So Valentine’s car was a little dirty.
He reached back and peeled a desiccated Twizzler out of Aliyah’s hair.
“Thanks for the ride,” Paul said.
Valentine brightened. The embarrassment vanished, replaced with bonhomie.
She stuck one bruised elbow out the window as Aliyah felt around for the seatbelt – and then turned on the Halo soundtrack and pulled out into the street.
Paul never asked how Valentine managed to afford a car in New York City, a place infamously hostile to vehicles, but he suspected some usage of videogamemancy. They drove, the engine seizing up sporadically, to the place Oscar had designated as today’s Flex lab.
Paul wished he’d rented a nice car for the occasion. Normally he shrugged off Valentine’s sloppiness, but today required scientific rigor.
If they couldn’t track down the King of New York and neutralize him, then David would utilize the King’s hints a lot better than Lenny Pirrazzini had.
Paul would have felt better in a nice rented Lexus. Something professional. Valentine’s cheap car reminded him all their efforts were a ramshackle improvisation.
“Surprised you didn’t set up the location yourself,” Valentine said as Paul consulted his notes for the address. “Usually, you’re all about getting your control-freak on.”
“I’m isolating variables. If this turns up nothing, then I’ll choose the next lab.”
She winked at him jovially, then screeched out of the way of a delivery truck.
“Whoo,” she said. “Winking and driving when you have one eye is not recommended.”
They pulled up next to an abandoned pharmacy. Paul pulled the key out of the envelope he’d sealed last night and marked, “SITE KEY.” They let themselves in and waited for Quaysean and K-Dash.
Aliyah puttered around the shop for a bit, bringing back everything the old store owners had left on shelves, winding up with a pile of dusty candy bars and crumpled Ex-Lax.
“I need my Nintendo.”
Paul didn’t look up from his checklist. “I told you, Aliyah. No videogames today. No ’mancy at all.”
“I don’t want to do ’mancy. I just might need to do ’mancy.”
Valentine took a bite of one of the dusty candy bars, spit it out. “You don’t get your Nintendo. But if you practice, and get very good like your Aunt Valentine, then you can do videogamemancy without holding a controller in your hand.”
“I said I don’t want to do ’mancy!”
“You won’t have to today,” she said, taking Aliyah’s hand and leading her away. “This is just like that Walking Dead episode – the one where they were holed up in the pharmacy, all the zombies ready to rip their tender flesh to pieces?”
“You let her watch...” Paul said.
Valentine looked aggrieved. “I wouldn’t let her watch the show, Paul. This was the game. Anyway, Aliyah, let’s play hide-and-seek. Tag!”
“That’s not the way hide-and-seek–” Aliyah protested, then ran off, giggling, after Valentine.
Paul watched as the two darted through the aisles, giggling madly, just another girl and her crazy aunt playing on a lazy afternoon. Paul ached to join them; as a ’mancer family, they had so few moments of fun. Imani had loved this raw joy, making up games with nothing more than two hands and an imagination…
…and the kind that Aliyah could never have as long as Imani didn’t know what was going on.
Then he remembered he was here to cover his trail so Imani’s husband couldn’t track him down.
Before he could ponder that too much, Quaysean and K-Dash pulled into the abandoned strip mall’s parking lot. They kissed in the front seat of the U-Haul before hopping out, and though Paul was doubtless not meant to see that, the gesture still somehow made Paul happy. At least someone had a love life.
Paul went out to meet them. “Did you get all the paperwork?”
Quaysean handed over a thick manila folder, rubber-banded to keep everything together. “The U-Haul truck rental forms, the ownership forms for this store, the receipt from where we bought the desk, the receipt from the alembics and the silver knives–”
“Each bought at a different store?”
“Yes, Mr Tsabo. The only hitch was the, uh…”
“The hematite.”
Quaysean scratched the back of his head. “Yes.”
“Because you didn’t buy it.”
“It’s, uh… no legal transaction, to be sure, Mr Tsabo. That shit is guarded.”
“Our hematite always arrives in factory-sealed bags. It fell off a truck somewhere, correct?”
