I am so grateful for all the help I received while writing this book.
Thank you to my wonderful agent, Miriam Kriss, for your unflagging excitement and support. My deepest gratitude also to my editor, Anne Sowards, who took the time to call and talk with me about the book. Though you may not know it, in that one hour you showed me a new way to approach writing not only this novel, but many novels yet to come. A big thank-you also to assistant editor Cameron Dufty, designer Ray Lundgren, and artist Larry Rostant. You made this book shine.
I am lucky to have the best, most supportive, and most persistent first readers in the world. Thank you, Dean Woods, for always asking when I’ll have something for you to read and following up with such insightful questions. You are brilliant. Thank you, Dejsha Knight, for being there for me from the very first story. I wouldn’t be here without you. Thank you, Dianna Rodgers, for your friendship, and for giving such honest feedback, even on short deadlines. Thank you, Sharon Thompson, for all your encouragement, support, and advice. And thank you to Deanne Hicks for everything. I love you, girl.
I’d also like to thank the fabulous readers who read Magic to the Bone and liked it enough to try this sequel. I hope it doesn’t disappoint.
Lastily, all my love to my husband, Russ, and sons, Kameron and Konner, for all you are and all you do. Thank you for being the very best part of my life.
BERKLEY UK
Devon Monk has one husband, two sons and a dog named Mojo. Surrounded by numerous colourful family members, she lives in Oregon. She has sold more than fifty short stories to fantasy, science fiction, horror, humour and young adult magazines and anthologies. She has been published in five countries and included in a year’s best fantasy collection. Visit her website at: www.devonmonk.com.
For my big, crazy, wonderful family. I couldn’t do this without you. Thanks for believing in my dream and helping me to make it come true.
I dunked my head under the warm spray of the shower and rubbed shampoo into my hair, wondering where my next Hounding job, and paycheck, were coming from. I hadn’t been using much magic since I got back to town, and the bills were piling up. It was time to get on with my life, time to get on with tracking spells again.
I heard a distant pop, like a lightbulb blowing, and all the lights in my apartment went out. I opened my eyes just as a stream of soap dripped into them.
“Ow, ow, ow.”
Outside, the wind howled past my bathroom window. We’d been having some bad storms lately—plain old windstorms, not wild magic. Probably a tree or landslide up in the west hills had knocked out the line or blown a transformer, throwing this part of Portland into a deep early-morning darkness. The wail of an alarm from a nearby business started up, and then an answering siren, and then two, joined in on the noise. A couple car alarms got busy.
I rinsed as much of the soap out of my eyes as I could, turned off the shower, and stumbled out of the tub. I hit my shin on the toilet bowl.
“Ow!” I groped for the sink, found the cool surface with my fingertips, and looked over my shoulder at the single frosted window behind me. No light, which meant the magic grid was down too. There were backup spells to power the streetlights in case of blackout—spells the city paid the price for. Weird they hadn’t kicked in yet.
I felt my way along the sink, the wall, the light switch, and the towel hanging on the back of the door. I knew there was no one in the room with me, no one in my apartment. Still, I did not want to be alone and naked in the dark.
“Allie,” a voice whispered so close to my cheek I could feel the cold exhale.
I bolted out into the hallway and turned. It was so dark I couldn’t see anything.
I traced a glyph for Light in the air in front of me, completely forgetting to set a Disbursement for the pain that magic was going to put me through. Pain, I could deal with later. Light, I needed now.
The hallway, hells, the entire apartment, lit up like sunlight on snow.
I was not alone.
My dead father stood right there on the yellow ducky bath mat in front of my shower. It didn’t look like death had done him any favors.
Sure, he still wore a dark business suit—I’d rarely seen him out of business dress—and he was clean shaven and gray haired. Other than that, he looked like a hastily drawn interpretation of himself—his skin too pale, his green eyes gone so light as to be white. Dark, dark shadows caught beneath his eyes and pooled in the hollows of his face. He scowled. He was angry.
Angry at me.
Well, apparently death didn’t do much for a person’s mood either.
He stretched out his right hand, traced the first strokes of something in the air—maybe a glyph—and then moved fast, faster than any living person, until he was standing in front of me, close, so close his hand pressed against my forehead.
I raised my arms to keep him away, push him away, make him stay away from me. I could smell him—or maybe it was just the memory of him—and taste him, leather and wintergreen, on the back of my throat.
I yelled, tasting more wintergreen as he leaned in closer, all ice and bone—cold and damp against my naked wet skin. The Light spell flickered out, probably because I was too busy panicking to concentrate, and magic does not tolerate that sort of thing.
The apartment plunged back into blackness. I could still feel my dad’s hands on my arms.
I ran backward, scrambling to get away from the cold and wintergreen of his angry touch. My back hit the hall wall and I had nowhere else to go.
“Seek,” he whispered against my cheek.
Streetlights snapped on—the city’s spells finally kicking in—and poured blue light through the windows.
My dad was gone. Cut off midsentence like a dropped call.
Holy shit.
I gulped down air, shaking with more than cold, and backed into my bedroom, needing to be dry, dressed, covered, protected, safe, and the hells away from here as quickly as possible.
I’d been groped by a ghost. My dad’s ghost.
