Elton didn’t have time to shout at him. He didn’t have time to worry how many people might see him. He surged forward and held out both hands, barking out the word anaid. His ring burned against his skin as he struggled under the weight of the cars, but he managed to keep them from colliding with the occupied cars driving by. People on the sidewalk cried out in alarm and stopped to point at the vehicles groaning to a stop in mid-air, but Elton didn’t have the strength to put up a barrier. He could feel sweat beading on his forehead as the cars jerked lower, and the muscles in his legs strained from exertion. He couldn’t hold them. He kept his eyes on the row of cars, but he was startled by the sudden heat of Nathan’s breath on the back of his ear.
“Don’t drop it,” Nathan purred, and Elton set his jaw and kept his attention focused. “Easy, Elton; you’re doing so well.” Elton tensed as he felt Nathan’s hand lightly on his waist, but he didn’t dare turn to scold him.
“Holy shit!” Elton distantly heard Cora’s voice beside him, and then he felt the weight of his burden ease as she called out a spell. “Oh my god, bad idea,” she grunted, stumbling under the shared load. Nathan stood idly by with an amused smile while the two of them struggled to turn the cars upright, slowly drawing them closer to the sidewalk they’d been thrown from.
Elton’s hands shook as the cars finally creaked back into their places, and when he released the spell, his legs almost gave out from under him. He shared a glance with Cora and tried not to show how unsteady his breath was as he gave her a grateful nod. He heard slow applause beside him and turned his head with a scowl, the nearby mundanes backing away as though pushed when he took a step forward.
“Excellent work, Elton. You too, my love; truly spectacular. I’m so proud of you.”
“Stop this,” Elton said, but Nathan laughed at him.
“Not yet,” he answered, and he moved closer, reaching out to slip a folded note into the pocket inside the Chaser’s coat. “This is the chase you wanted, isn’t it? You wanted to catch me, hm?” He let Elton’s coat slip from his fingers as he stepped backward. “So play the game, darling.”
Elton didn’t get to speak before Nathan vanished again, and he didn’t have the strength to run. He pressed a hand against his chest where the note sat in his pocket and tried to catch his breath.
“That was fucking cool though, right?” Cora panted beside him. Elton only shook his head, his attention on the ring of people distantly surrounding them. Some of them had their phones out, clearly still taking pictures or video. This would be difficult to explain.
“What the fuck was that?” Chris’s voice called after them, and Elton looked up as his partner jogged toward them. Chris’s head was bleeding from the temple, and he was a bit dirty, but he didn’t seem much worse for wear. There was some benefit to his hard-headedness, at least. “Get the hell out of the street, you idiots!” he snapped, and he threw up a barrier around them, leaving the circling mundanes to stare in confusion and whisper among themselves. Chris led Cora by the back of her collar around the corner again, and he waited until he had shoved both her and Elton into their rental car before he turned on them.
“What the hell were you thinking, Willis? Do you even know how many people saw you?”
“I was thinking those cars were going to crush them if I didn’t stop them,” Elton snapped back. “What was I supposed to do?”
“You were supposed to let them fall,” Chris growled. “You can’t expose mundanes to magic. End of goddamn story. Now we’re going to have to file a report, and you’re on thin ice as it is with this shit.”
“Are you kidding me right now?” Cora spoke up from the backseat as she leaned forward between them, an elbow on each seat. “People would have died! How is that better than having to fill out a stupid form?”
“People die,” Chris answered grimly. “Moore would have been responsible for that, not us. Which is exactly why we have to stop him,” he added with a pointed tare at Elton. “You don’t think that if you hadn’t been distracted playing hero that you might have been able to bind him?”
“I had to make a call,” Elton said. “If they want to put another black mark in my file because I chose to save lives rather than bind a perp, they’re welcome to.” He glanced sidelong at Cora, thin lips pressed into a frown. “But this was my call,” he said. “Don’t drag her name into it.”
