by DAVID B. COE
It wasn’t the sort of investigation I usually took on. But I suspected that Amaya wouldn’t take kindly to my telling him as much. And truth be told, if this woman really was using dark magic, I wanted to know about it. Amaya was right: Dark crafting was nothing to sneeze at. The lingering twinges of pain in my arm and leg, mementos of my confrontation with Cahors, were all the reminders I needed of that.
He cut me a check on the spot: a thousand dollars, as I’d asked. There were benefits to working for the rich and infamous. But even after he signed it, he didn’t hand it to me right away.
“You’re going to want to ask around about Regina Witcombe,” he said. “I know that. But understand this: You are strictly forbidden to tell anyone that I told you she’s a weremyste and that she has a history of using dark magic.”
I wasn’t used to being forbidden to do anything, and I wasn’t sure I liked it, but I understood what he meant.
“I have no intention of telling anyone.”
“That includes your reporter friend.”
My hackles went up. He was talking about Billie. Who the hell was he to be dragging my personal life into our professional arrangement?
“My friend is none of your damn business,” I said, none too wisely. “And when I say I won’t tell anyone, I mean just that. Discretion is part of my job, and I’m here because you know how good I am at what I do.”
“Your confidence pleases me, Jay,” Amaya said, looking and sounding more pissed than pleased. “Because I’m counting on you to get me the information I want. I’m paying you a good deal of money, and I expect results from that investment. As Luis will tell you, I don’t take disappointment well.”
“Are you threatening me?”
“Not you alone. Your father, your girlfriend, your ex-partner.”
At least he was honest.
“On the other hand, if you meet or, better yet, exceed my expectations, you’ll find that I can be a valuable friend.”
I held out my hand. He stared back at me, holding my gaze for several seconds before setting the check on my palm. I folded it and tucked it in my wallet.
“Anything else?”
“I’d like regular progress reports.”
“I’ll be in touch when I have information for you.”
His smile was reflexive. “Fine.” He pulled a business card from his shirt pocket and wrote a number on the back of it. “That’s my private cell number. You can always reach me that way.”
I slipped the card into my wallet beside the check and crossed the room back toward the front door. “Thanks for the beer,” I said over my shoulder.
Luis, Rolon, and Paco scrambled to their feet as I passed them and followed me to the door.
I didn’t say a word until we were back in the lowrider and pulling out of the driveway.
“He’s a piece of work, Luis.”
He swiveled in the front seat with a rustle of cloth on leather. “And you’re fucking loco talking to him like that. You think you’re invincible or something? You think you’re fucking superman?”
“I didn’t say anything that would make him want to kill me,” I said, hoping it was true. “But he’s got some nerve threatening Billie and my dad that way. And threatening a cop? That’s pretty loco, too, don’t you think?”
“It’s only loco if you can’t back it up.”
It was a point worth considering.
“Seriously, Jay. Amaya went easy on you today, and he’s not the evil bastard that he’s made out to be in the media. But he’ll kill you if you cross him. He does business with the Mexican and Colombian cartels. All of them. You don’t screw around with somebody like that.”
I nodded and stared out the window. Luis was right. I needed to be more careful, for Billie and my dad if not for myself.
“You ever played around with dark magic?” I asked.
Luis glanced at Paco and then at Rolon before turning his dark eyes back on me. “Yeah, a little. A long time ago. You?”
I shook my head. “I was always afraid to. Watching my dad go nuts was bad enough; I always figured that the dark stuff would send me over the edge sooner.”
Luis gave a small shrug. “I don’t know. Seems to me that part of the attraction is that some of the rules don’t hold for the darker stuff. It might be that they can find a way around the phasings, and keep themselves sane.”
“Jacinto wouldn’t like that you were talking that way, mi amigo,” Paco said.
“Well, Jacinto isn’t going to hear, is he?”
Paco grinned.