My hands shook, and my heart beat so hard, I couldn’t breathe. My dad touched me. And I’d been naked.
I fumbled into a pair of jeans, my bra, a T-shirt, and a wool sweater. Then socks and boots. I picked up the baseball bat I kept near my bed. I didn’t know if a baseball bat would work on a ghost, but I was willing to find out.
I stood there, breathing hard, the bat over one shoulder, and stared through the empty hallway at my empty bathroom.
“Dad?” I asked.
Nothing.
Let’s just go over the facts: I’d seen a ghost. My dad’s ghost.
And he had seen me. Touched me. Spoken to me.
Okay, that was so far down Creepy Lane that it had intersected with Scaring the Hell Out of Me Avenue. I hated that avenue.
I shook out my hands, switching the bat from one to the other, and tried to calm my breathing. Take it easy, Allie, I told myself. Ghosts aren’t real.
Yeah, well, that felt real.
Maybe seeing him was some sort of weird leftover guilt from not being there when he died. Not being there for his funeral or his burial. No, I know I wouldn’t have gone to his funeral even if I’d been able to. I was still angry at him then, angry that he had let his hunger for money and power hurt everyone in his life, including me.
As a matter of fact, I was still angry about that.
The lights in my apartment—regular electric—weren’t working yet. I didn’t want to pull on magic again for light because when you used magic, it used you right back. There was always a price—always a pain to pay. Why give myself a headache when I could just light a candle? Problem was, my candles were all the way across the apartment in the living room.
I strode into the hallway, bat ready to swing. I looked in the bathroom—no one there—and walked (not too quickly, I’ll add) over to the side table next to my ratty couch. I put down the bat and found a box of matches. I lit several candles on my bookshelf, on top of the TV, and on the little round dining table by the window. For good measure, I pulled back the curtains, letting in as much light from the street as possible.
Blue light from the streetlamps caught in the whorls of metallic color that ribboned around my fingertips and up my arm and the side of my neck to the very corner of my right eye. It was still strange to see the marks magic had left on me—brighter and more iridescent than tattoos. Stranger to feel magic heavy inside me, a constant weight that moved and stretched beneath my skin.
Even though my right arm didn’t itch anymore from the magic flowing through me, my left arm, banded black at my elbow, my wrist, and at each knuckle, was always a little cold and numb when I used magic too much.
I wasn’t sure what all of it meant—because no one I’d talked to had ever seen anything like this, like me. People who try to hold magic in their bodies die from it. Horribly. And I’d done my best to stay away from doctors who might be curious enough to want to take me apart to find out why I wasn’t dead yet.
I rubbed my arm—the right with the whorls of colors—and scanned the street below.
Rain and wind? Yes. Ghosts? No.
The last room to check was the kitchen. There were no windows in the kitchen, so I picked up a candle in a glass jar and paused in the entryway to the kitchen. My apartment door stood to the right of me, my kitchen lost in shadows ahead of me. I lifted the candle. Yellow light pushed aside blocks of shadow. Nothing.
The phone rang. I jumped so hard, wax sloshed over the candle’s wick and smothered the flame.
The phone rang again, and a wash of cold sweat slicked my skin. It was just the phone.
It rang again.
I didn’t want to answer it.
Another ring.
Could ghosts use the phone?
Okay, now I was being ridiculous.
I put the candle down on the half wall between the kitchen and foyer and jogged to the phone in the living room. Caught it on the fourth ring.
“Hello?” I said, my voice a little too high.
“Allie Beckstrom?” a low male voice asked.
I recognized that voice. Detective Makani Love had spent a good deal of his childhood in Hawaii and still hadn’t lost that particular rhythm to his words. Plus, I could hear the ring of phones behind him and then another voice, female, and likely his partner, Lia Payne. I think the police department had stuck them together for a laugh—Love and Payne—but they’d turned into such a good team, they hadn’t asked to be reassigned.
“Hey, Mak,” I squeaked.
“Is everything okay? Are you okay?”
I swallowed and worked hard to get my voice down an octave or so.
“Yes. I’m fine. Just, uh … kind of startled when the phone rang. Is the power out over there?”
“No,” he said. “But we heard part of town was down. You dark?”
The lights flicked back on, and my computer on the desk in the corner room hummed back to life.
“Not anymore,” I said. “It just came back on. So, what’s up?”
“We need you to come down to the station to give your statement regarding the death of your father.”
Oh.
I’d never filed an official report. See, I’d been there the day my father died. I may even have been the last one who saw him alive—except for his killer. But since I’d spent the next several days being chased by the people who killed him, I hadn’t had a chance to actually talk to the police about the last time I’d seen him.
Well, the last time I’d seen him alive.
I wondered if Mak believed in ghosts.
“Can it wait until later? I haven’t had breakfast yet and was hoping to hunt down some leads on Hounding jobs this morning.”
“No. It’s been long enough, yah? You’ve been back in town, what, a week now, almost two? That’s patience on our side, you know. We need you this morning. Can you get here in an hour?”
“Will there be any decent coffee in the building?” Love and I weren’t best buddies, but I usually ended up going to him when I worked Hounding jobs that involved someone doing something illegal. He and Payne were two of the few police officers I knew who were cross-trained to handle magical crime enforcement.
