by August Li
Jet grinned, slipped off their sunglasses, and stashed them in their pocket. “This situation calls for a different kind of magic, I think. Leave it to me. Just hang here and try not to look too suspicious.”
Jet walked over to the two guys, one black, one white, both younger and looking bored as hell. Jet pulled something from their pocket and set it between their lips. Even from where I stood, I could see it wasn’t an ordinary cigarette. Even though marijuana had been decriminalized within city limits, Jet was still taking a risk. I tensed, waiting to see if we would need to beat a hasty retreat.
“Either of you got a light?” Jet asked.
The two guys looked at each other, and a minute or two passed before one of them pulled out a plastic lighter. Jet lit up and exhaled a luxuriant—and very fragrant—stream of smoke. “You know, if there’s a place around here out of sight, you guys could join me. I don’t like getting high by myself. Make the workday pass a little quicker.”
Without hesitation, the guy on the right nodded and tilted his head. The three of them turned a corner and disappeared into the dark recesses of the garage.
“Come on, we’re in,” Emrys said.
With the help of the license plate number Jet had provided, and what Emrys now had pulled up on the screen of his phone, we found the Mercedes after about ten minutes of searching. A guy in a black suit stood nearby, smoking a cigarette.
Dante practically lunged when he saw the man, and I barely managed to stick my arm out in time to stop him. “Look, let me talk to him. There’s no need to beat the shite out of the poor bastard first thing. It’ll only draw attention.”
“Yeah, okay,” he muttered. “But I’m going to find out what happened to Ros one way or another.”
“Let’s hope it won’t come to that,” Emrys said as we walked over.
“Juan Lucero?” I asked. The gangly ginger bloke didn’t look like a Juan Lucero, but you could never tell.
He dropped his cigarette and ground it out with a polished black shoe. “No. Joey Trent. Can I help you with something?”
“Maybe.” I met his eyes, pawed around for his desires. One thing was crystal clear—this guy was straight as an arrow. I could go pretty far to fulfill fantasies, but growing a set of tits and a fanny—or even the illusion of them—was beyond my abilities. So much for playing that card. Unfortunately, it was pretty much the only one I had up my sleeve, and I stood there gaping, trying to think of something to say.
Emrys extended his hand to Joey. “I’m a friend of Juan’s, in town for the weekend. I was hoping we could get together before I go back to Newark. A lot of us around the old neighborhood miss him. Everybody wants to know how he’s doing. I thought he was working today?”
Of course, that story didn’t explain how we would’ve known how to find the car Juan drove, but Joey didn’t seem to notice, and he smiled. “He was supposed to be, but he’s been off sick the last few days.”
“All right, man.” Emrys patted Joey’s shoulder. “I’ll try him on his cell. Thanks, buddy. Take it easy.”
“Hey, you too, man,” Joey said as we walked away.
“Fuck,” Dante hissed.
“I guess we’ll be calling on this guy at home,” I said. “Do we know where that is?”
Emrys held up his phone. “Of course. I have all the information Jet found out. How do you think I concocted that story? Let’s go back out front and wait for Jet, and then we can go to Juan’s apartment.”
“I’m picking up Blossom first,” Dante said, surprising me. He always seemed tense around the faerie.
“Why?”
“Because I’m sick of standing around holding my dick!” he snapped. “Blossom can make this guy talk, and if someone’s ass needs kicked, Blossom can do that too. And he won’t pussy out if shit has to get messy. No offense to either of you, but I want him at my back.”
Bloody hell. I had a bad feeling about this.
Chapter Nineteen
I GUESS driving rich assholes around and looking the other way when they do awful shit pays pretty well, because Juan’s building was nice—brick with wood trim, in a quiet neighborhood not too far from Center City. It even had a private entrance on the ground floor. It pissed me off that he got to live like this after what he had done to my sister and who knows how many others. Unfortunately for him, he was going to find out how I felt pretty soon. I would have preferred to go in alone or just with Blossom, but it seemed like that wasn’t going to happen. All four of them stood on the sidewalk while I knocked and rang the bell again and again.
