by Judy Mills
I pushed the cat carrier tighter into the corner. Pulling my non-issue iC from the front pocket of my jeans, I keyed in a number and a message. Across the street, Ms. Fairview retrieved an identical black iC from the oversized purse next to her. She read the message and then stared expectantly to the right and down the street. Points for her.
The man with the newspaper and the admirer of vintage pots immediately became alert.
I slipped from my hiding place and ghosted from shadow to shadow until I was four stores beyond the gadget shop in the opposite direction from where Ms. Fairview had pretended her contact was coming. What I was about to do was insanely risky, but it was the only way to make sure Bellmonte didn't hurt Wizard.
I checked the straps of my holster to make sure the Browning was secure and took off running down the middle of the quiet street like the devil was on my tail. I knew the FBI agents would spot me and I knew they'd chase me.
I also knew that Ms. Fairview would calmly get up once they were gone, get Wizard and take her to a safe place that even I wouldn't know about. I'd told her that the fewer people who knew, the better, and she agreed. My cat would get the best of everything and when this was over, she'd come home five pounds overweight and even more full of herself than usual. As long as I never had to see her skinned and tortured body hanging from the fire escape outside my apartment window, I was okay with that. More than okay.
I glanced behind me, noted the distance between the FBI agents and me and slowed down just enough to keep them interested.
The game was on.
* * *
Sweat and grime covered me, making my skin itch, and fatigue had started pulling at my body, making every step feel like burning torture. I'd lead the agents all over the city for the last hour. They were no match for me, they just didn't know it, poor things. But now we'd had our fun and it was time to call it a day.
I headed for one of the many abandoned neighborhoods in Charlotte. Ducking past the shattered entrance of the once prestigious gated community, I took off down a pitted, overgrown road. Running as silently as I could, I cut to the right, darting through the beaten down ruins in a zig-zag pattern that I hoped would confused the Were trackers that would be brought in when they realized they'd lost me.
Once I was sure I was out of sight and that I'd given them enough trails to stay busy, I wound my way to my real goal—a half destroyed home at the end of what had once been a family-friendly cul-de-sac. I imagined happy kids riding their bikes around in front of their houses, which had probably never happened given the level of wealth and prestige this particular community had commanded.
I ran toward the collapsed and charred corpse of what was once a large brick colonial. Smashed walls, exposed floors, and broken furniture were all that remained, as if a giant toddler had decided her doll house displeased her and had taken a bat to it.
Darting behind the half of the house that still stood, I prowled to the back. Approaching a section of the foundation that had cracked, I glanced around and then slipped feet first into a crevice at the base that was hidden behind the weeds.
Now you see me, now you don't, I thought as I slid from the humid warmth of the late morning and down into the cool, earthy space that was once the basement entertainment hub for the occupants of the home. I landed with a crunch on the broken glass scattered over the floor and stepped carefully toward the stone fireplace.
The fireplace was a classic rustic design made of heavy gray stone with an inner hearth that was about four feet by five. The huge flat-screen television that had once hung over the mantle now lay in a shattered mess and was the source of most of the glass covering the floor. Next to that were the remains of a pool table, long ago salvaged for kindling, as well as the guts of a leather sofa whose leather had been stripped, probably to be repurposed as clothing or storage containers.
I climbed into the inner hearth and sat down facing forward, hugging my knees to my chest. This particular access point had been one of my ideas and I was particularly proud of it. I pressed my hands against the slate and my skin tingled as the scanner read my identity. Two handles popped out into my palms. I gripped them.
"Addison Kittner. Access required," I said in a firm, clear voice and I braced myself.
The back of the fireplace flipped over, carrying me with it head over heels like I'd done a fast backward summersault. Left behind was an empty fireplace and the trashed room that would immediately be sprayed with a fine mist composed of water and skunk discharge. The perfect cover to hide my trail from sniffing Weres.