“Oh, sure. Best coffee in the city, yah. Dug a pit this morning, roasted it with my own hands over the fire. Fresh just for you.”
“Right.” I glanced out my living room window and through the bare tree limbs that spread across my view of the street and buildings on the other side. It was six o’clock on a late November morning and still dark. Rain gusted sideways past the window, flashing like gold confetti in the headlights of slow-moving traffic crawling toward downtown Portland, Oregon, and the freeway beyond. The police station wasn’t all that far from my apartment, but I didn’t have a car. The bus ran every half hour and would take me straight to the station doors.
It was doable.
“I’ll be there in about forty-five minutes.”
“Good. And, Allie?”
“Yes?”
“Don’t leave town. And be careful.”
A chill ran down my arms. Why would he say that? I wouldn’t skip town. And I was always careful. Well, as careful as the situation allowed. “I’ll be there in forty-five.”
I hung up the phone and scowled at it. Okay, maybe he had a reason to worry about me not showing up. I’d gotten myself into some weird stuff a few months ago, not that I remembered much of it. My friend Nola, who lived three hundred miles away on a nonmagical alfalfa farm in Burns, had taken me in afterward. She tried to tell me what she knew about the days I no longer remembered and the weeks that had gone by while I’d been in a coma. But her information was sketchy too.
The one thing that had become abundantly clear to me was just how much memory I had lost. It still gave me nightmares.
I glanced over at the table by the window. The blank book where I wrote everything just in case magic took my memories was there. I walked over to it, flipped it open. The most current pages were the basic itinerary from the last few days—me settling into my new apartment, the phone messages from my father’s accountant I hadn’t returned. The sandwich shop I discovered a couple streets over that made really good paninis (I give the salmon rosemary five stars), and the name of a song I liked on the radio.
But as I flipped back toward the front of the book, I found the blank page. The corner of it was worn from me going back to it so often in the last few weeks. Right there on that blank page I should have written everything that happened to me between when I last saw my father alive and when I woke up at Nola’s farm a month later.
Blank.
No matter how hard I stared at it, the notes I should have written were not there.
Things I really wish I could remember, like what had happened between me and a man named Zayvion Jones. I remember him hanging around St. Johns neighborhood in North Portland. I remember him asking me out for lunch, and I remember him going with me to see my father.
What I didn’t remember—the things my friend Nola had said happened—was falling in love with him, so much so that I’d sacrificed myself to save him.
It just didn’t sound like me.
Slow to trust, slower to love, I couldn’t figure out how I had fallen for him so completely in such a short time.
I shut the book and pressed my fingers against my forehead. Magic is not for sissies. Sure, it can do a million good things—keep cities safer and hospitals going, and even just make a bad paint job look good—but it always comes with a price.
Sometimes magic makes me pay a double price—pain for using it, and loss of memory. Yeah, I’m just lucky that way. It was almost enough to make me want to give it up altogether. Almost.
The phone rang again, and I looked through my fingers at it, trying to decide if I really wanted to talk to anyone else this morning. It might be a Hounding job, which would mean money, or, heck, Nola checking in on me.
I picked it up.
“Hello?”
“Hello, Allie.” A woman’s voice this time. I searched my memory and came up with nothing—see how annoying that is? “I’m sorry to call so early, but I’ve left a few messages on your cell phone and thought I’d try to catch you before you went out for the day.”
I flipped my book open again. Who had been leaving me messages? Just my dad’s accountant, Mr. Katz. I glanced at my cell phone—no light at all. The battery was dead, blown. I’d had it only a couple days, and it was currently plugged into the charger.
I’d had zero luck with cell phones lately. Any electronics that worked through a line, like my computer, seemed to hold up okay, but anything wireless self-destructed when it saw me coming.
“Allie?” the woman said.
“Yes,” I said, still trying to place her voice. “My cell isn’t working. You might want to leave messages here on my home phone.”
“Do you want me to have Mr. Katz set you up with a new phone?”
And that’s when I knew who it was. Violet. My dad’s latest wife. She had a young voice, and from the newspaper articles Nola had shown me, I knew she was about my age. I think I had met her, but that memory was toast too.
“No, that’s fine. It’s still under warranty. Sorry I haven’t gotten back to you. Why are you calling?”
She hesitated, just a pause, an inhalation, but it made every instinct in my body rise up.
“Are you in trouble?” I asked.
She exhaled with a sort of laugh. “I’m fine, just fine. I was hoping you might want to get together for lunch today. I haven’t heard from you since before the coma. You didn’t contact me when you came back into town. I know we’ve only met once, but … well, since you weren’t able to come to the funeral … and there’s still so much unfinished business with Beckstrom Enterprises and your role in managing the company … I just thought … I don’t know. I thought we might want to get to know each other a little better. Talk about some things.”
My dad had been married six times. Years ago I’d stopped trying to make nice with the women who attached themselves to and were discarded by my father. Which is why I surprised myself by saying, “Sure. Let’s do dinner instead, if that’s okay. I have a lot of things to get to today.”
Violet sounded just as surprised. “Oh. Good. Dinner’s fine.”
We settled the time and restaurant—not one of the exclusive swanky spots in town, but Slide Long’s, known for its seafood—and then we said our goodbyes.
I stared at the phone for a minute, trying to sort out how I felt about getting to know her.
