There are reasons why I like to sleep in my own bed. One, I have good pillows. Even though the mattress is too hard, as long as I have enough pillows, I don’t care. The other reason I like sleeping in my own bed is because gorillas with baseball bats don’t come in the room and bash in my head while I’m asleep.
So when that sudden, explosive pain hit, I knew right off that I wasn’t at home. I groaned, opened my eyes, and tried to match where I was to places where I might fall asleep. It was a narrow room lit by a small yellow-shaded lamp in the corner. The walls were painted in we-didn’t-even-care-the-first-time-we-painted-it beige. A white and blue quilt spilled over onto a wood floor that had been so worn down it looked more like bark than wood.
But the quilt was clean, thick enough that I suspected feathers inside, and looked homemade. I leaned over, almost lost my lunch to the pounding pain inside my skull, and with much careful breathing pulled the quilt off the floor and back onto the bed with me.
Sweet hells, I hurt. But it was not the same pain I’d been in from using magic. This was different. Deeper. It made me feel really sad and really alone.
Then, as fast as it had hit, the pain was gone. I wiped at the wet on the corners of my eyes. That had been the worst headache I had ever experienced. I took a couple of breaths, and was relieved that really, all the rest of me was feeling pretty good. But the headache, or maybe the haunting absence of that sudden pain, left me feeling horrible in a different way. I was crying, actually crying, like I hadn’t since I was ten. But why?
The wispy fragments of a dream brushed across my thoughts; someone was gone, missing. Hopelessness washed over me like when I’d been told my mom had left the country. I wanted to curl up under the quilt and never come out.
I’d just lost someone or something important to me. But I didn’t know why I thought that. I must be tired. Just tired.
I wiped my face on my sleeve and took a look at my hands. Still a little yellow from the bruising, but not the angry black and purple-red they’d been last time I’d looked at them.
The digital clock next to the bed read five a.m. I’d slept over twelve hours. I had better write down the details of the hit on Boy and the meeting with my father in my little book while I had the chance. When I got home, I’d take some time and transfer the notes to my computer.
It was strange to have my entire life, or at least the important bits I didn’t want to forget, recorded by hand and backed up electronically. It made sense to do it for the jobs I Hounded, but sometimes when going through the book I ran across a detail, like “always take the right trail in the park” or “parrots don’t work” that were obviously personal experiences I no longer retained.
Sometimes I felt like a ghost in my own life.
I sat up and turned on the bedside lamp. Mama had left me in my jeans and tank top and put my extra sweater on me, and had draped my coat over the foot of the bed. I tugged the coat up to me, and dug the leather-bound journal and pen out of the pocket.
The first page of the book had my vital information. My name, birthday, blood type, medical allergies, things of that manner. So far I hadn’t forgotten those things, but it was a grim and very real possibility that one day I might. I didn’t like to think about it, but it would be stupid to not take what precautions I could.
I thumbed back to a blank page and started with the date and time of Mama’s call.
It didn’t take me long. I’d had lots of practice, in college and otherwise, to make my notes as short, clear, and concise as possible.
I tucked the book back in my coat and turned out the lamp. But instead of drifting back to sleep for maybe another hour, I tossed and turned, the lingering sadness and loss from the dream filling my thoughts.
For no reason at all, I kept thinking about my father. Not about his anger and manipulation, but about the feel of his blood and mine joined, his regret when he said, “I’m sorry,” and how genuine that felt.
I should have stayed away. Stayed away for another seven years.
I finally got up and walked across the dark room to the window. I tugged back a corner of the curtain, not sure I was ready for actual sunlight yet. I needn’t have bothered being so cautious. It was not daylight out, not even close. The sky was black as a hangover, and the alley below the window didn’t have a light anywhere along it. I was on the second floor, so I could see around one building with windows that were broken out, and there was plenty of light from the other streets, lights that burned brighter the farther away from St. John’s they were.
St. John’s wasn’t like what I expected from this vantage. This early in the morning, it carved a strong ebony edge against the burning yellows and blues of the city, like the mountains against sunrise. And there was a kind of haphazard sense of power in the short, strong buildings that were still standing, a squared-off victory over time, over manipulation, over magic. It survived despite the changing world.
St. John’s had power to withstand poverty, neglect, pain. Maybe that was what I liked about it. Because there were people in these buildings who hadn’t given up, hadn’t tried to be anything other than what they were, hadn’t tried to conform to what the world expected them to be. There were other people too, the kind who migrated here like rats to garbage. Even so, good people remained—people like Mama and her Boys. Those deep roots made this dump feel more like home than the penthouse condo of my childhood.
A motion at street level caught my eye. A big, heavy man in a dark trench coat moved down the street, stepping around piles of what I hoped were just garbage and cardboard. He was coming from somewhere farther north, moving out of deeper shadow into faint streetlight.
A chill ran over my skin. There was something about the big man that gave me the creeps. I watched as he strolled along, trying to figure out what bugged me about him.
He was almost out of my line of vision, moving in front of the building that blocked my view farther down the street. I shifted on my feet, curling up so I put some weight on the side of my foot. I drew the curtain back a little more.
The man stopped. It was like watching an old movie where a mime runs into a glass wall. He threw a hand in front of him and looked over his shoulder. But instead of looking back into the darkness, he looked up. At me.
Like I said before, it was dark out, dark in the room, and I hadn’t brought a night-light with me. There wasn’t a single way he could see me, standing behind a dark curtain, in a dark room, wearing a dark sweater and jeans.