They dropped me back at my place a short time later, and to my surprise gave me back both my Glock and the magazine they’d taken from it. The fire on the western horizon had nearly burned itself out, and the first stars shone brightly in a velvet sky.
I still planned to go out to Wofford again. I couldn’t remember the last time I had arrived at my father’s trailer so late in the evening, but I had promised him that I would be back, and on the off chance that he remembered, I didn’t want to worry him. More to the point, I wanted to make sure he was all right, especially now after speaking to Amaya.
I grabbed a change of clothes and some toiletries, hopped in the Z-ster, and started out toward his trailer. Along the way, I called Billie, so that she wouldn’t worry either.
“You’re alive,” she said upon answering.
“So far.”
“It sounds like you’re driving.”
“I am. I’ll be spending the night at my dad’s. But if you’ve got time tomorrow, I’d like to see you. We can try lunch again, maybe.”
“I’d like that,” she said, her voice warming.
We made our plans and said good-night, and I drove the rest of the way to the trailer in silence, thinking about Jacinto Amaya, Mando Rafael Vargas, and Regina Witcombe, and wondering what the hell I’d gotten myself into. A part of me would have liked the chance to question Vargas. I didn’t expect that he knew much about dark magic, but I was an admirer of his work, and I knew that Billie would be impressed. I also knew, though, that the Feds and the PPD were not about to let a PI anywhere near the man. And Amaya would have told me to concentrate on Witcombe.
Upon reaching my father’s place, these other thoughts fled my mind. My dad was still outside, sitting where I’d left him, his damn binoculars still resting in his lap. The trailer was dark; the only light came from the dull orange glow of the distant city lights and the gibbous moon hanging in the eastern sky.
As soon as I got out of the car, I heard him muttering to himself. I was able to see his outline in the dim light, but not his face. I could tell, though, that he was still flinching.
“Dad?”
No answer.
I walked to where he sat and kissed his forehead. His skin was as cool as the desert night air. He fell silent and looked up at me.
“It’s me. Justis.”
“I told you if you came you’d make it easier for them to find you.”
“Yeah, I remember. You should be inside.” I took hold of his arm, intending to help him up. But he jerked it out of my grasp with a motion that was quicker and more powerful than I would have thought possible.
“I don’t want to go inside. It’s too damn hot in there. It’s cooler out here. The burning doesn’t bother me so much. The rest is as bad. But it’s cool.”
“All right,” I said. I grabbed the other chair, unfolded it, and set it next to his. “Do you want anything?” I asked before sitting. “Are you hungry?”
“Ice cream.”
I laughed. “You had ice cream for lunch. You need some real food.”
A smile crossed his face, and I knew a moment of relief so profound it brought tears to my eyes.
“Did I really?” Recognition glimmered in his eyes. “You were here today.”
“Right. That was when you warned me not to come back.”
He nodded, the smile slipping. “I remember. It’s not Tuesday.”
“No. What can I fix you? Are those
steaks still in there? The ones I brought the other day?”
“Steak sounds good.”
The increasingly rare moments when my dad was cogent were to be treasured. These past few weeks had made that much clear to me. I needed to treat each lucid moment as if it might be the last; I was glad I’d made the drive out here this evening.
I went inside and pulled from the refrigerator the New York strips I’d brought him on Tuesday. I rubbed them with salt, pepper, and garlic and poured some Worcestershire over them, then stuck them in the broiler. I also sliced up a tomato and put salt and pepper on that. I brought the tomato out to him, along with a beer, and settled down next to him.
He ate the tomato in about a minute—I managed to salvage one slice for myself. He didn’t argue when I took the plate and went back inside to slice another for him. Whatever was going on with him was making him ravenous. Either that, or he was eating so infrequently that he was starving himself. After a few minutes I flipped the steaks. When I came back out, he was sipping his beer.
“Can you tell me more about what’s been happening to you?” I asked him, sitting once more.