Cora softened slightly as she looked at him. “Elton—”
“They’ll revoke your scholarship,” he cut her off in a gentler voice.
Chris snorted and slumped back in his seat, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. “Fine,” he said after a pause. “But you,” he went on, turning to glare at Cora over his shoulder, “had better be on your best fucking behavior, you got it? You’re a little too chummy with the wanted criminal.”
“Ugh,” she grunted, barely holding back from kicking his seat in frustration as she sat back.
“What happened to Adelina?” Elton asked, and Chris seemed even more annoyed.
“She…got away,” he muttered. “Which might not have happened if you hadn’t run off,” he added, seeming more than a little defensive.
“Sorry, are you actually complaining that I was chasing after Nathaniel Moore?”
“What’s the note Nathan gave you, Elton?” Cora cut in to disrupt the argument. “Since we’re so eager to get on with the job, here.”
Elton looked down at himself and reached into his coat to retrieve the letter. He frowned as he unfolded it, Cora leaning over his shoulder.
Elton,
One more stop. I have it on the best authority that if you were to visit an apartment building near Oriole Park late tonight, you would have the unique opportunity to save a life and put a repeat criminal (not me) behind bars. That is your favorite thing, isn’t it?
Affectionately,
Nathan
Elton sighed and offered the note to Chris. Just another step in this pointless chase. What was Nathan trying to lead them to?
“Let’s go back to the hotel for now,” Elton suggested. “If we have to wait, there’s nothing to do yet anyway. We can discuss our options and get something to eat.”
“How many of these love notes is this asshole going to send you?” Chris growled, and he shoved the paper into Elton’s chest before turning the key in the ignition. “I thought you were going to be the one to bring him in, not follow his breadcrumbs all over the city.”
“He wants to meet again; I know he does,” Elton answered. He buckled his seat belt and frowned out the window. “He just wants to see how long I’ll play along for.”
“Well I’m not doing this for very much longer,” Chris muttered. “I thought this was supposed to be a fight.”
“If you want to fight him head on, you go right ahead,” Elton scoffed. “That seems to have worked out well for the Chasers that came before us.”
Chris gripped the steering wheel so hard that the leather squeaked, but he drove on in silence. The three of them stopped at a nearby Thai restaurant for dinner and brought the food back to the hotel, none of them feeling sociable enough to sit down to a proper meal together. Cora sat next to Elton on one of the beds and bent over her lap to eat her noodles while Chris paced the room, only periodically picking at his food.
“You’re not going to find him if you just go looking, anyway,” Cora said blandly as she wiped a bit of sauce from her lip. “He doesn’t want you to find him.”
“This isn’t about what Moore wants,” Chris snapped back. “We can’t just let him roam around the city freely while we play his stupid game. This is about bringing him to justice. It’s not about having fun, and it’s definitely not about whatever weird romance you two have going on,” he finished with a vague gesture in Elton’s direction.
“I told you,” Elton sighed, “it’s just how he is.”
“You keep saying that, and I keep not fucking believing it. You’d better keep your head on straight, Willis.” He snatched up his toiletry bag fro
m his suitcase. “You two behave yourselves so I can fix this fucking gash in my head.” He gave them one final scowl and shut the bathroom door behind him, muttering in Cantonese all the way.
“He should be happy that we got to help that guy, right?” Cora snorted. “Or that we, you know, didn’t let a whole bunch of people die because Nathan can’t play nice?”
“Helping people isn’t a Chaser’s job,” Elton admitted with a small shrug. “Not really.”
“Well that’s…really shitty.” She sighed. “Your job is shitty.”
“Sometimes,” he agreed.
Cora huffed and laid down on her stomach on the bed, reaching out to touch the small chest Elton had left on the nightstand. “What do you think this is, anyway?” she asked over her shoulder. “Why did he want you to have it?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s nothing in it but confetti,” Elton muttered.
She laughed. “That would be awesome. It should play music.” She shifted onto her side to look at him. “Are you going to open it?”
