Forgotten Tigers and Other Stories

by Annie Bellet

  Images of Ruby’s favorite matching game, red, blue, green, and purple squares with simple shapes on them, flashed through Verity’s mind. The moment she had the door open to her tiny one bedroom, Ruby leapt free of her pocket and raced across the oatmeal-colored carpet to the TV, reaching up to push the power button. Then she danced in tight circles, her leash trailing and tangling in her long, scaly tail, sending her desire to play across the mind link.

  “Let me get my shoes off. And your harness. Brat.” Verity smiled, unable to maintain her exhausted, annoyed mood in the face of this after work ritual.

  She turned on the game and unbuckled Ruby’s harness, some of the tension draining out of her shoulders as the familiar dings and beeps from the game came on. The tattoos that let her and Ruby share senses and communicate in basic ways were visible on the large rat’s body, showing black through her snow white fur. Verity had the same tattoos in the same places, on her back, ribs, and down her scalp from top of head to base of spine, though her thick black hair had grown back in to hide it.

  No one else at the academy had wanted the runty albino rat. Their loss. Ruby, which Verity called her due to the rat’s bright red eyes, had excelled as a magic sniffer and their link was stronger than normal, flowing both ways instead of just from rat to human handler. She and Ruby had more collars than anyone else who had graduated from the Detection program.

  Spells had a smell, each one subtly or not so subtly different. Once people had figured that out, they’d started trying to train animals to detect magic, same as they used them to detect land mines, drugs, and some kinds of disease. Her, and Ruby’s, job was to sniff out magic, sorting the legal from the illegal and signaling her enforcer partners to take down those who broke the law. Her guideline was that if it was a magic that could harm someone or be used to invade privacy, like the bus kid’s invisibility charm, it was probably on the books as illegal.

  Not that it matters, she thought as she pulled herself away from watching Ruby match shapes and colors to see to her own needs. The late twenty first century’s war on magic was about as effective as the last century’s war on drugs. No one knew why all the magic had, well, magically started working. No one knew how to turn it off. So they tried to control it, and when that didn’t work very well, they regulated the hell out of it. The laws of what was and wasn’t allowed in the States changed almost daily it seemed, with both the lawyers and the criminals getting fat on the results.

  Just a job to Verity, though she wouldn’t give up Ruby for anything. She stuck to it, though the exciting new car smell was long gone. Ruby made up for a lot of disappointments in life.

  She opened the fridge and grabbed a small bottle of orange juice from the pack of fifty that took up the whole top shelf. Snagging the vodka from the freezer, she dumped out half the orange juice and refilled the bottle with booze. She was half way to the couch when a woman next door started screaming.

  Verity dropped the bottled screwdriver and sent a command to stay at Ruby, pushing away the querying flood of images her rat sent at her. She fumbled with the safety chain and got her door open as another scream echoed through the walls, followed by a crash and a heavy thud.

  Another scream, this time sounding more like a child than a woman, pulled her down the hallway. She reached for her gun and remembered it was locked up tight at work as her hand closed on emptiness where the weight at her hip should have been.

  Screaming. Thud, thud. Heavier than the last one.

  Verity sized up the plain gray door, which looked like every other door in this building. “Fuck it,” she muttered, and kicked it in.

  The apartment was laid out exactly like her own with a few differences, two bodies on the floor, one covered in blood with a young boy crying over it.

  A broken floor lamp lay next to a big man who was half-conscious, blood leaking from his receding hairline as he shifted and groaned. Verity moved around him, focused on the child and the heavily bleeding woman.

  “You okay?” she asked the boy as she knelt next to the woman. She reached to feel for a pulse but pulled her hand back as she saw the blood no longer pumping, just leaking from a gaping hole in the dark-haired woman’s neck. It didn’t take triage training to tell her this lady was a goner.

  “Lydia,” the boy whispered.

  Verity met his eyes, unsure what to do or say. Someone was calling 911, she assumed. She had to get the boy out of the room. He couldn’t have been more than nine or ten, all elbows and knees and big dark eyes, wearing a thin black tee-shirt and a pair of shorts that were too big for his narrow frame. He had blood on his arm.

