” said Chase. “These guys planned this pretty carefully.”

  Looking at them now, I’d never believe how efficiently they’d worked as a team down there unless I’d seen it for myself. They just seemed like a bunch of kids you’d see loitering at the mall when they should have been in class.

  “This is our window,” Chase said with a nod towards the train that had just squealed to a halt.

  I flared a bit of energy into a slightly more elegant version of the cloaking spell the kid had used. It had to be quite strong in order to stand up to the bright overhead lights, but I only held it in place for the span of time it took us to cross from the top of the stairs to a door two cars back from the one the kids had stepped onto.

  Neither of us spoke. The train pulled out of the station, and Chase settled into a seat that gave him a partial view of the kids. I leaned against the wall just behind the bulkhead between cars. I couldn’t see them, but they were being loud enough that I could clearly hear them over the soft rattle and clack of the older SkyTrain car flying down the tracks.

  “They’re getting off already,” Chase said as he scrambled to his feet at the next stop.

  We ducked out of the train and once again I flared my cloaking spell long enough to keep us hidden while we let them get ahead of us.

  “Check it out,” Chase said when we hit the bottom of the stairs.

  I followed his gaze to the three sleek cars parked next to each other on the street in front of the station. The five kids split up and got into the cars, neon purple running lights shining bright against the pavement as the heavily modified vehicles came to life. All three vehicles pulled away from the curb and sped off into the night in such perfect sync I wondered if they hadn’t practiced it. The cars rumbled like demons wen their drivers shifted them into gear, sputtering from some aftermarket modification that would likely ensure they could hit speeds far higher than any police car could match.

  “Huh,” said Chase. “You catch those plates?”

  I shook my head, still staring down the empty street and wondering what the hell we were going to do next.

  “They were coated with a reflective spray,” he explained. “It’s almost invisible to the naked eye, but it makes the plates glare so brightly under the flash of a traffic camera that it’s impossible to record the number.”

  “I don’t suppose you caught the numbers of any of them before they took off?”

  Chase had his phone out and was furiously punching letters and numbers into the on-screen keyboard. When he was done he held it up for me to see that he’d recorded two of the three plate numbers along with the make and model of all the cars. I was always happy to have Chase along on a job, but at times like this he more than proved his worth as my partner. Had I been questioned, I couldn’t have even recalled what color the cars were.

  “What now?” he asked, shoving his phone back into his pocket.

  “Home, I guess.” I swallowed with some effort, the acrid aftertaste of using my magic acting as a perfect manifestation of the bitterness I felt over letting the kids get away. I still had no idea what they intended to do with that magic, and I’d failed to stop the murder I should have seen coming.

  “I’m worn out,” I continued. “Right now I just want to get to bed.”

  “I’ll call a taxi,” said Chase.

  Karyn had driven us to the SkyTrain station in the first place, and since we’d just gotten off the last train of the night, we had no other way of getting home again. I sat on the curb and sucked on a mint I’d found in my pocket.

  “Alex?” asked Chase when he sat down next to me. “I don’t want to be annoying or anything, but how long do y
ou think my face is going to look like this?”

  Once again, I’d somehow completely forgotten that Chase had been given the appearance of a ninety-year-old version of himself. Looking at his now familiar expression of concern was enough to put at weak smile on my face.

  “I dunno, bud,” I put my hand on his knee and squeezed it reassuringly. “Probably with the sunrise. Worst case, a few days.”

  Chase looked at something on his phone then back at me. He seemed about to say more, but instead he just nodded and turned his phone off, sitting silently next to me while we waited for our ride home.

  Chapter Eight

  Scalding hot coffee splattered onto my bare thigh when Chase — already back to his youthful appearance — braked suddenly to avoid rear-ending a car that swerved into our lane without signaling. I licked a stream of it off my thumb before any more could drip free, holding the cup away from my lap while I searched through the center console for something to wipe my leg with. Stuffed in the back was a wad of fast food napkins. The top two were smeared with what I hoped was ketchup, but the next few were clean. I used a couple to mop up the mess before too much of it could dribble onto the seat cushion, wincing at the stinging red welt that had already begun to form.

  I muttered a few choice expletives that may or may not have included a couple of generalizations about the kind of terrible drivers Vancouver is infamous for. I’m not saying I’m proud of it or anything, but I find it particularly hard to be a good person when I’ve hardly slept and I’m running late for an important first meeting with a new client.

  “Does this rust bucket have AC?” I asked Chase while stabbing buttons that activated different vents. The early evening sun was hot where it shone though the passenger side window, baking the lower half of my body in the stifling interior of the car.

  “Yeah, just roll down the window with that little lever on the door there.”

  “I honestly don’t understand why you drive such a crappy car. It’s not like I’m suggesting you go buy a Ferrari or anything, but maybe something that doesn’t sound like it’s going to break down at any second? Bluetooth or maybe an aux cord wouldn’t hurt either.”

  Chase just shrugged. “I like this car. It gets me from place to place, and I don’t have to worry about people trying to break into it when I’ve got thousands of dollars of gear in the trunk.”

  A semi roared past us, spilling diesel fumes into the now open window. My gut was already sour from pouring black gas station coffee into it without first buffering it with food, and the thick black smoke belching out of the exhaust did little to make me feel better. Slowly but surely, we chugged up the incline of the bridge that spanned the river which separated Vancouver from it’s southerly neighbor, Richmond. Cars passed us in both lanes, a few of them honking at Chase for doing well below the limit.