“Yes.”
“Then you’ll need to write down everything involving the truck it came off of. The guard you bribed to look the other way, the company you retrieved it from, the day and time of the transaction, how much you paid.”
Quaysean paled. “I’m not... Oscar doesn’t like paper trails the way you do…”
Paul squeezed Quaysean’s shoulder. “Don’t worry. I’ll burn the evidence once we’re done. I just need it for today.”
It was gratifying, to see the trust Quaysean had in Paul. It reciprocated the trust Paul had put in Quaysean. The simplest way of checking Oscar’s organization for a mole would have been to tell Oscar to assign different bodyguards to the next brew, leaving K-Dash and Quaysean in the dark – but that would have implied that K-Dash and Quaysean were untrustworthy, and Paul didn’t want Oscar to think poorly of them. Paul suspected that once someone instilled a doubt in Oscar, that doubt never faded.
No. He would try literally every other approach before he tested their loyalty.
Paul turned his attention to K-Dash, who was removing the opal from the dashboard.
“You kept that glued to your odometer the entire time, correct?”
“Yes, Mr Tsabo. No breaks yet.” K-Dash flashed a gold-toothed grin from behind the windshield and held up the opal –it was top grade, came in a small adhesive case you could stick to any ’manceable surface. Its silver-flecked surface, polished flat, was intact.
“And it’s unbroken?”
K-Dash stuck the black-and-gold case out the window, offering it to Paul; Paul estimated its worth around $50,000. Opals themselves weren’t rare, but ones pure enough to crack in the presence of ’mancy were. Uncracked ones were rarer still, as angry ’mancers often went after opal manufacturers.
“But,” K-Dash said, clambering down from the U-Haul, “I brought the most important thing of all.”
He proudly displayed a tray of Dunkin’ Donuts.
Valentine lunged for a double handful of Vanilla Kremes. Paul took the chocolate glazed, smiling despite himself.
K-Dash knelt next to Aliyah, holding the tray in her direction. It looked absurdly incongruous, this lean-muscled, tattooed gangster with a do-rag offering a tiny girl a donut, but it was also somehow heartwarming.
Aliyah snorted through her nose.
“If you’re giving information to the King,” she said, “I’ll hurt you.”
K-Dash cringed. He knew Aliyah had once murdered a ’mancer in order to protect her father, and that danger rolled off her in waves. Quaysean moved to stand behind his partner, and Paul saw the absurdity of the situation: a professional enforcer, moving to protect his lover from an eight year-old girl.
But that eight year-old girl, almost nine, was very very dangerous.
“…the fuck?” Valentine wrenched Aliyah around to look her in the eye. “How dare you talk that way to our friends?”
Paul was relieved: Aliyah still had the decency to be shocked.
“Someone’s tattling on us,” she explained, hurt that Valentine wasn’t on the same page. “Why couldn’t it be them? They’re mun–”
She bit her lip, remembering at the last second that Daddy didn’t like that word.
“Because if we get busted, so do they!” Valentine roared, her face covered in fading bruises. “And those ‘mundanes,’ little girl, have done more to help us than you ever have. Th
ey bring us equipment. They protect us. They bring us... they bring us donuts, for Christ’s sake.”
Valentine thrust a glazed donut into Aliyah’s hands. Aliyah quivered, not quite willing to cry.
“Whereas you, Miss Prissypants ’mancer – all you’ve ever done for us is get your goddamned Daddy fired. You won’t listen when we tell you not to dump flux on us! You’ve hurt us more than they ever will!”
Aliyah turned to Paul, wanting Paul to deny Valentine’s words, and Paul… couldn’t.
Valentine mouthed at him: Good cop time?
Paul hated the way Valentine roughed up Aliyah emotionally and then handed her to him for cuddles. He especially hated how effective it was. In the absence of friends, Valentine’s anger was as close as Aliyah got to peer feedback.
“Valentine,” Paul warned. “Back off.”
Valentine held up her hands in surrender, instantly abandoning the approach. As always, Paul wondered how much of these outbursts were theater.
Aliyah, however, looked stricken by guilt. “…did I really get you fired, Daddy?”
