“Mr. Jensen, it is not a difficult question. Do you know where Mr. Torrez is or not?”
“I…no.” Sven shook his head. “We met up after the first set of bars to debrief, then we got your text and headed out again.”
She watched him for a second longer, using her silence to make him speak.
It worked.
“He’d mostly had success,” Sven said. “Just one place seemed like a miss. The Mermaid.” Under her steely gaze, he felt much smaller than his six-foot-plus stature. “I don’t know where he went and in what order, though.”
Pauline went back to her notes without comment, but she shot a pointed glance at Lia.
The other woman pulled her phone out and began texting furiously. Sven assumed it was a business-speak version of “Where the fuck are you?”
“With these locations plus the party…” Pauline considered. “Yes. Mr. Jensen, you will move on to Stage 3. I believe you were the one who initially identified the gangs working in this district?”
“Yes.” Sven decided not to comment on the hint of a Russian accent that had emerged.
“Good. You will do your best to stoke violence between them.”
“You want me to start a gang war?” Sven wasn’t sure what was going on.
“Were the instructions unclear?”
Sven tried to decide how far he was willing to push this.
To his surprise, Lia spoke up for him. “Ma’am, part of why he’s here is your vision of a peaceful city. While you, of course, are not obligated to tell us your reasons, I think he wants to understand how short-term violence will lead to long-term peace.”
Sven shot her a grateful look.
Pauline nodded. “Very well, although I prefer my employees speak for themselves. Ask yourself this, Mr. Jensen: if all of us are here to create a better world, why did we not join the police?”
Because I’m not a fucking narc, and I’m in it for the money? “I…don’t trust the police, ma’am.”
“Nor should you,” Pauline said, nodding approvingly. “They are powerless. The methods they have at their disposal are useless. They are hamstrung by their own incompetence and by the weakness of politicians, and that is what we are about to show them.” She paused for a moment. “You will stoke violence between the gangs. News reports will come out. People will be afraid. The police will be able to do nothing to help them, and then…we will help them. We will restore peace.”
Sven knew better than to look at Lia. He only nodded as if he understood.
As if this wasn’t completely ass-backward.
“The police cannot stop them,” Pauline said, “so they will know they cannot stop us. They will also know that to take us out is to return to the chaos and violence that made them look so bad. They will let us be.”
Oh. When she put it that way, it wasn’t the worst idea.
Sven was about to speak when the door was thrust open and Johnny strode in. The other man was grinning, his clothes rumpled and the smell of perfume clinging faintly to his shirt. It was obvious what he’d been doing to be late.
“Good night,” he announced.
Sven sensed that Johnny was about to make a spectacular ass of himself. He should stop that from happening. After all, Lia had saved his ass. He might as well save Johnny’s.
“It sounds like we both had good results last night,” he said, trying to convey with his expression how urgent it was for Johnny to bring things back on track. “We will be starting Phase 3 soon.”
“Oh, we had good results, all right.” Johnny took a seat and propped his feet on the table. Sven could still smell the alcohol on his breath. “After that little bitch at the Mermaid tried to play tough with me, I needed a little something, you know? Went and got wasted with a bunch of models.”
Pauline’s face had gone icy.
“Did I say that blonde was hot?” Johnny continued. “She might be hot, but if you can’t see the tits, they might as well not be there, huh? Three models are better than one snooty rich girl.”
Pauline was done waiting for him to speak. “Mr. Torrez, did you do anything productive last night?”
“Oh, sure. Got you the four bars I mentioned. Not the Mermaid, but I’m going back there tonight. That guy’s not gonna hold out much longer, an’ the models aren’t too far from wantin’ in. That’s a whole market we haven’t tapped.”
Johnny had saved himself by the skin of his teeth. Pauline’s expression changed to something more contemplative. “It’s hardly an untried market,” she said, “but yes. We might. Their drugs are usually supplied by their handlers, but for those coming to LA domestically, we might have an in.”
