Coincidence or not, she couldn’t waste the chance.
She didn’t see how she could live with herself if she chose Christian over her powers. She also didn’t see how she could have both.
But those thoughts, strangely, steadied her. She couldn’t have lived with herself if she hadn’t intervened. There had been a child in the group of hostages. A young woman had almost lost her boyfriend. The terrorist had shown multiple times and in multiple ways that he was bent on destruction.
Kera wanted to live in a world where Anastidis could have been treated, still on his meds, still stable, but when she pushed him out the window the night before, it was because he’d left her no choice. She couldn’t let that weigh on her forever.
Someone had to stop him.
She swallowed as she considered. Los Angeles had never been crime-free, but after the rampant violence of the 90s, it had calmed down for a while. Maybe she could help that happen again. Hell, for all she knew, someone like her had helped it calm down the first time.
If she could do that, she might feel like she had done enough to walk away from being a vigilante. If she focused on healing, she was fairly sure she could have both her magic and a semi-normal life.
She was going to have to get serious about this, however. Until now, she had been purely reactive. She saw crimes and thwarted them.
If she wanted to stop the wave of violence, she was going to have to start anticipating what was happening and use her efforts where they would make the most impact. That meant she needed a lot more information.
She nodded and went to turn off the television, then saw what was on the screen and her jaw dropped.
She had called herself paranoid, but there wasn’t much to mistake about what she was seeing. Near the wreckage of the first bombed-out building, news choppers had picked up a message spray-painted on the road in huge letters.
MOTORCYCLE MAN, YOU FAILED
Chapter Twenty-One
Ted arrived outside Christian’s apartment building around eleven. He had agreed to drive Christian to the car dealership, with the threat that he would not be driving him back, so Christian had better get a car while he was there.
As soon as Christian got in, Ted motioned to the radio. “Did you hear what happened last night?”
“Did it have to do with the absolute fuck-ton of sirens I heard?” Christian asked. He was sipping from a massive travel mug of coffee. He’d gotten the mug at Christmas and had thought he would never use it, but after the sirens last night had rendered him unable to sleep, he wished he had an even bigger one.
“Yeah,” Ted said, “it did. Did it not occur to you to check the news?”
“I was busy trying to figure out how to mainline coffee so I don’t crash this car I apparently have to get,” Christian grumped.
“You’re in a mood.” Ted detoured to go through a drive-through. “Let’s see if a breakfast sandwich and some hash browns won’t fix that, huh?”
“Mmf.”
Ted ordered for both of them and then idled as the line pulled slowly forward. “I understand why you’ve been putting this shit off,” Ted said after a period of quiet. “Owning a car can be a bitch. But I’m proud of you. The time has come to take the next step forward in the world and become self-mobile.”
Christian grunted.
“That said,” Ted shrugged, “we can just get breakfast and hang out. We don’t have to do this.” He pulled up to the window and paid for their food, then drove to the end of the parking lot for them to eat.
They chowed down in silence. The day was sunny and warm. The palm trees were looking perkier than they had for a while, and Christian felt himself unwinding.
“I know I have to,” Christian said finally. “I’m still in that college bro mindset.”
“You?” Ted asked around a mouthful of breakfast sandwich.
“Not as in sleeping around and partying,” Christian said, rolling his eyes. “I mean, like, I don’t want to deal with having a car, so I just don’t. I cut whole areas of stuff out of my life because I don’t want to deal with the details.”
“Oh.” Ted nodded. “No decorations at your apartment, so you just never bring anyone back.”
“Yeah, that’s why I don’t bring anyone back to my apartment. Not because I have zero game.”
Ted laughed. “You say that, but you’ve got Kera.”
“That’s the other thing.” Christian put his sandwich down and heaved a sigh. “Do I? She said the date went well. She texted me that the date went well. So why did she go all weird and drive me home and just leave? What the hell happened?”