“’Mancy has a cost,” Paul reminded her for the ten millionth time. “When you do it, it hurts Daddy. And Auntie Valentine. Do you understand?”
She nodded, looking quite studious. But like any child, Aliyah didn’t understand reality. She could merely recite facts.
Valentine shot Paul a steely glance, blaming him for Aliyah’s ignorance. Paul looked away, not wanting to face her down now. I don’t want her hurt, but there’s no training wheels in this profession, Valentine had said – except there were, when Paul was around. By siphoning away her flux, he kept her from experiencing the consequences of her decisions. As he watched Aliyah’s uncomfortable confusion, it occurred to him that maybe he should let her experience a full blast of flux. Just once.
Then he remembered Valentine’s words: This is magic. She might die.
’Mancers were rare, simply because most of them got killed by the backlash of their own ’mancy.
He’d find some other way to teach her responsible magic use. He had to.
“And not only is ’mancy dangerous,” Paul continued, “Aunt Valentine is right about something else: K-Dash and Quaysean are our friends.”
Both raised their eyebrows as if to ask, We are? Followed by a prideful inhalation: We are.
Aliyah shot a mortified glance at K-Dash and Quaysean – then crept close to her father.
“Daddy,” she whispered, pushing her face into his shoulder to hide her embarrassment, “I thought they worked for you.”
“I worked for Uncle Kit. Some people you work with are friends.”
She frowned, as if filing this new revelation away somewhere in a large cabinet marked “ON JOBS.” Then she turned to K-Dash and Quaysean – who backed away from her.
“Sorry,” she said.
K-Dash shrugged, a casualness that filled Paul with gratitude. “Ain’t nothin’, little girl.” He extended the tray again, tilting it so it pointed at the glazed donut Valentine had pressed into her hands. “That the donut you want, sweetie? You can take another one, if you want.”
Aliyah took a cruller off the tray.
But when K-Dash and Quaysean headed back to the truck, Paul watched as Aliyah chucked the donut into a sewer grate.
Thirteen
The First Fracture
“I’m bored,” Aliyah said, kicking her heels against the old pharmacy counter.
“Sorry, kid,” Valentine said. “I played tag, and Walking Dead, and Call of Duty, and… without ’mancy, I’m fresh out of games.”
Aliyah whistled. “Mommy knows lots of games.”
Valentine bristled. “Yeah, well, that’s why I’m your aunt.”
Aliyah tensed. Valentine reached over and squeezed Aliyah’s foot, as close as Valentine ever came to apologizing.
“Look, you wanna go watch Paul work? There’s gonna be some crazy ’mancy going on soon.”
She tensed. “Really?”
“Well, Daddy-’mancy.”
“Oh.” Aliyah slumped. Paul quelled indignation at this quiet insult; Aliyah had never respected his magic. It was, he supposed, the way of all parents – children never seemed to respect their parents’ strengths – but he resisted an urge to explain that “Paying the rent” was a power greater than any Grand Theft Auto rampage.
But Aliyah had enough to feel guilty about. And the poor girl was in for a long day. By sunset, Paul thought, he hoped to have a lead on the King of New York.
Paul phoned up Lenny; the last thing he wanted was to spend the day loading and unloading equipment, only to find Lenny had dropped his end of the deal.
“Yo, ’mancer-hunter,” Lenny said on the third ring. “You ready to bust some bewitching bitches?”
“Can you keep it down?” Paul asked, remembering how Kit had gotten busted at Samaritan Mutual. “I’m not on the force. You’re not even supposed to talk to me.”
“Relax those britches, I’m on the snitches. Our grand ol’ boss David is up to his nostrils, chasing that paper trail to figure out who bought the Patziki garage. He’s miles from my department.”
That failed to reassure Paul in any meaningful way. “So you’ll call….”
“…the moment we hear from the King, Paul. I’ll get you timestamps and everything. I know you love precision. You wanna share your reasons, though?”
“Thanks, Lenny.”
