by Jaye Wells
“Try me.” I raised a brow.
His expression tightened into something approximating wounded pride. “I’m no snitch.”
“Maybe some time in the can will help you tune your singing voice.” I pushed him back to the ground. “Stay.”
I looked at the powder. An overwhelming, forbidden urge rushed through me to skip the red tape altogether and read the potion. Not all Adepts could read energy signatures, but it was one of my gifts—or curses depending on your perspective. Still, evidence gained through Arcane processes wasn’t admissible in court. Besides, when it came to magic, I was supposed to be firmly on the wagon.
But it would be so easy to just open that bag. So easy to read the potion’s secrets. So easy to target the guilty coven.
Despite the chill in the air, my left palm was slick and trembling. Something in my gut opened, like a black hole that wanted filling.
A throat cleared next to me. “You all right, lass? You’re looking kind of… off.”
I jerked my head up, realizing too late I’d been about to take a running leap off the wagon.
Again.
The sound of an engine signaled Morales’s impending arrival.
Time to remind myself that magic might be easy, but it was never simple.
My pulse did a little soft-shoe in my chest. I stuck the ampoule in my pocket and swallowed to cleanse the tarnish of guilt from my tongue. I grabbed O’Lachlan’s arm and pulled up and toward the curb. “C’mon.”
Since his hands were bound I had to hoist him up into the SUV. He wriggled across the seat, and I followed him. Morales glanced back over the seat. “Everything okay?” He was frowning like his instincts were telling him otherwise.
I wiped my damp palm on my jeans. “Yep. Why?”
“You’re all flushed.”
I tilted my head and prepared to verbally punt. “Morales, I just spent the last fifteen minutes chasing down a leprechaun. Sorry I’m not looking spring fresh.”
I worried I’d overplayed my sarcasm. But he blew out a breath. “All right then.” He turned back toward the steering wheel. “Settle in, Mr. O’Lachlan, we’ll have you at the Hoosegow Hilton in no time.”
The perp spat on the floor. “May the devil cut the head off ye and make a day’s work of your neck.”
“First of all, don’t spit in the car. It’s disgusting,” I said. “And second, the devil can do his worst so long as he buys me dinner first.”
O’Lachlan looked me directly in my eyes. His own had lost the fevered glow from the potion he’d taken earlier, but, even sober, his irises retained the icy-blue hue of a dirty magic addict. “Once the Blue Moon gets here, you’ll all be praying for the devil, bitch.”
Chapter Two
Later that evening, I pushed my way through the kitchen door with a grocery bag in my right hand and my gun rig in my left. The mail was clamped between my teeth.
Arriving home to play house after a day of chasing down scumbags makes for an uneasy transition. Back when my brother, Danny, was little, I usually had to hide in the bathroom for five minutes and do deep-breathing exercises to release the pent-up adrenaline before I could face putting on my nurturing, maternal mask for the kid. But now that he was older, I found the same cop’s instincts that allowed me to handle criminals were also pretty handy in dealing with a sixteen-year-old.
“What’d you get?” Danny was at the table pretending to do homework in the hopes I wouldn’t notice the game device on his lap.
I swung the grocery bag up onto the tiled counter. “Come unload the bag and you’ll see for yourself.”
He sighed from deep in his gut, as if helping me was a burden only a saint could bear.
I began flipping through the mail while he unloaded the bag.
“Oh eww!” He turned and shot me an accusing look.
Setting down the private school tuition bill I couldn’t pay until after my next MEA overtime check cleared, I went to investigate the problem.
Grabbing the rotisserie chicken and sides from the grocery had seemed like a good idea at the time. Better than fast food, but not as time consuming as an actual home-cooked meal. But the container Danny held aloft like a gun at a murder trial held a pale-looking carcass swimming in a pool of congealed lemon-pepper-flavored grease.
I shrugged and took it from him. “It’s not that bad.”