The panel at my back jerked to a stop and locked into place, and I dropped to a dirt floor, landing on my feet. The clean, moist scent of earth and rock washed over me. The tunnels Falcon had designed during the war stretched to my right and left with periodic low-level blue lights strung along it.
He and I knew every inch of these tunnels and they'd saved my life more than once. These days we only used them for emergencies, not wanting to risk their discovery. As far as we were aware, we were the only ones who knew about them or used them, but the world was full of dangerous and clever things and only fools assumed life was safe.
Drawing my gun, I backed up against the cool, packed earth of the tunnel wall under the fireplace trap door.
When nothing jumped at me, I headed off to the right. Time to get the only other person I cared about to safety.
* * *
Traveling through the tunnels, I'd managed to cross the city in a few hours without mishap. I'd stopped once for food and water at one of the lockers we had scattered throughout, but other than that, I'd kept an unbroken, steady pace. When I reached the access point I needed, I eyed the hole in the wall just above eye level with distaste. This one had been Falcon's idea. Figured.
Resigned to my fate, I backed up to the other side and judged my trajectory. I got a running start, jumped and dove into the hole. I managed to get my upper body in and scrambled the rest of the way, feeling like Winnie the Pooh stuck in Rabbit's house.
Once my thighs passed the entrance, I commando crawled up the ascending passage. Only four and a half feet high, the short tunnel narrowed down to three and if you didn't know any better, you'd think you'd just gone to a lot of trouble to get to nothing but a dead end.
Anyone claustrophobic, or with knowledge of tunnel integrity, wouldn't give it a second look and would move on to pursue more obvious exits. As it was, this particular little sweetheart was our main access point to Falcon's shop.
When I reached the debris piled at the end, I squeezed over onto my back. The tunnel above me looked like nothing special, mostly dirt and roots and no way out. It was actually a fake composite of soil mixed with plaster and various realistic touches like dead bugs and rocks that we'd spackled over the cement foundation under the store.
I pressed the pads of my forefinger and middle finger to a spot just to the right of a large fake root, spitting crud and a few curses when soil showered into my face. I tried again and was rewarded with the sluggish clatter of locks disengaging. When the noise died down, I braced my palms on the surface above me and pushed. The trapdoor into Falcon's shop didn't budge.
With a grunt of effort, I pushed harder, my teeth crunching on an extra dose of dirt. Slowly, painfully the door inched up. As I squinted and coughed from the sawdust drifting down on me, I heard a large container of some kind laboriously coasting off the door.
Annoyed, I gave a final shove. The blockage slid away with a complaining thump, the door flipped open and late morning light spilled into the tunnel. Pulling myself up using the edge of the frame, I climbed out into Falcon's back storage room.
A jumble of shelves, barrels, trunks and tables full of all things magical, magically enhanced or just plain gadgety cluttered the space around me, making the twelve by twelve room look like the playhouse of a magician hoarder gone mad.
I shut the trapdoor and pushed the blasted crate back over it. Brushing sawdust and dirt off my clothes, I opened the door to th
e shop and stalked out.
Magical Bits, as I liked to call it, wasn't open yet and the main area spread out in front of me was empty of people except for the lanky, bespectacled seventeen year old hunched over the counter. Falcon's faded jeans, stained cartoon-covered T-shirt and his eternally mussed rusty brown hair were as hodgepodge as his uncle's shop where he'd worked since he was twelve.
Also like the shop, his external appearance effectively hid a wealth of powerful secrets. Unlike the shop, that included an astronomical level of genius. At least, I didn't think the shop was sentient. I'd have to remember to ask him about that. Right now I was too pissed about the tunnel entrance.
"Jesus, Falcon. An old crate of books? Seriously?" I complained.
"What up, Addie K?" he said, grinning as he continued fiddling with the insides of some ill-fated electrical device.
"No time for retro surfer fun. Is Wizard safe?"
"Little Wiz is cozy and cosseted in a secret location known only to the good witch of the North."
I rolled my eyes and leaned on the counter to get a better look at his project. "You packed?"