I guess I was a little curious but mostly just lonely. My best friend lived three hundred miles away. The man I was supposed to love was nowhere to be seen. I didn’t even know any of my neighbors.
And my dad was dead.
I wondered when I’d stopped liking being alone. Maybe somewhere in the days I couldn’t remember, I’d given up on the solitary woman bit and had actually let people into my life. And maybe I had really liked it.
Or maybe I just wasn’t in my right mind. Which might also explain the whole ghost-in-the-bathroom bit.
Well, whatever. Right now I had to get down to the police department and tell them what I knew about the day my dad died. After that I’d scout around town and see if there were any Hounding possibilities.
I picked up my journal and quickly wrote that I was giving a statement and had dinner plans with Violet. I paused, wondering if I should write that I’d seen a ghost. Common sense won out, and I simply wrote: Saw Dad’s ghost in the bathroom. Not fun. And hoped that would be that.
I blew out all the candles and checked to make sure my windows were locked and my heater wasn’t turned up too high. My apartment looked like it always did: sort of half-decorated, a few boxes still out from my move a week ago, laundry piled on one corner of the couch waiting to be folded, and empty coffee cups perched here and there amidst a half dozen paperbacks I was reading.
The place was coming together. Pillows on the couch and a couple pieces of artwork I’d bought at the Saturday Market did some good to add color to the off-white walls and tan rug.
And best of all, not a ghost in sight. If I managed to stay here long enough, it might even feel like home someday.
I gathered all the empty cups and took them to the kitchen sink. I was procrastinating, and if I waited any longer I was going to miss the bus and miss my appointment with Love and Payne. Then they’d be on my doorstep, wearing their not-at-all-amused faces.
Going in to see the police before coffee wasn’t my idea of fun.
I took a nice deep breath and put the last cup in the sink. I could do this. Go downtown, give my statement, and then head over to Get Mugged—my favorite coffee shop in the whole town—and get me a decent cup of joe and something for breakfast.
All the normal stuff normal people do. Normal people who use magic only occasionally because they don’t want to pay the physical price of pain. Normal people who use magic only to make themselves look thinner at their high school reunions or to keep their car shiny in the summer. Normal people who use magic only to get high on Friday nights.
Normal people who don’t see ghosts.
So what if I wasn’t good at normal? Didn’t mean I couldn’t have some fun.
I turned out the kitchen light and walked around the half wall, snatching up my knit hat on the way. I tugged the hat over my head, thankful my hair was short enough I didn’t have to tuck it up. I headed to the living room and pulled my coat and scarf off the back of my couch and put them on. I put my journal and dead cell phone in one pocket and then checked for my gloves (black leather driving gloves that were actually warm and stylish, wonder of wonders) in the other pocket.
The gloves served two purposes. One, they kept my fingers from freezing—it had been cold the last week or so. I was amazed the rain hadn’t turned to snow yet. And two, the gloves hid the marks magic had left on my hands. Which meant I didn’t have to put up with the stares and questions.
Yes, I get tired of making up excuses for something most people wouldn’t believe. That magic, magic in my bones, painted me, marked me, scarred me. Most days I liked how it looked but some days I didn’t want the attention.
With my keys and wallet tucked in my pockets, I went out the door, locking it behind me. The delicious spice of cinnamon and yeast caught at the back of my throat and made my empty stomach cramp in protest. I inhaled deeply and sighed. Sweet torture, someone was baking cinnamon rolls. I put one hand over my stomach and picked up the pace a bit. I hadn’t eaten since my peanut butter sandwich for dinner yesterday, and I was suddenly very hungry.
I marched down the hall and noted the last apartment door was propped open. The tenants had moved out about a week after I moved in, and it looked like someone had rented it already. I passed in front of the door and inhaled deeply again, this time picking up on the more subtle scent of almond and deeper spices—a man’s cologne, the slightest tang of sweat and something sweet like licorice—as I passed by the door. I didn’t hear anyone moving around in there, but clearly, moving was going on.
There were no elevators in the Forecastle, which was one of the reasons I practically begged the landlord to let me rent. I had a serious thing about small spaces. I seriously hated them.
Elevators, changing rooms, even small cars set me off in a panic. I’d rather walk a million stairs than push a single elevator button. The other thing the Forecastle had going for it was it didn’t reek of old magic every time the weather got bad. And in Portland, the weather got bad a lot.
I headed down the central staircase, my boot heels silent on the carpeting. The lobby was cold and quiet and dark except for the ceiling lights. There were windows next to the doors that led to the street, but dawn hadn’t knocked the night out of the sky yet.
I pulled my hat closer over my head and tucked my chin in my scarf before opening the door.
Rain fell in huge heavy drops, cold as ice melt on the gusty winds. I pushed my hands into my pockets and tipped my head down, trying to keep my face out of the worst of the wet. I tromped up the sidewalk to the bus stop. The good thing about being six feet tall is I can cover some serious ground in a short time. But even though the bus stop was only a few blocks up the hill, I was out of breath by the time I hit the first curb.
Nearly dying had taken a lot out of me. I hated being reminded that I wasn’t as strong as I liked to be, but it was true.
Time. All I needed was a little time to finish getting well and then I’d be healthy and strong. I’d be normal again.