But his face was tilted up toward me. I saw his mouth open, as if he had just said the word no. I could see the shadow-smudged thumbprints where his eyes should be, and I knew he saw me. I stared right back at him, because if there’s one thing I won’t do it’s back down once I’m spotted.
My heart beat hard, and I wished I had on my boots, my running shoes, anything. Instinct told me to run. Instinct told me he was dangerous.
I could handle dangerous. Dangerous and me went back a long way. We did lunch when dangerous was in town.
The man lifted a hand toward me and I felt, very clearly, his fingers, like heated oil, slide down my spine, thump over each vertebra, and then squeeze.
I caught my breath because it felt really real. And it creeped me the hell out.
I let the curtain drop and stepped away from the window. Groping someone without their permission was against the law, magic or no magic. Breaking the line of vision was usually enough to dispel that kind of spell. But just in case, I backed away to the door and made a warding gesture. The sensation of his hand down my back had already faded, so I didn’t invoke a spell or draw any magic into that ward, but I rubbed my hands up and down my arms trying to rid myself of the sense of violation.
His touch might be gone, but my heart was still pounding. That had been familiar. That man down there, whoever he was, had touched me before.
I tried to draw up a memory that he fit. A client? An acquaintance? Someone from college? An associate of my father’s? But where there should be a name, or a defined face in my memory, all I found was black static.
A chill rattled under my skin and I clenched my hands into fists, then shook them out. That man touched me, bone deep, without my consent. He knew me. And he knew I was here, up here, in this room.
“Oh, hell,” I whispered.
There was no way I was going to just sit here. For all I knew, he was on his way up now. I didn’t know why, but getting away from him, shaking the scent of him—rot, and something like licorice or honey mixed with the faint whiff of formaldehyde—had become the top item on my agenda for the day.
Okay, I wanted out, out of here, out fast.
I looked for my backpack and found it on the wooden chair by the bed. I picked it up, took the time to shove my feet into my shoes and tie the laces so I wouldn’t trip. I pulled on my coat, patting my pocket to make sure the book was there.
The other pocket had money, so I pulled out a twenty and threw it on the mattress. Mama’s generosity was a bridge I didn’t want to burn.
I wanted to run. I needed to run. I knew he was coming for me. I could feel him moving through the darkness below into the light of Mama’s restaurant. I could smell him. Could smell the rotted stink of magic he’d used on me. I had to leave. Now.
I looked at the window, but some practical part of my mind calmly listed the injuries I’d get if I tried to hero it down the outer walls of this dump. Right. Probably best to escape through the door. Any time now. Now would be good. Before he made it up the stairs.
I swung my backpack over my shoulder and hurried to the door again. I listened for footsteps. My heart was beating so loudly that I had to hold my breath to hear. Nothing. No sound at all from the other side of the door.
I opened the door as quietly as I could and checked the hall in the dim light of a couple low-watt bulbs in the ceiling. Just a hall with a few closed doors, and the wooden-railed staircase going down. And that’s exactly where I was going too. I closed the door behind me and walked over to the stairs, insanely grateful that I’d packed my running shoes. I looked down the stairwell. Pockets of shadow swallowed whole sections of the stair. Anyone could be in those shadows. He could be in those shadows. I hesitated.
What if he were waiting for me on the stairs? I didn’t like small spaces, and especially didn’t like fighting in them.
But there were other ways I could defend myself. Like magic. I was a Hound. I had certain abilities at my disposal. All I had to do was calmly draw upon the magic within me and use it to see where the man was. It was even possible he wasn’t in the building. Maybe he had just walked on. Maybe this was all in my head and I was panicking for no reason.
I shivered even though it was warm and damp in the hall. Instinct told me someone was nearby and looking for me. Instinct had never been wrong about these kinds of things before.
I silently recited a mantra, the one that always calmed me down no matter how freaked out I was. A mantra could be anything you could actually remember in times of panic. Mine happened to be the childhood chant Miss Mary Mack. Miss Mary Mack, Mack, Mack, all dressed in black, black, black, with silver buttons, buttons, buttons, all down her back, back, back . . . and again, all the while listening for footsteps and keeping a nose out for the smell of him. Finally, my shoulders relaxed and my breathing slowed. Good. Now all I had to do was draw upon magic.
Nothing. I felt as empty as a beggar’s pocket. No magic here, not even old copper channels. It didn’t mean it was impossible to tap into the magic—that guy out on the street had done just fine. It did mean it was difficult.
The small magic I carried within me seemed like a tiny flicker of its usual strength—a flame about to go out. I was deeply tired, and even though I’d slept, I hadn’t really recovered from the price I’d paid. I didn’t want to draw magic from the nearest source, which was at least three miles away. For all I knew, that guy out there was a Hound and would spot me the moment I cast a spell.
Fine. I could do this the old-fashioned way.
I headed down the stairs as quietly as I could, my back against the wall. The first landing was empty, and I waited there, breathing through my nose, trying to sniff out a whiff of anything, or anyone, out of place. All I smelled was cold cooking grease, and the tang of meat and onions.
I took the last set of stairs down and paused at the bottom to listen. Still nothing. There was no one in the hall. There was no one out in the dining area.
What a great morning this had been so far. First, I woke up and cried like a little girl who’d lost her mommy, and now I was jumping at shadows when there were no shadows.
I so needed a cup of coffee.
