Gang leaders liked a bit of mystery; that was expected, but complete anonymity was weird.
And now, it looked like he had been right.
The message that had gone out to all of the gangs was clear: Stay away from the Mermaid. The LA Witches will be destroyed tonight, as will Motorcycle Man. The Startup will not tolerate any interference.
Lamar knew the rules. You didn’t snitch. The Startup would be expecting only the two gangs to be present, plus Motorcycle Man. They would expect to have things done before the police got involved.
Because gang business was gang business, and anyone willing to turn a civilian site into a crater was going to torture snitches to within an inch of their life.
You didn’t tell the cops what was going on.
But this was over the line. Lamar shook his head. This was too far over the line. You didn’t shoot up a restaurant. Sometimes civilians got hurt, but that wasn’t the same as going guns blazing into a place that was full of them.
He knew what he had to do.
Chapter Twenty
Kera had no idea what to do next or how to get away. The thought that her pursuers had been in the Mermaid and had noticed her was terrifying, so she went to the only place where she knew that someone had experience with this.
The Kims’ house.
She killed the engine and left Zee parked in the half-lot around the side of the Kims’ store, where it would attract little attention.
Sam was behind the register. “Oh, hi, Kera. Mom and Dad are upstairs if you want to see them.”
She gave him a nod and a smile as she passed him. “Thanks, Sam.”
His parents were in the living room. Mrs. Kim lying on the couch, half-conscious, and her husband was sitting in a chair by her side.
Alarms went off in Kera’s brain. Oh, no. Her cancer got worse again. It’s metastasizing at a faster rate, isn’t it? Shit, shit, shit! She didn’t know how to deal with this on top of everything else.
“Hi, I, uh, I had something I needed to say, but is everything okay here?” She tried to give no indication of her near-panic.
“Yes,” said Mr. Kim. “We are okay. We want to speak to you, though. It’s about your recent choices.”
The girl drew back a step. It was a relief knowing that her guess had been wrong, but now she had other things to consider. “Okay. Whatever it is, you don’t have to sugarcoat it.”
Ye-Jin rolled over and opened her eyes. She didn’t look good, but she did not seem to be suffering or severely ill, either. Kera put a hand on her shoulder and tried to relax.
Mr. Kim began, “We know your life has changed immeasurably since you discovered who and what you are.” His words had the feel of a rehearsed speech but a heartfelt one. “It does great credit to you that your first thought was to sacrifice yourself for the good of others. You do not allow yourself to stand aside and let them be hurt when you could aid them, but I think you have begun to wonder what a long life might look like with no one close to you.”
Kera’s stoic façade cracked. A faint ripple went through her neck and shoulders and a lump formed in her throat, but she swallowed it at once and nodded.
The couple exchanged glances, then Mr. Kim continued, “We ask only one thing of you, which is that you respect that we are people who have seen more decades of life than you have, and we have a perspective on things that you should consider carefully. Will you agree to listen and think things over before you jump up and act in haste?”
She almost groaned but bit her lip and nodded.
“We have reason to believe that things are getting…more difficult for you,” Mr. Kim said. “We have seen stories in the news, and you told Ye-Jin about the choice you made regarding Christian.”
Kera waited, but Mr. Kim seemed to be struggling to find the right words. His wife murmured something in Korean and he listened to her, nodding.
She must have told him what to say because he looked at Kera again. “The young are often more willing to sacrifice themselves, you see, particularly people like us with our special talents. It is a supremely honorable thing, but we also mourn for many who could have done a great deal of good throughout their lives if they had lived. Don’t we? If there comes a time soon when you face the option of throwing yourself into almost-certain death for a chance of victory, please, Kera, from both of us, think twice.”
Mrs. Kim put a hand over hers, and Kera closed her eyes, unable to speak. Their love and concern mingled with and tempered her reckless desire to charge into battle.
“All right,” she murmured, her voice shaky. “I, um…I’ll try to be smart. I won’t be a martyr if I can win and survive.”