“It’s the damn brands. Burning, burning, burning, burning, burning, burning. So many burns.” He held out his arms again, spilling a little beer, wincing once, twice, a third time. “They won’t stop. And then they do, but they start up again, and I can’t make them go away. They won’t listen when I tell them that I don’t matter.”
I let out a breath through my teeth, taking care to do it silently, so that he wouldn’t hear. Two clear minutes. And now he was gone again.
I got up without a word and went back in to check on the steaks again. Even inside, I could hear him, and I could make out what he was muttering to himself.
“. . . You’re wasting time with me, damnit. I’m nothing. Ow. I’m not a stone or a mirror or clear water for you to see your goddamned portents. I’m nothing. I’m husk.
“You leave her alone, you hear me? Just leave her be. She did nothing to you. And the boy is not for you either, no matter what you might think. So go away. Ow. Go! Go, damn you! You can take me down to the cottonwoods, and you can light every damn one of them on fire, and you can leave me in the middle of it, let me burn until my skin peels away, but it’s not going to do you a damn bit of good. You won’t have her or him, and you won’t kill me. You won’t. Ow! Shit! No, you goddamn will not!” He paused, and after a few seconds I heard the beer bottle clink lightly on his chair. “You don’t like that, do you, you little fuckers? Well, good. I’m not as helpless as you thought, and I’m not here for you to play your little games. I might not matter, but I’m not helpless, not yet.”
He went on and on in the same vein, while I pulled out the steaks, cut into one, and seeing that it was done, shut off the oven. I cut up my dad’s steak for him, something I only did when he was in bad shape, and filled two glasses with ice water, which had seemed to help him earlier in the day.
“They don’t like this,” he had said about the ice cream and the water.
Who didn’t?
Returning to my Dad, I put the plate with his steak on his lap and handed him the water glass. He took a long drink.
It had been a strange day, and it had seemed endless. Which may be why my mind was making connections it wouldn’t have otherwise.
“Are they dark sorcerers, Dad? Is that who’s doing this to you?”
He considered me, a spark of recognition in his pale eyes.
“I don’t know. Could be.”
Except for the fact that there were no weremystes here. I was sure of that. But to set my mind at ease, I cast a spell similar to the one I’d attempted in the airport. This time, though, I tried to keep it simple. Three elements instead of seven: me, a concealed myste, and my eyes.
Nothing.
“What was that?”
“You felt it?” I asked him.
“You cast a spell.”
“Yeah, I did.”
“What kind?”
“I wanted to see if there was a weremyste here, someone camouflaged, who might be doing these things to you.”
He shook his head. “There isn’t. These are powers that go far beyond you and me and other weres.”
“You’re talking to me again.”
“Did I stop?” He glanced down at the plate and frowned. “You just started those.”
“No,” I said, laying a hand on his shoulder. “You’ve been muttering to yourself for fifteen minutes.”
“Damn.”
“What else can you tell me? Before you slip away again.”
“I don’t know what they are. They’re hurting me, testing me, trying to craft their way past my wardings.”
“I heard you say something about ‘her,’ and you also mentioned a boy.”
He nodded, his face falling. “The boy is you,” he said, voice thick. “They want you for something. And . . . and sometimes they make me see your mother. She looks so fine, so much like . . . like she did. Young and beautiful. Before all the rest, when it went bad. It’s Dara as I like to remember her.” He shook his head. There were tears on his face.
I gripped his arm, not knowing what else to do. “I’m sorry.”
He cleared his throat, swiped at the tears. “I try to stop them. But that’s what they want. That’s the test.”
“You mentioned wardings a minute ago. Have you been warding yourself?”
He frowned again, squeezed his eyes shut. “No. Not the way you mean. But I try to make them go away, and I think they learn from that.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I know. I’m in and out. I’ll be here, and then . . .” He shook his head and drank the rest of his water. “I know what it seems like. I mean, I know. I know! But it’s not— There’s something real here. You’ve been good to . . . You take care of me. And you’ve seen . . . I know what you see when you look at me, what you’re afraid of. But this is real. It’s . . .” He winced. “Damnit! They’re hurting me again. I’m slipping, burning.” His eyes closed, and he shuddered. “Listen to me.” His voice had fallen to a whisper. “Justis?”