“Ah.” Ted wiped his fingers on a napkin. “So, if I’ve got this, you’re worried that you’re doing all this for her, and it’s not going to work.”
“Yeah.” Christian finished his meal.
“I meant what I said about you doing this for you,” Ted said. “Not to sound like some sort of fuckin’ Hallmark movie, but this isn’t about her.”
“I know, I just…” Christian leaned his head back and groaned. “I hate feeling like I screwed it up already, and I just don’t know how. She’s the whole package.”
Ted nodded and took both bags out of the car to a nearby trash can. He jogged back and started the car again. “So, where am I going?”
“Car dealership.” Christian nodded decisively. “One night of bad sleep is temporary. A car is…well, less temporary.”
“That’s the spirit.” Ted pulled out of the lot and circled back to the road, then turned toward an area where several car dealerships clustered near one another. “So, you still thinking of a Jeep?”
Christian smiled. “Yeah.” Despite his bad mood, he really was looking forward to having a car that wasn’t a rattling death box.
He scanned the lot as Ted pulled in. Rows upon rows of Jeeps were lined up, shiny and covered in signs advertising monthly payments and hauling specifications.
He was nervous. He didn’t know how to negotiate for features or a price, or what questions to ask, or how to ascertain a vehicle’s condition.
Fortunately for him, Ted did.
“Hi!” Ted opened, matching or perhaps exceeding the massive grin of the first salesman to come out and greet them. “We’re looking for a new or slightly used Wrangler for my buddy here. I used to drive one myself, you see, so he’s here on my recommendation...”
Two hours passed. They viewed three vehicles. Christian was hoping for a black one, but they only had red and tan. He liked the latter more. Though people thought tan was a boring color, on a Jeep, it gave it an appearance of ruggedness, something intended for off-roading in the desert.
After Ted and the salesman did a detailed inspection, Chris decided he wanted it.
The sales guy looked relieved as much as jubilant, probably because Ted had been grilling him with constant questions and implying at regular intervals that they had other prospects they’d go to if they didn’t get a price they liked.
The three of them went into the man’s office and hashed out the paperwork. Between the payment plan, title and registration, and insurance, there was plenty of paperwork, but Christian was confident in this particular area, so they wrapped up quickly.
Finally, it was over. Christian opened the tan Wrangler’s door and slid into the driver’s seat. A heady, almost giddy feeling threatened to overwhelm him as Ted got into the passenger’s side.
Christian jingled the keys in his right hand and ran his left hand over the steering wheel, allowing the reality of it all to sink in. His wheels. His ride. He now had a badass machine of his own that could take him from one place to another at his will and whim. No more waiting for buses.
“Feel good?” Ted queried. “You look a hell of a lot happier.”
“I feel happier,” Christian answered. “Feels great, in fact.”
He spent a minute or two familiarizing himself with the controls, which were slightly different from the setup on his last ancient death trap of a vehicle. It all seemed
manageable. He nodded.
“Well, I think I’m ready to go. Are you going back to your car?” He put the keys in the ignition.
“Pfft.” Ted waved his hand. “And miss tooling around in this thing? No. I checked this place out on Google Earth before we came. If you take us out back down one of these streets past the dealership, there’s a big sandy empty lot over there. Not as good as going out into the proper desert, but it’ll let us check out the thing’s moves. After that’s done, we can come back and get my car.”
As Christian brought the engine to life—only for it to die abruptly—a look of wide-eyed alarm appeared on his friend’s face.
“Uh, Christian,” Ted asked carefully, “you do know how to drive a stick shift, don’t you?”
Chris stared down at the gear shift. “I mean, I do in video games. It’s the same, right? You just—”
“You’re rolling!” Ted squawked.
“Fuck!” Chris almost drove through the concrete barrier before slamming on the brakes. It took two false starts in first and one more lurch toward the barrier before he remembered to shift into reverse and check his mirrors.
One of the dealers was standing in the open space nearby, staring at them. His mouth was hanging open.