Lia was taking notes.
“Mr. Jensen, explain Stage 3 to Mr. Torrez. And Mr. Torrez?”
“Yeah?” Johnny ran his fingers through his hair.
“I expect you to be on time to meetings and appropriately attired.” Pauline’s voice was perfectly pleasant, but it gave Sven chills. She left without another word, and Lia trailed after her with a pointed glance at Johnny.
When they were gone, Sven dropped into a chair. “Do you know how close you were to getting your balls cut off?”
“Woman like that could do better things with my balls.” Johnny gave him a grin and made a crude gesture. “Might loosen her up.”
“Johnny, I’m serious. She is not in the mood to play around. We have work to do.”
“Damn straight. I’m gonna show blondie—”
“No,” Sven interrupted. “Seriously, Johnny, leave it. We have a lot to do.”
“Like what?”
“We have a gang war to start.” Sven stood up and held out his hand to pull the other man up. “After you shower.”
Chapter Eleven
For a moment, when Kera woke up, she felt as if she had finally slept enough.
Then she cracked an eye open to check the time and was struck by one of the worst headaches she’d ever had.
“Owwww.” She pressed her hands over her eyes, only to have the distinct feeling that she’d been hit by a truck. Her muscles hurt. Her hands hurt. Her eyes hurt.
What had she done last night? Gotten ragingly drunk and then found a horse to get kicked by? She squinted at her arms and saw nothing in the way of bruises, though it was difficult to tell, given the unholy brightness of the sunlight. She sat up and looked around the room.
“Seriously, what the hell?”
Her first thought was that she had been robbed. The walls, the table, the fridge…all of the surfaces were covered with sticky notes. She distinctly remembered when her mother had sent her a care package with supplies for “the office I just know you’ll have soon, honey,” and Kera had said that she wouldn’t ever use that many sticky notes, especially ones with flowers on them.
At a glance, it looked like she had used them all. Last night.
“Is there a new drug I don’t know about?” Her eyes were getting used to the light, though the headache was still there. She could just hear the news headlines now: Police confused by the emergence of OrganizeX, the drug that makes people compulsively take notes. OfficeMax reports unprecedented first-quarter sales.
She didn’t realize she was hearing a trilling noise until it stopped. Kera sat up a little straighter, wincing as muscles ached and spasmed, and looked around. Not the clock, which said 2:14PM. That meant it was probably her phone, which she did not see anywhere.
She looked at the post-it notes for another moment, then her eyes settled on the empty space on the other side of the room.
Where the hell was Zee?
“What?” She threw the covers up and bounded out of bed. The pain in her head and her muscles was nothing compared to the rage rising in her chest. Someone had come into her house, taken her baby, and—
Put up several hundred sticky notes?
Kera hobbled to the door as fast as she could and wrenched it open to make sure she hadn’t left Zee outside. The fragile hope collapsed as soon as she saw the empty patch of conc
rete that served as a driveway and ramp.
“Fuck.” She slumped against the doorframe, only to nearly leap out of her skin when there was a beep from somewhere around her feet. “What the—oh, hey.”
Her phone was between her shoes.
Why had she put it there?
She bent down to get it, wincing. The screen showed a missed call and a voicemail from Cevin, which made her frown. She couldn’t remember if she was supposed to work today—she also couldn’t remember which day it was—but she couldn’t be late since it was only 2:15 in the afternoon. The Mermaid wasn’t even open yet.
Cevin. She had a vague memory of being here in this door, and—
His truck. She blinked at the empty street. Why would Cevin have been here? She sorted through several possibilities in her head, each stranger than the last.
Then it came back to her in a rush, like she had stumbled all the way through a patch of dense fog and could see the shapes of memories ahead. She had been at the Mermaid when someone had confronted Cevin. There had been a gun. Zee…
That was why Zee wasn’t there. The thought came with barely any relief. No use knowing where Zee was when he had bullet holes in his gas tank.
