The open bar and surrounding tables were dotted with clients of every background chatting and drinking and eating greasy, delicious-looking food. Nathan took a place at the bar with an easy smile at the man beside him and ordered both of them their usual—a Dark and Stormy for Nathan, and a Sazerac for Adelina. He would start taking pure shots later in the evening she was sure, as was his custom, but he occasionally liked to at least pretend he was going to be civilized.
“This is where we ought to do our shopping,” he chuckled as he sipped at his drink. “Where else can you pick up Jimson Weed and a hand of glory, right next to each other? It’s wonderful.”
“I wonder why Mr. Proctor wastes his time selling trinkets to mundanes when a place like this is right under his feet?”
“Who knows? Maybe he likes the yuppie crystal-wearing type. Or maybe he doesn’t feel particularly welcome among his own kind,” Nathan said with a shrug that suggested he knew more than he let on. Adelina stared at him with her lips pressed together, but a man at a table over Nathan’s shoulder caught her eye before she could question him.
The man had a glass of water and an open book in front of him, and he clutched something tightly in both hands as he hunched over the spread pages. She watched his lips move, his eyes shifting between the book and the water glass. He furrowed his brow, narrowed his eyes and then shut them, fingers working anxiously over the something in his hand. The glass stayed where it was, silently dripping condensation onto the high top table, and when the man opened his eyes again and saw it hadn’t moved, his face twisted into an anguished grimace, and he dropped his head onto the open book and clutched at his hair.
“No luck again, I see,” the bartender chuckled, and Adelina looked up to see him following her gaze. “Poor bastard.”
“Who’s a poor bastard?” Nathan piped up, glancing over his shoulder to see what they were looking at. “Him?”
“He comes here just about every night, stares at that book and worries that token, trying to tip the glass over.”
“Is there something...wrong with him?” Adelina asked in a quiet voice.
“He’s fás.”
Adelina’s heart sank as the bartender moved away to take an order, but Nathan pursed his lips and tilted his drink, clinking the ice in the glass. “Fás” was the callous term used to describe someone who had undergone the ingnas and come out the other side disconnected from their magic. It meant “empty.”
“Curious,” Nathan murmured, and Adelina set down her glass and touched his arm to draw his attention.
“That’s your scheming face. What are you scheming?”
“It is a shame, isn’t it? It must be like losing a limb. The Magistrate can be cruel.” He paused and took another drink. “Perhaps a reminder is in order.”
“A reminder?”
“Look at him. He’s so pitiful, even Elton would feel guilty. He’s perfect. I’ll have to make sure they cross paths.”
“Perfect for what?”
“For Elton,” Nathan clarified, though his meaning wasn’t any clearer to Adelina.
“That is a person, Nathaniel. He isn’t just there for you to use.”
“Nonsense. Of course he is. I feel for him, but what’s done to him is done.”
“Can’t we help him? You must know something. You know a way around everything.”
“I appreciate your flattery, kè mwen, but even my remedies would be a chance at best. The ingnas is a powerful spell.”
She squeezed his arm. “Isn’t a chance worth it? Wouldn’t you take even a chance to bring back a lost limb?”
Nathan let out a small sigh through his nose, then glanced over his shoulder back at the man, who had lifted his head and begun to try again. His hands fumbled the grounding token as though his fingers felt too thick, and he seemed to struggle to focus. Nathan shook his head apologetically, but then he paused.
“I’ll tell you what,” he said, setting down his glass and turning on his stool to face her. “Compromise. Cora will help him.”
“Cora? What could she do?”
“Exactly as I’ve taught her,” he answered with a smile. “Trust me. I’ll get to Elton through this unfortunate soul, and Cora will help him. You’ll see. Who knows?” he shrugged. “It may even work.”