“Sorry!” Chris called out the window. “Was just, uh, testing the brakes.”
Slowly, he piloted the massive vehicle down the lane and toward the road. Then he asked, “Is up right, or is that left? On the turning signal thingy.”
“This is it,” Ted said sadly. “This is how I’m going to die. Twenty bucks says we don’t make it to the lot.”
Pauline stared Johnny down. Off to one side of the conference room, Lia and Sven were trying very hard to be invisible. No one had spoken for close to five minutes, since Pauline had ordered them into the room and sat down to stare silently at Johnny.
It was clear that she didn’t intend to speak first, and Johnny was not prepared to back down.
Eventually, however, after checking her watch, Pauline stood up. “If I don’t have a reason to have you on my team by tomorrow,” she said, her voice clipped, “I will replace you with Motorcycle Man—or the witch, or whoever the fuck that is. You were supposed to calm things down, not provide a convenient stage for someone else to play the hero.”
“What would you have done?” Johnny shot back. “Would you really have thought you needed more than firebombs and hostages?”
“I’m not the one who’s been following this prick,” Pauline snapped at him. “And then taunting him, like he didn’t achieve the fucking impossible last night. At this point, I’m almost sure he is a witch.”
“It’s a girl,” Johnny said sullenly.
“Does that make it better somehow?” Pauline leaned down. Her accent had come out as she got angry. “Let me be perfectly fucking clear with you. You’ve acted like I owed you something from day one. I thought we finally understood each other. Instead, for whatever reason, you just set up a perfect situation for whoever the fuck that is to show off, then you wrote a stupid fucking taunt on the road like that was going to make it better.”
Johnny glared at her.
“You are going to set another trap for Motorcycle Man,” Pauline said, “and you are going to succeed this time—or, so help me, I am going to make sure you beg to die.”
“Easy to say it’s all my fault,” Johnny spat back. “You’re the one pushing us at an insane pace. You’re the one trying to turn drug-running into some crazy, fucked-up sci-fi perfect world shit. If you were ready to run the fucking world, you’d have thrown more than just me at Motorcycle Man.”
“I gave you a chance to prove yourself!”
“You tried to push the problem off on me,” Johnny snarled back. “You started shit you couldn’t finish. You expected everyone to fall in line. You touched this whole thing off. Motorcycle Man wouldn’t be around if you weren’t trying to get all of LA under your thumb within a fucking month.” He came out of his chair and jabbed a finger at her. “Don’t you dare say this is my fault. A real fucking leader would have given me the resources to do this.”
Pauline glared at him. “You need help? You can’t figure out how to solve problems on your own?”
“I think you’re pushing it off on me because you don’t know how, either!” Johnny yelled.
“Fine.” Her face was nearly bone-white, nostrils flaring. “Come with me. I will show you how to set a trap, and you will execute it.”
The two of them slammed their way out of the conference room and headed toward her office.
Left behind, Sven and Lia looked at one another.
“So…” Sven rubbed at his nose. “We’ve just decided Motorcycle Man and the LA Witches are the same person? People?”
“They both show up in the same outfit and do…” Lia’s voice trailed off. “Things others would consider impossible,” she finished after a moment. “It seems like a safe assumption.”
“Okay.” Sven looked at her. “What do we do now?”
“The two of us?” Lia shook her head. “We focus on research and lie low. This job had better go well, or those two are going to rip each other to shreds.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
“So…” Jay, a lanky, dark-complected individual with shoulder-length dreadlocks, grinned as he slung a bag over his shoulder. “You think this witchcraft shit is real? Gage ain’t never lied to me before, but he never said nothing like that before, either.”
Nolan, one of his guys, snorted. “You’re the only one wondering, man. The rest of us are just here to see what shit they pass off as ‘witchcraft.’”
“Nah.” Jay frowned. “Gage and I’ve pulled jobs before.”