Elton hesitated and set down his bowl. “If Nathan said not to, it’s because it’s dangerous, or it’s because he wants to be there for the big reveal.” He looked over at her with a frown. “Which do you think it is?”
“Both, probably,” she shrugged. “I mean, if today is any indication.”
“Do you think I should open it?”
Cora paused and sat up, her brow furrowed in confusion. “You’re asking me?”
“You know him better than I do.”
“I’m not sure I do,” she chuckled sadly. “That was fucked up, what he did today. He could have killed those people, and he did it because…why? Just to see if you would stop him? I wanted to see him again, and I still want to see him, but I wish he’d do more teaching me how to help people with messed-up brains and less murdering just to get a reaction out of people, you know?”
“That wouldn’t be the worst choice he could make, no.”
Cora stared down at the chest for a few moments, her lips pursed in thought. The water squeaked off in the bathroom, and she glanced sidelong at the door before leaning closer to Elton. “Let’s make him open it,” she said under her breath.
“Cora,” Elton sighed.
“I’m serious. He’ll want to open it. You want to know what’s inside. And if it curses him like crazy, who cares? He can’t blame it on you. He’s supposed to be the one in charge here. Plus he’s a total dick,” she added.
Elton hesitated. He knew he should say no, but he was finding it difficult to come up with arguments. Chris reappeared from the bathroom looking only slightly more relaxed than when he’d went in, and he snatched up his jacket from the back of the nearby chair.
“Well, are we going or are we not going?” he said, and Elton and Cora exchanged a brief look of mutual suffering as they rose from the bed.
10
Adelina walked down the sidewalk behind Nathan, who was practically skipping with glee. Even she had to smile at seeing him so excited.
“This really couldn’t be going any better,” he laughed, taking a few steps backwards as he turned to look at her. “Sorry to leave you alone with that brutish Chaser, kè mwen; I assume he didn’t give you any trouble.”
She chuckled at the memory of the Chaser wriggling from the balcony railing where she had hung him by his belt. It must have hurt to come down when he finally got himself loose.
“No, he didn’t,” she agreed.
“Of course he didn’t.” He stopped walking and took both of her hands in his. “I don’t have to worry about you, do I?”
“Has this been you worrying about me?” she laughed.
“I fear I’ve been neglecting you. I’ve just freed myself up until tonight—why don’t we do something not related to tormenting Chasers?”
“But that’s your very favorite thing,” she teased, and he smiled.
“My very favorite thing would be to see you actually enjoy yourself, rather than follow along in my wake,” he said. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed.”
“Yours is a difficult shadow to live under,” she chuckled. “I’m sure you know. All of this running from the Magistrate, fighting in the street. People dying. It isn’t anything like the life I left behind. I don’t know if I’m suited for it. The magic you do…it’s incredible,” she admitted, but she looked up into his eyes with a frown. “But you put people in danger, Nathaniel. Yourself, and me, and Cora, and your Chaser. Even mundanes who are only trying to live their lives get hurt because of magic. Even before you came—I knew witches in New Orleans who would trick people out of their money, or take women from the street to do with as they pleased. Magic allows us to connect to the loa and to those who have gone, but so many people use it for selfish and hateful things. It’s a weapon. If this is what magic does, isn’t the Magistrate right to keep it leashed?”
Nathan watched her with a pondering look in his eyes, then he gave her hands a soft squeeze and released her, urging her to walk beside him with a tilt of his head. “Let me show you something.”
He walked down the sidewalk with his eyes on the curb, and when they reached the next corner, he stopped. He crouched down at the edge of the sidewalk where a muddy puddle remained from a previous rain and dipped his fingers into it, stirring up the grit and oil from the street.