The Kims smiled. “Good,” said Ye-Jin.
“Uh, now it’s my turn for bad news,” Kera said. She went to get a chair and sat down, her legs suddenly wobbly. “I think…I think the people who’ve been searching for magic have found me.”
The Kims went still.
“They left a message for me in the bathroom where I work,” Kera explained. “It said they don’t mean me any harm, and they know what I’m going through. I…” She tried to find words for the dread that had coiled up in her chest. “I just don’t have a good feeling about it. Power is being snuffed out. The book has been removed. I…”
The Kims gazed at her.
Kera’s head jerked up. “What if I led them here?” she gasped.
The couple froze. Mr. Kim swallowed and his wife put a hand on his arm, speaking rapidly in Korean. She held up a finger to Kera and seemed to be arguing, saying something he didn’t want to hear.
Kera’s intuition must have been good because Mr. Kim’s eyebrows snapped together and he spoke back just as quickly, waving his hands.
Mrs. Kim said something gentle and wry, and Mr. Kim sighed, then nodded and looked down. He didn’t look at Kera for a moment, then he got up, headed into the house, and came back with a small silk bag.
“We have this for you.” He pulled a curious object about the size and dimensions of a teacup saucer or a miniature Blu-Ray disc from it.
Kera accepted it. It was made of what looked to be jade or crystal, and shapes and letters were carved into it on both sides. A mandala pattern, she guessed, an ancient relic of Buddhist, Taoist, or folk-Korean origin.
“Thanks,” she said. “What is it?”
“A device,” Mr. Kim answered her, “which will block your magic from the sight of others. We had forgotten about it until earlier today. A man gave it to us shortly before we left Korea. He said it would protect us from prying eyes. We only half-believed him at the time. But before you arrived, I tested it with a spell or two. It works, and it is much easier to carry than a cloak with a bunch of iron and silver in it, isn’t it?”
Kera marveled at the thing. If what Mr. Kim said was true, the relic would be very useful. Then again, they might have had a use for it themselves.
“Will you be okay without it?” She opened her coat to show them the silver she had stashed there.
Mr. Kim nodded and smiled. “Yes, we are fine. You must think about it and believe in it for it to work. It acts on the mind as much as on the energies of the universe itself. Now, then. What you do from here on is a choice that only you can make, but we do have one request.”
Kera nodded. “Anything.”
“I asked you to be careful with your strength,” Mrs. Kim said, “but could you do just a little bit of healing for me? There is a bit of pain, just here.” She pointed. “I am very much better, so I do not want you to drain yourself.”
“Of course.” Kera nodded. “Yes. I, uh…okay.” She took off her coat and knelt by the chair.
James and LeBlanc were back at the safehouse by the time the message spell went off. Agent Richardson was relating a story about something his partner had once done, involving a remote-controlled car and a couple of very large hogs that had gotten loose from a farm while pretending that MacDonald, who was in the next room, couldn’t hear him.
“And since her
name is MacDonald and we were on a farm and all, I couldn’t resist going up to her and—”
James had been listening with honest interest, but the agent’s words blanked out as something like an alarm filled his mind. He nodded and laughed, giving no outward sign of what had happened.
“Excuse me,” he muttered, standing up and heading into the kitchen, where LeBlanc and MacDonald were making tea.
LeBlanc caught his eye, and both nodded.
MacDonald noticed and asked, “You guys are trying to protect me from the harmful effects of Richardson’s extremely inaccurate anecdotes? Or is this serious?”
James frowned. “Busted. It’s one of those serious things where if you don’t do what we say, we will refuse to cooperate and make your life a living hell. If you cooperate, it will lead to all of us succeeding in our mutual goals sooner.”
While MacDonald narrowed her eyes, Richardson called, “I heard that.”
LeBlanc spoke up. “Please leave the house, or at least stay in the room in the northeast corner of the second floor.”
