Fiction River: Hex in the City

by Fiction River

  Dalton hadn’t called ahead to make an appointment with his media consultant. Getting the truth out of someone was always easier when you caught them off balance. He expected the receptionist to tell him Shelly wasn’t available, but instead she led him to a conference room buried behind a maze of cubicles.

  Roxie had equipped Dalton with a lapel pin that included a tiny camera and a microphone so small it looked like just another silver thread running through the pattern in his tie. The miniature electronics had no magical signature, so someone like Roxie, who sensed the presence of magic, wouldn’t pick up on the fact that Dalton was wired. The down side was that the equipment would short out if someone threw a sufficiently strong spell at him.

  “Don’t make her angry,” Roxie had said.

  He hoped he wouldn’t have to.

  One wall of the conference room where Dalton waited for Shelly had been spelled into transparency. The view gave him a good look at the patch of green grass and trees in the courtyard five stories below where Roxie sat with a small handheld receiver, complete with tiny video screen. On the other side of the courtyard, a modern steel and glass office building reflected the warm glow of the late afternoon sun.

  In spite of the trauma of the day, Dalton felt good. Things would work out. He was a damn fine lawyer. He’d get what he came for, and life could go back to normal.

  “Impressive, isn’t it?”

  Startled, Dalton turned around. He hadn’t heard anyone enter the conference room, but then again, he wouldn’t have. Magical energy practically crackled off the woman who’d slipped in unnoticed. She might look human, but she was a wizard, and a powerful one at that. If she didn’t want to make a sound, she wouldn’t.

  She gestured at the wall, and the transparency turned into just another plain white interior office wall. Dalton’s feeling of well being vanished along with the view.

  This woman wasn’t his media consultant. Shelly was short and dumpy. The woman who’d turned off the wall with the flick of a finger was tall and thin, her hair shiny black, her fair-skinned face as flawless as an elf, and she was looking at him like he was an insect caught in her web.

  “Shelly won’t be joining us?” Dalton asked.

  The woman shook her head. “I’ve given Shelly the rest of the afternoon off. I might even give her a bonus. I haven’t quite decided.” She gestured at one of the faux-leather chairs arrayed around the conference table. “Have a seat.”

  Dalton smiled, forcing the charm. He thought better on his feet. He didn’t know why this woman was here, but he had a feeling he’d need every advantage he could get.

  “I’m fine, thank you,” he said.

  “Suit yourself.” She sat down at the head of the table and rested her elbows on its shiny surface, her hands folded together. “You always did.”

  Dalton’s smile faltered just a little. “Do we know each other?”

  She had on a long-sleeved red silk dress cut in a style that accentuated her curves, and she certainly had the kind of curves he would have remembered. The contrast of her black hair against the soft red silk was striking. She was certainly beautiful, but in a hard-edged way. She made an impression, even without her magic.

  “It’s been a while, I admit, but I’m a little disappointed,” she said. “I guess I didn’t make much of a first impression. This should help.”

  The air shimmered around her, and Dalton found himself looking at the woman beneath what he realized had been a carefully constructed glamour.

  The real woman wasn’t as tall, as thin, and definitely not as beautiful. A scar covered half her face with ugly red welts that pulled down the corner of one eye. Her eyebrow on that side was gone. The scar trailed down the side of her neck and disappeared beneath the red silk of her dress. Similar scars covered the backs of her hands.

  Chemical burns, and just like that, Dalton remembered.

  The case should have been a slam-dunk. Traffic accident late at night. Dry roadway, clear visibility. Dalton’s client was a twenty-two year old college student on her way home for the weekend. She’d been following a tanker truck on the freeway when another car cut off the truck. The truck driver had locked up his brakes trying to avoid the collision, and the tanker had jackknifed into a concrete embankment, rupturing the tank. Dalton’s client had been bathed in chemicals never meant to come in contact with human skin.