He pressed her hand to reassure her and carried his drink with him as he stood. Adelina watched with a wrinkle in her brow as Nathan took the seat opposite the despondent man, a bright smile on his face. They chatted for a bit, and the stranger seemed guarded and reluctant, but eventually he took Nathan’s offered hand and shook it with an earnest grasp. Nathan leaned close to him to murmur something Adelina couldn’t hear, and as he returned to her, the man hastily gathered up his book and weaved through the crowded market and out of sight.
“He’ll have his chance,” Nathan promised. He tipped the last of his drink to his lips and pushed the glass away. “You’re kinder than you let on, kè mwen.”
“I’m only trying to balance you out,” she answered, and he smiled.
“How about a real drink?”
Adelina chuckled. Even if he wouldn’t tell her what he was planning, she at least trusted him to keep his word. He was capable of doing some good, in his own self-serving way. “Why not?”
The next few days had gone by uneventfully, but Nathan had eventually burst into the suite while Adelina was curled up with a cup of coffee and declared that everything was ready, and he had ducked into his bedroom to retrieve the bag of herbs he had bought from the little shop weeks prior.
“Now, come,” he said giddily as he reappeared, and he practically threw her coat at her. “Let’s see about finding a Chaser.”
“What? He’s here?”
“Not that one. Come along, come along,” he urged, taking her by the hand to hurry her along.
They walked for a while to distance themselves from the hotel, and when Nathan decided they were far enough away, he sat down at a covered bus stop and held a lit cigarette in his lips while he emptied his bag into his lap. He picked out the herbs he wanted, tucked the remainder back into the bag, and passed it to Adelina to hold. Humming a soft tune to himself, he ground some of the herbs in his palm with the ball of his hand and plucked his cigarette from his lips. He barely winced as he bit into the meat of his free hand, and he spit a mixture of blood and saliva into the little nest of herbs in his palm. He took another draw from his cigarette as he picked the shells from his lap and poked them gently into the center of the sticky mess.
Adelina watched with her brows knit as he lifted his hand to his lips and whispered something into his palm, then covered the mixture with his other hand. After just a moment, he lifted his hand, and a purple specter of a cat leapt daintily from his palm, leaving no trace of the herbs or blood that had made it. The cat twisted around Adelina’s ankles with a ringing yowl, and she laughed, reaching down but hesitant to touch it.
“What is this for?” she asked him with a smile as the cat bounded around the sidewalk in front of them. Some people ignored the cat completely, too absorbed in their quick pace to even notice as they stepped through the spectral creature, but others gasped and dodged it, even pausing to turn back and look.
Nathan didn’t answer her. He clicked his tongue once, drawing the cat back to his feet, and as he gave it a single long stroke from head to tail, it grew to the size and shape of a lion, immediately letting out a heart-shaking roar. Everyone on the street either froze in place or took off running, and Adelina herself let out a short cry and shot backwards onto the bench beside Nathan.
“Nathaniel, what have you done?” she asked in a panicked voice as the lion took to the street, bringing cars to a screeching halt and sending pedestrians scattering.
“Oh, it’s only an illusion,” he assured her, sucking on his wounded hand as he twisted on the bench to watch the creature bound across traffic. “Harmless. It shouldn’t take long,” he added, slightly muffled around his hand.
As predicted, the magical specte
r was loose for only minutes, terrorizing the locals and leaping onto taxis, before a man appeared on the street who seemed far less concerned than the people around him. A subtle gesture of his hand sent up a glimmering blue barrier, separating himself and the creature from the sight of the mundanes, but Adelina could still see inside as though through frosted glass. The man easily dispelled the roaring specter and dropped the barrier, leaving the surrounding mundanes to question amongst themselves. Adelina knew how the Magistrate worked. There would be a note in the newspaper tomorrow about street magic, or performance art—anything to explain it away and keep the truth from the public.
“There he is,” Nathan chuckled. “About time.” He flicked the butt of his cigarette away and stood, moving toward the street to keep an eye on the Chaser. The man crossed the street before traffic could nervously start up again, immediately zeroing in on Nathan. He looked young for a Chaser. As soon as he approached, he opened his mouth to speak, but before he could make a sound, Nathan pressed his injured hand to the young man’s chest.