And I wanted to be away from here. But when I crossed the room and checked the front door, it had no less than six dead bolts across it. I could get out, but I didn’t want to leave Mama’s place unlocked behind me. Not with that man out there.
Great.
Well, I could still get coffee, then maybe wake Mama up and ask her to lock the door behind me. I walked behind the front counter and toward the kitchen to see if I could start a pot. I heard footsteps behind me.
“Allie girl?”
I turned around. I can’t say I was surprised to see Mama, wearing a pink robe with red hearts on it, her hair messed from sleep. But I was surprised to see the gun in her hand.
“You robbing Mama?” She waved the gun toward the cash register at my elbow.
“What? No. No, of course not. I was going to make coffee.” I shifted the backpack on my shoulder and turned away from the register so it didn’t look like I was casing the joint. “I really just want to go now. The door’s locked and I didn’t want to leave it unlocked behind me. I need to take care of some things.” Like getting some coffee and sanity. In that order.
“You in trouble, Allie girl?” She had not lowered the gun.
For a fleeting moment I wanted to say, well, yes, there’s this woman who is pointing a gun at me, and I don’t do guns before coffee. But Mama was the one who put me up yesterday and let me lie low, and Mama was the one who woke up in the middle of the night to check on me. So what if she was checking on me with a gun? She was just the overprotective type.
“I’m going to be fine,” I told her. “How is Boy?”
Mama lowered the gun. The sleepy look in her eyes turned to worry before she shrugged one shoulder. “Doctor say he stays for a week. But he is sleeping good. Breathing good. Strong.”
There was a strain in her voice, the tight tone of a parent whose child was hurting, maybe dying, saying the hopeful things as if she believed them. Maybe saying them so she could believe them, so they could be true.
“He’s at the hospital?” I asked.
She nodded again. “He comes home soon. Soon.”
“That’s really good. You did the right thing.” And I meant it. I didn’t expect someone as little as Boy to survive such a hard hit, much less recover so quickly. But Boy was strong. Just like Mama said he was.
“Who did this, Allie?” Mama asked. “Who hurt my boy?”
And that’s when it hit me. I hadn’t told her. I had been so angry, then so shocked that my father would be behind this, that I hadn’t told her he was the one who put her son in the hospital. I wondered if she would believe that I’d forgotten to tell her. I wondered if she would hold me hostage and demand money from my father once I told her. I wondered if I wanted to risk telling her anything while she was holding a gun.
Hells. I did not like to negotiate for my life before coffee either.
“I know who it is,” I said.
“Who?” The gun came up, casually aimed at my stomach.
“I am not going to tell you while you’re holding a gun.”
Her eyes narrowed and I knew she was suddenly much more awake than she had been.
“You don’t trust me?” She did not put the gun down. “Tell me.”
“Not with the gun.” I was a lot more awake right now, too.
I could tell it was a hard decision for her. She had, as far as I knew, raised a multitude of boys on her own, in the poorest part of town. Asking her to trust me enough to put down a weapon was like asking magic not to follow a perfect casting, or a river to flow backward.
“Did you do it?” she asked.
Oh. I hadn’t thought of that. No wonder she wasn’t putting the gun down. I shook my head. “No, Mama. I hate that someone hurt him. He’s just a little kid.”
And she must have heard the sincerity, because she walked over to the counter and put the gun down. She did not step away from the counter, but she did fold her hands in front of her so I could see both of them, which was thoughtful of her. It would give me just enough time to surrender if she decided to grab the gun and fire it at me.
“Who?” she asked again.
“My father.” I’d never told her who my father was, but I figured she knew. I’d spent enough time in the public eye when I was younger, and I looked enough like my father that it was hard to find someone who didn’t know we were related. On top of that, Mama was smart. Smart enough to know who she hired to Hound her personal problems. Maybe she hoped some of the Beckstrom fortune would eventually find its way into her pocket.
Mama scowled. “Why? Why my boy?”
“I don’t know. I went to him. I told him we knew. Told him he would have to pay for everything, hospital, damage, and more, but he didn’t tell me why he did it.”
“He say he did it?”
“No. He denied it. But I know his signature. I know what he can do.”
Mama considered that for what felt like a long time. Long enough that I started feeling tired again, started wishing for a cup of coffee down at Get Mugged. Started thinking about the big man I’d seen in the street and wondering whether or not I should mention him to her. Yeah, right. Like telling her a strange and possibly dangerous man was in the neighborhood would be news to her.
“He agree to pay?” she asked.
“I didn’t give him a choice. He hit Boy, Mama. And he has the money to pay. You should take him for everything you can get.”
I expected maybe a smile out of her. Instead, “You don’t care for your own father?”
Good question. Only I had no good answer for it. “I don’t know. I don’t like what he is.” It was the best I could give her.
“Then we sue,” she said. “I have lawyer.”
“A good one?”
“Good, bad.” She shrugged. “I just need hungry.”
“Then you shouldn’t have a problem.” I shifted the weight of the backpack straps again. “I’m going out of town for a while, a week at most. You filed a report with the police, right?”
“I take care of it.”
Which meant she probably hadn’t. I’d need to stop by the station and file a Hounding report. But not before coffee.
“You really need to contact the police about this, Mama. It will make a difference when you go to court.”
“I take care of it.” She picked up the gun. “You do good for Mama. I do good for you.” She walked over to me, the gun balanced in the palm of her hand, grip toward me, like she was offering it to me.
“No thanks. I don’t do guns.”