Lenny’s voice overflowed with admiration. “You are the most secretive son-of-a–”
Paul hung up. Quaysean and K-Dash leapt up as Paul glanced at them; they were as bored as Aliyah.
“Just one more thing,” Paul said, double-checking his list, which contained each piece of equipment they used to brew Flex. The columns waited for Paul to record the proper information: when the equipment was hauled in, when they were first used, who brought them in.
Bureaucracy was like science: it only worked when you collected the correct data.
“You have the opal on properly?” Paul asked.
“Yes, Mr Tsabo.”
“All right. Haul in the desk.”
Aliyah perked up a bit as K-Dash and Quaysean brought in the new OfficeMax desk, then slumped again as Paul brought out a stopwatch – aside from a burner cell phone Paul had picked up at the mall, nothing digital was allowed on site – and clicked off an hour’s waiting time.
“What’s the stone, Daddy?” Aliyah stared at the silvery rock stuck to the cheap desk. “It’s pretty.”
“The opal? They shatter in the presence of ’mancy.”
Aliyah touched it, then jumped back. “It didn’t break!”
“That’s because you didn’t do ’mancy.” Her eyes narrowed mischievously. “And if you do ’mancy here, Ms Aliyah, I will break your butt. That opal is worth more than your Mommy’s car.”
Aliyah poked at it again, seeming relieved. “So I’m not magical.”
“Not until you do ’mancy,” Paul explained. “And even then, most opals aren’t that accurate. You have to target your ’mancy directly at the person wearing it before the opal breaks. Most people think opals are a safeguard against all ’mancy – but honestly, the ones I could get for the Task Force–”
“ – you’re not on the Task Force any more, Daddy! – ”
“–Yes I know, Aliyah, I was using the past tense there, and the ones I could get back then were government grade. We wore them, and had them placed all around our office, but there are all sorts of ways to cast ’mancy that don’t affect people directly.”
“Like Valentine changing the furniture in the garage?”
“Good answer, Aliyah. Yes. Those weren’t cast directly on anyone, so they didn’t crack the government-grade opals.
“But this,” Paul said, polishing the opal with a handkerchief, “is a very expensive opal. It shatters in the presence of any ’mancy, no matter how subtle. They have to ship it a special way, routing all the way around Europe so nothing breaks it. If anything magical happens, anything
at all… This will break like a mirror.”
“You think the King is a ’mancer?”
“I think we need to rule that out.”
Paul waited a half an hour – long enough for the King to call in – and then opened up all the drawers, using the desk just like he’d use it to cast ’mancy. Nothing.
“Bring in the legal pads,” Paul said.
The rest of the day went like clockwork, which was to say not particularly interesting when you had to stare at it for hours straight. The legal pads were brought in, and opened up half an hour later. Then the Bic pens. Then the alembics. Then the silver knife.
“Nothing’s happening, Daddy,” Aliyah cried.
“That’s science for you. Sometimes things don’t happen for long periods.”
“But I’m bored.”
He chucked her on the chin. “It builds character.”
“Ghod,” Valentine huffed. “That is the daddiest thing you could say ever. Don’t listen to him, Aliyah, all boredom ever builds is naps.”
They brought in the sack of hematite, a $50,000 opal pinned to the burlap, put it on a shelf. Half an hour passed. Paul recorded the time. Paul ripped the sack open…
The opal shattered.
“Well,” Paul said, satisfied. “That’s progress.”
Fourteen
He Sells Sanctuary
Later that night, Paul spread out the paperwork on the desk in his bedroom. Sure enough, the King had called seven minutes after Paul had ripped open the hematite – just long enough to get to a pay phone. And the ’mancy surge had been small, very small; only years of tracking ’mancers had attuned him to this ’mancy.
Someone had tagged the hematite bags, and used them to trace Paul’s Flex operations.
Paul closed the bedroom curtains, ensuring privacy, then stacked K-Dash’s notes into piles. This was the tricky part. Somewhere between the time some underpaid worker dug this raw hematite from the earth and the time K-Dash bribed a guard named Annabelle Leckie down at a plant in Long Island to look the other way, a ’mancer had gotten his hands on this.
The Flux Page 10