“San,” he said in a low, purposeful voice, and a deep slit opened up in the man’s torso, pouring blood as the Chaser gave a strangled cry. The man collapsed to the pavement, the scene drawing screams from nearby mundanes who hadn’t even had time to recover from the sight of the spectral lion in the street. The Chaser’s blood clung to Nathan’s hand even as the body fell, leaving a gory marionette string trailing from the witch’s fingers. He shook his hand as casually as if shedding rainwater and crouched to slip the silver ring from the young man’s right hand.
Adelina stood trembling, unable to will herself to move despite every fiber of her being telling her to run. Nathan stepped away from the body, turning the ring in his fingers.
“We should be on our way.” He started down the sidewalk, glancing over his shoulder to make sure she was following, and she trotted to keep up with him, her hands shaking as she clutched his paper bag. He turned down an alley a block away, once they were far enough away from the body that his glamor was sufficient to keep them from suspicion, and he took the hotel’s slip of paper from his pocket and pressed it against the wall to write on it. After a moment, he folded the paper in half, dropped it into the envelope along with the ring, and blew it into a burst of green flame in his palm. When he was finished, he let out a pleased sigh and leaned back against the brick wall.
“Is that what’s been happening all this time?” Adelina demanded. “Why you’ve been showing up like this? You’ve been killing Chasers?”
“Of course I have. I told you I was taking care of it, didn’t I?”
“I thought you meant covering our tracks!”
“Why on earth would I want to cover our tracks?” he laughed. “He won’t come if they can’t find me.”
“He?” Adelina stared at him open-mouthed. “Are you still talking about Elton? All of this, for him?”
“This is only the beginning, kè mwen,” Nathan chuckled, wiping a bit of dripping blood from his hand onto the nearby wall. “Now he’ll come, and the game is truly begun.”
Adelina shrank back slightly from the dark look in his eyes, a chilling contrast to the curved smile on his lips.
RUNAWAY
5
The door to the apartment opened too easily. It should have been hard to slip the key in the lock, to turn the knob and push. But the door worked just as it always had, creaking just slightly as it swung fully open. The air inside was cold and still, and there was no sound in the home as Elton took his first step across the threshold. It was as empty as she’d promised it would be.
Decorative pictures still hung on the walls, and all the furniture was in the right place, but the apartment felt abandoned. As it had been, he supposed. The closet in his bedroom was precisely half empty—one row of suit jackets hanging opposite a set of bare shelves. Her side of the bathroom had been cleared away, and her alarm clock was missing. All traces of her had been removed, the apartment sterilized of her presence. The only sign that anyone else had ever been there was the single business card on the kitchen counter for Kerrington Family Law. She hadn’t even left a note with it. He wanted to call her. He wanted to hear her voice again. He could apologize properly if she would let him. He could tell her that he didn’t blame her, that he should have treated her the way she deserved. That he hoped the man she’d left him for knew better.
Elton left his tie and jacket on the neatly made bed and washed his face in the bathroom sink, splashing the cold water over his cheeks until he felt his numbness begin to subside. He would have to move. There was no way he could stay here. He dried his face on a hand towel that smelled like her lotion and stood leaning against the counter, staring helplessly at his own reflection as though it would have any answers for him.
1
He still looked like a prisoner. They had kept his hair trimmed, though not as neatly as he would have liked, but he felt grimy, and he was in desperate need of a shave. He had lines at the corners of his eyes that he was certain hadn’t been there before. The suit he wore, carefully kept for him in storage these past six months, still smelled charred and bore a few singed black marks from his last encounter with the lich.