“Like hell—”
He cut off the words when I pointed to the curse jar by the sink. I’d told him it was my way of maintaining a level of respect in our home, but the truth was, I added more money to it than the kid. I considered it a sort of savings account. Some people pulled pennies from couch cushions or sold plasma for extra scratch, but I paid for splurges with shits, damns, and the occasional fuck.
Danny shoved a buck into the jar before continuing. “I’m going vegetarian.” He turned and pulled a bottle of soda from the fridge.
“If you don’t want the chicken, you can have rolls and potatoes and—”
I realized with a start I hadn’t grabbed one green thing to serve with the meal. A salad or whatever. The little burst of heat in my stomach was the familiar sensation that accompanied the reminder that I was a failure of a role model. Didn’t matter that I hadn’t asked for the job. I took care of my responsibilities. It’s just that lately it felt more and more like parenting was a riptide I couldn’t outswim.
“And what?” he said, a challenge in his tone.
I put down the knife and turned to face him. “What do you want from me, Danny? I spent three hours at the precinct this afternoon trying to get one guy through booking. And that was after Morales and I had to chase the guy down. You don’t want chicken that’s your choice, but I’m not going to apologize for not catering to your refined palate with money I worked my ass off to earn.”
“Fine,” he said softly, “I’ll have the freakin’ chicken.”
The corner of my mouth quirked. I may not be a real mom, but I’d somehow managed to master the martyred tone my own mother had employed to guilt me into good behavior. I hated having to use it on him, but it got results. Pasting a June Cleaver smile on my face, I turned to set two full plates of food on the table.
We both sat and dug in. The kid had been right, the chicken was too greasy, but it helped counterbalance the overly dry mashed potatoes, so that was something.
A few minutes later I realized Danny was unusually quiet. He seemed to have recovered from the chicken discussion, so it couldn’t be that. Also, the electronic squawks and beeps that created our typical dinner soundtrack were conspicuously absent. Plus, he was staring into his mashed potatoes like maybe they held the secrets to the universe.
“What’s up?”
He jumped a little, like he’d forgotten I was there. “Nothing.”
I frowned and turned fully toward him while I wiped chicken grease off my hands with a paper towel. “Something happen at school?”
“What?” His brows lowered and he shook himself a little. “Yeah.”
I tamped down the flare of worry in my gut and tried to look not-too-judgmental. “Should I expect a call from the principal again?”
“Nah. Nothing like that.” He took in a deep breath and leaned back. “I—uh, well—there’s this thing.”
“What kind of thing?”
“There’s this new club at school I want to join.”
I blinked at him a couple of times. “A club? You?”
His face crumpled into an offended frown. “What? I do stuff.”
“Just surprised is all. You’ve never really been a joiner.” Off his deepening frown, I realized I was probably offending him. I swallowed and tried again. “What kind of club is it?”
His eyes widened, like he was surprised he’d gotten this far with the discussion. Guilt hit me upside the head. I’d always been protective of Danny—overprotective if you asked Baba—especially after almost losing him six weeks earlier. So it was no wonder he expected me to refuse outright without hearing details.
“Well, re
member how that girl Pen was helping died a while back from the diet potion?”
Pen was my best friend, Penelope Griffin. She was also the guidance counselor at Meadowlake, the private school Danny attended. The girl he mentioned had gotten in trouble for taking the potion at school. Turned out her mother had been making her take it to lose weight, but before Pen could get the authorities involved, the girl overdosed. The mom was now in jail, but the incident left its scars on the Meadowlake community.
“One of the teachers started a group to promote kids staying off dirty magic.”
I didn’t point out that the girl in question had died from a completely legal potion sanctioned by the Federal Drug and Potion Agency, not some dirty brew cooked by a junkie wizard in the Cauldron. Instead I focused on my surprise over him wanting to join this type of organization. “You want to join an antimagic group?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“It wasn’t all that long ago you were begging me to let you learn how to cook.”
“This is different. The club is about preventing kids from becoming addicted to dirty magic. Jeez. I thought you’d support me in this.”
“I do—”
“Especially after what happened.”