After it looked like the guy wasn’t going to come to the door, Jet wiggled in front of me and did something to the security panel. As soon as they opened the door, I recognized the smell.
“Shit,” Jet said. “Let’s look around, but be quiet and don’t touch anything with your bare hands. This’ll be a crime scene eventually, and we don’t want to leave any prints.”
It was a typical guy’s apartment—leather couch, a big-screen TV, and a couple of game systems. A little messy, but not too bad, like Juan had been busy and would straighten up on his day off, a pizza box on the coffee table and a couple of beer bottles by the sink. A few dirty clothes here and there. We found Juan in the bedroom, under a navy blue comforter, the remote near his hand.
Emrys pulled the sleeve of his coat over his hand, picked up an umbrella that had been leaning in the corner, and pulled the blankets back. Juan was wearing a pair of gray boxer shorts. He was pale, bloated, and blotchy, and he stank—a lot of people don’t realize that someone shits and pisses themself when they die—but I didn’t see any marks on him.
“It almost looks like he went peacefully in his sleep,” Emrys said.
Jet looked spooked as they came to stand beside Emrys, and I saw them take hold of Emrys’s hand. “Probably a massive heart attack, maybe a stroke.”
That didn’t make any sense to me. “This guy doesn’t look like he could be older than thirty.”
“Yeah,” Jet said. “Look, let’s get out of here.”
“But we haven’t found anything out!” I said.
“I want to leave.” Jet was shaky, and Emrys looked a little pale too. Maybe it was the first time they had ever seen a dead body. “Come on. Now! We need to get out of here!”
Jet was shouting, and the worst possible thing that could happen was for us to be found in here with this dead guy. If they threw my ass in jail, there would be no one to look for Ros.
Back at Corazón’s house, everybody settled down. Except for me, I guess. I was sick of coming up empty-handed again and again, tired of being jerked around, and I paced between the heaps of junk in the living room while the others sat around the table in the kitchen. Corazón thought we were all her family, nieces and nephews and cousins, here for some kind of a party. She’d put on music and was frying some fritters made of smashed-up plantains. Spicy-scented chicken sizzled in a dutch oven, but I didn’t have any appetite. I needed to be doing something. At least I could get some answers.
Even though I was upset, I wasn’t going to go up to a bunch of people sitting down to a meal and start shouting at them. It wasn’t any of their fault, and no matter how shitty I felt, I had to remember that. My phone vibrated in my pocket, and I looked down to see another text message from Raf:
Call me. Please.
I sighed because I really didn’t have time for him. I didn’t want to lose my job—I needed that money to take care of my sister—but that wouldn’t matter if I didn’t get her back. Honestly, I was still kind of pissed that he hadn’t tried to help me. I took a deep breath before I spoke so everybody wouldn’t think I was some kind of psycho prick.
“Hey, Jet, could I talk to you in the living room for a minute?”
Emrys gave me a look that was a little curious and a little defensive, but he didn’t say anything. Jet put down the handheld game system they were playing and stood up. Inky came too.
We squeezed onto the sofa together, and Jet looked aro
und the room. “So. This is a lot of stuff. Quite a collection.”
“Blossom loves this stuff,” Inky said, shaking his head. “Thinks this place is fucking Disneyland or something.”
“Look,” I told them, “I’m not trying to be a dick or anything, but can we not talk about Corazón’s knickknacks?”
“Okay, Dante.” Inky’s tone was placating, like the tone cops used to talk to a guy with dynamite strapped to his chest. It should have irritated me, but it didn’t. “What do you want to talk about?”
I turned to Jet. “You seemed really freaked out at Juan’s place. First time you see a dead guy?”
Jet shook their head. “I wish it was.”
It hadn’t been an especially gory scene. No blood, even. “The smell?” I asked.
“The people who were probably responsible,” Jet said. “Do you know much about the mage guilds, Dante?”
