by Domino Finn
At the same time, the death sight had introduced doubts. Asan was capable of murdering me and my family, but I'd figured those for Haitian jobs. I also doubted Martine's loyalty, once a solid partner, now a possible (and dead) traitor. Were the Bone Saints mixed up in their plot? I wondered if Asan was a Bone Saint himself, but Haiti was the New World. The pet anansi suggested Old World roots.
Sure, my understanding of the situation wasn't a field of rolling flowers, but I wasn't lost in the woods anymore either. My info wasn't great but it was a starting point. And hey, I'd almost been dissolved and devoured over the course of several hours. Just being alive was cause for optimism.
Still, I was left with few people to turn to. I couldn't trust anyone hooked into the magic scene, not anymore. And I couldn't risk the lives of my friends by being seen with them. But my absence hadn't prevented Martine's death. The mere threat of my turning up was enough to have her killed. What if my other friends were in a similar position? As long as I didn't carelessly lead anyone to their doorsteps, didn't I have an obligation to check on them?
One name kept tumbling around my head, prompted by Milena's glittery ink: Evan Cross.
Normally, I'd leave my best friend out of this. Spellcraft was not his cup of joe. But his position as a police officer could come in handy. If not for clutch assists, what were best friends for?
I've known Evan Cross since elementary school. Back when I was normal, he likes to joke. There's truth to the humor. Back then, we were just kids. We played with action figures and went on bike rides. Kid stuff. Then Evan and I grew apart. He played sports. I played RPGs. He exercised, and I exercised my imagination. By the time high school rolled around, Evan was the quarterback of the football team and I was a full-blown animist. Go figure.
It's amazing we remained friends through it all. True, he dislikes my craft, but he has a good heart. He ignores what he disagrees with and sees me as the same eight-year-old he used to BMX race with.
After he returned to Miami with his criminology degree, Evan breezed through the police academy and aced his field training. I knew him as a rookie, but he was too smart for patrol. News of his promotion was no surprise. Head of a special task force? Well, maybe just a little bit.
When the bus dropped me off in Downtown Miami, I checked my six. I couldn't shake the eerie feeling that I was followed. Hey, it's not paranoid if it's true. Not only were the Bone Saints after me, but Asan as well. And the last thing I wanted to do was endanger my friend.
I found Evan's field office without incident. It was an unassuming building without signs or markings announcing the police affiliation. Evan was more legit than I thought.
You might think it's a dumb move to walk right into a police station after the kind of day I'd had. I don't entirely disagree. Usually, I'm a planner. Things don't always go as planned, and sometimes it's more stressful keeping a plan together as it falls apart, but I like to be in control. To see all the angles. I wanna know what someone's going to say before asking the question. To know how things will play out before setting my pieces on the board. For example, it would be nice to know if I'm walking into a trickster spider trap. And, in this case, that there's not a warrant out for my arrest, before I submit myself to the police.
But desperate times, and all that.
Besides, I trusted Evan. He probably had a new best friend by now, but I didn't. He'd see that. He'd do the right thing.
I opened the door and marched in, expecting to give a fake name to a front desk officer. Instead I was greeted by several cluttered workstations. The layout of the office didn't waste any real estate. Just enough space for the staff to work effectively and comfortably, but no more. High-tech computers (to me anyway) dotted the main room. Everything from equipment, files, and personal items found a proper place. Thankfully, the actual detectives were absent.
Two doors loomed against the far wall, one open and one closed. I approached slowly, wondering if I was trespassing at this point. The name placard on the closed door read, "Sergeant Ronaldo Garcia." When I got close enough to the open door to check the name, Evan Cross looked up at me from behind his desk.
"What are you—" he started, pausing just as suddenly. His eyes widened and his mouth hovered open, trying to speak but failing.
I smiled. "Who'd you have to blow to get this office?"
The bad joke barely registered on his face. Evan stood up. "Cisco?"
I tried to come up with an equally sophisticated punch line, but sometimes perfection is best left alone. I just shrugged.