  He’d been too cocky back then. Two years out of law school and he thought he could take on the world. He had dreams of what he could do with his share of a multi-million dollar jury award, but he didn’t just want the money, he wanted the big win in court.

  In all the prep work he’d done for trial, it never occurred to him to ask his client if she’d been sober at the time of the accident. She wasn’t the at-fault driver, so what did it matter?

  The defense counsel had been a wily old litigator who knew better. He’d waited until he had Dalton’s client on the stand. Under oath, he got her to admit she’d been drinking. Then he’d put on other witnesses who testified to exactly how drunk she’d been when she climbed behind the wheel.

  Dalton had done his best to rehabilitate his client’s testimony on redirect, but the damage had been done. In the eyes of the jury, his client had gone from sympathetic victim to irresponsible party girl who shouldn’t have been behind the wheel in the first place. Although the jury ruled in her favor, they reduced her damage award to an amount that was less than a tenth of the lowest settlement offer Dalton had convinced her to turn down, and Dalton had learned a hard lesson about contributory negligence.

  “Meredith,” Dalton said, the word almost too painful to get out.

  “Ah, so you do remember,” she said from her ruined face. The air shifted as her glamour reasserted itself, and she became the beautiful, hard-edged woman once again.

  Only the Meredith he’d known all those years ago hadn’t been a wizard.

  “How?” he asked.

  “An unexpected benefit. All those chemicals mixed with all the drugs I took for the pain—they changed my body chemistry.”

  She pushed up one of the sleeves of her dress. A thin gold bracelet wrapped around her upper arm emitted a weak green glow, almost like it had tried its best but knew when it was outmatched.

  “I’m registered, of course,” she said. “I pay my license fees, and I wear my collar so everyone thinks I’m a good little wizard.” She let the sleeve fall back into place. “Do you know how people treat a woman with facial scars? Like we’re invisible. Money would have changed that—everyone pays attention to the rich—but we both know how that turned out.”

  The ad campaign Dalton had purchased cost him almost all the profits he’d made the year before. And here he’d thought it was his idea to advertise. Meredith must have embedded the late-night ads he’d seen with a compulsion spell of her own aimed at reeling in just one big fish—him.

  “That’s what this is about?” he asked. “Money?”

  She made a sound that wasn’t quite a laugh. “Do I look like I need money?”

  No, she didn’t.

  She was out for revenge, and she’d concocted a hell of a convoluted scheme.

  “It would have been easier to just kill me,” he said.

  “When I can ruin you instead?” She stared at him with hard, cold eyes. “Tell me, counselor. What’s more fun? Settling a case like a gentleman, or destroying your opponent in open court?”

  The Dalton he’d been back when he’d represented Meredith had wanted to make a name for himself. Quiet settlements didn’t accomplish that.

  “I’m not that person anymore,” he said.

  No, today he was the kind of person who wore a hidden camera and microphone.

  “There’s one thing I need to know,” he said. “Why that particular spell?”

  “You mean you haven’t figured it out?” Her false face wore the same expression as every law school professor he’d ever disappointed with an incomplete answer. “At my trial you made such a point of how m
y doctors tried to repair my face, only they couldn’t. Remember?”

  Meredith’s burns had been so extensive, her skin grafts had to come from donors, and most of the grafts had healed badly.

  He should have put it together sooner. Her new skin had come from organ donors. The recently dead.

  Dalton stood there stunned. He’d never realized she’d hated him that much.

  Her eyes took on a maniacal gleam. “I spent a lot of time thinking about the perfect way to show my gratitude. To my lawyer. I wanted a new face. You wanted new clients. So I gave you exactly what you wanted the same way my doctors gave it to me. Too bad what we wanted was already dead.”

  It was enough. He had enough now to save his own skin, but he had to give her one last opportunity to save her own. He owed her that much. She’d screwed up her lawsuit by keeping vital information from him, but clients lied, especially to their lawyers. He just hadn’t been smart enough back then to realize it.