Magic pushed under my skin, stretching and making me itch a little. Reminding me it was there, ready to be used, to be shaped, to be cast. Reminding me it would do anything for me. So long as I was willing to pay the price.
Okay, maybe normal was too much to ask for. Right now, I’d settle for healthy.
I ignored the push of magic and kept a steady pace to the bus stop. I was drenched by the time I arrived. The bus stop itself was a cozy little Plexiglas closet of death beneath the glaring eye of a streetlight. My palms broke out in a sweat inside my gloves.
Oh, no way. No matter how wet and cold I was, there was no force in this world that could make me stand under that tiny roof with the other six people who were already crammed inside. Freeze to death in the driving wind and rain instead? No problem.
Five or six men huddled on the other side of the bus stop, between it and the curb. They faced the street, hands in their pockets, heads bent against the gusty rain.
Typical to Oregon, no one carried an umbrella, though everyone had on a hat or hood. We all waited, silent, a mix of old, young, and odd.
I scanned the faces, wondering if I knew any of them. It was possible they could be my neighbors. But no one made eye contact, and no one looked familiar. What every one looked was wet, and tired of it.
The bus rumbled up to the curb and screeched to a stop. The curbside men got on first, and then a few of the speedier bus stop huddlers, myself in the mix. I reached the door and flashed my bus pass. The smell of people—lots and lots of wet people—hit me full in the face.
That was one of the disadvantages to being a Hound. Not only was I able to track spells back to their caster, I also had a pretty sensitive nose, even without magic enhancing it.
I tucked my nose a little deeper into my scarf and beelined to the empty back of the bus. I took a seat near the door and leaned my head against the window behind me. That let me stare across the aisle and out the other window while the rest of the riders got on the bus. Across the street, a man pulled free from the shadows. He stood there, in the open and the rain, a darkness against darkness. He stared at the bus. He stared at me.
I felt his gaze all the way down to my bones.
I knew him. I was sure of it.
Zayvion Jones. The man I had fallen in love with—the man I might still be in love with. The man I hadn’t seen for weeks.
The doors hissed shut and the engine growled as the bus pulled out into traffic, leaving Zayvion lost to the rain and darkness behind me.
Loneliness hollowed out my chest. What had he been doing there on the street? Was he looking for me?
Well, if he was, he’d have to wait. My cell was toast. If he had a phone, I didn’t think he’d given me the number. I’m sure I would have written it in my blank book. Or at least I think I would have.
I shook my head and tried to push Zayvion out of my mind. He knew where I lived. Obviously. He could leave me a note if he wanted to get a hold of me.
“Mind if I sit?”
That voice sent my stomach down to my shoes and left nothing but fight or flight rising up through me in a hot wave. I suddenly wished I’d brought my baseball bat with me.
I looked up.
Lon Trager, the kingpin of drugs and blood magic, smiled down at me. I’d saved Martin Pike’s granddaughter from his blood and drug den a while ago. My testimony had put Trager in jail.
He was supposed to get thirty years. Thirty. It hadn’t even been three.
He wore a nice business coat, expensive French cologne, and a hat straight out of a 1930s film. He didn’t wait for my answer before folding into the seat next to me, his shoulders brushing mine. His face was long, dark, his cheeks hollowed out so the bones cut a hard line under his eyes. He was a predator. He was violence. A dealer, a pusher, a killer.
“Great day to be alive, isn’t it, Ms. Beckstrom?”
If he thought I was going to sit there and make nice talk, he was out of his mind.
I stood.
Six other men in our immediate vicinity rose out of their seats just a little and glanced at Trager. They each had at least one hand in a pocket. I pulled my nose out of my scarf and caught the faintest scent of metal and oil and gunpowder.
“I’m sure you are a very busy woman.” Trager put his hand out, and his thugs sat back down in their seats. “Please sit, Ms. Beckstrom. We wouldn’t want anyone on this bus to have an unpleasant experience.”
I was so screwed. If I yelled for the bus driver to call 911, or even if I silently traced a glyph to cast magic, Trager’s men would pull their guns. Everyone on the bus could be killed.
Magic is fast.
So are bullets.
Think, Allie, I told myself. There had to be a way out of this.
But the only other thing I could think of was to sit down, listen to his threats, and maybe oh-so-casually trace a glyph that I could use on him before his goons killed me.
Life or death before coffee. Welcome to Monday.
I sat on the edge of the seat and half turned so I could meet him eye to eye.
His eyes were brown enough to be black. Cool, flat, and alien in a way that made me squirm inside.
“Cops know you’re out?” I asked.
“Oh, yes. Yes, they do.”
That sent chills over my skin. He had gotten out legally. Or maybe he had bought his way out. Either way, he was free. Really free.
Holy shit.
“Does it worry you?” he said. “You know this … bad blood between us”—he smiled, and it made him look hungry—“could be wiped away. I’m willing to call it clean, done, over, no harm, no foul, so long as you do one thing for me.”
I had no intention of doing anything for him. But he didn’t have to know that. “Really? Must be my lucky day.”
His smile wasn’t doing anything for his looks. Unless he was going for the crazy psycho-killer thing.
