by Ann Aguirre
So there’s something guarding Kel. Makes sense.
“You feel like battling some demons?” I whispered to Booke.
He flashed me a wide smile. “I feel as if I’ve waited my whole life for someone to ask me that.”
“Two lives, even. Brush up on some combat spells on the way, okay? I’m not gonna be much use out there.”
“Don’t sell yourself short.”
Beto cleared his throat. “If you need some weapons, I know a guy.”
Of course he did. I smothered a smile. “I’m not a very good shot, but if he sells Tasers and knives, I might survive long enough for Booke to do his thing.”
“Si, he’s got anything you could want.”
“Not in a store?” I guessed.
“He sells out of his trunk.”
That sounded familiar. Chuch had gotten me an emergency cell phone from a market that consisted of parked cars. “Let me guess . . .” I described the location.
“That’s the place. Look for a tan Malibu, early eighties.”
“Thanks. Can you write down the directions to the cartel hideout?”
“No problem.” He borrowed a scrap of paper from the bartender, and I handed him a pen.
Booke leaned over. “Is this likely to get dicey?”
“Probably.”
The Englishman smiled. “Finally.”
I was less sanguine about facing monsters and death, but it was good he wasn’t whining, like the dog in my handbag. Butch had been emitting a high-frequency moan ever since he heard about the unknown beast that killed the last dude who went out there. Like me, he was ready to settle down to a normal life.
After taking the directions, I dropped a couple of twenties on the table. “For your time.”
“Don’t die,” the old man advised.
I offered a wry smile. “Will do my best.”
Butch was still whimpering, so I set him on the scraggly grass, where he peed again out of sheer nerves. Booke picked him up to comfort him as we returned to the Pinto. He was smiling as he slid into the car, face upturned to bask in the sunlight. He had the pallor of a long-term invalid, like he’d just woken from a ten-year coma. Maybe it felt that way to him too.
“First, the street market?” Booke asked.
“Yeah, but it doesn’t open until dusk. In daylight, it would draw too much attention.”
“That makes sense. I suppose the area clears out when all the businesses close.”
“Exactly.”
We ended up killing time over lunch, and then I took him shopping. Impossible to believe, but the guy had never been to a mall. By the time we came out, he was loaded down with purchases, mostly tech toys he was dying to try. Since it was expensive, energy-wise, he’d only had the Birsael demon deliver the most essential items required to keep him healthy and sane.
“Ready to rock?” I asked, as we locked his new gear in the trunk. Gods help me if he ever discovered the Sharper Image.
“Indisputably.”
The street market was much as I remembered it, hidden behind an abandoned warehouse. There was an unused parking lot, but the cars parked in the alley behind the building. There were a few merchants already doing business. To my surprise, the cell phone guy remembered me. “Need a hookup?” he yelled, making the universal “call me” sign with his thumb and forefinger.
Smiling, I shook my head, skimming the vehicles for a tan Malibu. Then I sighed. “Not here yet.”
“What if he doesn’t come?” Booke asked.
“Then I guess we wade in unprepared.”
“There’s a difference between ‘yen for adventure’ and ‘death wish,’” he observed.
I shrugged. “I can’t leave Kel hanging. Though I’m not the witch I used to be, and the touch won’t do me much good in a fight, I have to try.”
“That’s what makes you such a good friend.”
He put an arm around me and squeezed my shoulders in a friendly fashion. Though he looked younger, he felt like a favorite uncle. We didn’t wait long for Tan Malibu. Part of me wondered if he knew Chuch, but I didn’t want to drag the Ortizes further into this mess. Bad enough they had a crime scene in their yard. I watched as the dealer settled onto the hood, then I made my way over to his car.
“Can I help you?” he asked.
“Beto sent me.”
“Yeah, he gave me the heads-up that you’re okay. Otherwise I’d have to ask you to show me your belly.”
In case I was wearing a wire. Just to settle the issue for his peace of mind, I flashed some skin and raised each of my pant legs. “I’ll tell my friend to wait over there with my bag, if you’re really worried.”