“Not really.”
“Okay.” Jet shook their head. “I’ve never tried to explain this to anybody who doesn’t know.”
“Just try,” I urged.
“Yeah. Okay, so you know I’m a member of a group called Electrosensory Mirage. We think that the future for mages is going to be in finding ways to combine magic with technology and science. Emrys is what’s called a rogue mage. He doesn’t have any affiliations. He can do what he wants without answering to anybody, but it’s also dangerous for him because a lot of the guilds feel threatened by rogues. They either try to recruit them, or—
“Anyway, there’s a guild called Wú Cháng. They specialize in altering flesh, and they can do some really nasty things to a person. From a young age, they start learning all about the body and its systems, which means they know every conceivable way to kill someone. Like today, poor Juan…. They could’ve used a spell to pinch shut one of the arteries around his heart or burst a blood vessel in his brain. They don’t even have to touch him to do it. They don’t even have to be that close. They might have been outside on the sidewalk when they killed him, and for all anyone will be able to tell, he died of natural causes. I guess he was lucky that at least it was quick. They could’ve given him cancer or a slow internal bleed.”
I shuddered. How could something like that be possible? “And you think these are the people who took my sister?”
Jet looked at me with pursed lips, like they were deciding how much to tell me. “The truth is, maybe. If they did, it’ll be to train her as an assassin. The other possibility is that they’re working for one of the other guilds. They’re mercenary, and they might have been hired to get rid of Juan so he couldn’t tell anybody what he knew. If that’s the case, my money would be on Sekhet-Aaru.
“Either way, if they find out we’re poking into this, they could come after us.”
I reached into my pocket and felt the smooth metal of my gun. It was a good little gun, but I wished I had my Colt back—or that Raf had let me have something equivalent when I’d asked. If it would even help in this situation. “Is there anything we can do?”
“I wish there was more,” Jet said. “I have some precautions in place—mostly ways to detect if magic is nearby. I put some alarm systems up to keep Emrys safe, and I’ve updated them when I could. They’re actually pretty effective, and the other guilds haven’t found a way to bypass them yet, if they even know about them.”
“And if we decide magic is nearby?” Inky asked.
Jet leaned their elbows on their knees and dropped their head. I took the hint, and we sat there in silence before we went back to the kitchen.
After a dinner that was so damn delicious I actually found myself enjoying it and eating until I was stuffed, Corazón went into her bedroom to watch TV, and we did our best to clear her table. Jet got out a couple of laptops and pads, along with some other shit that I had no idea what it was for. They took a few minutes to connect stuff and adjust wires. “So, without Juan’s information, we’re back to square one. That means searching building by building.”
Jet hit some keys and a map of part of the city—mostly the downtown area—projected onto the tabletop. I blinked. I’d only ever seen things like that in sci-fi movies. Blossom’s eyes widened, and he spread his long fingers over the grid. He wiggled them, and some hills and trees—also made of light—sprung up. Even some birds circled around, flickering in and out of existence. The colors sparkled in his eyes.
“I’m going to have to slap your hand,” Jet threatened with a grin.
“You wouldn’t dare!” he whispered.
Jet didn’t answer, and the two of them looked at each other for a few seconds before Jet hit some more keys. This time a series of red dots appeared over the map—dozens of them. “These are the locations that have at least a 50 percent likelihood of being one of Juan’s destinations. I’ve eliminated restaurants, convenience stores, things like that.”
“How many are left?” Emrys asked.
“Thirty-seven.”
Inky blew out a long breath. “Bloody hell. This is going to take forever. Especially if some of those buildings contain multiple flats.”
“They do.” Jet shook their head. “And we’ll have to somehow check every one of those apartments. Getting inside alone will take time. I know some tricks, but still.”
My eyes stung, and I felt like I was going to hurl my insides out. Every second that went by without me finding Ros was time somebody could use to take her farther away from me. She could already be in Mexico… maybe farther. I got up and hurried through the living room and out the door. I was going to lose it—I couldn’t stop it from happening anymore—and I didn’t want to do it in front of an audience.