“Ms. Beckstrom,” he chided, “you don’t know how lucky you’ve been. I will kill you.” He shrugged his shoulders like he was discussing which pizza to buy for lunch. “Today, tomorrow. If not by my hand, then by my voice and the hands of my people. My people are everywhere. Even your rich dead daddy knew that. Even your rich dead daddy bowed to me.”
I blinked like I wasn’t the least bit intimidated. And in some ways, I wasn’t. He could insult my father all he wanted—I didn’t care.
“Is this going to take all day?” I asked. “My stop’s coming up.”
A flicker of raw anger flashed in those alien eyes. “Bring me Martin Pike,” he said with such emphasis that his spit peppered my face. “Bring him to me alive. By tomorrow night. Tuesday, no later than midnight. If I don’t see both of you strolling across my floor, you will be dead before the sun rises on Wednesday.”
The bus grumbled and slowed, kneeling toward the stop at the curb. His goons all stood.
I should have seen it, should have sensed the change in his body language. But when six guys with guns stand up at the same time, I am all about keeping an eye on them.
The bite of a needle plunged deep in my thigh hit me like an electric shock. I grunted but didn’t have time to yell, didn’t have time to cast magic or even punch him in the face before Lon Trager was on his feet. In his hand was an odd double-chambered glass syringe wrapped from tip to plunger in a fine metallic cagework of glyphs. And in that syringe was my blood. Six guns from his goons were pocketed and pointed at me.
Subtle. Deadly. “Tomorrow by midnight.” Trager deposited the syringe in his pocket.
I stood to throw a spell at him, regardless of the stupidity of taking him down with all his gun-buddies ready to waste me, and thumped back into the seat on my ass. A wave of dizziness washed over me. The sickeningly sweet taste of cherries exploded in the back of my mouth, and the entire bus slipped sideways while a flood of heat spread out over my thigh.
What was on that needle?
By the time the dizziness passed—maybe a full minute and a half—Trager and his men were gone, the bus was no longer at the curb, and the seat across from me was now filled with a mother and two kids sitting on their knees so they could look out the window behind them.
Sweet hells. I was so screwed.
Lon Trager had my blood.
And I didn’t know what he was going to use it for.
I thought about calling the police on my cell, but it was beyond busted.
Magic shifted in me, pressed to slip my tenuous hold on it. It promised anything, promised to destroy Trager, if I was willing to pay for it.
No. I’d find a traditional way to throw his ass back in jail. Some way that he wouldn’t be able to plea or bribe his way out of.
I’d be at the police station in just a few minutes. Enough time to calm my pounding heart and regain my cool.
Tall buildings slid through the branches of trees that lined the streets as the bus continued into downtown. At the next stop, a man wearing a ski hat, a gray trench coat, and a black scarf walked up the two stairs and paused to scan the bus like he was looking for someone. He had a newspaper folded under his arm. The brown paper cup in his hand sent out the scent of coffee like strains of music from a caffeine angel’s harp.
He paid, glanced again at the mostly full seats, and caught me looking at him. Okay, I was really looking to make sure he wasn’t carrying a gun, but still, he caught my glance.
Here is something else that’s weird about me. I do not look away when people catch me staring at them. I’d spent too many years staring down my father even though I hadn’t ever won. My father had a deep need to control people—his only daughter perhaps most of all. Still, it taught me not to back down from confrontation.
The man with the coffee smiled, just the slightest curve of his lips, and walked my way. He didn’t look away either, and I found myself staring into a pair of eyes the color of winter honey. He had a square face with heavy brows and eyes framed by very dark lashes. It don’t think he’d shaved this morning, and it looked good on him.
“This seat taken?” he asked.
What was it with me and strange men today?
“Yes.”
He frowned, looked toward the front of the bus. No other empty seats. But instead of pushing it, which would have gotten him a broken nose because no one was screwing with me again, he took a couple steps forward. He switched his cup into his left hand so his right hand was free to hold the overhead bar. With the newspaper pinned under his arm, he took a sip of coffee.
I sniffed him out, searching for a hint of Trager’s French cologne. Instead of Trager’s overpowering scent, this man’s cologne—sandalwood and sweet oranges—mixed with the fragrance of coffee. A delicious combination made more delicious because he didn’t smell like Trager, didn’t smell like the goons, the guns, or the danger that had suddenly pushed its way into my morning.
My gut said he was just a regular guy.
Well, Regular Guy would just have to ride the bus on his regular feet.
We rode a while in silence, me looking out the window across the aisle, keeping him in my peripheral vision, him looking ahead. He took a sip from his cup, and the smell was sweet torture.
At the next stoplight, he let go of the bar and extended his right hand. “Paul Stotts,” he said.
I did not shake his hand. “Good for you.”
“I know you,” he said. “Allie Beckstrom, right?”
I did a quick search through my memories. I didn’t remember him, but instinct told me he wasn’t as Regular Guy as he appeared to be. “How long have you been following me?”
“Hmm,” he said around a swallow of coffee. “Just today.”
He didn’t hold himself like a Hound, didn’t have that desperate look of a Hound, and was wearing too much cologne to be a Hound. He also didn’t look or smell like he was into blood magic or drugs, so maybe he wasn’t a part of Trager’s game. But with Trager’s “my people are everywhere” speech ringing in my head, I did not want to chance it.
“Police,” he said. “Detective Stotts.”