She scowled. “Did I say I give you gun? Think with your head.” She said it in the same tone she used with her boys, and for no reason at all it made me happy she would be so gruff with me.
“You are good Hound, Allie,” she said, “but you can be more. Better. I see it here.” She pressed her fingertips against my sternum. Warmth spread out from her fingers and dug down deep, like roots looking for water. I felt magic—it had to be magic, though I didn’t know Mama had ever learned to cast—branch out through my veins, wrap my bones, and then drain away, down my arms, stomach, hips, legs, dripping out my fingertips and the bottoms of my feet.
I felt refreshed. Awake. And suspicious as hell. That magic didn’t feel like anything I’d experienced before—too clean, too soothing—and it was gone so thoroughly, it was like it had never happened. I couldn’t even catch a scent from it. It certainly didn’t feel like the magic stored within the city. Didn’t feel like the magic harvested from the wild storms.
But there was no other kind of magic in the world. If there were, it would have been exploited. And if a new kind of magic were going to be found in the world, it sure wouldn’t be here, in the rundown section of Portland, a city where every tap of magic was carefully regulated, monitored, and doled out in billable minutes. And it wouldn’t be discovered by a woman who, as far as I knew, didn’t even have a high school education, much less a higher ed in magic, called all her kids the same name, and wore clothes scrounged from the women’s shelter.
“What was that?” I asked.
“I say if you try hard, you be better. Here.” This time she poked my chest, and all I felt was her bony fingers. “And here.” She tapped my forehead. “Think with your head. Get a real job. No more Hound.”
I rubbed at my forehead. “What else?” She knew what I wanted to know. What kind of magic had she touched me with. Or what kind of spell or glyphing had she cast. I wasn’t an expert. There were spells I’d never experienced before. “What about that magic you just used on me?”
Mama scowled. “No magic. If I had magic, would I be poor? Would my Boy be in hospital dying? Would I live here?”
I gave her a noncommittal shrug. Mama was smart and tough. Tough enough to take a few hits, or live with less if it meant hiding what she had from those who would want to take it. She was also smart enough not to wave magic around in front of someone she didn’t know very well—me.
“I don’t know what you’d do if you had magic,” I said quietly. “Maybe you would be poor and Boy would still be hurt.”
I was very aware of the gun in her hand. And of the fact that she and I weren’t exactly best-buddy girlfriends.
“No magic,” Mama repeated, flat. Final. But she didn’t smell right. I didn’t think she was telling me the truth—or at least not all of it.
The door handle rattled behind me. A key slipped into the first lock and the dead bolt snicked.
I moved to one side of the door. Mama tucked her gun into the pocket of her robe.
“Boy?” she yelled.
“Yes, Mama,” said a man’s voice. “It’s me.”
Mama seemed happy with that, but I wasn’t feeling nearly as confident. I could smell the man, a heavy musk and spice odor.
I thought I knew all of Mama’s Boys, but the man who walked through the door was a stranger to me. Lighter hair than the other Boys I’d met, his dark eyes glittered in the low light, hard and glassy against the deeper tone of his skin. He looked more like Mama than most of her boys. I was pretty sure he was actually her son and figured he was older than me by maybe ten years. He looked like he’d recently taken a shower, and was clean-shaven and polished in a casual corporate way, all the way from his button-down white shirt, dark tie, and gray khakis to his loafers. He smiled and there was a smooth, slick coldness about him that made me think of reptiles. Or politicians.
“I didn’t know we had company.” He extended his hand. “James.”
It took everything I had to put my hand out. I might have been raised by wolves, but I still had social graces. I shook his hand and pulled mine away as quickly as possible. His hands were cold and smooth, and I had a real desire to wipe my palms on my jeans.
“I was just leaving,” I said. So what if I didn’t give my name. Sue me.
His eyes narrowed and the smile slipped. “That’s too bad. You look familiar . . . have we met?”
I got that question a lot, and I had zero intention of telling him I was Daniel Beckstrom’s daughter. But here’s the thing. He didn’t look familiar to me at all. His voice wasn’t ringing any bells and neither was his face. But his scent was familiar. I may not have met this man before, but I had been around him. Close enough and long enough that the smell of him—musky to the point of being sour and peppery—was imbedded in my memory. He carried other odors too—he’d been somewhere with organic death, like at the edge of the river, among fish and rotted things. He smelled of sweat too, like he’d recently done something very physical. What creeped me out was that he also carried the slightest stink of formaldehyde, very faint, like he’d brushed against someone or something that carried that scent. Maybe the big man in the street?
Despite the overriding smells, I knew I knew him. Or had known him. But I couldn’t remember him.
This is where the extra hit—the random double price magic sometimes takes out of me—really sucks. And there was a bad stretch in college where it happened every time I used magic—pain plus memory loss. I shrugged it off at the time, and yeah, I’d turned to booze and drugs to try to handle it. But it didn’t change anything. Unless a person was very diligent about always Offloading to a Proxy, magic left marks. It scarred. And I hated coming face-to-face with my own failings. Knowing I was missing memories, maybe even days or weeks of my life, was the sort of thing that gave me nightmares.
Not to mention the fact that I did not like this man, Mama’s Boy, or no.
“No, we haven’t met,” I said. “Unless you went to Harvard.”
He did a fair job of looking surprised and confused. “The college?”
Right. So we weren’t going to really find out how we knew each other. I’d had enough of this. “Listen, I don’t care what your game is, but tell your buddy out there to keep his hands and magic off me or I will report you both to the police.”