“Fuck,” Kera said, and she took only a hollow pleasure in what her mother would say if she could hear her swear like that.
She closed the door behind her, went back into the big open space, and looked around.
“Okay. Some asshole shot Zee, Cevin drove me home, and I went crazy. But, like, in an organized way.” She hobbled over to the table and began looking at the post-it notes. They all had her writing on them—unsurprising, now that she knew what had happened to Zee—and seemed to be arranged like some sort of quality assurance checklist.
Her stomach interrupted her thought process with a growl, and she realized how hungry she was. She was at the fridge in a second, yanking it open to stare at the food inside with a groan of frustration. Eggs that were past their expiration date, a bag of shredded cheese, and a green pepper that didn’t quite look to be in its prime anymore.
She didn’t have the willpower to order food in. Kera grabbed the bag of cheese and the pepper and began shoveling cheese into her mouth with one hand while washing the pepper with the other. She chowed down on the pepper like an apple, spitting seeds into the sink occasionally, then stared at the empty cheese bag and the pepper innards confusedly.
This wasn’t like her. She tried to eat healthy. She had never gotten out of sorts when she was angry or motivated by an empty stomach.
And she was getting increasingly worried because she couldn’t remember much of last night.
She considered, then took her phone over to the bed to listen to the message from Cevin, which she put on speakerphone.
“Hi, Kera,” her boss began, sounding less than cheerful. “Listen, don’t bother coming in today. After we left, that guy apparently shot out your tires, too.”
“That asshole!” Her eyes widened, and her hands balled into fists. “Those tires were brand new.”
Cevin’s voice went on, his words echoing hers. “Real asshole move. It looked like the tires were brand new. Anyway, I took your bike to a shop this morning since I figured the tires would at least be an easy fix.”
Kera groaned and pinched the bridge of her nose. “They were special orders.”
“But,” Cevin continued, “it turned out they were special orders. I should have known you’d have primo stuff since you love your bike so much. Regardless, I had them match the size and place the order in the meantime. One set and a spare. Anyway, it will be three days before it’s ready. Maybe more, but they’re hoping three.”
Kera groaned again and propped her arms on her knees. How was she going to get to work? The Mermaid wasn’t that far, but it was farther than she could realistically walk.
“So, I thought I’d give you some PTO. Take a couple of days paid. I’ll cover you for the time being. Since that prick shot up your vehicle to send me a message, I guess I feel responsible.” He sighed.
Kera grimaced and looked at the phone, guilt worming through her chest. The asshole with the gun had been hoping to teach her a lesson, too.
“All I can say is that I’m sorry about last night,” Cevin concluded. “I’ve got more cameras coming in and extra lights for the back. We won’t be caught with our pants down like that again, I promise. If you, uh…” He paused. “If you don’t want to come back at all, I’ll understand. Just let me know. Take care of yourself.”
He hung up, and the phone beeped as the message ended.
Kera sat staring at the phone and feeling a peculiar sensation in her stomach, one that had nothing to do with the cheese and the pepper. Though Cevin’s message had been predictable, touching on all the topics she would expect, she couldn’t help but feel that she had anticipated all of it, down to the exact words he had used.
“This isn’t still a dream, is it?” she asked aloud. She gave herself a light slap across the face and determined that she was indeed awake. “Huh. And ow.”
She got up and went into the bathroom, where another surprise awaited. She stopped and stared at the note stuck to the mirror before approaching it suspiciously and pulling it off to read it.
Check the back of your hand. You had a cut there last night. And the witch stuff is real!
She noted that the word “real” was double-underlined. There was more on another series of notes.
Also, be REALLY careful with the memory spell. Maybe just stay away from that one.
Bet you can’t remember the talk with Mom, either. Because I can’t right now, and I wrote myself a note to make sure I remembered it if the brain bleach spell worked. If we could make a product out of this, we would be rich!