I snapped my mouth shut. Those four little words were deceptively innocent considering he was referring to spending several days in a coma. Ramses Bane, the Grand Wizard of the Sanguinarian Coven, had dosed my kid brother with a dirty potion hoping it would make me drop off the case. Instead I’d shot the asshole with a salt flare and cooked dirty magic after a ten-year abstinence to save Danny’s life. Now Bane was being kept in a secure location while he awaited trial, and I was getting shit from Danny, who had no idea what I’d done to save his life.
Swallowing the knot of remembered fear in my throat, I readjusted my approach. “I support you joining an anti-dirty-magic club. Of course I do. It’s just I wasn’t expecting it, is all. We haven’t really talked about… what happened in a while. I wasn’t sure how you were feeling about it all.”
His young face hardened. “How do you think I feel? If it hadn’t been for John, I’d be dead right now.”
My hand tensed into a fist on my lap. John Fucking Volos. Letting him take the credit for saving Danny had been the only way to ensure no one found out I’d fallen off the magic wagon. Over the last several weeks there had been so many occasions when I’d wanted to scream the truth. Without the help of my ability to read potions, John never would have been able to finish the antipotion that eventually saved both his and Danny’s lives. But I hadn’t told anyone because in addition to lying about cooking dirty, I’d also failed to report evidence that fingered my uncle Abe as the mastermind of the entire scheme.
But I couldn’t very well contradict Danny’s praise of Volos with getting some probing questions I was nowhere near ready to answer. So I swallowed the bitterness and forced a smile. “So when does this club meet?”
He pulled back, like I’d surprised him. “Every Tuesday and Thursday until about six thirty.”
My brows rose. “The meetings will be two hours?”
“Mr. Hart said it would be longer in the beginning because we have a lot of work to do to get the club going.” He toyed with his cell phone. “Making posters and stuff, I guess.”
“How will you get home?” Normally, Pen dropped him off after school.
“I’ll get a ride from one of the other members.”
“If not, I bet Baba would come get you.” Baba was our septuagenarian Wiccan neighbor. With my crazy hours, she often stepped up to keep Danny company if I had late nights.
His face screwed up. “I’ll definitely get one of my friends.”
“What’s wrong with Baba getting you?”
“Her car, for one thing.”
I grimaced. It’s not that her old Cutlass Supreme was horrible, even though the avocado green made it look like some sort of ’70s time machine. The real problem was the bumper stickers she’d plastered all over the back. As a witch, she felt the need to broadcast her support of her fellow Mundane magic users in the form of messages like WITCHES DO IT IN CIRCLES. There were also stickers with slogans like HONK IF YOU LOVE NAKED BINGO and TOM JONES MAKES ME FEEL LIKE A WOMAN.
So, yeah, I couldn’t exactly blame the kid for not wanting to ride in her hooptymobile. I didn’t want to be seen in it, either.
“All right, ask your buddies. We’ll use Baba as a last resort for rides.”
His face cleared. “Thank you.”
My center warmed at the rare gratitude. “When’s your first meeting?”
“Next week. Mr. Hart said the permission forms need to be in by Monday.”
“Who is Mr. Hart again? I don’t know if I’ve met him.”
“He’s the new chemistry teacher. The form’s in my room.”
“Go grab it and I’ll sign it.” He was almost at the door when another question occurred to me. “Wait!”
He froze and turned slowly in that teenager way of telling you they couldn’t wait to get out of your company.
“What’s the name?”
“Huh?”
“Of the club? Like DARE?” He stared at me blankly. Sometimes I forgot he wasn’t yet born during the days of neon and cocaine. “It was a movement in the ’eighties that stood for Drug Abuse Resistance and Education.”
“Oh.” He didn’t look impressed. “This one’s Don’t Use Dirty Elixirs.”
I frowned. “The acronym is DUDE?”
He nodded slowly, as if he found nothing funny about it.
“That’s kind of awesome, actually. You should tell that Mr. Hart what I do. Maybe he’d have me in to speak about the dangers of dirty magic.”