"Holy shit!" boomed my best friend. "You're alive, you son of a bitch!" He hurried around the desk, gave me a hug, then drew back to look at me. "I can't believe it."
My friend had short, dirty-blond hair and what could only be described as a cop's face. He was taller than me, and I wasn't short. Thinner, but well-muscled. The white shoes, white pants, and polo combination didn't scream tough guy. The double shoulder holster with twin Colt Diamondbacks did.
"Jesus," I muttered. "You look like Steve McQueen."
Evan laughed. "Thanks."
"Don't worry. It's mostly about the bad-ass-in-charge persona, not the looks."
"You're no spring chicken yourself," he said, eyeing me over. "You've lost some of that boyish charm in your face. But man, you've been working out."
"I'm not sure I recognize myself anymore."
He cocked his head. "You look tough."
"It's just a facade."
Evan nodded. "You're back," he repeated, and excitement slowly turned into an awkward frown. "But how?"
"That's what I'm here to find out."
Evan blinked, checked the main room, then shut his office door. He knew about magic. He didn't practice, but he knew I did. Just because he didn't have the stomach for it didn't mean he refused to believe.
"I've never heard of resurrection magic before," he said, keeping a distance from me now.
"Me neither, except that it's impossible."
"Impossible," Evan agreed.
"Exactly. Totally and utterly impossible."
Evan watched me uneasily. "Right." He backed up and sat on top of his desk without taking his eyes off me. After a minute of silence, I shook my head and sat in one of the chairs facing the desk.
"Relax, Evan. It's me. I swear. Why don't you pour me a shot of whiskey from the bottle I know is in one of your desk drawers?"
He half smiled, paralyzed for a second, but the suggestion of something familiar and normal, a drink with a friend, shook him loose. He returned to his seat and pulled a sealed bottle of whiskey and two rocks glasses from the bottom drawer.
Aside from beer to take the edge off, I wasn't much of a drinker. Maybe I didn't like losing control. Evan often encouraged me to man up and drink something that would put hair on my chest. There was no way I was gonna give him the ammunition to call me out today. Not when he was the one crapping his pants.
He poured two shots and added soda water to each, then passed mine over. I tried a sip and bit back the saltiness of it. Evan took his in two gulps, so I followed suit. It was only after the burn in my throat calmed that Evan spoke.
"You're supposed to be dead, Cisco. Your blood was everywhere. I've seen the crime scene photos."
I slid the empty glass on the desk. He gestured to the bottle and I shook my head.
"I don't know what to say," I confessed. "I woke up today in a dumpster in South Beach. Next thing I know, the Bone Saints are trying to kill me. Again, apparently, since they claimed to have done it already. Oh, and by the way, it's ten fucking years later."
"Can you ID them?" he asked, leaning forward. "Can you ID the one who killed you?"
"I was hoping you could tell me."
Evan leaned his forehead into his hands. "Fuck."
"Are you telling me you don't know?"
"No one knows, Cisco. It was a big story. It got a lot of play in a slow news period. We put out requests to the media for information, but you know how tight-lipped
the magic community is. They don't say shit."
"Were they looked into?"
"I don't know, man. I pointed the detectives to that voodoo friend of yours, tried to find answers on my own, but I was a scrub back then. I never got anywhere. Neither did they." I stared at him, upset at his ineffectiveness. He saw my expression and held a finger up like he had an idea. "But with you back, maybe we can make headway."
I raised a skeptical eyebrow. "What kind of headway?"
"The detectives weren't qualified for something like this, right? So they tried, but by now your file's sitting in an unsolved pile in a dusty box somewhere. But you can give us new leads. Your testimony alone is enough to get your case re-prioritized."
I shook my head.