Oh. I hadn’t expected that.
“Police? Where were you two stops back?”
“Waiting for the bus. Why?”
I hesitated. Did I really want to go into this in public? Just because the goons got off the bus with Trager didn’t mean someone else wasn’t here acting as his ears. If Trager had any brains—and I had to assume he did, since he had not only created the largest blood and drugs cartel in the city, but he had also pulled a get-out-of-jail-free card—he would have left someone behind to watch me and report back.
Hells, for all I knew Stotts could be his guy.
I rubbed at my forehead with the tips of my gloves. “Never mind. Are you here to make sure I get to the station?”
He glanced at me and then away. “Well, we didn’t want to leave anything to chance.”
He had no idea how chancy it had been. Still, that was interesting. I’d never had police protection or escort. At least, I didn’t remember having it. So far, I wasn’t all that impressed.
“Didn’t think I could manage it on my own?”
He smiled, that soft curve of his mouth. Okay, this close, I noticed that his bone structure had a Latino influence: arched cheekbones, square jawline, but soft eyes and lips. A very nice combination.
Yes, I looked at his left hand. Saw the wedding ring. Can’t blame me for being curious.
“We thought it might be better if you had an escort.” And I could tell by the tone of his voice, and the rhythm of his heart, that he was telling the truth.
So it was a friendly gesture. The police were looking out for me, not against me.
“How thoughtful.”
He took a drink of coffee, nodded. “You haven’t exactly been living on easy street lately. Pegged for murder, shot, chased, nearly killed by wild storm magic.”
“And the coma,” I said.
He nodded. “It just seemed like the odds of you getting to the station unscathed were pretty low.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” I drawled.
“Could be worse,” he said.
The bus pulled to another stop, and I caught a glimpse of the police station through the rain-pebbled window. This was our stop.
“Worse?”
“Decker could have been on duty.”
I winced. Officer Decker and I did not get along. Not since the time I’d Hounded a drug deal back to his brother’s girlfriend and found out I’d been mistaken. It was his brother, not the girlfriend, who was dealing and Offloading the price of magic onto a retirement home. It had been my testimony that put his brother in jail. Since then I mostly tried to avoid Decker.
Detective Stotts stepped backward and waited for me to take the place in front of him.
“Aren’t you chivalrous?” I asked as I stepped into the aisle.
“No,” he said from close behind me. “Just trying to keep my eye on you.”
“Get in line,” I muttered. Actually, I appreciated his honesty. I would appreciate it even more as soon as I confirmed he really was a police officer.
I checked the people still sitting on the bus as I shuffled down the aisle. One woman, who I thought had been asleep, lifted her head and opened her eyes to watch me go by. She smelled like sweet, sweet cherries. Blood magic. One of Trager’s people, watching, listening.
I couldn’t get off the bus and out into the freezing rain fast enough. I tucked my head and jogged toward the station doors, too many threats too early in the morning making me want to run.
But I knew better than that. One, it would exhaust me. Two, whoever was still watching me would know how spooked I really was. Instead of going faster, I slowed my pace, my boots slapping through dark puddles. I strode past the concrete blast barriers and up the steps to the front door of the police department. Other people milled along the stairs with me, too many people and too many scents for me to know which of them was part of Trager.
I pushed through the doors and expected Stotts to be right there with me, but once I made it to the lobby and wiped the rain off my face, I realized he wasn’t there. My police escort was gone, like a ghost in the wind.
Before I’d taken more than three steps across the lobby, a man’s voice called out. “Hey, Tita!”
Detective Love, who, if you believed his stories, had a mama from Samoa and a daddy who was a Scottish pirate, strolled my way. Love was six foot three if he was an inch, and almost as wide. His dark wavy hair fell down to ox-thick shoulders as broad as a city bus. He wore a bright blue button-down shirt and tan pants, a combination that made me think of sand and sky on a distant, sunnier shore.
Tita, I’d learned, meant tough girl. Love had called me that since the Hounding job I’d done that put Lon Trager in jail.
“Why’d you have to make it in on time?” he asked with a wide, white smile. “Now I owe Payne ten dollars.”
“You should know better than to take bets against me,” I said.
He laughed. “Yah, yah. Come on this way.”
He started off toward his office, and I fell into step next to him, absorbing the sunlight good humor he radiated. “There’s coffee, right?”
“Oh, yah. Coffee’s onolisicious today.” He glanced over his shoulder and rolled his eyes.
So much for coffee.
“You like the new apartment?” he asked as we left the lobby behind us for a maze of cubicles and desks. “I heard you moved away from the river.”
“I like it okay. It’s better than the Fair Lead.”
“Yah, yah. That place’s a pit. Don’t know why you stayed there so long.” He opened a door to the small office he and his partner shared. He lumbered around the desk to the right and sat. Payne was not in the room.
“It was cheap.” I pulled off my coat and hung it on the coatrack that leaned against the file cabinet. With me and Love in the office, I was fast running out of breathing space.
Think calm thoughts, I told myself. There was plenty of room for me, plenty of room for Love, and plenty of room for lots and lots and lots of air.
“You okay?” Love asked.
I nodded and took the seat in front of the desk. “Small spaces.” I shrugged like it was no big deal.
He raised his eyebrows. “Want me to open the door?”
