Magic After Dark: A Collection of Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance Novels

by Margo Bond Collins

  Serafina’s breath paused in her lungs before she could gasp.

  Rumpel!

  Suddenly Serafina realized she might actually enjoy killing them, after all.

  The tip of the sais found their way to each of his shoulders. Serafina didn’t remember moving them, but she didn’t fight the response, either. “Why’d he give you the magic?” she asked.

  The young man shivered and looked at her, pleading. “He… he hired us. Odd jobs and such. Said that workin’ for him came with benefits—thought he meant health, dental, that sorta thing—but then he gives us this. Said we could play—said we should play, in fact—but that we was always, always workin’ for him.”

  It was all Serafina could do not to plunge the blades into him then and there. “What’d he want you to do?”

  Another shrug. “Scoutin’ work, mostly. Go around the city and check out new businesses that was opening. Guy got real excited when a new casino was openin’. But, like, anywhere, really—hotels, gyms, spas, clubs… Basically anythin’ that was bringin’ in dough, y’know? ‘C-‘cept for…” he chewed his lip and looked down.

  “What?” Serafina hissed, jamming the tip of one of the sais into his shoulder. “Except what?”

  “AH! SON OF A—” the young man caught himself and gritted his teeth through the pain.

  “He’s dead… he’s dead… HE’S DEAD!” Piss-pants howled and, finding new strength in his knees, moved to lunge at Serafina.

  Her left sai was a silver blur as it moved to set itself between them.

  As Piss-pants closed the distance, he managed part of “HE’S DE—” before the tip passed through his throat. Momentum carried him the rest of the way along the blade’s length until the shorter forks on either side caught the edges of his neck, then, with a gentle push, Serafina let him fall back off the blade. Slumping to the floor, he made a few last sounds—none of them words—and eventually slipped into silence.

  Serafina returned the blood-streaked sai to the sole survivor. “I look like I enjoy that one?”

  He shook his head.

  “Well, third’s a charm, right?” she asked, making a show of poising the bloodied sai for a strike. “Unless you wanna keep me distracted by talking, that is?”

  He seemed to take a moment to try to remember what he’d been saying, his eyes racing in their sockets for something—anything—to say that might save his life.

  “You were at ‘except…,’ if that helps,” she offered, not withdrawing the sai.

  “Exce-exc-eh…” he drew in a deep breath and nodded, “R-right! So he was all ‘bout us scopin’ local businesses, right? ‘Cept for this other thing—always struck me as weird, but, y’know, he was payin’ and givin’ us magic and—”

  “OUT WITH IT!” Serafina roared.

  The young man winced and actually looked around the train as though somebody might suddenly notice them.

  Nobody did.

  “‘C-‘cept for hospitals!” he finally said, shaking his head. “Always had us checkin’ hospitals. The maternity wards—always the maternity wards! First thing every day and last thing every night. Even had some deal goin’ with some of the nurses—we’d go in and they’d slip us these envelopes, then they’d sneak us in to take a gander at all the babies. Never knew what we was supposed to be doin’ there—guy never told us, just said to go in there, take what was given, and look at the livestock; that’s what he called ‘em: ‘livestock;’ not my thing, sounded creepy—but we did what we was told.”

  Serafina felt like she was going to be sick. “What was in the envelopes?” she pressed.

  The young man stiffened as though the question offended him. “I ain’t never looked!” he said.

  “Bullshit!” Serafina let the tip of the sai that was already in his shoulder dig a little further in. “You already said you found it odd, and you admitted that you didn’t like any of it. There’s no way you didn’t sneak a look just to try and answer some of your own questions!”

  He hissed in pain and writhed around the blade before saying, “GAH! Alright, alright! I’ll tell ya! Jus’ take the pig-sticker outta me!”

  She put it in deeper. “Your friends put a bad taste in my mouth for trusting you. Learn to talk with it in. NOW!”