Kera felt like something was fluttering around in her stomach. She rubbed her eyes again. “I am too hungover for this,” she said to no one in particular. “Or…whatever. Headache.” She looked at the note again. “Who is we?”
Of all the things she needed today, her past self writing notes to her future self was not on the list.
Her stomach was doing weird flip-flops. The witch stuff was real!
That was ridiculous.
So why are you so afraid of it? a snide part of her mind wondered.
She ignored the little voice determinedly, opened the cabinet behind the mirror, and pulled out a bottle of ibuprofen, downing two capsules with a swig of water. When she was done, she still wasn’t ready to think about the book, so she decided to wash her face. And moisturize it.
Her stomach hadn’t stopped doing weird things yet, and it struck her that this was an excellent time to floss. She did so with extreme care, made sure to brush her teeth for the full two minutes, then rinsed her mouth with Scope.
After that, she couldn’t think of anything further to do in terms of stalling.
She returned to the bed and looked at the phone as if it were a venomous snake that was about to strike. Gingerly and almost without looking at it, she brought up the reader app and the witchcraft book.
She remembered having opened it. She even remembered joking about lighting that asshole on fire.
What she didn’t remember was highlighting a bunch of sentences and paragraphs, adding a series of notes to each suggested posture and image, and then adding the note, “This would be easier if I didn’t remember the wrong attempts and forget the right ones.”
The notes had been taken over a span of hours. How much sleep had she gotten?
She went back to the table and began tracing her way through the notes, referencing them against headings in the book’s table of contents. There had been method to her madness.
“Did I seriously stay up late doing quality control testing on how to perform spells?”
If that was the case, it presented a lot of possibilities—ones she was too tired to explore at present but too curious to leave alone.
Her screen dimmed, the battery indicator switching to red. Kera sighed as she went to get her charger
from her backpack. There was part of her bag of trail mix left, which she poured into her mouth and chewed like a chipmunk, cheeks bulging out.
God, she was hungry. Apparently, that was what magic did to you.
“This is ridiculous,” she told herself firmly. “Magic is not real, Kera. The fact is, you’ve developed a drug problem.”
It was a little bit worrisome that a drug problem was her best-case scenario, but she couldn’t think of anything else it could be. Because if the magic was real, that meant…
She didn’t even want to think about what it meant.
On the other hand… She looked down and flexed her fingers. She had gotten a scratch.
Chapter Twelve
In general, the company Christian and Ted worked for was a mess of bureaucratic nonsense, needlessly specific dress codes, and corporate-speak that only the top-level executives could deliver with a straight face.
However, there were occasionally good perks, such as the full hour the salaried employees got for lunch. A half-hour didn’t give people nearly enough time to drive out, buy food and eat it, and return to work, especially in Los Angeles traffic.
Even if one wasn’t hungover, which Ted definitely was today.
Christian had driven them both to his favorite burger place nearby—independent, every bit as good as In-N-Out, and far less likely to be packed at lunchtime—and was now eating with gusto while Ted stared into the middle distance and looked queasy.
“How you feeling, buddy?” Christian asked around a mouthful of food.
Ted gave a low moan and dropped his head onto his crossed arms.
Christian tried not to snicker. “The burger will help, you know.”
“Strongly disagree,” Ted said, his voice muffled.
“Come on. Carbs, protein, some grease.”
Ted made a gagging sound. “Why would nature make it so you’re supposed to eat when you feel like you’re about to throw up?”
“A glitch in the programming?” Christian tried to keep it from being too obvious that he was laughing at his friend. “No one ever said nature was an expert coder, and it probably didn’t account for vodka when it was writing the operating system. Try drinking some soda first. Carbonation’s supposed to be good for an upset stomach.” He took another bite of his burger and savored the medley of greasy beef, fresh vegetables, and sauce.
How to be a Badass Witch Page 9