Fire Water

by Jaye Wells

  She tipped her chin. “Good luck, Prospero. You’ll need it.”

  I kicked in the front door of my apartment at seven that night. In my left hand, I held my keys and my duffel bag. In my right, a bucket of fried chicken. Behind me, Danny carried a bag of sides and drinks.

  “So then David said that Ava told him that Riley wants to kick my butt,” he said.

  I put my stuff on the counter and turned to relieve him of his burdens. “Why?”

  “I don’t know. He tripped me on the playground this morning, too.”

  I frowned. “What did your day camp counselor say?”

  “She told me I shouldn’t antagonize him.” He crossed his arms. “It’s not fair. He tripped me.”

  I ruffled his hair. “Dealing with bullies is never fair, kiddo. Pass me some plates.”

  He sighed and turned to grab paper plates out of the tiny pantry beside the fridge. The entire kitchen had less space than the interior of my Jeep, so he bumped me as he moved past. “Here.”

  I took the plates and started filling them with food. “Look, I know you’re frustrated, but if we get this new place, you can start at Pen’s school.” My best friend, Penelope Griffin, was a counselor at Meadowlake, the exclusive prep school Danny would start in the fall. The house I was hoping to rent wasn’t in the same neighborhood, but it was only about fifteen minutes away as opposed to our current place, which was more like thirty without traffic.

  He frowned. “But I want to go to middle school with my friends.” Since it was summer, Danny was in a summer school program at the moment, but in the fall all of his friends would be going to a public middle school. I’d visited the place, and, even though it was far nicer than the prison parading as an educational institution I’d attended, I wanted something better for my brother.

  “You’ll love it there,” I said. We’d had this argument before, so I wasn’t about to get into it again. “Let’s eat!”

  We took our plates to the living room and sat on the sofa, which would fold out to become my bed later. I flipped on the TV and we dug into our chicken. I was starving after a full day working on the boat, followed by the obstacle course debacle. Probably, I should have tried to get something more nutritious, but the chicken place was convenient and cheap, which pretty much checked every box on my must-have for life at the moment.

  Danny flipped channels to find his favorite cartoons. I tuned it out and thought about Sergeant Reams’s advice in the locker room. Truth was, as much as I wanted to deny that women were still required to fall into such narrow categories in order to succeed, I’d seen the dynamics at play over and over again at the academy and in the real world. So the question was, did I want to fight against the system or try to figure out how to work inside it?

  It didn’t take me much thinking to realize that the latter choice was better. In addition to being a woman, I also had the whole Adept thing working against me. A lot of cops were suspicious of people born with the ability to work magic. It went beyond the typical prejudices against Adepts because in police work, evidence gathered through Arcane means wasn’t admissible in court. Still, a lot of Mundane cops saw their Adept counterparts as people who cheated the system to close cases. That’s why most Adepts in law enforcement went the CSI route instead.

  So really, I had no choice but to try to play within the boundaries of the system. When Reams referred to the dyke stereotype, she wasn’t really talking about sexual preference so much as an attitude. But I wasn’t sure I could butch it up convincingly enough to fit in. That left two choices: slut or bitch. While the slut thing sounded fun, I wasn’t exactly a vixen. Nor was I willing to use sex to gain favor in the department. That meant that, by default, I was going to have to be the bitch.

  If you asked any of my classmates from the academy, they’d probably tell you I already had it down pat. After growing up in one of the covens, I certainly understood how to employ swagger and a few choice words to shut down anyone who stepped up to me. Still, I wished it were okay not to have to play any role. I just wanted to be me.

  I sighed and poked at my food.

  “Hey, Katie?”

  I looked over at my little brother. He had a smear of grease on his cheek, and his shaggy hair was in desperate need of a cut. “What’s up?”

  “Can I have your biscuit?”

  “Sure.”

  He snatched it off my plate like an experienced pickpocket. I shook my head at him with a smile.

  My phone rang over on the counter. I hopped up to grab it. “Turn down the volume, buddy.” He grabbed the remote and pressed the button, but left a grease slick in his wake.