At this suggestion, Butch popped his head out of my purse and growled. He didn’t like being banished from the action.
The guy laughed. “Nah, it’s cool. I see you got a guard dog. My auntie raises Chihuahuas . . . yappy little ankle biters.”
Butch’s growl went lower. I tapped him gently on the skull. “Pipe down, you know I love you.”
He shut up.
“Whatcha need?”
“A Taser and a good knife, for sure.”
He seemed a little disappointed. “You could buy that anywhere. I got some serious hardware up in here.”
“I know, but I’m not the best shot.”
“I’ll take a piece,” Booke said in his plummy accent.
The dealer’s face was priceless. “Really?”
I stifled a smile, letting Booke take the lead. “It’s been some years—” Massive understatement. “But I used to be quite a good shot. Let me see your hardware.”
“With pleasure.” The guy popped the trunk, revealing a dazzling array of weapons.
Some had obviously seen hard street use; others looked pristine, as if they’d just come off the factory floor. I didn’t ask questions, as that tended to piss off entrepreneurs like Tan Malibu. Booke leaned over for a better look and then he indicated what I thought was a Glock.
“May I?”
The merchant nodded. “Sure, it’s not loaded.”
Though I wasn’t the best judge of such things, Booke seemed to know what he was doing when he handled the gun. He held it two-handed with his fingers curled around for support, and it looked to me like he wasn’t exaggerating his experience. I’d love to know more about his past, but it wasn’t the time. I could hardly ask in front of GM when the story was so implausible.
“How’s the recoil?” Booke asked, along with a number of technical questions, before nodding. “I’ll take the nine millimeter.”
“I only have one type of Taser in stock,” GM told me. “But I don’t think you’ll be disappointed. And if you’re looking for a quick kill after you incapacitate someone, then this is the blade for you.” He demonstrated a few moves and explained where I should be stabbing.
That alarmed me, as he looked so normal, but it wasn’t like killers went around with signs around their necks, or tattoos on their foreheads. That would make life so much simpler. In the end, I bought all three, plus some ammo for Booke’s gun, and a shoulder harness that he slipped on under his jacket.
“Remember,” GM called as we headed out. “If you’re caught, it’s illegal to carry concealed and I never met you.”
I assured him, “We won’t flip.”
“Heard that before,” he muttered.
Butch yapped at him in disapproval, as a Chihuahua’s word was his bond. Funny, but even a gangly Englishman gained some swagger with a gun hidden beneath his coat. I teased him about it as I swung back into the car.
“Now you’ve got a total James Bond thing going on, only you’re cooler because you do magick. You’ll have to beat the ladies off with a stick.”
He colored, cutting his eyes to the stained floor mat in the Pinto. Lord, it was a good thing our outcome didn’t depend on image. The engine purred to life, however, a testament to Chuch’s good work. Someday, I’d love to have him restore a car for me, totally custom from bumper to bumper.
Then Booke changed the subject; clearly he didn’t want to talk about his own charms. “Speaking of magick, if you know of a shop, I need to get a few things. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with how hermetic tradition works—”
“No clue.” I figured I’d save him a few words. “Tell me how I can help.”
He nodded as I pulled onto the street. “I’m not as versatile as a witch. I need more preparation, and to use my spells in combat, I must store them in a focus object, which is destroyed in the process.”
“Gotcha. Yeah, I know a place. Shannon and I found it a while back when I was squaring off against the Montoyas.”
Caridad didn’t sell supplies; there was more profit to be made in offering spells only. But after this last stop, we should be ready to head into the wilderness to find Kel. Hopefully it won’t take forty days and nights.
Then it occurred to me to ask, “How did you learn to shoot? I thought the U.K. had much stricter gun laws than the U.S.”
“Not for soldiers,” Booke said quietly.
Mentally, I did some math. He had been thirty-six in 1947, which meant he could’ve fought in World War II, but he’d said he had been with his lover for eight years, which would’ve taken place during wartime. But maybe they were separated until it ended . . . ? As I pulled into traffic, I decided to find out.
“Did you fight?”