  “You mom’s going be okay,” Verity lied, using her best cop voice to convey that she was in charge and the situation was under control. “Are you hurt? We should go wait for the police in my apartment.” Her mind was already writing the report, part of her wondering if she should restrain the groaning man. Domestic situations were a serious bitch and seriously not her cup of joe. There was nothing magical about an asshole attacking his wife and kid.

  The boy looked down at his arm, drawing Verity’s attention back to the blood there. He was scratched, pretty deep. Maybe from the same weapon that made the ragged hole in his mother’s neck. TGIF my ass.

  Verity stood up and moved around the mother, pulling off her sweatshirt. She wrapped it around the boy’s arm as she guided him to his feet with her other hand. His back beneath her fingers was bony and hot, the ridges and warmth reminding her of Ruby.

  “She’s not my mom,” the boy said, putting his hand over the sweatshirt and applying pressure without her having to direct him. “Will you help me?”

  “You’re gonna be fine,” Verity said, wondering where the neighbors were, or the cops. This was big time SEP stuff, but fucked if she’d leave a bleeding boy in the middle of it all. “What’s your name?” She led him toward the door, moving around the guy again. The big man’s eyes were closed and he had stopped moving much. One problem at a time.

  “Andre.” The boy’s dark eyes widened and his body went stiff.

  French fries and gravy and everything fattening and delicious in the world hit Verity’s nose as Ruby pushed on the link. Damn rat hadn’t stayed in the apartment; Verity could sense her in the hallway now, but the amazing smell was coming off the kid.

  She had no time to process that. The delicious smells died away in a wave of rot and sourness, like her nose had just jumped down the garbage chute the day before pick-up. Ruby started squeeking, signaling banned magics.

  “Ruby, no!” Verity let go of the kid and ran for the door. Whatever was out there making that smell was bad news.

  Pain ripped through the link, knocking her off her feet like a physical blow. Black and red spots danced and exploded behind her eyelids as her face found the floor. Dimly, she heard Andre screaming again. A dark shape stepped over her and she twisted, trying to close off the link with Ruby enough to see properly. She grabbed at a leg. Her fingers closed on denim. A sharp kick forced her to let go and then a boot descended onto her head, putting out the lights.

  * * *

  Verity came awake as the police arrived, reaching through the tattoo link for Ruby. Her rat was okay, bruised and upset, but burrowed against Verity’s side with no serious harm done to her. Verity pulled Ruby into her arms and curled around her, breathing in the rat’s warm pineapple and sawdust smell.

  “There’s no boy registered as living here and only one bed, no clothes or nothing,” the officer, a plainclothes detective who had taken his sweet ass time arriving, told Verity as she finished giving her account. When she’d awoken, only the corpse of the woman was left, and a broken, bloody lamp the only sign of the first man. No sign of the boy, except one.

  “That’s my sweatshirt with his damn blood on it,” Verity said, pointing at her light gray Vassar hoodie where it lay on the floor just inside the door. It was smeared with dark brown streaks as the blood soaked in and dried. The cops hadn’t bothered to bag it yet. “Someone came here,
grabbed the boy. Someone using very bad magic.”

  “Very bad magic,” the detective repeated, pretending to write it down. She looked into his corn-fed, annoyed face and wondered if he was even literate.

  Her next thought was if she looked that bored at her job. She shoved that one away.

  “Thank you, Detective,” the police detective said, emphasizing her title as though he wished he could use a different word. “We’ll let you know if we need any follow-up. Don’t leave town.” He winked at the last, probably thinking he was funny.

  Verity pushed Ruby up onto her shoulder, wincing as the rat’s soft body rubbed against her bruised cheek. She waved off the hovering paramedic and bent down; grabbing her sweatshirt off the floor with a look that dared the detective to tell her it was evidence.

  He didn’t. He’d already turned and walked over to the body. Not even wearing booties to cover his ugly cop shoes.