“There are hungry people in this city,” he said as she leaned over his shoulder. “People without a place to sleep, or fresh water, or anyone at all to care for them. It’s the same wherever you go. People say they want to provide for those less fortunate, but everything costs money. Who’s going to pay for it all? Who’s going to give up their hard-earned tax dollars to build a water treatment center in Sierra Leone? Vini non isit la.” He rose as Adelina shifted closer at his command, his hand drawing the water up with it in a gentle spout that snapped from the rest of the puddle with an audible pop when he straightened to his full height. Nathan turned his hand and let the water settle into a murky brown ball just above his palm. “You want a taste?”
“No thank you,” she said with a frown.
“This water, clear and fresh from the sky, will run off down this sewer drain, through pipes that cost millions to build, so that it can be run through a treatment plant that cost even more millions, before it would be considered fit to drink.” He lifted his other hand and touched his fingertips to the gently shifting orb. “Men, li ki kapab fèt pi bon kalite.” As he pulled his hand away from the water, he drew the impurities with it, until he held one ball in each hand—one a bubble of silt, gravel, and glistening oil, and the other a clear globe that reflected almost blue in the sunlight.
“What about now?” he asked with a faint smile, but she couldn’t pull her eyes from the water in his palm. “Magic isn’t the problem, kè mwen. With magic, a thirsty man can drink, a crippled man can walk, and a blind man can see. The fault lies with the men and women who wield it. Just imagine what could happen if witches across the globe were free to help, instead of being bound by laws written by men afraid of being burned at the stake.”
Adelina quirked one eyebrow as he let both orbs fall, staining the sidewalk. “What about you? If you’re opposed to the Magistrate, why don’t you help? Why not feed the hungry and cure the sick?”
“Even if I were personally inclined to spend my days at the service of others, I’m just one person. Besides, I’m an old man now,” he chuckled. “I’ll leave changing the world to the next generation. Now what would you like to do today? Ah—but please don’t say change the world. My schedule’s a bit tight for that.”
She smiled at him when he offered his hand, and she let him lace his fingers in hers as they walked. She would never understand him. All of the dead bodies, all of the sex and drugs and alcohol—all of the ruthlessness. But somewhere underneath, there was a person who might once have been an idealist.
11
Chris huffed out a sigh as he slammed the car door shut outside the apartment building. “If Moore has
brought us here as some kind of set-up, I swear to God—”
“This whole thing has been a set-up,” Elton reminded him. “Stop complaining and keep a lookout. There’s something here he wants us to see.”
Cora stuck near Elton as they walked the sidewalk, hooking her arm in his and huddling close to his warmth in the chill of the night, but he barely seemed to notice. He scanned the abandoned street and watched each pedestrian they passed with his thumb idly turning the ring on his hand. Ahead of them, a dark-skinned woman in pale blue scrubs turned onto the street, followed quickly by a larger, darker figure with a drawn-up hood. The woman hunched her shoulders against a sharp breeze and twisted to dig through her purse as she drew closer to the building. Elton grabbed Chris by the back of his jacket to stop him and hissed out a quick spell, barricading them from the distant scene.
Chris opened his mouth to object, but Elton muttered, “Just shut up,” before the other man could get a word out. The barrier was a simple illusion, the kind Chasers regularly used to keep mundanes from seeing things they shouldn’t, but it would be easily detected if they made enough noise to attract the pair’s attention, especially if one of them was a witch. “Pay attention.”
At the end of the street, just as the woman was finally retrieving her key, the figure behind her rushed forward and clamped a hand over her mouth, dropping her to the ground in his grip. Her arms went limp without a fight, and Elton’s grip tightened on Chris’s jacket to keep the other man still. With barely a glance around, the attacker scooped up the woman and threw her carelessly over his shoulder, leaving her purse abandoned on the pavement as he made a hasty retreat toward the apartment building. When he opened the door without a key, Elton moved. The woman’s collapse could have been explained by chloroform in a handkerchief for all he could tell at this distance, but he heard the sharp thunk of the deadbolt in the door as soon as the man touched it. He was a witch.
The Left-Hand Path: Runaway Page 9