“And has he ever done anything you’d call ‘witchcraft’?” Nolan wiggled his hands. “Come on, be real. He’s crazy.”
“Then why are you here?” Jay challenged him. He was annoyed. He’d spent two days thinking about Gage’s offer, trying to figure out if the other guy was playing him.
He’d always known Gage to be rock-solid, though—the real deal. Gage never exaggerated what he could do. He gave good odds, and he made good plans. And above everything else, Gage was coming with them. If this thing went down in flames, he was going to turn into SWAT target practice too.
If he wanted to screw Jay over, there were easier ways. He couldn’t think of why the two of them would have bad blood, anyway.
So he was annoyed to see Nolan treating him like a gullible sucker.
Nolan just shrugged and held up his rifle. “I’m here because there’s always the old-fashioned way of doing things.” He slid it into his pack and shrugged. “The plan still works without whatever shit they’ve made up about magic. It’s a good target, good haul. If they pull whatever the fuck it is off, it’ll be a cakewalk. If they don’t, we’ll still have good enough odds to try it.”
The two men worked in silence for another few moments before Nolan started laughing again.
“Seriously, man, I can’t believe you believed him about this. Come on. Magic? Seriously?”
Jay gritted his teeth, but a second later, he jerked back as Nolan leapt up with a yelp. The back of his pants was smoking. He flailed, shrieking, and ripped his pants down.
“Aw, man.” Jay looked away. “No one wants to see your bare ass.”
“Or any of the rest of it,” Gage’s voice said. The older man stood in the doorway and raised an eyebrow at Nolan. “But Nolan here didn’t want his junk on fire, which is one of those things I can arrange…with my magic.”
Nolan examined his pants and pulled them up again, glaring. “What the fuck did you do to me?”
“It’s a little spell called Firefly,” Gage said. “Want another demonstration?”
“It’s not real,” Nolan snapped. “I don’t know how you did it, but you’re playing tricks.”
Gage considered him. “Fine,” he said after a moment. “You come up with something. Something I couldn’t do without magic. I’ll do it.”
“
Stop an asteroid from hitting Earth,” Nolan challenged.
“Do you have an asteroid handy? No? Then come up with something else.” Gage waited, examining his nails.
Jay, intrigued, settled down in a chair as he cleaned his rifle. He might not like Nolan taunting him about it, but he’d had trouble believing in the magic. He knew Gage had something, sure, but…
Magic wasn’t real.
Nolan looked at Jay, who only shrugged. Finally, scowling, Nolan said, “Fine. Fly.”
Gage thought for a moment, then moved out of the doorway, limbered up slightly, and began muttering under his breath as one hand made a complicated series of gestures.
Then to Jay’s utter shock, he began to levitate. Gage’s feet drifted up off the ground. As they watched, he began to move forward and back in midair, and then from side to side. Finally, he went back down to the ground and looked at Nolan, whose jaw was hanging open.
“Anything else?” Gage asked.
Nolan cleared his throat and shook his head.
“Good,” Gage said. “And since you’re the one who wanted a demonstration, you can pay for it.” He slapped his belly. “Every one of those is a party-size bag of Doritos.”
He left with Jay and Nolan staring after him.
“Holy shit,” Jay said finally. “We saw that, right?” He looked at Nolan.
“Whatever,” Nolan said. “Let’s focus on the big picture: we’re about to knock over a bank, man.”
“Just remember, you’re using part of your winnings to buy Gage some Doritos,” Jay joked.
“Fuck, I’ll buy him one of those thousand-dollar burgers if he wants. I don’t care.” Nolan shrugged. “Magic, man. Fuck. We’re set for life.”
“Uh-oh.” James didn’t have to be psychic to know that the look on Mother LeBlanc’s face meant something bad.
She handed him the phone.
The flickering lights they’d seen in Nevada had come again, but this time, they weren’t south of the road. They were squarely centered on Las Vegas.
How To Be A Badass Witch: Book Two Page 17