From the corner of my eye, I could see Mama stiffen. James’ face flushed with a fury he dampened with aplomb. “I don’t know who you’re talking about. I’ve been alone tonight. And there is no magic here. Not in this part of town.”
“No magic,” Mama repeated firmly. “You go now, Allie girl. Go.” She shoved me toward the door, and opened it for me.
“No magic,” she said. Mama was sweating even though the air outside was cold enough to sting my eyes. She was afraid, or lying. I glanced back at James. He stood with his hands in his pockets, relaxed, cool on the outside and burning on the inside, watching me watch him. He was hiding something. I figured Mama knew too, but for her own reasons didn’t want to admit it. I also figured she had a gun and it was time for me to go.
I stepped through the door. Mama closed it so quickly behind me that the doorknob literally hit me in the hip. Every lock snapped into place.
“You go to those men again?” Even through the thick wood door I could hear her yelling at James. “Those worthless men, huh? You go to them? Do what they want like dog to them?”
“My business dealings are my own,” James said.
“Your own! What you do, you do to family. To Mama.”
“Then you should be happy,” James yelled. “I’m the one who’s going to get us out of this hellhole. Don’t you want that? Don’t you want to get away from this rotted dump? Have some money, some power?”
“No. Not if that man hand it to me on gold and diamond platter. There is no paying back his kind. They will use you. That kind always uses. We are dirt to them. You are dirt to them.”
“I’m not that stupid,” James said. “I know how to play their game. I know how to give them what they want and take what I want. We all win. We all get what we want.”
“Good.” Mama lowered her voice, but I could still hear her. “I want smart Boy. Boy who pushes pride away. Boy who breaks ties with those men and is not ashamed of his real family.”
There was a pause. Finally James spoke. “Well. Maybe you won’t get what you want after all.” I heard his footsteps pound across the wood floor, retreating deeper into the building.
“You go now, Allie,” Mama’s voice said through the door.
So I did.
This was so none of my business. If Mama needed me for the trial against my dad, I’d happily be there. But I did not want to get involved in her personal life.
It was cold out, so I hit the street at a pretty fast clip, heading toward the nearest well-lit street with a bus stop. Luck was on my side for a change—it wasn’t raining. Dawn smudged cobalt blue over black clouds and faded to a hazy gray by the time I found a bus stop.
Get Mugged would be roasting coffee beans about now, and I’d be there for the first cup. After that, I’d go down to the police station, file my report on Boy’s hit, and then I’d get out of town to Nola’s for a couple weeks before the trial started.
I pictured her little farmhouse and the hundred acres she farmed. In my mind’s eye it was always summer there—the summer I’d left college and landed on her doorstep trying to sort out my life. Nola and I had met in high school. She married her sweetheart her senior year and seemed happy as pie to move almost three hundred miles away to help him run the family alfalfa farm. But with Nola and me, time and distance didn’t matter. She’d always been there when I needed her and I’d tried my best to be there for her too, especially when her husband, John, had been sick with cancer.
There weren’t a lot of people out on the street yet, which suited me fine. Even better was that I didn’t have to wait long for the bus. I flashed my bus pass and settled into the relative peace of the fluorescent lights and rumbling engine.
It had been a strange twenty-four hours. The hit on Boy, seeing my father again after seven years, working blood magic to find a Truth I still couldn’t accept. The feeling of my dad’s blood and words still resonated beneath my skin. Maybe they would for a long time. Blood magic was a powerful branch of spell casting, and except for Truth spells, it was all but outlawed.
My father told me he didn’t hit Boy.
My father was really good at Influencing people to think what he wanted them to think. He was also an expert caster, and probably knew twelve different ways to fake a Truth spell. But it was hard to believe he could lie so completely held blood to blood.
Twenty-four hours had also gotten me hurt and sick from Hounding Boy and, just to make things even more interesting, I’d also gone on a nondate with a nonstalker my father had hired to either protect me or spy on me.
My thoughts circled Zayvion. There was something about that man that made me stop and want to look. Made me stop and want to feel. It wasn’t just the outside of him, which was, I had to admit, pretty nice: shy smile, quiet voice, and a gaze that made me feel like he was looking closer at me than any person had in my life. There were other things, unspoken things, that drew me to him. The long silences. The sense of calm he radiated. His willingness to step in when people were in need, like standing up to Mama for Boy. There was something about him that seemed honor-able, and yes, kind. And just thinking about that kiss sent a thrill through me.
Survival instincts said step away and leave the man alone. Something else, something deeper that was probably my heart, if I indeed still had one, told me to draw near and fold into the warmth of him.
The last time I listened to my heart all I got was a mooch of a boyfriend I couldn’t get rid of for months.
The bus finally dropped me off a few blocks from my apartment.
I decided not to go home yet, so I turned the corner toward Get Mugged, which was down another five blocks.
Someone was following me.
Dawn spread dove wings across bruised cloud bellies, lending the day some light, but not enough for the streetlamps to switch off. The city was waking up, streets and sidewalks more crowded, but not so crowded that I could easily lose my pursuer. I stopped on a corner to wait for traffic and to try to get a better look at the guy on my tail. Shorter than me, stocky. Dressed in a practical coat, knit hat, jeans, running shoes. At first I thought it might be Marty Pike, the ex-marine who Hounds for the cops. Then the wind shifted and my follower moved. I got a whiff of him—just the lightest scent of baby powder and soap, and beneath that, the peppery stink of lavender. I was being stalked by a woman.