  “THE MUTHAS!” he bellowed.

  The pain and accent forced Serafina to repeat the strange sound in her head a few times before she realized he’d said “mothers.”

  Then she drove the sai deeper. Nearly a full inch of the blade was now buried in the meat of his left shoulder, but she knew it felt like more to him. “What about them?” she growled, giving the blade a slight twist so he’d think she was stabbing further in.

  “Ev-everythin’! EVERYTHIN’!” he whimpered and tried to pull away from the sai. Serafina didn’t let him. Realizing it was a futile attempt, he said, “Addresses, work, husbands, thei’s history… everything! Th-the ones with the bad lives—without work or with no fathas to the kids, the ones who’d been in trouble, ‘specially the whores—was highlighted real bright. The guy had some sorta hardon for the muthas who was in some kinda trouble.”

  Better to bargain with, right, asshole? Serafina’s hands were starting to shake with how tightly she was gripping the sais.

  “The magic he gave you,” Serafina had to change the subject to keep from throwing up all over the guy, but she wasn’t done with the interrogation, “what else can you do with it?”

  The young man’s eyes bulged at that, and he looked like he might actually start laughing. “Wh-what else? Lady, we can hide ourselves in plain sight! We can stroll through the classiest of the classy without none of them hoity-toity types makin’ eyes at us! We can walk into a casino, strip the winnings right off the highest roller, and go have drinks with the VIPs! Not even thei’s cameras seems to see us when we’re usin’ the magic! Shit, lady, I just told ya that we’s walkin’ in-and-out of hospitals—maternity wards—with not a doctor or new parent havin’ a thing t’say ‘bout it!” Serafina was having a harder and harder time following his drawling words, and she realized that pain and panic were beginning to gunk up his already garbled speech. Before long he’d likely stop using words altogether and revert to grunting and growling. “Ya think that ain’t enough? What the hell else ya want da magic t’do, huh? Ya want I should go back an’ ask fer more? What’chu t’ink—”

  “Enough!” she said, but it was the extra half-inch of stainless steel buried in his shoulder that ended the oozing rampage of his words “So how’d he give you the magic then? A mark? A contract? A—”

  “A coin,” his voice was now a forced whisper, and she realized that extra half-inch was putting him into shock.

  “A coin?” she repeated. “He gave you a coin?”

  A lazy nod.

  Took long enough for that gesture, she thought with a sigh. “Show me!” she said.

  He began to flex his left arm, trying to reach for his pocket, but the sai’s blade was keeping him from finishing the motion.

  “C-can’t r-r-reach,” he announced.

  Serafina kept the one sai buried in place as she spun the other to rest the length of the blade against her forearm, freeing her fingers, and worked to reached across and into his pocket.

  “What the…?” she sneered in disgust as her fingers found something warm and pulpy and… metallic?

  Securing her hold as best she could, she pulled the strange something out of his pocket and found herself staring at a large gold coin that was beginning to wilt and fold in on itself. She was instantly reminded of one of those chocolate Easter coins, wrapped in their gold foil and filled with heat-sensitive candy. There was always a few that, whether they’d gotten lost in the festivities or simply missed out on being consumed, eventually succumbed to time and the brutality of the springtime sun. Then, warm and melty, the shape would begin to go; the rigidity being replaced by something more appropriate in a Salvador Dali painting. But this wasn’t chocolate. This, Serafina could already tell, was gold. Real g
old. Rumpel’s gold! And, yes, there was magic in it.

  But this, she realized, was fading. Fast. Looking up at the young man, she realized the coin wasn’t the only one.

  “How…?” she demanded, looking again at her sai and determining, no, it shouldn’t have been enough to kill him.

  “S-supposed to go… unseen,” the young man muttered.

  Then he died, slumping downward fast enough to yank at the sai and force Serafina to withdraw it before letting it get pulled from her hand.