  “Call off the spells,” he said. “Or you leave me no choice but to go to the authorities.”

  She grew very still. Energy cracked around the tips of her fingers, little red sparks against her pale skin. “You wouldn’t. You’d implicate yourself.”

  “You’re reanimating the dead. That’s a felony. I’m an officer of the court, and you’re no longer my client.”

  “You’re bluffing.”

  The red energy arced now between her fingers. How was that even possible? Generating a glamour while wearing a magic-inhibitor was easy for a wizard to pull off if the glamour was properly licensed. The inhibitor Meredith wore on her arm was supposed to prevent the kind of destructive magic dancing around her hands.

  He had to get out of here before she decided to use it.

  He shrugged, trying to make the gesture look natural. “You’re right,” he said. “I’m bluffing. No one would believe me anyway.”

  He almost made it to the door before an invisible hand slammed him against the wall. Red energy coursed over his body, and the little camera in his lapel pin sputtered and sparked as it shorted out.

  “Have I ever told you how much I hate lawyers?”

  Meredith’s voice filled the room, grating and raw. The glamour that had given her a pretty face had disappeared. Her scars were livid, and there wasn’t much sanity left in her eyes. For the first time in his life, Dalton was afraid of magic.

  “You can’t kill me,” he said, amazed his voice still worked. “People know I’m here.”

  “Oh, I’m not going to kill you.” She closed on him, the red arcs of energy multiplying. “You’ll only wish I had.”

  When the first touch of her twisted magic seared his face, Dalton screamed.

  He was still screaming when Roxie burst into the room moments later and hit Meredith over the head with one of the heavy conference room chairs. Dalton always forgot just how fast and strong Roxie was.

  The last thing Dalton saw before he passed out was Roxie standing over Meredith’s inert body. “Bitch,” Roxie said.

  “That’s my girl,” he murmured, and then the pain and the darkness took him.

  ***

  Kathy Ruiz sat in Dalton’s office stealing glances at the pendulum wall clock his staff had given him as a welcome back present. In ten minutes they’d be heading to court for the first day of Kathy’s new trial and Dalton’s first day back in front of a jury.

  He didn’t know who was more nervous.

  At least they didn’t have to worry about any dead bodies interrupting the trial. The reanimation spells were over, thanks to the heavy-duty restraints Meredith was forced to wear as long as she was behind bars, which was going to be a very, very long time. The restraints canceled out all her magic, including the glamour that had given her the illusion of beauty.

  No formal charges had been filed against Dalton in connection with his spelled ads, although it had been a close call. He still remembered the panic he’d felt when he woke up in the hospital and realized he was chained to his bed with a pair of enhanced handcuffs. Luckily for him, the miniature camera and microphone he’d worn had caught enough of his meeting with Meredith that it was clear, even to the jaded investigators who’d interviewed him, that he had nothing to do with the reanimation spells.

  The scars Meredith had carved in his skin were near mirror images of her own. Before he left the hospital, Dalton had purchased a glamour that showed the world his old face. He wore it until it became clear he was never going to look the same again. After all, he couldn’t use any magic, including the glamour, in court. He wasn’t about to let what Meredith did to him end his career. That would be too much like letting her win.

  Going back in front of a jury, though—that was going to be rough. Strangers either stared at him the same way they’d slow down to stare at an accident on the freeway, or they’d look at him and then glance quickly away, like his scars were catching. He needed to hold the jury’s attention, but get them to focus on the case, not him. He’d never make a case all about himself again.

  Kathy took a deep breath and looked at the clock again. Dalton knew how she felt. They didn’t have to wait out these last ten minutes in his office, not if all it was doing was making them both more nervous. His trial briefcase was all packed up, and the associate who’d be sitting second chair this time around was waiting in the lobby.

  “You still want to do this?” Dalton asked his client. They’d had this conversation before, but he had to be sure. “We can always float a settlement offer, see if they bite.”