  I grabbed the phone on the third ring.

  “I’m trying to reach Kate Prospero,” said a male voice.

  “This is she.”

  “It’s Bill Tanner,” he said, “you applied to rent my house on Maple Avenue?”

  “Oh, this is her.” My stomach sank. In my head I was already hearing him tell me we didn’t get the place.

  “I was just calling to let you know the place is yours.”

  “That’s too bad—” I froze as his words sunk in. “Wait, we got it?”

  “Baba recommended you highly.”

  “She did? I mean, that’s great!” My right hand shot into the air and I did a little victory dance.

  “When will you be able to move in?”

  I paused and thought about it. My lease had been up a couple of months earlier so I was paying month-to-month until I could find a place. “Actually, I could move in as early as next weekend.” Even as I said the words, I couldn’t believe this was really happening.

  “That’ll be fine. I’ll be out of town on a business trip, but I can leave the lease for you to sign and the keys with Baba.”

  “Perfect,” I said. “I’m really excited. Thank you, Mr. Tanner.”

  “Don’t thank me—thank Baba. She convinced me to give you a chance.”

  I paused. “That was generous of her.”

  He grunted. “Just pay your rent on time and don’t break anything and we’ll get along fine.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. “Thank you again.”

  I hung up the phone and spun around. “We got it!”

  Danny looked up with his cheeks packed with biscuit. “Mmph?”

  “The house near your new school. It’s so great, Danny. You’ll love it. There’s a big tree and you’ll have your very own room.”

  He swallowed and smacked his lips. “But I don’t want to move schools.”

  I went to join him on the couch. “I know change is scary, but I really believe you’ll be happy there. You’ll get to see Pen every day.”

  He thought it over with a frown. “That’d be sort of cool, I guess.”

  “And the house has a big backyard.”

  His eyes lit up. “Can we get a dog?”

  I hesitated. “Maybe.” The dog discussion had been ongoing for the last year. I’d put him off this far by claiming our apartment was too small and no one was home all day to play with a dog. But now I’d just ruined that excuse. “Tell you what? Let’s get moved in first and then we can talk about getting a pet.”

  “All right,” he said. “But no fish. They’re boring.”

  I ruffled his hair. “Deal.”

  The next day Cap’n allowed me to leave my milk crate and join him in the pilothouse of the boat. That victory combined with the excitement of finding out we’d gotten the house made me ridiculously happy. I leaned forward with the binoculars at my eyes and a huge smile on my lips.

  “What are you grinning about, girl?”

  I lowered the binoculars and shot him an exasperated expression. “It’s a beautiful day.”

  “Hmmph.”

  We were crawling through the waters farther from the mouth of the river. Here the factories and buildings of the city had given way to trees and farmland. The sun was warm, and a nice breeze drifted across the deck. A crane took flight from the surface of the water and flew a lazy circle ove
rhead. This part of the river wasn’t as polluted as the areas closer to Lake Erie, so wildlife was more plentiful.

  “Don’t know what’s so beautiful about it,” he grumped. He shifted to his right, taking weight off his left leg. Remembering what Sergeant Reams had said about him getting shot, I wondered if the movement had something to do with the old injury. “Get ready to tie up.”

  Excited to do an actual job, I jumped up and went to the starboard side, where the lines were neatly coiled. Cap’n angled the boat toward a dock. An old tin sign hung from a pole on the end of the dock. The placard had a picture of a kid sitting at the end of a dock, fishing. Under that were the words, EARL’S BAIT AND TACKLE.

  When we came aside the dock, I jumped out to quickly tie up. “Tie her up tight,” Cap’n called. He cut off the engine, and it took a second for my ears to adjust to the unaccustomed silence. I finished the knot he’d shown me and stood back to admire my handiwork. Cap’n climbed off the boat to inspect it. “Hmph.”

  With that, he turned and limped up the dock. With a grin on my face, I stared after him. Cap’n wasn’t the kind of man to get real flowery with the accolades; the fact he hadn’t yelled or found some small thing to nitpick about was his version of high praise.

  He stopped at the end of the dock and turned. “Well? You comin’?”