Evan kept going. "It'll be easy, Cisco. I'll personally do everything I can to push this—"
"You don't get it," I said, raising my voice. Sometimes you have to do that to get him to stop. "I'm dead. I've been dead for ten years. I can't magically reappear and file a police report. 'Yes, officer. That's the man who killed me. But don't worry. I got better.' No one's ever going to be accused of this in a court of law." I hissed in frustration. Some bright idea. "Besides, my death took a toll on me. I don't remember anything that happened."
My friend went sullen when the reality set in. He shook his head. "I wish I'd known you were alive," he added.
"I wasn't. But I am now. I don't know what happened but I'm gonna get answers. People are going to pay for what they did."
Evan threw his hands over his ears. "Whoa, don't tell me that, man. I'm a cop."
I jolted to my feet. "Where were the cops when my family was killed? My little sister..." Tears came to my eyes but I forced them back. Dwelling on Seleste and my parents wouldn't leave me in the right state of mind.
"Don't blame me for that. I'm outclassed here. What did the voodoo bitch say?"
"Martine," I corrected. "She's dead. Killed hours ago by a man she called Asan. A man who was looking for me."
"Dead?" The surprise was evident on Evan's face.
"Yes, because she would've talked to me. I'm being hunted, Evan. Martine and I got into something. That's why I need to stay underground."
Evan Cross kept shaking his head as if denial could help. "I told you she was trouble, Cisco. I always told you she'd get you into trouble."
"Skip the speech," I warned. "I need answers, not more lectures on spellcraft."
"Why not? Because I'm right? I told you not to play around with that stuff since day one. Remember in school when you used to draw pentagrams and listen to death metal and wear all black?"
"That was just a phase," I said, slightly embarrassed.
"It was black magic, Cisco. Once you started playing with roadkill, you officially lost the right to call it a phase."
"That's different. The early stuff was teenager bullshit. I was a kid, man. But practicing was real. It's not devil magic, and it surprisingly doesn't dictate your choices in music."
Evan scoffed. "Make jokes all you want. Nobody liked it. Nobody liked you hooking up with Martine either."
I rolled my eyes. "Jesus, you sound like Emily now."
He stopped short and jutted his chin out. Whatever my girlfriend believed, Evan knew it wasn't true. My friend shook his head and took a measured breath. "Cisco, the point is that nobody thought what you were doing was safe. You need to own that."
Normally I would've snapped at him for the self-righteous act, but Em was still on my mind. Four years together. Out of my reach now. The last thing I wanted was to put her in danger.
Evan frowned. He hadn't liked Emily a whole lot at first, but I think that was because he thought she broke our crew up. After he got to know her, he understood why I was into her. Beautiful, Australian, she had a lot of experience traveling and knew about varied cultures. Both of us shunned higher education as useless. Maybe it works for other people, but for us it felt like thirteenth and fourteenth grade. One step above day care. We stopped focusing on class and focused on each other, always talking about traveling the world.
"Milena said she's happy now," I chanced.
Evan raised an eyebrow. I wasn't even sure he knew who Milena was. My friend rubbed the back of his head and winced. "Look," he said weakly, "I'm not gonna hide this from you. You're my friend, and I'm just gonna be upfront about this, even if it hurts. Okay?"
My heart stopped.
Evan said, "Emily's my wife now."
Chapter 16
"That's a bad joke," I said to my best friend.
Evan Cross shrugged firmly. "You were gone five years, brother. Emily went out with a couple different guys in that span, real douche bags if you ask me. I always looked out for her, though. You know that. Next thing you know, both of us are single, commiserating, and—"
"I get the picture," I snapped, before he finished the thought. Milena had said Emily was married, but she left out the part about it being to my best friend. I was stunned.
"I... This... How..." I fell back into my seat.
"I'm really sorry to tell you that," he said. "There was a small part of me that thought, if you knew, you'd be happy for us." The bastard even sounded sincere.
Look, I know ten years is a long time. If they held out for five, they weren't dancing on my grave or anything. And I truly couldn't blame Emily for moving on. But with my best friend? It felt unnecessary. Like I'd lost both of them in one fell blow. Life was throwing me yet another beating. Cisco Suarez, the dead horse.
