Street Magicks

by Paula Guran

  “Natural on me,” I said. “Yeah.”

  She touched my hand briefly with hers. “So, I guess we got something?”

  I shook off dark thoughts and nodded. “We’ve got a name.”

  Burt Decker ran what was arguably the sleaziest of the half-dozen establishments that catered to the magical crowd in Chicago. Left Hand Goods prided itself on providing props and ingredients to the black magic crowd.

  Oh, that wasn’t so sinister as it sounded. Most of the trendy, self-appointed Death Eater wannabes in Chicago—or any other city, for that matter—didn’t have enough talent to strike two rocks together and make sparks, much less hurt anybody. The really dangerous black wizards don’t shop at places like Left Hand Goods. You could get everything you needed for most black magic at the freaking grocery store.

  But, all the same, plenty of losers with bad intentions thought Left Hand Goods had everything you needed to create your own evil empire—and Burt Decker was happy to make them pay for their illusions.

  Me and Murphy stepped in, between the display of socially maladjusted fungi on our right, a tank of newts (PLUCK YOUR OWN *#%$ING EYES, the sign said) on the left, and stepped around the big shelf of quasi-legal drug paraphernalia in front of us.

  Decker was a shriveled little toad of a man. He wasn’t overweight, but his skin looked too loose from a plump youth combined with a lifetime of too many naps in tanning beds. He was immaculately groomed, and his hair was a gorgeous black streaked with dignified silver that was like a Rolls hood ornament on a VW Rabbit. He had beady black eyes with nothing warm behind them, and when he saw me, he licked his lips nervously.

  “Hiya, Burt,” I said.

  There were a few shoppers, none of whom looked terribly appealing. Murphy held up her badge so that everyone could see it and said, “We have some questions.”

  She might as well have shouted, “Fire!” The store emptied.

  Murphy swaggered past a rack of discount porn DVDs, her coat open just enough to reveal the shoulder holster she wore. She picked one up, gave it a look, and tossed it on the floor. “Christ, I hate scum vendors like this.”

  “Hey!” Burt said. “You break it, you bought it.”

  “Yeah, right,” Murphy said.

  I showed him my teeth as I walked up and leaned both my arms on the counter he stood behind. It crowded into his personal space. His cologne was thick enough to stop bullets.

  “Burt,” I said, “make this simple, okay? Tell me everything you know about Caine.”

  Decker’s eyes went flat, and his entire body became perfectly still. It was reptilian. “Caine?”

  I smiled wider. “Big guy, shaggy hair, kind of a slob, with piss running down his leg. He made a deal with a woman for some bloodstone, and you helped.”

  Murphy had paused at a display of what appeared to be small smoky quartz geodes. The crystals were nearly black, with purple veins running through them, and they were priced a couple of hundred dollars too high.

  “I don’t talk about my customers,” Decker said. “It isn’t good for business.”

  I glanced at Murphy. “Burt. We know you’re connected.”

  She stared at me for a second, and sighed. Then she knocked a geode off the shelf. It shattered on the floor.

  Decker winced and started to protest, but it died on his lips.

  “You know what isn’t good for business, Decker?” I asked. “Having a big guy in a gray cloak hang out in your little Bad Juju Mart. Your customers start thinking that the Council is paying attention, how much business do you think you’ll get?”

  Decker stared at me with toad eyes, nothing on his face.

  “Oops,” Murphy said, and knocked another geode to the floor.

  “People are in the hospital, Burt,” I said. “Mac’s one of them—and he was beaten on ground held neutral by the Unseelie Accords.”

  Burt bared his teeth. It was a gesture of surprise.

  “Yeah,” I said. I drew my blasting rod out of my coat and slipped enough of my will into it to make the runes and sigils carved along its length glitter with faint orange light. The smell of wood smoke curled up from it. “You don’t want the heat this is gonna bring down, Burt.”

  Murphy knocked another geode down and said, “I’m the good cop.”

  “All right,” Burt said. “Jesus, will you lay off? I’ll talk, but you ain’t gonna like it.”