Interesting.
The light changed and I crossed into traffic. I could lead her on a chase, maybe trap her down the end of an alley and then ask her why she was following me. I could walk to the police station and report her. Hell, I could get a cab, go to the cops, and fill out a report about her, and one about my father and Boy all in one easy trip.
But unless she got up in my face for some reason, there really wasn’t much to report about her. And I needed a cup of coffee like nobody’s business.
Lovely morning. The snap of cold air on my face, the sound of birds in the trees, the gut-wrenching joy of being stalked. It was great to be me.
The next three blocks went by quickly. I kept an eye on her without being obvious about it, but she was good. I saw her once, then lost track of her at the next crosswalk. Maybe she realized she was tailing the wrong woman. Why would anyone want to follow me around anyway?
Zayvion had followed me. If he were telling the truth, he was no longer on payroll. Maybe this was the new girl on the job. Why my father felt the need to know every step I took was beyond me. I wished he would drop dead and leave me alone.
The wind pushed between tall buildings and I caught a whiff of dark roast. Get Mugged was just a few shops away and I put a little extra length into my stride. Just let me get coffee. One cup. After coffee I would take care of everything. I’d report my dad, report my stalker, contact my landlord about the late rent, and get a train ticket to Nola’s. Maybe I’d even call my dad and tell him once again, and firmly, to leave me alone.
Just ahead was a newspaper stand, and I considered blowing a couple of bucks on a magazine to read while I drank coffee and let my stalker cool off. That sounded like a fabulous idea. But as I came near the stand, near enough to read the newspaper headlines, my ears began to ring, my vision narrowed down to a hazy tunnel, and suddenly everyone around me seemed to be moving in really slow motion.
All I could see were blocks of black letters across the tops of the newspapers: DANIEL BECKSTROM FOUND DEAD. BECKSTROM ENTERPRISES CEO MURDERED. INVENTOR OF BECKSTROM STORM RODS DEAD.
Shock is a strange thing. It’s a little like dreaming about breathing underwater. I could hear the noise of the city around me. I could feel the press and push of people walking too close to me. I even watched as a man casually picked up a paper that outlined my father’s death, read the front of it, and dropped it back on the stand. A flash of hatred that he could be so callous, that he could look at something like that and just throw it away like it didn’t matter hit me. I knew I was in shock, knew I wasn’t moving, wasn’t thinking straight.
And all I could think was: so this is what it feels like to have a parent die. I didn’t think it would hurt so much. I didn’t think I would feel so empty so quickly. I didn’t think I’d feel much of anything when he died, since I didn’t like him very much and didn’t love him either, right?
Then why did so much of me ache?
Move, Allie, I told myself. So I moved. Forward. To the newsstand. I dug in my pocket and bought a newspaper. My hands were shaking so hard the man at the stand gave me a strange look. I tried to smile, but my teeth were chattering.
“Cold,” I mumbled.
He handed me change. I put that in my pocket, almost forgot to take the paper with me, tugged it off the counter, and stepped back into the flow of the crowd. I went blank for a couple seconds. Someone brushed past me, bumped my elbow, and I got moving again. Down the street. To Get Mugged, because I could not think of what else to do. I stopped outside the wood-and-glass door and the smell of coffee was suddenly too much, too strong, too sour, and I thought I might puke if I had to walk in there.
I wanted to go away. Wanted to go somewhere where someone could explain to me why my father was dead.
A woman pushed the door open from the inside and I had to step back to let her out. The practical part of my mind took over, caught the door. I walked in and sat at a table in the back where I could watch the door.
Sitting was good. Really good. I kept my coat on, and my backpack. It was hot in the little brick shop; the coffee roaster must have just finished its job. The air was thick and moist with the heat and overcooked smell of roasted beans. Even so, I was shaking cold. I put the paper on the table. I turned it over so I couldn’t see the headline. That was worse. The bottom half of the paper was filled with pictures of my father, dressed in his business suit and smiling. I could almost imagine his voice, low, encouraging. You’ve had your fun, Allie. There is still a place for you in this company. Come home.
My throat tightened and hurt. But it was as much from anger as sorrow. How could he die on me? Why? Why now?
Come on, Allie, I said to myself. Pull it together. You’re a tough chick. You can take it. People die every day.
People die, sure. But not my dad. Never my dad.
I left the paper on the table and got myself over to the counter to order coffee. The girl behind the bar was bristling with multicolored piercings, including the one through her left eyebrow that had some sort of light worked into it and changed from blue to pink every time she blinked.
“What can I get you?” she asked.
“Coffee, black, with a shot of espresso.” My voice sounded a little low, a little soft. It was like I couldn’t breathe, like maybe I’d swallowed a whole bag of cotton balls and they had filled up my lungs and stuck in my throat. I cleared my throat, handed her money, and picked up the steaming mug at the far end of the counter.
I thought about leaving, about going back to my apartment, and crawling into bed, like when I was little and didn’t want to hear my mom and dad yelling, didn’t want to hear my world chipping away word by word. But my apartment was horrible and probably still stank, and I couldn’t deal with one more horrible stinking thing right now.
I sat at the table and took a drink of the coffee. Hot, bitter to the point of being sharp. It was like a slap to the face, painful, but kind of good too.