  The coin, matching its original owner’s motion, went totally slack in her hand, suddenly feeling like a liquid that grew harder and harder to keep a grip on until, like its original owner, she released it, too. A gold wad slapped to the floor of the train and sloshed for a moment, then, like a shimmering, metallic slug, it writhed into a cylindrical shape and reared up near Serafina’s boots.

  Was it looking at her?

  The thought passed as two matching coin-slugs slithered free of the two bodies, emerging from wherever they’d been keeping them, and converged. Retching in disgust, she moved to stomp her foot down on the closest—the first—only to have it flatten itself against the floor. The attack resounded as though she’d merely stomped her foot, and, as she withdrew, its form returned and it retreated to join—literally—with the other two. Three became one, and their size respectively tripled, becoming the size of a small snake with reflective golden scales and solid gold eyes that once more regarded Serafina before it slithered away, squeezing with a gut-wrenching squelch between the sliding doors of the train and vanishing into the tunnels of the Chicago subway system.

  Son of a bitch! Serafina shook her head and stuffed her sais back into their place in her bag before remembering the girl.

  Though she was surprised to see her still sitting against the wall in much the same way she’d found her, Serafina figured there hadn’t been much of an opening for her to confidently get away. Taking a deep breath and hoping she didn’t look too threatening after everything she’d just done, she kneeled down a few steps away from her.

  A few steps that were occupied by a few dead bodies…

  What a great way to calm a person.

  “You okay?” she asked softly.

  “I-I am…” the girl nodded slowly, whimpering. “I didn’t think anyone was going to help. They weren’t even looking.”

  Serafina nodded slowly, “I know. It was… well, I’m sure you heard all that, didn’t you?”

  Another slow nod.

  “You believe any of it?”

  A shaky shrug.

  “It’s okay,” Serafina assured her. “You won’t in a moment; you won’t even remember any of this in a moment.”

  The girl looked like she didn’t believe her, but Serafina could tell that she wanted to. She couldn’t blame her for that. A few years ago, before she knew how to fight, she’d be just as eager to forget something like that if it’d happened to her.

  “It’ll be okay,” she promised, nodding back towards the crowded portion of the train. “Just go stand as far away from all of this”—she motioned to the ugliness around them—“and, I promise, when it’s out of your sight, it’ll also be out of your mind. Trust me.”

  “But… what about them?” the girl asked, glimpsing down at the corpses for only a second.

  Serafina shook her head. “Trust me,” she repeated.

  Though she had no reason to, the girl trusted her.

  As she stood, Serafina stood with her and helped to adjust her top before letting her hand over the knife that she’d been clinging to the entire time. Offering one last nod, Serafina stepped aside to let her pass.

  She did so without looking back.

  Serafina sighed as she watched her slip into the crowd of still-oblivious passengers and, just as quickly, became just as oblivious as the lingering spell robbed her of not only any awareness of what existed on the other side of the train car, but anything that had existed. By the time she reached the other side, driven by nothing more than a phantom voice in her mind saying it was the right thing to do at that moment, she’d be certain that was where she’d spent the entire ride.

  Sighing, she glanced back at the pile of bodies.

  Rumpelstiltskin had taught Serafina a little bit of magic early on in what she was certain he’d enthusiastically refer to as their “relationship.” It had all been for the sake of further seducing her, of course. Early on he’d seen her thirst for knowledge, and what better way was there to gain both her attention and her admiration than by offering a breed of knowledge that no other could? Serafina both loved and hated the magic. It was very likely the only thing that had kept her alive after the monster had stolen her child. It, and the small seed of vengeance that had been planted deep within her guts. When the self-destructive phase had passed, she’d found that that seed had since sprouted and, with the magic aiding it once more, grown into something powerful and demanding. It helped her train, letting her learn and advance at an alarming rate. In many ways, she supposed, she owed everything she was now to that magic. Rumpel’s magic.