“Yes. Perhaps that’s why the romance seemed so much more desperate, more doomed . . . and therefore, more important. Ironically, by the time she told her husband everything, I was a different man. War changes you.”
It had started as an indulgence of his ego, ended in tragedy. “So those eight years, it was off and on . . . all the stolen moments you could snatch.”
“Precisely. I lived for those hours when she could sneak away . . . or I was on leave. Though toward the end . . .” He lifted a shoulder in a weary, self-deprecating shrug. “I loved her, but she wasn’t the woman I wanted her to be.”
I made a left turn, heading toward the highway. The directions fluttered on the scrap of paper on the dash, lifted by the vent, while Butch paced in the backseat. If he had his Scrabble tiles, he’d be Han Soloing all over the place, with a bad feeling about this. He wasn’t the only one, but Kel was my friend. I never left people behind if I had a choice. Just one more errand, and then we’d see how bad the opposition was.
“I get it. Love is worth fighting for.”
His face went pensive. “Sometimes I think it’s the only thing that is. That’s why you mustn’t give up on your young man, no matter what.”
The lump in my throat surprised me. “I won’t. I’m facing some pretty steep opposition, maybe even going up against nature itself, but if hell didn’t stop me, death won’t either.”
Booke gave a half smile. “Remind me never to cross you.”
Unlikely Heroes
The arcane shop where Booke bought his supplies was housed in an Oriental Home Furnishings shop. Or that was the front. If you had the fortitude to shake off the aversion spell, you progressed to the real goods in the back. This time, I couldn’t see the runes pulsing, but I felt them; and without my mother’s magick, I had a strong inclination to get out before we ran into the creepy old woman again.
Booke grabbed my arm, forceful when he had to be. “None of that,” he cautioned me in an undertone. “We’ve a job to do.”
“Yes, sir.”
He cut me a chiding look for the sarcasm and led the way toward the private sales floor. Though he’d never been to this shop before, apparently he was familiar with the premise. The room was filled with short shelves covered in esoteric supplies: wands, chalices, athames, and spell components, cunningly arrayed. There was a young woman at the counter this time, and I let out a small sigh of relief. Not subtle, it seemed, as the clerk focused on me.
“You’re glad not to see my great-aunt.” She had strawberry blond curls, blue eyes, and she hardly looked old enough to be out of high school, but something told me her baby face was deceptive.
So I didn’t bother to dissemble. “Maybe a little.”
“She’s retired now. In recent years she’d gotten a bit . . . odd, which makes for poor customer service.”
Too many demons wandering in and out of her head, I thought, but didn’t say so out loud.
The girl went on, “I’m Karen. If you need anything specific, have questions, or can’t find what you’re looking for, let me know. If we don’t stock it, I’m sure I can special order what you need.” There was a reassuring solidity behind her prettiness, making me think I wouldn’t converse with any demons through her anytime soon.
“I have a list,” Booke cut in.
His accent made Karen take notice, as did most Texan females. She brought him colorful powders, stored in glass vials, small ceramic figures, various herbs and liquids. It was like watching an alchemist prepare to transmute lead into gold—while carrying on a courtly flirtation. At the end of the transaction, she slipped him a business card, and I didn’t think it was for special orders. I grinned at him as we went out to the Pinto, parked at a meter a block away. We passed Popeyes on the way, so the air smelled like fried chicken and biscuits. He didn’t notice, too busy smirking.
I teased gently, “You should be ashamed, the way they tumble for you. What about Dolores?”
“She and I shared an amicable, somewhat calisthenic evening, not to be repeated.” He held up a hand as I swung into the car, forestalling my commentary. “At her request, not mine. She knows I’m leaving and isn’t interested in playing at a long-distance romance.”
“I’m glad you were up front with her.”
“I don’t lie to women to get what I want. I’m not a scoundrel,” he said in an aggrieved tone, but his word choice made me laugh.
“I think you mean ‘dog’ or ‘player.’”
“My original point stands.” He changed the subject, becoming brisk. “Is there a safe place where I can craft my foci?”