  “I don’t handle disappointment well, Burt.” I tapped the glowing-ember tip of the blasting rod down on his countertop for emphasis. “I really don’t.”

  Burt grimaced at the black spots it left on the countertop. “Skirt comes in asking for bloodstone. But all I got is this crap from South Asscrack. Says she wants the real deal, and she’s a bitch about it. I tell her I sold the end of my last shipment to Caine.”

  “Woman pisses you off,” Murphy said, “and you send her to do business with a convicted rapist.”

  Burt looked at her with toad eyes.

  “How’d you know where to find Caine?” I asked.

  “He’s got a discount card here. Filled out an application.”

  I glanced from the porn to the drug gear. “Uh-huh. What’s he doing with bloodstone?”

  “Why should I give a crap?” Burt said. “It’s just business.”

  “How’d she pay?”

  “What do I look like, a fucking video camera?”

  “You look like an accomplice to black magic, Burt,” I said.

  “Crap,” Burt said, smiling slightly. “I haven’t had my hands on anything. I haven’t done anything. You can’t prove anything.”

  Murphy stared hard at Decker. Then, quite deliberately, she walked out of the store.

  I gave him my sunniest smile. “That’s the upside of working with the gray cloaks now, Burt,” I said. “I don’t need proof. I just need an excuse.”

  Burt stared hard at me. Then he swallowed, toadlike.

  “She paid with a Visa,” I told Murphy when I came out of the store. “Meditrina Bassarid.”

  Murphy frowned up at my troubled expression. “What’s wrong?”

  “You ever see me pay with a credit card?”

  “No. I figured no credit company would have you.”

  “Come on, Murph,” I said. “That’s just un-American. I don’t bother with the things, because that magnetic strip goes bad in a couple of hours around me.”

  She frowned. “Like everything electronic does. So?”

  “So if Ms. Bassarid has Caine scared out of his mind on magic . . . ” I said.

  Murphy got it. “Why is she using a credit card?”

  “Because she probably isn’t human,” I said. “Nonhumans can sling power all over the place and not screw up anything if they don’t want to. It also explains why she got sent to Caine to get taught a lesson and wound up scaring him to death instead.”

  Murphy said an impolite word. “But if she’s got a credit card, she’s in the system.”

  “To some degree,” I said. “How long for you to find something?”

  She shrugged. “We’ll see. You get a description?”

  “Blue-black hair, green eyes, long legs, and great tits,” I said.

  She eyed me.

  “Quoting,” I said righteously.

  I’m sure she was fighting off a smile. “What are you going to do?”

  “Go back to Mac’s,” I said. “He loaned me his key.”

  Murphy looked sideways at me. “Did he know he was doing that?”

  I put my hand to my chest as if wounded. “Murphy,” I said. “He’s a friend.”

  I lit a bunch of candles with a mutter and a wave of my hand, and stared around Mac’s place. Out in the dining area, chaos reigned. Chairs were overturned. Salt from a broken shaker had spread over the floor. None of the chairs were broken, but the framed sign that read ACCORDED NEUTRAL TERRITORY was smashed and lay on the ground near the door.

  An interesting detail, that.

  Behind the bar, where Mac kept his icebox
es and his wood-burning stove, everything was as tidy as a surgical theater, with the exception of the uncleaned stove and some dishes in the sink. Nothing looked like a clue.

  I shook my head and went to the sink. I stared at the dishes. I turned and stared at the empty storage cabinets under the bar, where a couple of boxes of beer still waited. I opened the icebox and stared at the food, and my stomach rumbled. There were some cold cuts. I made a sandwich and stood there munching it, looking around the place, thinking.

  I didn’t think of anything productive.

  I washed the dishes in the sink, scowling and thinking up a veritable thunderstorm. I didn’t get much further than a light sprinkle, though, before a thought struck me.

  There really wasn’t very much beer under the bar.

  I finished the dishes, pondering that. Had there been a ton earlier? No. I’d picked up the half-used box and taken it home. The other two boxes were where I’d left them. But Mac usually kept a legion of beer bottles down there.