Two minutes of arguing later, the feds chose the northeast room.
Locking themselves into the living room, which lay in the southwest corner of the first floor, James muttered, “Outside would have been better, but we’ll take what we can get.” He’d brought a metal bowl filled with water from the kitchen.
LeBlanc pulled the curtains shut. “Standard procedure?”
They cloaked and shielded the room and cursed the bugs the agents had set up. Once again, their tech would fail to provide them with useful info on what the thaumaturgists were doing.
James set the bowl in the center of the floor and they knelt beside it, channeling their powers into a full-strength scrying spell.
Nothing. Minutes passed.
Lovecraft broke the silence. “What the hell?”
“Something is wrong.” LeBlanc rubbed her chin, and her face elongated in apprehension. “We could not possibly have failed at the spell. There must be an extra factor at work here, something we did not consider.”
James leaned back, rubbing his hands. “Um, okay. Here’s a proposal: We don’t tell the Council we did everything we could to ensure we could track this person, and somehow, it didn’t goddamn work.”
LeBlanc ignored him and went to a nearby bookshelf, where she found a map of Southern California and placed it in the bottom of the scrying bowl. “Not as good as direct tracking,” she admitted, “but we will be able to see any thaumaturgic activity in the LA area.”
James huffed. “Right, though it defeats the purpose of what we did last night, doesn’t it?”
“Not entirely,” LeBlanc countered. “But pay attention to the bowl.”
They sat staring at the map beneath the water for close to an hour. The FBI agents were probably getting antsy, but this was too important for James and LeBlanc to take their focus off this greater goal.
LeBlanc’s eyes flicked upward for a split second. “James, are you twiddling your thumbs?”
“No,” he snapped back. “You took your eyes off the water, but not for long enough to see that I’m merely flexing my hands. Furthermore, your blinking breaks have been taking far too long. I think I saw your eyes close for half a second at a time, maybe longer.”
She snorted. “How would you be able to see that unless you were looking up as well?”
A green flare erupted beneath the water.
Both thaumaturges’ eyes were on the scrying bowl in an instant, yet they had trouble processing what they saw. The ethereal flame was nothing like the ones they’d seen before; it spiraled haphazardly while also seeming far weaker than what they expected for a magic-user of Motorcycle Man’s caliber.
James squinted. “I can’t tell where that was, exactly. And it looks so...confused.”
They were still pondering that when they heard the footsteps in the hall, then pounding on the door.
“Guys?” It was MacDonald. “We have a problem.”
When they opened the door, her face was a grayish color. “Lamar just contacted us.”
“On his own?” James asked skeptically.
“All of the gangs have gotten word to stay away from a bar in Little Tokyo tonight,” MacDonald said. “The Startup says they’re going to turn it into, and I quote, ‘a giant fucking crater’ unless the LA Witches stop them. We’re going in.”
James and LeBlanc looked at each other. The LA Witches were one person who would not have an easy time interfering on that level.
“I think we can agree that if Motorcycle Man gets involved in something like this, it’s going to be a shit show,” James said.
“Exactly,” MacDonald snapped.
LeBlanc reached out to put a hand on her arm. Her brown eyes were serene. “We have just found his trail,” she said. “We will deal with him. You deal with the Startup.”
“Okay.” MacDonald nodded her head. “We’ll get our resources moving. Good hunting.”
“You, too,” James told her.
Concentrating on healing, Kera found, took her mind off the storm of anxieties that had arisen since she’d received the bizarre psychic message, in part because it was so goddamn hard. She gave it her all until she felt the slight dizziness that told her she was approaching her limits.
“Okay,” she gasped, “I’m sorry, but I think I have to stop now.”
Mrs. Kim put her other hand atop Kera’s. “Thank you. It is enough.” They rested together, not speaking, for a couple of minutes, the older woman lying on the couch, the younger sitting beside her.
“You should go get some rest,” Mr. Kim said finally. “Yes?”