  But it was because it was Rumpel’s magic that she could never feel anything but disgust at it. It was why she used it as sparingly as she did, fearing that, in some way, it proved what he’d wanted to prove all along: that she needed him; that she loved him. There was no doubt in her mind that he believed that, and whether or not he believed she was still alive—and what reason did he have not to?—he was no doubt viewing it all as a victory.

  And if every time she used her magic it was, in any way, a victory to him, she’d sooner rely on her blades.

  Her blades, however, weren’t about to do any good with the three dead bodies that would soon become visible the spell-blinded passengers on the train. That being the case, she had no choice but to offer Rumpel a little victory to save herself the trouble of murder allegations. Turning to the three bodies, she held out her hand and chanted a spell. A moment later the bodies, their blood, and everything of theirs, except for their coins, of course, vanished.

  Where it all went, Serafina wasn’t sure. Rumpel hadn’t told her. At that moment, though, she hoped it was Hell.

  Where they belong!

  Her body felt an excited swell at the first use of its magic in a long time, and somewhere in the back of her mind she heard a familiar taunt—“The devil always collects his dues, dearie”—and remembered just what sort of price those magic lessons had cost her. As the call rose on the speakers for the next stop, she buried both her memories and the urge to cast another spell.

  Just for the hell of it.

  Yeah right…

  She already knew it was going to be a long day.

  It was nearly nightfall when she had finished her business in Chinatown. She hadn’t realized just how large the area was, and, as it turned out, finding a particular spot, which thrived on being notoriously difficult to find already, with the already staggering number of shops and restaurants was nearly impossible. “Nearly impossible” translated to several hours of asking unanswered questions and walking in circles until she finally spotted the informant she’d been looking for.

  “What’s it say for your shop that you’re easier to find than it is?” she’d scolded.

  Like the spot, this person didn’t want to be found and was upset for both of them. While the man, one of the informants she’d first met back at the Rom camp, had been anything but eager to help—confessing that, tipsy on a fresh bottle of blackberry wine and find wares, he’d offered up everything he had with the expectation that she’d never in a million years follow through on any of it—he began to buckle after she promised him a discount next time he visited their camp. Still, he was reluctant, explaining that he had no plans to return, and, knowing that she would likely be dead and unable to honor the promises anyway, she swore an entire case of blackberry wine.

  Suddenly he couldn’t speak fast enough.

  The man, whose family was being terrorized with threats of—go figure—child
abduction if he didn’t keep a constant circulation of gold moving throughout the city. As it turned out, on top of hording and, near as Serafina could tell, worshiping the stuff, Rumpel was able to set up a web-like network by cycling trinkets and jewelry throughout the city. Though neither the man nor Serafina were sure what such a network would allow him to do, she had a few guesses after her encounter on the train.

  After all, what better way to get involved in everything than to already be a part of everything?

  Little golden tags on everyone, huh, you bastard?

  Fortunately, while this information really only served to creep out Serafina and make her hate the monster that much more, it did come with a useful nugget attached: he knew where Rumpel lived! And while things could never be that easy—apparently the location changed every week, but always on the same day each week—it was still a step in the right direction.

  “Unfortunately,” the man said, “I only ever get the new address a few hours before he moves again. I show up at the address, pick up the shipment he wants me to put into circulation, and by the time I’m ready to leave so is he.”

  “Why such a brief window?” she asked.

  The man shrugged and said, “Probably because he’s smart enough to know that somebody like you would turn up and ask me questions like ‘where’s he live?’”

  Serafina glared at him. “Then why tell me you knew?” she demanded.

  Another shrug. “Technically I do. Besides, like I said, I wasn’t expecting you to follow through on any of this and, quite frankly, I was just shocked that somebody was able to, I don’t know, smell the guy on me or something. Still not sure how you did that.”

  “So, hypothetically speaking,” she caught herself looking at a few of the gold trinkets that he had in stock, “what if I just decided to go with you after you got the new, about-to-be-old address?”