  I hopped to and sped to catch up with him. Stepping off the dock, we landed in a sort of open grassy area in front of an old building with a rusted tin roof. Fishing nets decorated the metal walls, and old dog snored in the shade.

  Signs tacked to the walls advertised the store’s offerings: night crawlers, red worms, wax worms, minnows, pike shiners, and maggots.

  “Why are we here?” I asked.

  “Seeing a man about a thing.” His eyes sparkled with mischief that belied the no-nonsense tone. But before I could question him more, he reached around me. The old screen door screeched like a banshee. The dog wasn’t impressed.

  Inside, the bait shop smelled like rotten fish parts, old beer, and mold. I scrunched up my face, but Cap’n stilled and pulled a deep breath through his nose. “You ever fish, Prospero?”

  “Of course not.” I’d grown up in the Cauldron with a single mother. My uncle Abe was the most likely person to take me fishing, but instead he’d taken me under his wing in the potion-cooking game.

  He shook his head. “Kids these day aren’t raised proper.”

  Considering I’d spent a lot of my childhood committing petty crimes and wanting to grow up to be the leader of my coven, I couldn’t exactly argue with him. But I did make a mental note to be sure to take Danny fishing at some point. “What kind of project are you working on, exactly?”

  At that moment a tarp-covered door to the shop’s back room crinkled open. The man who emerged looked like an extra from Deliverance. His sun-weathered arms extended from a sleeveless T-shirt advertising a brand of motor oil. He wore a mesh cap on his head, and a toothpick jutted from his lips.

  “Well, hell, Marty didn’t know you was coming around today!” The man smiled, exposing sepia-colored teeth earned from years of smoking the cigarettes he pulled out of his pocket. He had the accent of a transplant from below the Mason–Dixon. I wasn’t a linguistics expert, but I knew redneck when I heard it.

  “Had a little time in my busy schedule,” Cap’n said. For some reason, both men started cackling. Bored, I looked into a case of hooks and lures.

  Once they sobered, the owner of the shop nodded at me. “Who’s this you got with ya?”

  “This is Prospero,” Cap’n said. “She’s stuck with me for the week.” His tone implied he considered himself the one who was stuck.

  The owner lifted a cigarette to his lips and squinted as he lit the tip with a Zippo in his left hand. This told me he was most likely an Adept, which meant he’d been born with ability to turn Mundane ingredients into magic potions. Whether he actually used those talents was still up for debate. Not all Adepts chose to go through the training necessary to work magic. He exhaled the drag slowly as his gaze crawled over me like the maggots in his bait fridge.

  I’d quit smoking a couple of years earlier, but, like most former smokers, I still craved the feel of smoke in my lungs. Seeing the cloud of nicotine emerging from under his mustache, though, turned my stomach.

  “You must be Earl?” I said.

  His eyes squinted. “How’d you know that?”

  I pointed toward the door. “Sign outside.”

  He didn’t crack a smile or relax his posture. Those two black eyes stayed on me as he spoke to Cap’n. “I got that stuff you wanted, Marty. Come on out back.”

  Cap’n turned to me. “I’ll be right back.”

  I started to ask him what was going on, but he shot me a look that promised retribution if I got too nosy. With a sigh, I leaned a hip against the counter.

  Without another word, the pair of men disappeared through the tarp. I heard their shoes on creaky wooden boards and low-toned discussion, but I couldn’t make out any words. Pushing off the counter, I looked around the store. Several large fish were stuffed and mounted on the walls with brass plaques bragging each specimen’s weight and the date it was caught. A drinks cooler along one wall offered six-packs of beer, sodas, and bottles of water. There were even a few shelves filled with snacks and convenience items someone might need on a fishing trip, like sunscreen and foam coolers.

  In other words, it was really boring. I looked to the right and spied a cloudy window looking our on the shop’s side yard. A rusted-out Chevy sat on cinder blocks in the tall weeds just beyond the wraparound porch.

  The sound of a screen door closing echoed through the shop. An instant later Earl and Cap’n appeared on the porch. I quickly stepped behind a display shelf of koozies so they wouldn’t know I was eavesdropping.