“Right.” Kera stood up and wavered on her feet. When Mr. Kim handed her a pastry from downstairs, she smiled. “You both take such good care of me. What did I ever do to deserve you?”
Mr. Kim smiled and patted her on the back. “I think you know the answer to that. Now, go rest. No more magic tonight, yes?”
Kera hugged him and let him pat her on the back, then did the same with his wife, though more gently, given her condition. “Thank you so much. I’ll rest, and I promise I won’t just throw myself away, like you said.”
They said their goodbyes, and Kera strode out, leaving the couple behind watching her.
When she was gone and the sound of her motorcycle had receded into the distance, they looked into each other’s eyes, not bothering to speak. It was pointless to ask how the other felt since they had both agreed on their course of action. The conclusions were obvious.
Both husband and wife had agreed to a sacrifice of their own.
Mrs. Kim pointed out, “She is going to be very upset with us when she finds out.”
“Yes,” Mr. Kim conceded. “Yes, she is. I’ll go tell Sam to go to a friend’s house for the night. We have preparations to make.”
Several blocks away, Kera was stripping off her leathers and thinking about the Kims’ request to be careful when her helmet started buzzing. Frowning, she went over to pick it up and realized it must still be tuned into the police scanner, which was currently filled with anxious voices.
She put it on to be able to hear better, and her jaw dropped open.
“You’re absolutely sure?” one of the voices was saying.
“Yes,” another snapped back. “There isn’t much that rhymes with ‘We’re going to turn the Mermaid into a fucking crater,’ is there?”
Kera’s knees wobbled, and she gasped.
“The FBI is mobilizing,” someone said. “They’re claiming they have jurisdiction. They say these people came in from Nevada.”
“I don’t fucking care where they came from,” someone else snapped.
Kera pulled off the helmet, her breath coming in quick gasps.
Think, think, think.
She had just promised the Kims that she wouldn’t throw her life away, so what could she do?
Chapter Twenty-One
“Okay,” Agent Richardson began as he loaded 5.56 NATO rounds into one of his
assault rifle’s magazines, “I don’t suppose we could get a real estimate of how many gang members will be there, do you? We want to know how much backup to have. Our usual philosophy is ‘overwhelming force’ since it reduces the likelihood that the bad guys will be stupid enough to fight back.”
MacDonald shrugged. “No fucking idea. The cops aren’t talking. Lamar said he didn’t think it was a bomb of any sort, so apparently ‘crater’ was metaphorical. The number of enemies Motorcycle Man has made is anyone’s guess, but Lamar said the Startup told other gangs to stay away, so this is pretty much just…whoever they are.”
Richardson sighed as he continued to load magazines. “Okay, whatever. We will bring as many people as possible to be safe and have LAPD SWAT standing by to back us up. And a detachment of regular officers. I don’t fucking care what they say about us pulling rank; this is a national operation. We want them to know that resisting arrest is tantamount to declaring war against the United States government.”
There were two other FBI agents present, Almeida and Barker, but they were not talkative. Both were clad in full paramilitary battle gear minus their big, heavy helmets, which they seemed reluctant to put on until it was necessary.
MacDonald looked grim. “We just want to take care of the threat, and no one needs to get hurt. But I suppose if violent criminals are there, it causes problems.”
Richardson wagged a hand. “Causes some, resolves others. By the way, HQ settled on a hostage situation as the smokescreen for managing the public.”
Agent MacDonald stood to shrug into her bulletproof vest. “The problem will be if Motorcycle Man heads there some way the—” She looked at Almeida and Barker. “Some way our other team can’t head him off.”
“We’ll have to trust them to manage that,” Richardson said bluntly. “In the meantime, the hostage situation gives us a pretext to raid the place while also evacuating all the nearby civvies. They won’t get hurt, and as icing on the cake, nobody will see anything.”
How To Be A Badass Witch: Book Three Page 19