I took a second drink, then stared out the window until I’d finished half the cup. My head cleared a bit, my nerves settled some. I didn’t want to read the paper on the table. So I didn’t. Not until I finished my coffee. Then I pulled my shoulders back and turned the paper over so I could start at the headline.
The report said that my father had been found in his office, dead, late yesterday afternoon. The receptionist had found him. She’d gone in because he wouldn’t answer his phone and had an important call on hold. She’d called the police. The paramedics who arrived pronounced him dead. They didn’t list the cause but said it was a suspicious death.
The police weren’t willing to announce suspects yet, but they were working some strong leads and wanted information anyone had in connection to the case.
The rest covered my father’s life, his highly publicized dispute with Perry Hoskil over the invention and patenting of the Beckstrom Storm Rod that had changed magic distribution throughout the world, his playboy lifestyle, his six wives, one child, and the humanitarian causes he’d been involved with over the years—causes I knew he’d only taken on for the tax write-off.
Neat. Tidy. The entire life and death of a man who was a mystery I had never been able to puzzle out, summarized in a thousand words or less by a stranger.
I stuck the paper in my backpack. I should really go to the cops now. I didn’t have much information, although I had been at his office earlier that afternoon. I could tell the police I was there and what we talked about. I could tell them Zayvion Jones had followed me up to his office and could corroborate my story.
As a matter of fact, Zayvion had been in dad’s office longer than I had. I rolled around the idea of Zayvion being a hit man, capable of murder. The image of him when Mama had yelled came to me. He’d seemed angry then, dangerous. But not murderous. Still, I suppose it was possible. The article didn’t say how he’d died. But I hadn’t smelled blood on Zayvion when he’d come out of my dad’s building, hadn’t smelled the sour heat of anger or violence on him, nor spent magic.
Zayvion struck me as the kind of person who was good at keeping his cool. Even so, he’d seemed a little jumpy at the deli. And he had spent a lot of time looking out the window at the street.
I rubbed my eyes. Okay. Go to the police, tell them I thought my dad was involved in a hit on Boy, then tell them that I knew nothing about my dad’s death even though I’d chosen yesterday of all days to visit him, and sure, I’d been angry at him, and yelled at him and stabbed him while I was there.
Didn’t that make me sound like a wonderful daughter?
So much for a trip into the countryside. I’d be stuck in the city, maybe even jail, for the next couple of weeks at the least.
Great. I tightened my backpack straps and left the coffee shop. The police station wasn’t that far away and the walk would probably help, right? Maybe help my day feel more normal, mundane—like the day everyone else was having, or at least those people who hadn’t just found out their father was dead.
I glanced up at the sky. No blue, just clouds blackened with rain. A drop hit my forehead, then another landed on my bottom lip. Then the sky let loose a heavy rain.
Lovely.
About two blocks into my march, it occurred to me that I could call a cab or catch a bus. I had money in my pocket. But I just kept walking, getting more soaked by the minute.
A woman with very blue eyes strode over from beneath a building awning and stopped in front of me. She was shorter than me, stocky like maybe she’d done some time on the football team back in college. She stank of lavender and was pretty in a desperate I-used-to-be-a-cheerleader sort of way.
“Allie Beckstrom?” my stalker asked, her voice all daisies and lollipops.
“Excuse me?” I said, like I didn’t hear her right.
“Remember me? We ran into each other on the Lansing job.”
I did remember her. She and I Hounded a hit someone had put on a banker maybe a year ago. She’d been hired by the bank; I’d been hired by the banker’s son. I successfully traced the hit back to someone inside the company. Turned out my client’s father was threatening to go to the authorities about the corporate magic-use policy. The bank had been “test marketing” low-level Influence and Glamour—spells designed to attract investors—and they’d proxied the use onto the stockholders without the stockholders’ permission.
I had gotten an arrest out of it, and the case caused yet another flurry of legislation that fell short of managing business magic. Still, the people who hired Bonnie had not been happy with how it all turned out, nor with her.
“Sure,” I said. “Bonnie Sherman, right?”
“Yes!” She smiled wide enough to flash me her back molars, a sight I could have done without. “I’ve been looking for you.”
Her eyes were too wide, her breathing too fast. Even without magic I could smell the hunger on her. She was so hot for a fight I could almost taste the adrenaline on the back of my throat. She was also on something and I figured it was painkillers. One of the other drawbacks to being a Hound—it hurt, often and a lot.
I am not stupid. I know when things are about to go down.
“You working for the cops?” I asked casually while I drew upon the magic I stored in my bones, a magic I was certain she could not detect.
“Oh, sure,” she said. “The cops, and lots of other people. I’ve incorporated, even hired my first employee—an office boy to take care of phones and filing. And you? How is every little thing, rich girl?”
“Well, my dad just died. And I’m on my way to the police to tell them everything I know about it. I’ve had better days.”
She puckered her lips in an unconvincing pout. “That’s so sad.”
“Yes, it is,” I said. “How about you make my day better by getting out of my way?”
She laughed. Not like she was amused, more like she was crazy.
Then she took a step closer to me.
Terrif.
It wasn’t like I was in top form right now. I still hurt from Hounding Boy—a lingering ache like I’d just gotten over the flu. So I really didn’t want this to get physical. My other option was Influencing her to do what I wanted. It would be easy, seductively so. Which was exactly why I had sworn never to use it again, although I wondered if I should make exceptions for when I was face-to-face with crazy.