  “These look real good, Earl,” my temporary boss was saying.

  “Glad you think so. You, uh, brought the payment?”

  Cap’n reached into the inner pocket of his windbreaker and withdrew a thick envelope. I frowned. What the hell was going on? I’d spent enough time in the Cauldron to recognize a deal going down when I saw one. My conscience told me I was overreacting, but Cap’n was acting awfully suspicious about this entire visit.

  I looked up in time to see the men shake hands and turn to come back inside. Jumping away from the window, I moved toward a display of fishing poles. The men emerged from behind the curtain.

  “You ready, Prospero?”

  I looked up as if he’d dragged me away from something very interesting. “Oh, sure.”

  Earl tipped the bill of his mesh cap. “Nice to meet you, ma’am.” The way he said it, though, sounded anything but polite.

  I forced a smile and nodded before following Cap’n out of the store. When we emerged from the screen door, the dog opened one eye and emitted a halfhearted growl. I jogged past it to catch up with my boss on the dock.

  “What was all that about?”

  He glanced out of the corner of his eye. “Nothing.”

  I laughed. “Didn’t look like nothing.”

  He stilled and turned toward me. “You spying on me, girl?”

  I raised my chin. “You were right next to the window.”

  “I don’t know what you think you saw, but it’s none of your damned business.” With that, he turned and stalked across the dock’s weathered boards.

  “Hey,” I called, following him. “I’m talking to you.”

  He waved a hand behind him, as if swatting off an annoying bug.

  I walked over to where he was bending over the lines. “I might be a rookie, but I didn’t fall off the turnip truck yesterday.”

  He paused and looked up under the brim of his BPD ball cap. “What?”

  I put my hands on my hips. “What kind of potion was it?”

  He eyed me for a couple of beats. Then he threw back his head and laughed.

  “I don’t see what’s so funny about it.” I crossed my arms.

  He ben
t over and slapped his knees. “Hoo! I haven’t laughed like that in weeks.”

  I cocked a brow.

  The last of his chuckles subsided. “I wasn’t buying a potion.”

  “What were you buying, then? Guns? Drugs?”

  He clucked his tongue against the roof of his mouth, as if fighting off another round of laughter. “Lures.”

  I froze. “What?”

  “Fishing lures.” He pulled the package Earl had given him out of his windbreaker. I took it from him carefully and opened the flap. Inside, there was a plastic box filled with six little compartments. In each, there was a fishing hook decorated with colorful feathers and rubber worms. “They cost a king’s ransom, too.”

  Heat crawled up my neck and up to my forehead. “Oh.”

  He snatched the box out of my hands. “Hmph.”

  I ran a hand through my hair and tried to collect my thoughts. “I don’t get it. If you were just buying fishing stuff, why all the secrecy?”

  He looked down at the dock. “Because I didn’t want you to know.”

  “Know what? That you like to fish?”

  He shook his head and squinted at me. “I’m taking an early retirement.”

  “Huh? Why is that a secret?”

  “You don’t get it. Where I come from, men work. They don’t quit early just because something’s hard.”

  “That’s silly. You’ve been a cop—what? Twenty years?”

  “Twenty-three. Don’t change how I feel, though.” He pointed down at his leg. “After my accident, I took the river patrol thinking it’d be a way to stay in the game. But I can’t do it anymore.”

  “No one would blame you for that. I mean, I’ve only been with you a few days and I’m bored as hell.”

  He shot me a warning look.

  “Sorry, but it’s true. Anyway, there’s no shame in taking an early retirement. But I don’t get what the lures have to do with all this.”

  “They have to do with my plans.” Two spots of red appeared on his cheeks. “Once I retire, I’m planning to head to Montana to open a fly-fishing business.”

  “That’s cool,” I lied. The idea of spending any amount of time in the wilds of Montana, thigh-deep in icy water trying to hook fish, was pretty close to my idea of hell. But I didn’t mention that to him. Now that he’d opened up a little, I didn’t want to ruin it by mocking his dream.