"Let's just change the subject," I said, trying to outpace my self-loathing. "Onward, not backward."
Evan Cross nodded and sat back, but he wasn't relaxed. His jaw was tight. His shoulders were tense. Mine were too. I avoided eye contact as much as possible.
"Look at you," I said in a lighter tone, trying to be happy for him. He was my friend, damn it. "You got your own office. The nameplate on the door says Lieutenant. You've done okay."
He nodded. "I command my own unit. The DROP team."
"DROP?"
"As in DROP the bad guys."
"Maybe you should DROP the acronym."
His face went sour but he shook it off. "District Risk Overview and Prevention. Miami's divided into five districts, with five city commissioners. This gig's a political appointment."
"Sounds kinda like you have five bosses."
"That part's not great," he admitted. "But it's big-picture stuff. The commissioners are concerned with long-term improvements to their districts. That's where the DROP team comes in. We analyze crime trends from the top down, look for underlying motivators for crime, and choke it out at the source. We're specially reserved for the long view."
Emily must be proud. "Sounds fancy."
He shrugged. "Eh, I'm practically a politician now. I get a call, work up an analysis, and send the boys out. Meantime, I'm sitting on my ass. Perks of old age, huh?"
I kept checking out his office so I wouldn't need to look at him. "I wouldn't know."
He smiled. "Come on, buddy. Whether you've been alive or dead for the last ten years, you aren't twenty-four anymore."
I couldn't disagree.
Evan stiffened. "Look, man, I'll help however I can. You know that. But I don't mess around in your circles. I don't understand the rituals that go on out there and I don't want to. My task force is purely mundane. That will slow me down. What I can do is get you gang intel."
My eyes zeroed in on his. "The Bone Saints."
He nodded. "My sergeant came from the gang unit, so I'm plugged into the scene. And what I don't know, I can find out."
"Let's hear what you do."
He nodded, eager to get down to business. "The Bone Saints have been making the news lately. A power struggle at the top. Elevated violence on the street. There's not a lot of intel on their new leader because he only recently came into power. The old boss was assassinated last year in a very public shoot-out. That's the official word." Evan leaned in and crossed his hands together. "It's clear to people
like us that magic's involved."
"Tell me about it."
"The Saints are into all that voodoo shit, like you and Martine. Jules Baptiste supposedly had a falling out with his lieutenants. I thought he'd be around forever but they got him. That triggered a power play. Several other deaths followed, anyone from top leadership to low level peddlers—all street scum in my book."
I nodded, attempting to categorize everything I heard into easy buckets. Threat, ancillary, or worth looking into. "Who took over?"
"His name's Laurent Baptiste. And before you ask if that's a common Haitian last name, they're related. He's the younger brother of the old guard, like Fidel and Raul. You heard about that, right? We got Bin Laden but needed to wait for Fidel to retire. Unbelievable.
"Anyway, from what I understand, Laurent Baptiste has majority support now and the takeover is complete. The guy's creepier than his brother. Paints his face and carries a snake around, and encourages his crew to do the same."
"All the bokors do that stuff," I said. He looked puzzled so I explained. "The Haitian necromancers, the bokors, they have a flair for the dramatic. The Bone Saints always did that."
Evan eyed me, surprised I knew that much. "Well, from what I've seen, there's a lot more face paint out there."
"That means they brought in more talent."
"I wouldn't doubt it," he said. "The Bone Saints have been more organized under his leadership. More of a long-term problem. Not just drugs but tax scams and stuff. Baptiste is a control freak in every sense of the word. If his guys are trying to kill you, it's definitely by his order."
Sheesh, I didn't even know the guy. His brother, the previous leader, probably hadn't been in power ten years ago. How could a dead man get mixed up in an internal gang beef?
"What's the African connection?" I asked.
Evan raised his eyebrows. "African?"
"I was almost killed by an African trickster spider today. I burned it down in Martine's house."