  Verity stomped into her apartment, slamming the door behind her. She tossed the bloody sweatshirt onto the kitchen counter and dropped Ruby into her crib by couch.

  Her hair was matted on the side with blood, but the cut itself was tiny. She stared into the mirror, seeing the boy’s big dark eyes looking back instead of her own red ones. She could report the magic violation but didn’t think it would get anything going faster. Magic that rotten smelling and filthy was definitely the black kind. She’d encountered something like it only once, when she’d gone on a raid to stop a necromancer a few years back. Just thinking about that night made her shiver and sweat.

  “I did everything I could,” she told her reflection. It wasn’t her fault that Ruby’s pain, probably from being kicked, had taken her out. It was a side-effect of the tattoo link. She’d misread the situation, thinking all the players were present and down. Not her fault. Not her kind of job. S .E. P.

  Somewhere out there in the sprawling mess of her city was a kid who smelled like summer and comfort, taken by a man wielding the most foul magic Verity and Ruby had ever witnessed.

  A boy who had asked for her help.

  She walked out of the narrow bathroom and her sweatshirt caught her eye as a terrible idea poked her between the eyes, stabbing like a migraine and sticking like old gum until it was all she could think about.

  * * *

  Cordwainer San Simone was called Cord by his friends, but Verity definitely wasn’t one of those. He lived in a boxy blue house that had seen better days and little love out in Morningside, his address easy to find since he was on the Registered Spell Offender list. Verity splurged on a taxi, tucking Ruby into a clean sweatshirt, a Detroit Red Wings hoodie this time. Her rat had to be bribed with a bowl of pineapple chunks to accept the idea of doing more work, her body starting to show bruises, and her mind over stimulated from the fight. Verity sympathized. She couldn’t leave Ruby at home. She would need the rat’s senses if her stupid plan worked.

  Of course, part one of the Dumbest Plan Ever depended on the help of a man who hated her.

  “Fuck off, Ms. Li,” he said, not even waiting for her to mount the final creaking step up to his porch before he leaned out the door and glared. Cord was a big, raw-boned man in his forties, hints of Native blood showing in his tanned skin, wide cheekbones, and black eyes.

  “Been a while,” Verity said, trying on a smile. It hurt. “How do you know it isn’t missus by now?”

  “Because you sniffers are all married to your rats,” he said, folding his arms and leaning against the door, blocking all view of the interior.

  That stung in a way only truth could and she almost told him where to shove his crooked picket fence. Only the weight of the paper bag in her hand and the shifting of Ruby’s bulk inside her shirt reminded her she was here for something more important.

  “I need your help,” she said. “Can you still do tracking spells?” Tracking missing persons was what she’d collared him for, almost three years ago. He done a year in prison and paid a hefty fine. Tracking people with magic was illegal, a serious invasion of privacy that even the government wasn’t allowed to breach. Yet. Maybe tomorrow the law would change. Again.

  He looked like she’d grown a unicorn horn for a moment, then he sighed. “Seriously?” When she nodded, holding up the bag, he shook his head and stepped out of the doorway. “This’ll be good,” he muttered, waving her inside.

  * * *

  Cord heard her out, then patted her down, much to Ruby’s consternation, and finally accepted that this might not be a trap.

  “This is illegal,” was all he said.

  “The law sucks. I wait on the law, this kid dies or disappears and the bastard that has him escapes.” Verity stroked Ruby’s fur, careful of where the rat’s pale skin showed bluish-green with bruising.

  The bloody stains on her sweatshirt did the rest of the convincing. He made her wait in his living room among a seriously impressive and seriously dusty collection of leather bound books while he cast the tracking spell. Cedar smoke and vanilla wafted in from under the door to his office.

  “Do you know what that boy is?” Cord said, coming silently through the door from his office and pulling Verity out of her unhappy reverie.

  “A kid. He had some kind of power though.” She stopped herself from saying it smelled delicious. That kind of thing tended to freak people out.