“No. I’m good.”
He gave me a considering look. I (of course) met his gaze straight on.
“Okay,” he finally said. He pulled a file folder off of a stack to his left, opened it, and tapped his computer keyboard. “Right.” He looked over at me and gave me a nod. “You ready for this?”
“Sure.”
He pulled out a tape recorder and turned it on and then held it close to his mouth while he said his name, the date, and some other things I wasn’t paying attention to. What I was paying attention to were the pictures on the wall. Him towering over a group of kids at a school, him and a police dog. And one of him and his dark, lean partner, Lia Payne. Other than that, the walls were off-white cracked plaster.
There was something odd about the walls, a cool dampness that emanated from them. I looked closer. Those weren’t cracks in the plaster. They were very fine, very subtle Blocking spells, placed there by adding lead and glass to the paint or plaster and then drawing out the glyphs with Intent. Pulling a magic fast one in here would rebound back on the caster. The glyphs seemed strange to me, since I didn’t remember ever noticing them when I’d come in to talk with Love before. I wondered if they’d created the spells recently, or maybe if they’d done it because of my spectacular meltdown a few months ago.
Magic shifted in me, stretched so hard I had to take a deep breath to make room for it. I hoped Love didn’t notice.
The door opened and Detective Payne walked in, three coffee cups in her hand. The door stayed slightly ajar behind her, offering a tantalizing glimpse of the space behind it.
“Hello, Allie. I knew you’d make it. No sugar, right?”
She handed the coffee over my shoulder and I smiled up at her. The woman never smiled, but I liked her anyway. Clear, efficient, and not afraid to make hard choices on a moment’s notice. She must have a soft side since I knew she had a couple of kids at home that her husband took care of during the day.
And, hey, she remembered how I liked my coffee.
“Right. Thanks.” I took a drink and shuddered. It was really and truly horrible, but it was hot and caffeinated, and I was desperate. I held my breath and went for another gulp.
She gave Love his coffee, which smelled like powdered hot cocoa mix, and held her hand out to him.
“Pay up.”
Love sighed and shifted his weight to access his wallet in his back pocket. “Fine. Fine.” He sifted through a couple bills. “We said five, right?”
“Twenty.”
“Ten.” He slapped a bill in her hand. “You tired of robbing me yet?”
“Just look at it as my way of keeping that superhero collection of yours under control.”
“Superhero?” I asked. “Which one?”
“Deadpool,” Love said.
“Who?”
“See?” Payne said. “No one even knows him.”
Love just shook his head. “He’ll be bigger than Batman, I’m telling you. People love him.”
Payne drank her coffee and gave him a level stare. “People love Batman because he’s a good guy.”
“Really? You read him?”
She blinked a couple times like that was the stupidest thing she’d heard all day. “I don’t read comics.”
“See how she is?” Love shook his head sadly. “No heart for the art.”
I took another drink of my coffee. Winced at the horror of it. “I think it’s the coffee. It could make anyone mean.”
Payne did not smile, but her eyes twinkled. She pocketed the cash and sat at her desk. “Yah,” Love said, “That’s why I drink the cocoa. Keeps me sweet.”
Payne just raised one eyebrow.
Love thumbed the recorder back on. “State your name, please.”
I did so. Love took a nice, noisy slurp of his cocoa and wrote something down on the yellow legal pad in front of him. Then he asked me to state where I was the day my father died and to tell him what happened in as much detail as possible.
So I did. The entire statement didn’t take longer than fifteen minutes. I’d Hounded for Mama Rossitto a hit that was killing a five-year-old out in St. Johns. I thought the magical Offload was my father’s signature and had taken a cab to my dad’s office, where I told him I was advising Mama to contact the police and then sue my father for illegal Offloading practices.
I told Love my dad denied that he or his company had Offloaded on the kid. I told Love I stabbed my dad’s finger—and my own—with a straight pin and worked a blood magic Truth spell at his request. Even under the influence of Truth, my father had told me he and his company were not involved with the Offload.
“Were you angry?” Payne, who was also taking notes at her desk, asked.
Okay, here’s where I realized it might have been smart to have an attorney come in with me. Hells, how stupid could I be?
Still, honesty was the best policy, right?
“Yes, I was angry. I thought my father had Offloaded a huge magical price onto a five-year-old kid and that the kid was dying.”
“Was that the only reason you went to see your father that day?” Love asked.
I knew what he was getting at. I’d managed to avoid seeing my dad for seven years before I’d gone storming into his office. And on the one day I did go see him, he was killed. It was a pretty hard coincidence to swallow.
“That was the only reason.”
Love nodded. “Did you see anyone else while you were there?”
“His receptionist. I … uh … cast Influence on her so she would show me into my dad’s office without making me wait.”
Love’s eyebrows went up. Influence came naturally to my family. With a smile and just the barest whisper of magic, a Beckstrom could make almost anyone do almost anything. Still, any spell cast legally on another human being had to be done with their consent. That was a damn hard thing to actually enforce, but the spirit of the law ruled in magic-related cases.
Cases like murder.
“Did you Influence anyone else in the building?” Love asked.
“No.”
“So other than your father, his receptionist was the only other person you spoke to while in the building,” Love said.
“No. Zayvion Jones was there too.”