"Unnecessary."
"Not a choice. Bellmonte won't hesitate to hurt you."
"Has to get me first," he said, his tone turning serious.
He tweaked some secret inner working of the device and it blinked to life. Retrieving the silver-colored back of the gadget from the corner of the counter, he snapped it into place.
Falcon held up the device, aimed it across the shop at a stack of what looked like human eyeballs in glass tubes and pressed a button. The eyeballs exploded like pimples, splattering goo all over the insides of their containers.
"It does other cool stuff, too," he said, smug satisfaction sparkling in his eyes.
"Better than vaporizing cow eyes? Awesome. Now let's go. My way out of the country leaves in two hours."
"Nope."
"Does this have anything to do with the girl hiding against the wall behind the Tarot card display?" I turned around, braced my elbows on the counter and gave the kid standing against the wall a hard look. Her eyes went wide, but she didn't move.
"You're not invisible, kid. I can see you," I said.
Falcon leaned over the counter and waved his hand in front of my face. I reared back and gave him a dirty look.
He stared at me and then toward the wall about a foot to the left of accurate. "Actually, she is invisible."
"Ha. Ha. There's a skinny kid about twelve or thirteen years old with dark skin, braids and scowling like she wants to kill me standing right there. Sound familiar?"
The pretty African-American girl stepped forward and glared at Falcon. His gaze focused instantly on her as if he'd just noticed she was there.
She marched toward the counter. "You told her," she accused Falcon.
"I didn't say anything. Don't know how she saw you."
Jolly jokesters. "So what's your story, kid?" I asked.
"My uncle's looking after Chiwa for a while," Falcon supplied.
The girl stopped a couple yards short of me and lifted her chin. "I'm in practitioner school."
"Congratulations. That's not much of a story."
"My mother's dead and my father's scared of me."
"Better."
She gave me an assessing gaze. "You helped Falcon catch Laiyla Billings' killer last summer. Now that she's famous, we have to study one of her books," she said, her tone implying that somehow that was my fault. "I told my teacher that unless it included an anti-boredom spell, we were screwed."
"She got lunch detention," Falcon added, and I thought Chiwa's scowl might set his hair on fire. "Oh! I almost forgot." He reached under the counter and pulled out a folder. He handed it to me. "The good witch left this for you."
"You know Ms. Fairview's not actually a practitioner," I said, opening the envelope.
"She was in tight with the vamps and stayed the noble path. That's magical, man."
"Whatever." I pulled out a report and glanced through it. My blood ran cold. By the time I was through, it was boiling with anger.
"I'm feelin' that's not good news," Falcon said.
"It's a summary of Cooper's investigation so far." I looked at Chiwa. "What school do you go to?"
"Why should I tell you?"
"The Rhea School for Practitioners," Falcon cut in, worry in his voice. "Why?"
"Seem like a good place?" I asked.
"Local coven thinks so."
"How about one called—" I checked the report. "Obdulia Torres School for the Exceptional. There's a mouthful."
Chiwa's scowling demeanor instantly shifted to a mix of excitement, envy and wistfulness, a combination only an adolescent girl could pull off without spraining something. "That's an awesome school! Only the really talented kids get to go there."
"Named for the first practitioner to step forward when the paras attacked New York. Protected a school full of kids," Falcon said with approval.
"Yeah. Good times." Not. I zeroed my attention back on Chiwa. "Know anything else about that place?"
Chiwa's enthusiasm dimmed. "My best friend got one of their scholarships. She left last week."
"She message you a lot?"
She shook her head. "But I'm cool with it. They're gonna be future covens leaders and stuff. They stay busy."
"I'll bet." I gave Falcon a hard look. "We need to talk. Alone."
"Can I go first?" Chiwa piped up. "Alone?"
I gave her my hard back-off-sucker stare, but she held her ground, her gaze steady and unblinking. Points for her.
I glanced at Falcon and he shrugged. "Sure. But make it fast," I said.