  “He’s a wellspring.” Cord ran a hand through his hair, making the thick brown curls stand on end. “He ain’t got power. He power. People like him, they’re rare as two-headed snakes. The kind of spells you could do with their blood powering things. Geez. I don’t even know.”

  “Did you find him?” she said, sitting up. Ruby twisted in her arms and looked at the big mage, feeding Verity his smells. Behind the magic residue was something strong and pleasant, like the aftertaste of a good peaty whiskey on her tongue.

  “Yeah, I got him pinpointed to an area out near the airport. Can’t get closer than that. Something’s blocking me.”

  “Show me on a map,” Verity said.

  “Nope. I’m coming with you. You and your bloody eyes might win a staring contest, but you sniffers don’t know shit about magic. And something real bad is hanging out there.” Cord was already moving back toward the door, pulling a red and green plaid lumberjack coat off a hook on the wall as he went.

  She tucked Ruby into her sweatshirt pocket and swallowed any argument. It didn’t matter what he thought she knew or didn’t know about magic. He was willing to help her save a little boy and maybe kick the shit out of the bastard who had hurt Ruby and taken her down.

  “Fine,” she said. “Do you own any guns?”

  * * *

  Cord’s cedar-scented spell, which he’d bound to a small shard of smoky quartz wrapped in a chunk of her bloody sweatshirt, took them out of Detroit proper and out toward Romulus and the Metropolitan Airport. Warehouses lurked behind the pools of streetlights, each one an indistinct shape in the night hiding secrets.

  “Here.” Cord turned his Chevy in and stopped beside a two-story metal building, whispering even though in the temporary solitude of the car, no one could have heard them. “We’ll have to rely on the rat from here. You ready?”

  The light from the dash glowed blue, making her feel like she were drowning and reinforcing the unreality of the situation. Ruby, sensing her distress, squeaked and burrowed against her stomach.

  “Why are you doing this?” she asked.

  “Having second thoughts? Guess you could call your buddies. Though you’d lose your job, we’d both go to prison, and they’d probably throw the kid into some government program that isn’t supposed to exist.”

  “I left my phone at home.”

  Cord shut off the engine. “Why are doing this?”

  “I need to do something,” she said softly, “Day in, day out. I just watch and point. Everyone else deals with the messes. If it weren’t for Ruby...” she trailed off, staring down at the bulge in her sweatshirt, heat rising in her face.

  “All right, Detective. Detect.
” Cord’s smile was in his voice and it barely sounded forced.

  There were no cars parked around this warehouse and no marks on the outside to tell them anything about what was inside. Cord ghosted alongside Verity, a shotgun held lightly in his big hands, as they followed Ruby’s white shape down the pocked asphalt along the edge of the building. Verity hadn’t bothered with a leash. Ruby wouldn’t run away anymore than Verity would willingly slice off her own hand.

  There was black magic slime all over this place, making it difficult to track the salt and sweet scent of the boy’s power through the miasma of rot. The trail led them around the side and to a closed roll-up door. Parked up against the building was a new model Toyota. Verity and Cord shared a look. Probably weren’t natives, driving a Japanese car like that in Motor City.

  Ruby paused by the roll-up door and tossed her head in the air, whiskers twitching as she indicated this was the place. Verity pressed herself to the side of the building and crouched down, holding out a pellet which her rat came to get, taking it with her delicate pink paws before scarfing it down.

  She listened for a long moment, hearing only the occasional rush of traffic on the road behind them and a plane taking off from the airport somewhere in the distance beyond the rows of metal and cement. Then, muffled voices, coming from inside, and a light came on beyond the truck, shining through a window that had previously been hidden in the dark, blending into the wall. It illuminated a small gap beneath the roll-up door.

  “Think there’s a button inside to raise that?” Verity whispered.

  “Maybe, but what good does that do us?”

  “Rats are better than cats at getting into tight spaces.”

  She pushed the link between them as open as she could get it, going deeper into Ruby’s mind than she usually did. Verity’s head hurt and the white rat rubbed at her whiskers and ears. Focus. She took a deep breath and pictured the memory game, sending Ruby the images of what she guessed the button for the door would look like.