Outside it was cold, especially without my coat, and the sky was clear the way it only was on the bitterest winter nights. I looked up at the stars and they blurred when I couldn’t hold the tears back. I wanted to scream, to pull the mailbox out of the ground and use it like a club to smash everything around me. But it wouldn’t do any good. Nothing would do any fucking good. I covered my face with my hands and cried like I hadn’t cried since I was five years old.
But then I caught my breath. I wouldn’t do it. I wouldn’t give up on Ros, because I was the only goddamn person she had in this world, and she deserved a chance. It wasn’t her fault that she was stuck with only me to see that it happened, but until I couldn’t drag myself up off the pavement, I was going to keep trying.
The door creaked open and closed quietly, and I hurried to wipe my snot and tears away on the sleeve of my sweatshirt.
“You all right?” Inky asked.
I didn’t turn to face him. “I just… I needed some air.”
“Perfectly understandable. It was getting a little stuffy in that kitchen. I was sweating myself.”
Just what I wanted him to say. He was good, and I had to remind myself that he didn’t really care, that it was just the way nature had made him, the same as a cat’s instinct to chase a mouse. “So much of this doesn’t make any sense. Like Jet and Emrys. Why are they helping us? What are they getting out of it? Because they can’t be doing it for nothing. That doesn’t happen.”
“I understand why you don’t trust us,” said a gentle voice. “I don’t think I would feel differently in your shoes.”
I hadn’t realized Emrys had come outside with Inky, but I wasn’t going to take back what I said. It was still true. I turned and looked at him. “Why, then?”
“Believe it or not, I try to be a good person. Being decent and being a mage aren’t contradictory, though I can see why you might look at it that way. You’ve had a hell of an introduction to our world. But I like to think I’m the kind of man who helps a little girl when she needs it.
“As for Jet, well, Jet can’t resist a puzzle, and Jet also kind of likes showing off. But mostly, Jet hates Wú Cháng and Sekhet-Aaru. They’re both trying to take control of ESM, because whether they want to admit it or not, ESM probably is the way of the future. So if Jet sees a chance to stick it to them, they will. Jet’s also here because I’m
here.”
“More than friends?” I asked.
Emrys smiled. “Much more. True soul mates is the way I would describe it. Though even that feels insufficient.”
“Huh,” Inky said. “I wouldn’t have guessed that, and I can usually tell.”
“My relationship with Jet isn’t typical. It isn’t a physical relationship, because I don’t have any desire for that kind of thing. Jet gets what they need elsewhere. None of that means we don’t love each other.” Emrys put his hand on my arm. “Believe me when I say I know what it means to love someone so much you would die to protect them.”
“I didn’t mean to pry,” Inky said softly.
“It’s okay,” Emrys said. “It’s not a secret or anything I’m ashamed to admit. Just the opposite, in fact. But let’s get back inside. It’s cold out here, and we still have work to do.”
Amazingly, I felt a little better. When we sat back down at the table, Jet put a steaming mug of coffee in front of me, and I curled my frozen hands around it. Then, staring at the red dots on the map, I made a decision. “We can’t search all of these by ourselves. We need help.”
“We should enlist the aid of the cats!” Blossom said cheerily. “They can search quickly and quietly, and they have the numbers.”
The cat thing still weirded me out, but at this point I couldn’t say no, so I nodded at Blossom. “There might be something else we… something I can do,” I told the others. “I might be able to get some of the people I work with to help us. They’ll be good at this type of thing.”
“The gunrunners?” Jet asked.
“How do you…? Never mind. But yeah, them. Some of my boss’s associates might be willing to lend a hand.”
Emrys shook his head. “A whole other group of people exposed to our secrets. I don’t know if I like that. It’s not just dangerous for us, but for them. If Wú Cháng or Sekhet-Aaru think these people pose a threat, they won’t hesitate to eliminate them.”