Falcon gave Chiwa a curious look which she ignored as he ambled around the counter and into his lab so the kid and I could talk alone. When he closed the door behind him, worry flickered over the girl's face and she stepped closer.
"I need to hire you," she whispered.
CHAPTER FOUR
I frowned at her, not sure how to respond to that. Her head barely came to my chest. Come to think of it, she barely even had a chest.
She was a kid. What could a kid possibly need a PI for? A missing puppy? "I'm expensive," I said.
"I have money."
"I don't mean your five credits for lunch. I mean expensive. As in five thousand. Half up front. Half when the job's done." A slight exaggeration, but I wanted to make a point.
She glanced away and worried her bottom lip between stark white teeth. After a moment, her big brown eyes came back to my face. "I can get that."
What was important enough to a twelve year old that they were willing to even talk to someone like me? Let alone lie about paying them?
Chiwa looked uncertain like she was thinking about backing out, but after a moment, she squared her shoulders and lifted her small, pointy chin, displaying the ever present defiance that I already associated with her. "I want you to investigate Falcon," she said.
I blinked. "Come again?"
"He and his guardian have been hosting me for almost two months. Uncle Ben's never here. I think Falcon might be in trouble."
Worry nibbled at the edge of my mind and my attention sharpened. If Falcon needed help, I wanted to know about it. "What kind of trouble?"
Her eyes almost betrayed the fear churning behind them before she beat it down and opted for annoyance. "How should I know? Isn't that what you're for?"
Smart aleck. "Some idea of what you think is going on would be useful."
"Shipments come in to the store a lot. Sometimes every week. Tibet. Africa. South America. All over. Some of them Falcon doesn't let me near. Others he has me unpack and catalog. Two days ago, I snuck a look into one of the forbidden boxes."
"Of course you did."
"The only thing in there was this ugly statue from like the stone age. No, 'I'll see you next week' notes. No return address. Nothing."
"Maybe Uncle Ben was in a hurry. I hear the indigenous tribes over there can be murder with their poison dart blow p
ipe thingys."
A frown creased her smooth forehead. "Uncle Ben is me and Falcon's guardian. What if he's doing something illegal? What if someone comes looking for him and finds out he's never here?" Her agitation expanded and her voice rose an octave. "They'll send me back to my dad!"
"Neglected by a criminal guardian. Have to go live with your father. I can see your problem. I would walk to Africa if it meant I could see my dad." And then I'd probably punch him in the nose for abandoning me, but that was beside the point.
"You don't understand." A flush skated over her cheeks.
"Sure I do. You're scared about being forced to be somewhere you don't want to be with someone you don't want to ever see again. I get it."
I knew I'd hit home when Chiwa scowled at me. "Are you going to take the job, or not?" she asked.
"I'll take it."
"Because I can totally find— What?"
"I grew up in the foster system. For kids who are different, it's no picnic."
She studied me, a crumb of respect and a boatload of curiosity churning in her eyes. "You're a lot like Falcon," she finally said.
"Not even."
"He covers it with goofing around. You do it by acting tough. Inside neither of you like to see people who don't deserve it getting hurt."
"Careful, kid. I might think you're warming up to me."
Chiwa gave me an up and down assessment and apparently decided that she found me lacking. "Don't worry. I still don't like you. You saw through my magic."
"Try hiding in a box to eavesdrop next time. Maybe that'll work out better for you."
* * *
I sent Chiwa across the street to get herself a hot chocolate, my treat. You'd think I'd given her a gold bar instead of my nearly depleted credit unit, she was so excited. I waited until she scooted out the front door and then bravely made my way around the counter and into Falcon's inner domain.
The modest-sized room had probably once dreamed of being an office. Instead, it was a mad scientist heaven. Wires, coils, metal sheets, bunsen burners, beakers, tubes, jars of things you did not want to look at too closely, old car parts...name it, and it lay in piles, lounged across table tops, hung from ceilings and generally seemed to be having a drunken party with the other junk.