  Kathy shook her head. “No. They think I’m scared, that I won’t go through with this because of what happened with Julio last time. I’m here because of what they did to Julio. I have to show them I can be brave.”

  Even though Dalton knew Meredith was responsible for the reanimation spell, he’d had Roxie check Kathy Ruiz out anyway as part of the same kind of due diligence he’d be doing from now on with every client. Kathy was just what she appeared to be—a woman widowed far too young who was standing up for a good man who’d died due to someone else’s negligence.

  If she could be brave, so could he.

  He stood up, grabbed his briefcase, and took his own deep breath to settle his nerves. It was time to get all the way back in the game.

  “Okay,” he said. “Let’s go be brave together.”

  Introduction to “One Good Deed”

  Jeanne C. Stein wrote me a ghost story, and I made her work for it. She was unaware that I had met a ghost in a hotel exactly like the one she describes in “One Good Deed,” so the setting and reactions had to be authentic. The difference is that her ghost has malevolent inclinations, and mine was quite friendly. Mind you, I slept with the lights on once the ghost departed, and I’m not a vampire. Jeanne might be a vampire but a nice one.

  Jeanne is the bestselling author of the Urban Fantasy series, The Anna Strong Vampire Chronicles. Her award winning series has been picked up in three foreign countries and her short stories published in collections here in the US and the UK. Her next Anna book, Blood Bond, was released August 27. Jeanne’s newest endeavor, The Fallen Siren Series, is in collaboration with author Samantha Sommersby. Published under the pseudonym S. J. Harper, the first book in that series, Cursed, was recently released. Jeanne writes:

  “The inspiration for ‘One Good Deed’ came in large part from Flagstaff’s Hotel Monte Vista itself. It’s been featured on television programs, national publications and numerous books—mainly for its reputation as being a ‘haunted’ hotel. So using it for an Anna Strong Vampire adventure seemed appropriate. As Anna says in the story, it made sense that one undead might be able to communicate with another.”

  One Good Deed

  Jeanne C. Stein

  “Flagstaff?” I put my coffee mug down on the table and stare over at Frey. “Why would you want us to go to Flagstaff now?”

  It’s June and I’ve come to Monument Valley to help my husband and step-son, John-John, pack. School on the Navajo Reservation is over,
and they’re joining me in San Diego for the summer. The plan was for us to leave for the coast tomorrow.

  Frey isn’t answering. Instead he busies himself at the stove.

  I get up and join him. He and I have only been married for a few months—and separated for most of them. We are not exactly an average couple since I’m a vampire and he’s a shapeshifter whose other form is panther. But truth be told, I was looking forward to the end of the school year so he and John-John would come back to San Diego with me. John-John’s mother had recently died and as much as Frey and I hate being apart from each other, letting John-John finish school with his friends seemed the right thing to do.

  But school is over now.

  “Frey? Why Flagstaff? And why now? John-John is looking forward to spending time at the cottage. Won’t he be upset if we take a detour—”

  “John-John knows we’re only postponing for a couple of days,” Frey says, still not answering the most important question. “He’ll stay with his grandparents until we come back to pick him up.”

  “So, John-John knows about this? Why am I just hearing about it?”

  Frey’s eyes slide away. Color floods up from his neck. His reaction is ridiculously exaggerated. The question now is why?

  Before I can ask him again, John-John bounces into the room. He’s holding a small duffle and his almost six-year-old face is wreathed in smiles. “When are we going to see shih-chai’?” he asks.

  Frey grabs up his keys from the kitchen counter. “Going to Grandma’s right now, Shiye. Give Anna a kiss.”

  I bend down and John-John wraps his arms around my neck and squeezes. “See you Sunday?”

  “You bet.” My eyes are on Frey, and I mouth over John-John’s head, You have some explaining to do.

  He sends me a brilliant smile that almost, almost, makes up for all the mystery. He follows up John-John’s hug with one of his own. “We’re going to be doing a good deed,” he whispers in my ear. “For an old friend.”