  So why only two now?

  I walked down to the far end of the counter, a nagging thought dancing around the back of my mind, where I couldn’t see it. Mac kept a small office in the back corner, consisting of a table for his desk, a wooden chair, and a couple of filing cabinets. His food service and liquor permits were on display on the wall above it.

  I sat down at the desk and opened filing cabinets. I started going through Mac’s records and books. Intrusive as hell, I know, but I had to figure out what was going on before matters got worse.

  And that was when it hit me. Matters getting worse. I could see a mortal wizard, motivated by petty spite, greed, or some other mundane motivation, wrecking Mac’s bar. People can be amazingly petty. But nonhumans, now—that was a different story.

  The fact that this Bassarid chick had a credit card meant she was methodical. I mean, you can’t just conjure one out of thin air. She’d taken the time to create an identity for herself. That kind of forethought indicated a scheme, a plan, a goal. Untidying a Chicago bar, neutral ground or not, was not by any means the kind of goal that things from the Nevernever set for themselves when they went undercover into mortal society.

  Something bigger was going on, then. Mac’s place must have been a side item for Bassarid.

  Or maybe a stepping-stone.

  Mac was no wizard, but he was savvy. It would take more than cheap tricks to get to his beer with him here, and I was betting that he had worked out more than one way to realize it if someone had intruded on his place when he was gone. So, if someone wanted to get to the beer, they’d need a distraction.

  Like maybe Caine.

  Caine made a deal with Bassarid, evidently—I assumed he gave her the bloodstone in exchange for being a pain to Mac. So, she ruins Mac’s day, gets the bloodstone in exchange, end of story. Nice and neat.

  Except that it didn’t make a lot of sense. Bloodstone isn’t exactly impossible to come by. Why would someone with serious magical juice do a favor for Caine to get some?

  Because maybe Caine was a stooge, a distraction for anyone trying to follow Bassarid’s trail. What if Bassarid had picked someone who had a history with Mac, so that I could chase after him while she . . . did whatever she planned to do with the rest of Mac’s beer?

  Wherever the hell that was.

  It took me an hour and half to find anything in Mac’s files—the first thing was a book. A really old book, bound in undyed leather. It was a journal, apparently, and written in some kind of cipher.

  Also interesting, but probably not germane.

  The second thing I found was a receipt, for a whole hell of a lot of money, along with an itemized list of what had been sold—beer, representing all of Mac’s various heavenly brews. Someone at Worldclass Limited had paid him an awful lot of money for his current stock.

  I got on the phone and called Murphy.

  “Who bought the evil beer?” Murphy asked.

  “The beer isn’t evil. It’s a victim. And I don’t recognize the name of the company. Worldclass Limited.”

  Keys clicked in the background as Murphy hit the Internet. “Caterers,” Murphy said a moment later. “High end.”

  I thought of the havoc that might be about to ensue at some wedding or bar mitzvah and shuddered. “Hell’s bells,” I breathed. “We’ve got to find out where they went.”

  “Egad, Holmes,” Murphy said in the same tone I would have said “duh.”

  “Yeah. Sorry. What did you get on Bassarid?”

  “Next to nothing,” Murphy said. “It’ll take me a few more hours to get the information behind her credit card.”

  “No time,” I said. “She isn’t worried about the cops. Whoever she is, she planned this whole thing to keep her tracks covered from the likes of me.”

  “Aren’t we full of ourselves?” Murphy grumped. “Call you right back.”

  She did.

  “The caterers aren’t available,” she said. “They’re working the private boxes at the Bulls game.”

  I rushed to the United Center.

  Murphy could have blown the whistle and called in the artillery, but she hadn’t. Uniformed cops already at the arena would have been the first to intervene, and if they did, they were likely to cross Bassarid. Whatever she was, she would be more than they could handle. She’d scamper or, worse, one of the cops could get killed. So Murphy and I both rushed to get there and find the bad guy before she could pull the trigger, so to speak, on the Chicago PD.