  Truth be told, I was mostly just pissed off over being given the slip at the SkyTrain station the night before. Chase and I had ridden home in silence, but once back in the privacy of our living room slash operations center, I’d forced myself to break down the events of the night with him. Chase had been plenty supportive in trying to convince me I couldn’t have anticipated that our killer would turn out to be a gang of kids using one of their own friends as a focus in order to transfer power from a nexus into their own bodies, but wasn’t it my job to know? What kind of detective (or consultant, or whatever the hell I chose to call myself) was I that I’d missed something so obvious? That we hadn’t been specifically hired to investigate this particular crime didn’t let me off the hook for completely failing to save that kid’s life. I’d just hidden in the bushes like a coward while he’d aged and died right before my eyes.

  If I was going to do this for a living, I’d need to think things through a little more. A real detective would have brought a camera that didn’t have a bright glowing screen to give them away. A real detective wouldn’t have relied on public transport to track a suspected killer. Even a half-assed detective wouldn’t have hesitated to jump into danger to save a life. I’d replayed the event fifty different ways while lying in bed afterwards. In every scenario I’d found a way to save the kid even if it meant taking a fatal hit in the process. There were a dozen ways I could have saved him without getting so much as a scratch.

  Instead, I’d done nothing. I’d simply sat and watched.

  In the end, the only thing I’d been able to do to keep myself from tumbling into the gaping maw of depression and self-loathing was to pop another Oxy and spend the day in bed. I’d found little sleep, but the negative voices had at least taken a bit of a holiday from harassing me with a slideshow of every mistake I’d ever made in my life. The come-down from my chemical reprieve had left me with a grogginess not even a cold shower could rinse away. I rubbed absently at the tight muscles around my jaw while I stared out the window. We’d crested the peak of the bridge, and I could see down over the numerous warehouses that made up this part of the city. Mr. Trang’s business was down there somewhere, and in a few minutes I’d have to conduct an investigation despite feeling like a complete and utter fraud.

  “Are you even listening?” Chase asked, turning down the radio volume to get my attention.

  “Sorry, still thinking about last night.” I sipped my coffee, swallowed, and tried to steel myself for another round of well-meaning, but ultimately infuriating armchair therapy. “What were you saying?”

  “I was telling you to snap the fuck out of whatever bullshit pity-fest you’re engaging in over there. We’re being paid too much for you to let your issues screw this job up for us.”

  Taken aback by such a blunt assessment, I actually straightened up in my seat a little.

  “I am not engaging in pity-fest,” I said, trying my best to make it sound true.

  “Like hell, you’re not. You look like you’re trying to put together the perfect emo playlist for when you go home, dye your hair black, and start writing shitty poetry in a notebook with an anarchy symbol scratched into the cover.”

  “That is weirdly specific.”

  “I was an unhappy teen, okay?” Chase flipped his blinker on and turned off on the next exit. “My point stands though. You need to get your game face on before we go in there. This Quan dude is all business. He’s not going to be happy if he thinks he hired a moody tween to consult on his boss’s break-in problem.”

  “Okay, fine. Maybe you have a point. I’ll check my baggage before we go in there.”

  Chase simply grunted and punched the eject button on the tape deck. He replaced it with another from the console, summoning forth the frantic screaming of one of my favorite hardcore bands. It wasn’t enough to make me forget just how badly I’d screwed up at the nexus, but it did help me face the fact that there was little I could do to go back and change the past. All I could do now was make sure I didn’t make the same careless mistakes a second time.

  By the time we pulled into the warehouse parking lot, I’d managed to mostly get my attitude back in check. At the very least, I figured I could pretend to be a professional for however long it took to get through this first inspection.

  “Sorry we’re late,” I said to Quan when he came out to meet us. “Complications with another case.”

  “I hope this other case will not impact your ability to discern who might be responsible for these trespasses against Mr. Trang.”

  If this was how the guy reacted to us being eight minutes late, what would he think if he knew what kind of doubtful thoughts had been running through my head only minutes earlier.

  “It won’t be a problem,” I assured him. “The other case is well in hand. Our work there will in no way affect our attention to this job.”

  I left out the part where I’d let my suspects slip right out of my grasp without securing the slightest bit of evidence against them other than the a couple of license plates that had thus far proven impossible to track down. With no other way of finding the kids, it didn’t look like I’d have a shot at identifying them bef
ore the next new moon.

  Quan bowed curtly then turned and let us in through the open loading bay door. Long strips of plastic hung from the entryway. The first thing I noticed after sweeping them aside was the blast of freezing cold air that raised goosebumps on my bare arms and legs.

  “Is it normal to keep a warehouse this cold?” I asked. “It must cost a fortune to cool a building this size. Doesn’t it cut into your overhead?”

  “This warehouse contains inventory destined for some of the world’s top computing research labs.” explained Quan. “This temperature ensures that the extremely specialized components are never subject to the degradation that come from drastic temperature fluctuations. All items housed in the south end of the warehouse are shipped and stored in special containers that are kept at exactly one degree above freezing.”

  Not having brought so much as a sweater on one of the hottest days of the year so far, I popped a mint in my mouth and burned a small heat aura in order to warm myself up. I could see Chase struggling to keep from shivering, so I extended the field to him. It would require a little more concentration and energy to maintain, but I figured it was the least I could offer in return for how effectively he’d snapped me out of my funk back in the car. Once the spell was locked in place, I returned my attention to Quan and thought I saw his eyes flick almost imperceptibly to the magical aura of the heat barrier that he shouldn’t have been able to see. I activated my mage sight, once again affirming that our client’s representative had no magic ability of his own.

  Or at least, none that I could see.

  “If you’ll please follow me, we can proceed to the location of the most recent theft.”

  Quan led us deeper into the warehouse. A few workers moved through the towering racks of metal shelving, scanning box labels and checking them against manifests. Their movements were slow and methodical, as though they were just settling into the beginning of a long overnight shift. By the time, I guessed the day shift had ended an hour or two earlier, and that there was little need to have a full roster of staff on hand if there were no shipments coming or going outside of regular business hours.