“I’m here.”
“This is real. Okay? This is real.”
“I believe you.”
“No, you don’t. But when belief is gone, all that’s left is trust. And I need you to trust me.”
“All right. I do.”
He flinched. “Brands. Burning, damnit. I hate you bastards.”
I took the empty glass from him, ran inside to fill it, and brought it back out to him. He drank deeply, and after a while he ate a few pieces of steak. But he was mumbling to himself again—more about burning and not mattering and the rest—and all the while flinching and whimpering in pain. I listened for more mentions of my mother and me, and heard what might have been a few. But there was little coherence to what he said, and I couldn’t make much sense of it.
His doctor had prescribed sleeping pills for those really bad nights when the delusions kept him up. After a while I got him to take one—no small feat—and then sat with him until he fell asleep in his chair. Once he had been out for a few minutes, I lifted him and carried him to his bed.
I sat up with him for a while, watching him as he lay there. He seemed to have aged ten years in the past few days; he looked like an old man, which scared the crap out of me. It shouldn’t have; he was old, and the phasings and his drinking had taken a toll on his body, so that he was older than his years. But sitting beside his bed, seeing the way he continued to flinch, even in a deep sleep, I realized that in the greater scheme of things, I didn’t have much time left with him. Who knew how many years he’d stick around? Tears welled, and before I knew it I was crying like a little kid, terrified by the simple truth that my father was mortal, and his mortality was exposed to me now in ways it never had been before.
After a little while, I pulled myself together, but I remained by his bed, thinking about the last thing he had said to me that made any sense. When belief is gon
e, all that’s left is trust . . . There was a time, in the years after my mom died—I was an angry, lonely teenager, and he was a drunk well on his way to losing his job on the force—when I hadn’t trusted him at all, when I would sooner have trusted a stranger than my own father. But those days were long gone. Crazy as he was, I did trust him. He flinched again, confirming my faith. What kind of hallucination would have followed him into a medication-induced sleep? Strange as it seemed, I was forced to consider the possibility that something or someone really was hurting him. Except that I had no idea how it was possible. I sensed no magic in the room, no ripple of power in the air around me. Maybe it was one of those “old powers” Namid mentioned earlier.
Dad cried out, and on instinct I grabbed his hand. At my touch, he appeared to relax, the tension draining from his haggard face.
“I’m here,” I said.
He shifted, began to snore.
After another fifteen minutes or so, satisfied that he was doing a little better, I pulled a spare blanket and pillow from his linen closet and lay on the floor next to his bed. There wasn’t a lot of room, but I didn’t expect that I’d sleep much no matter where I bedded down.
I surprised myself. My head had barely hit the pillow before I woke up to a bright morning and the song of a cactus wren drifting in through the open window. I sat up and peered over the edge of my dad’s bed. He was still asleep, soundly, peacefully. No flinching that I could see.
Relieved, I gathered up the blanket and pillow and padded out of the room, making as little noise as possible. I hated to leave him alone after the night he’d had, but I had work to do, and my dad’s trailer didn’t even have Internet. I hoped that he would remember to eat today, and I wrote him a quick note promising to come back in the next day or two. I had no idea if he would find it or read it or be able to make sense of it. But I put it on the counter in his small kitchen, where it was most likely to catch his eye.
I went out to my car and opened the door to climb in. But then I paused, gazing back at the trailer. I’d learned a long time ago to trust my magical instincts. And they told me that there was a common thread running through all that had happened in recent days: My dad’s pain, the killing of James Howell and the disabling of Flight 595, even the odd burst of magic that had saved my life the night I confronted Mark Darby. I couldn’t make sense of it, not yet. But I was sure it was right there in front of me. All I needed to do was connect the dots.