  It was half an hour before the game, and the streets were packed. I parked in front of a hydrant and ran half a mile to the United Center, where thousands of people were packing themselves into the building for the game. I picked up a ticket from a scalper for a ridiculous amount of money on the way, emptying my pockets, and earned about a million glares from Bulls fans as I juked and ducked through the crowd to get through the entrances as quickly as I possibly could.

  Once inside, I ran for the lowest level, the bottommost ring of concessions stands and restrooms circling entrances to the arena—the most crowded level, currently—where the entrances to the most expensive ring of private boxes were. I started at the first box I came to, knocking on the locked doors. No one answered at the first several. At the next, the door was opened by a blonde in an expensive business outfit showing a lot of décolletage who had clearly been expecting someone else.

  “Who are you?” she stammered.

  I flashed her my laminated consultant’s ID, too quickly to be seen. “Department of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, ma’am,” I said in my official’s voice, which is like my voice only deeper and more pompous. I’ve heard it from all kinds of government types. “We’ve had a report of tainted beer. I need to check your bar, see if the bad batch is in there.”

  “Oh,” she said, backing up, her body language immediately cooperative. I pegged her as somebody’s receptionist, maybe. “Of course.”

  I padded into the room and went to the bar, rifling bottles and opening cabinets until I found eleven dark-brown bottles with a simple cap with an M stamped into the metal. Mac’s mark.

  I turned to find the blonde holding out the half-empty bottle number twelve in a shaking hand. Her eyes were a little wide. “Um. Am I in trouble?”

  I might be. I took the beer bottle from her, moving gingerly, and set it down with the others. “Have you been feeling, uh, sick or anything?” I asked as I edged toward the door, just in case she came at me with a baseball bat.

  She shook her head, breathing more heavily. Her manicured fingernails trailed along the V-neck of her blouse. “I . . . I mean, you know.” Her face flushed. “Just looking forward to . . . the game.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said warily.

  Her eyes suddenly became warmer and very direct. I don’t know what it was exactly, but she was suddenly filled with that energy women have that has nothing to do with magic and everything to do with creating it. The temperature in the room felt like it went up about ten degrees. “Maybe you should examin
e me, sir.”

  I suddenly had a very different idea of what Mac had been defending himself from with that baseball bat.

  And it had turned ugly on him.

  Hell’s bells, I thought. I knew what we were dealing with.

  “Fantastic idea,” I told her. “You stay right here and get comfortable. I’m going to grab something sweet. I’ll be back in two shakes.”

  “All right,” she cooed. Her suit jacket slid off her shoulders to the floor. “Don’t be long.”

  I smiled at her in what I hoped was a suitably sultry fashion and backed out. Then I shut the door, checked its frame, and focused my will into the palm of my right hand. I directed my attention to one edge of the door and whispered, “Forzare.”

  Metal squealed as the door bent in its frame. With any luck, it would take a couple of guys with crowbars an hour or two to get it open again—and hopefully Bubbles would pitch over into a stupor before she did herself any harm.

  It took me three more doors to find one of the staff of Worldclass Limited—a young man in dark slacks, a white shirt, and a black bow tie, who asked if he could help me.

  I flashed the ID again. “We’ve received a report that a custom microbrew your company purchased for this event has been tainted. Chicago PD is on the way, but meanwhile I need your company to round up the bottles before anyone else gets poisoned drinking them.”

  The young man frowned. “Isn’t it the Bureau?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You said Department of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. It’s a Bureau.”

  Hell’s bells, why did I get someone who could think now?

  “Can I see that ID again?” he asked.

  “Look, buddy,” I said. “You’ve gotten a bad batch of beer. If you don’t round it up, people are going to get sick. Okay? The cops are on the way, but if people start guzzling it now, it isn’t going to do anybody any good.”

  He frowned at me.

  “Better safe than sorry, right?” I asked him.

  Evidently, his ability to think did not extend to areas beyond asking stupid questions of well-meaning wizards. “Look, uh, really you should take this up with my boss.”