He stripped off his clothes and took the hottest shower he could, scrubbing himself with the soap that seemed strangely alone on the wire caddy. He had to wipe steam from the mirror with a towel to see well enough to shave, and he rinsed his smooth face when he was done and pushed a hand through his damp hair to straighten it. The man in the mirror looked more like the one Elton knew, but he didn’t feel the same. When he glanced down to wipe the sink clean, the dull glint of his gold band caught his eye from the corner of the counter. He had taken it off to shower and shave, just like always, without even thinking. But now, seeing it sit there, waiting to be slipped back on his finger as usual, his hand suddenly felt awkward and lacking. He left it near the sink.
Elton chose a dark blue suit with a pale pinstriped shirt and a plum-colored tie, and he was frowning into the bedroom mirror to tie it when a knock on the door startled him. He moved through the apartment to look through the peephole, his lips twitching downward at the sight of the man at his door. He knew a Chaser when he saw one. He knew the eyes, always checking your surroundings, and the posture, purposely relaxed but always wary. He opened the door to greet his guest, but the man stepped inside without a smile or an offered hand.
“You’re Elton Willis,” he said, clearly not asking a question, and he leaned sideways to peer down the short hall into the apartment as he tucked his hands into the pockets of his leather jacket. “You alone?”
“I am,” Elton answered, gently pushing the front door closed again. The man who now stood in his living room was Chinese and looked about Elton’s age, but his jaw was dusted with black stubble and his dark hair was a carefully-styled mess. He frowned back at Elton with his heavy eyebrows furrowed cautiously, but after a moment’s pause, he turned to face him again and held out his hand.
“Chris Hao. I’ve been assigned as your handler.”
“That was quick,” Elton said as he shook the man’s hand.
“I should have been there to collect you when you were released, but I got held up. I hope you didn’t get into too much trouble on your way here.”
“I managed to restrain my criminal impulses in the taxi,” Elton answered dryly, but Chris didn’t seem amused. He released Elton’s hand in favor of studying the living room.
“So you’re up for this?” Chris asked without looking over his shoulder. He picked up the corner of a magazine on the coffee table, though Elton wasn’t sure what he expected to find hidden there. “You know the survival rate for Chasers who go after Nathaniel Moore isn’t great. And they said he asked for you by name.”
“He’s my collar,” Elton said, rather more defensively than he intended. “I’m the one who tracked him down when everyone else had given up. It’s my fault that he’s active again, and it’s my responsibility to bring him in. So yes, I’m u
p for it.”
Chris stood up straight and faced Elton with a dubious frown. “Just don’t forget whose side you’re on this time.” He took one final glance around the room, idly fingering the silver ring on his right hand. “I’ll be reporting to the Magistrate about our progress. If you step out of line, I’m authorized to call off the investigation and bring you back—with or without your cooperation. We’re not risking another incident like what happened in Arizona.”
“You don’t have to worry about me,” Elton promised, though the other man didn’t seem very reassured.
“Moore was last reported in Toronto. If you’re ready to go, I’ll arrange our flight, and we can get going before the trail goes cold. Not that he’s making it exceptionally difficult to find him.”
Elton stepped back into his bedroom and retrieved a small suitcase from his closet. He was still exhausted, but he was grateful he wasn’t going to have to sleep alone in his old bed. Getting right back to work was best. He didn’t have time to be morose. “What’s the damage so far?”
Chris followed him only far enough to stand in the bedroom doorway while Elton packed his bag. “Eleven Chasers believed dead, ten confirmed.”
Elton paused. “Why unconfirmed?”
“They didn’t find a body. But Moore sent back his ring.”
Elton frowned as he folded a shirt into his suitcase. “Then let’s hope he’s dead,” he muttered. “What else?”
“So far, a handful of reports of mundane exposure here in the city, a robbery in Calgary—with more magic exposure—and a very expensive damage report at the West Edmonton Mall. Various disruptions and incidents in smaller towns. They’re estimating about twenty mundane deaths.”
Elton grit his teeth and muttered, “For fuck’s sake, Nathan,” but he cleared his throat and zipped up his packed bag when he caught Chris staring suspiciously at him.
“We need to make a stop before we leave the city,” Elton said as he picked up his bag.
The Left-Hand Path: Runaway Page 4