“I was asked to bring you in, Allie. So you and I are going to walk a little ways and spend some nice, friendly time together, just like best friends in case anyone is watching.” She was nodding, like I was a naughty child and she was explaining the rules of good behavior. “And you’re not going to run. You know why? Because I have a gun, and I’d really, really like to shoot you. ’Kay?”
Shit.
“Since when do the police want witnesses bleeding on their floor?”
“Oh, that’s funny. I’m not taking you to the police, silly girl. There are other people who are interested in seeing you. People who wouldn’t care if I dragged you in kicking, bleeding, or dead. Neat, huh?”
She flashed that crazy cheerleader smile again and I noted she needed some work on a filling toward the back.
“So let’s stop standing in this rain, ’kay? And go for a little walk, ’kay?”
Here’s the thing. Magic can’t be cast in anger, or any other high emotion, including panic or fear.
Here’s the other thing. I wasn’t afraid of her. For all I knew she didn’t really have a gun—I sure couldn’t smell one—and if she did, I didn’t think she had the guts or the skill to pull the trigger.
Of course, I’d been wrong before. Actually, I’d been wrong a lot, lately.
Like that was going to stop me.
I mentally intoned a mantra, pulled magic into my fingertips, set a Disbursement—a headache or stomach cramp should do it—and pulled one of the easiest, most childish stunts of any first-time magic user.
I snapped my fingers in front of her face and set off a glyph that flashed like a two-second strobe light.
The great thing about childish tricks is that almost no serious adult ever expects them.
Bonnie jerked, blinked.
I hit her in the face. Hard enough to make my hand hurt and remind me that I really should get to the gym more often. Hard enough to give me about six seconds to start running.
These long legs of mine can do a lot with six seconds. Instead of turning and running—a great way to get shot in the back—I dodged past her and ducked into an alley, found a side door of a building open, and ran into the fluorescence of what looked and smelled like a print shop. I thought about grabbing a bottle of toner to rub over myself so I could throw her off my smell, but that kind of trick wouldn’t fool a good Hound.
I didn’t know how hard those pain pills had rattled her brain, or how good a Hound Bonnie still was, and I had no desire to find out.
I looked through the windows at the street, didn’t see Bonnie, and figured she was halfway down the alley by now. I needed to get somewhere, anywhere, fast.
I pushed through the door and stepped into the flow of foot traffic. With a silent apology to Nola, I dumped my neon pink-and-green backpack in a trash can, moved my leather book and my cash from my coat pocket to my jeans pocket, and threw my coat into the first doorway to my left. I crossed the street, ran down a few side roads and jogged through a collection of shops, including a drugstore, candy store, and knitting shop.
How had my life suddenly gotten so complicated, and why hadn’t I just taken up knitting as a hobby?
I caught a glimpse of short-and-blonde—she’d taken off her ski cap, probably to use it to wipe the blood off her nose. She was on the corner a block away. I ducked into the next shop—stationery and cards.
I hurried over to the older man behind the counter. I was wet enough that my shoes squished water when I walked. Must have hit some puddles on my run over here.
“Could you call me a cab?” I asked with all the pretty-please I could manage.
He gave me a considering look over his bifocals, and I realized I was a mess. His eyes strayed to the newspaper on the countertop, then back to me. He pulled a phone out from somewhere behind him—I was a little iffy on the details because I was keeping my eyes on the street beyond the windows.
“Sure you don’t want me to call the police?” he asked.
Just then a black-and-white cab pulled up and stopped at the light.
“Yes. No. I got it—there’s a cab. Thanks.”
I ran out of the store and ducked into the backseat of the taxi.
The cabbie was a heavy man with bloodshot brown eyes and a knitted hat with a red pom-pom on top. “What’s your hurry, miss?”
“Just trying to stay out of the rain,” I said, a little out of breath.
“Doesn’t look like you’re doing a very good job of it.” He pulled out into traffic. “Don’t you own a coat, young lady?”
“Forgot it at home,” I said. “It’s been a day of disappointments.”
He glanced at me in the rearview mirror. “Where to?”
“What? Oh.” I had no idea. Where should I go? I had no safe harbor in this town. “Do you go outside city limits?”
“I do if you show me your two hundred dollars in cash.”
“Right.” I only had about fifty left on me. I so should have pulled all my money out while I had the chance. Something to remember the next time I was being chased by a crazy gun-toting tackle-back sore-loser drug-sucking cheerleader. I rubbed at my eyes.
“Okay, how much to get me to St. John’s?”
“Fifteen bucks should get you there.”
“Best offer I’ve had all day.” I leaned back and watched the city go by. I tried not to think too much but my mind kept returning to my dad’s death. Every time it did I went sort of numb and random bits of conversations and fragments of my childhood drifted through my thoughts. I tried to think of happy times we had together, and honestly couldn’t drag even one image forward. Even the pancake breakfast hadn’t turned out well.
He had always been a distant, foreboding figure in my life, and when he loomed near he was the voice of judgment, of disapproval. A figure of authority and fear. The only time I saw him smile was when he was trying to get someone to do something his way. And, of course, people always did.
Except me. I’d done anything I could to not follow his wishes. And now, here I was, running for my life, cold and miserable and hoping I could beg one more day of refuge on the worst side of town. I’d done a bang-up job of making a success of myself, hadn’t I?
Maybe I should have gone back and been a part of his company like he said. Maybe I could have been a better daughter. I pushed those thoughts away. It wouldn’t have changed what happened today. Nothing I could have done would have changed it.
Or at least that’s what I tried to tell myself.