Starting the Pinto, I thought about that. There was no way I’d condone any magickal shenanigans where I was staying; no more complications for the Ortiz family. At one point, I’d used an Escobar safe house, but I wouldn’t go there without the boss’s sanction. My options in Texas were limited . . . and then I had it.
“If you’re not picky, yes.”
“I just need quiet and room to work,” he said.
“Then this will suffice.”
Making a decision, I put the car in gear, backed out of the parking space, and drove toward Ramon’s trailer, where Chuch had stashed me when I was laying low after a long day of driving the Montoya cartel crazy. Hopefully, nobody had rented the place. If so, I’d claim to be lost, and try to find an alternative. But from what I remembered, it was more of a crash pad than a home.
Booke and I bickered amicably as we rolled toward our penultimate destination. I teased him about his lady-killer moves and he gave as good as he got. It was good to see him acting normal, a man with a future instead of one who had given up on happiness. When I found him at the ghost cottage, he’d seemed so beaten, so hopeless. I never wanted to see him that way again.
The Pinto rode like a horse wagon, no shocks to speak of, but at least if I lost this ride or it got blown up, Chuch wouldn’t stroke out over it. Given how things were shaping up, either possibility seemed plausible. I was lucky I remembered the route Chuch had taken when he delivered me here, past the highway, past town, past everything worth seeing.
This RV park was a little slice of hell. Trash lay in moldering heaps, rusted carburetors and engines up on blocks. As I recalled from my last visit, one trailer nearby had license plates all over it, and the diagonal neighbor collected hubcaps. Stolen, I was sure. Trees featured sparsely in the landscaping, but on the plus side, if you were looking for broken glass to do an abstract mosaic, you only had to look down. Plastic bags blew in the wind, tangling in the scrubby bushes. As I parked in front of a run-down single-wide, Booke stared.
“Do they eve
n have trailer parks in the U.K.?” I wondered aloud.
“Yes, but they’re called caravans . . . and they’re nothing like this.”
I imagined not. The cracks in the underpinning had gotten worse, so that the vinyl hung completely askew on one side. For obvious reasons, the door wasn’t locked. Since I’d been inside once, I thought I was prepared; only I wasn’t—but not for the reasons I expected. Someone had hauled off the plaid purple couch, and the stained brown carpet had been removed too. The subfloor had been covered in new vinyl, and it wasn’t catastrophically ugly. Nobody would ever mistake it for real Italian tile, but it was a big improvement. All of the rubbish had been hauled away, and it now smelled of orange cleaner. Judging by his remodeling efforts, Ramon was seriously trying to rent the place out; the area was undesirable, but price it low and somebody would jump at it. This wasn’t a large trailer, but it had a kitchenette, along with some typical mobile features like a table and dinette, a small living area, minuscule bath, and a bedroom large enough to house a queen-sized bed.
Booke surveyed the space, then gave an approving nod. “I can work at the pull-down table.”
“Go for it.”
I went into the bedroom to find the stained mattress had been removed and the walls scrubbed down. It smelled clean in here too. Strange to think while I had been in Sheol, people I knew had been going about their ordinary lives. Yet that didn’t sound boring to me at all. I longed for the day when work and paying the bills constituted my biggest problem.
Since there was nowhere else to wait, I returned to the main room and sat down on the dining bench, careful not to disrupt Booke. His hands were quick and elegant as he laid the sigils that would protect his work. Not that it was demon magick, but you could never be sure what spells would attract attention. Best not to put all that shimmering energy out as a lure.
I’d worked as a witch and witnessed Tia crafting some impressive charms, but it was nothing like the hermetic tradition. Often our magick was sympathetic, invoked with one thing that represented something else. There was a precision to this; and I wished I could see how he was channeling the energy. Unfortunately, witch sight was closed to me, so I could only feel a faint, residual tingle as he poured power into his focus objects, storing them for future use. His items of choice were ceramic figurines, which would shatter on impact, unleashing the spell. Each statuette correlated with the chosen effect, though sometimes in ways I didn’t understand.