He shot me a look like I’d just taken a dump on the linoleum. “Mr. Hart said we won’t be having speakers for a while since we’ll be busy recruiting for the club.”
“But having speakers might attract new members.”
“It’s not my call.” Danny shrugged. “Can I go get the form now?”
I waved him off, trying to pretend his reaction to my suggestion hadn’t taken the air out of my sails. At some point I’d gone from being the cool big sister he worshipped to the annoying nag who said unbearably embarrassing things.
“I bet none of your friends’ moms knows how to apply a proper choke hold or reload a Glock in under ten seconds,” I said to the empty kitchen.
I’m pretty sure none of his friend’s moms ever had a feud with a dirty magic wizard end with her kid in a coma, either.
And with that cheerful thought, I turned to grab a beer. At least this development meant I was off the hook on my promise to teach Danny the basics of magic. I’d been waiting for him to bring it up ever since he recovered, but he hadn’t brought it up. I leaned back and took a long swallow of cold brew, satisfied that everything seemed to be under control for a change.
Chapter Three
October 18
Waxing Crescent
The next morning I pulled my old Jeep, Sybil, into the gym’s parking lot at eight sharp. The lot sat next to some abandoned train rails that used to carry steel from Babylon’s mills to the rest of the country. Now the tracks were rusted and choked with weeds. Sort of like Babylon’s justice system.
I walked across the lot toward the front door of Rooster’s Gym. Downstairs, the building housed a bodega that sold cold drinks, cheap smokes, and titty magazines. Upstairs, though, was the space the MEA task force used as our office. It used to be one of those old-school boxing gyms before the steel bubble burst and the economy dried up faster than flop sweat on the mats.
Climbing the steps up to the gym, I inhaled the scent of body odor on stale vinyl and old varnish on scarred wood. Sun streamed through huge steel-framed windows, casting an ethereal glow on the old boxing ring that dominated the center of the huge room.
In the center of the ring was a large whiteboard covered with a map of Babylon, where Gardner kept track of calls we responded to on behalf of the BPD. Technically, we were onl
y supposed to lend a hand in the Cauldron, but with the double full moons that month the circuits had been so overwhelmed with calls, we sometimes had to venture into the Mundane parts of the city, too. I was the only local cop on the task force; the map helped the rest of the team find their way around.
At that moment Morales ducked a head from behind a wall of the makeshift lab our team wizard, Kichiri “Mesmer” Ren, had erected to separate his work from the investigative side of things. Mez cooked up defensive weapons for us and broke down potions to help solve cases there, but the space also served as the coffee room. I went to join them.
The two men stood over the coffee siphon with mugs at the ready. Morales stood about half a head taller than the wizard. Mez’s long dreadlocks were their natural brown this morning, but the sunlight caught the small bells and magical amulets he’d woven into the strands. A lab coat covered the top of his outfit, but the distressed jeans and motorcycle boots were visible below. In addition to basically being a magical genius, he was also the team’s snappiest dresser. Technically, he was a civilian employee of the MEA instead of a sworn officer, but he was as integral to our success on cases as any of us cops.
The coffee contraption looked like something out of a mad scientist’s lab. A glass siphon sat on a metal stand holding another glass bulb of water. Using gravity and the alchemy of heat, water, and strong coffee beans, the machine turned out a brew that wasn’t a potion, but sure tasted like magic.
Neither spoke to me as I approached, but I didn’t mind. Watching the coffee percolate through the contraption was something of a morning ritual. As usual, Morales had his favorite SEMPER FI marines mug. Mez’s had a picture of Sir Isaac Newton and the quote I CAN CALCULATE THE MOTION OF HEAVENLY BODIES, BUT NOT THE MADNESS OF PEOPLE.
I went to the cabinet over Mez’s collection of Erlenmeyer flasks and pulled out the WORLD’S BEST SISTER mug Danny had given me for Mother’s Day a few years earlier.
“Aha!” Mez said, suddenly. “It’s ready.” He started to elbow Morales out of the way.
“As ranking agent I should get the first cup,” Morales said.
