by DAVID B. COE
I hesitated. “Maui,” I said. “Wish you were here.”
“Sorry, shouldn’t have asked. Habit, you know? I swear that’s all it was.”
“I believe you. Gotta go.”
“Right. Stay safe.”
“I’m trying.”
I closed the phone and glanced at Rolon, who was already watching me.
“You’re in some serious trouble, aren’t you?”
I wasn’t crazy about the idea of sharing my problems with one of Jacinto Amaya’s attack dogs, but right about now he was the best friend I had. And moments ago he’d saved my life.
“I’m wanted for a murder I didn’t commit, and for the life of me I don’t know how I can prove I didn’t do it. So, yeah, I guess you could say I’m in some trouble.”
“And still you’re helping the cops. They might be able to track you with that call.”
I shrugged, my eyes on the road. “Would you let dark sorcerers get away with murder just to save your own skin?”
“I might. I’m not sure. But you didn’t, and I respect that.” He stared out his side window. “So will Jacinto.”
We got stuck in traffic passing through Phoenix on our way to North Scottsdale, and if it hadn’t been for the impending start of the phasing, I wouldn’t have minded at all. This was a very, very nice car. But I begrudged every minute we lost.
When we reached Amaya’s mansion, Rolon got us past the security guys without delay—maybe he sensed my impatience. He was still wobbly on his feet, and he made a show of letting me help him into the house, which I appreciated.
“What happened?” Jacinto asked, meeting us inside the door.
I explained it all as succinctly as I could: the visits to Hacker and then Bear, Saorla’s appearance and Hain’s arrival, and our escape.
“Your man saved my life,” I said, as Rolon sat on a couch sipping club soda. “And he’s lucky to be alive.”
“Good thing I’m built like a brick shithouse, eh, amigo?”
I grinned.
Jacinto smiled, too, but soon turned grim again. “I can’t help you with Saorla,” he said. “She’s beyond me. But this man Hain, I might be able to track him down.”
“I have the police working on it,” I said.
“I’m better than the police.”
I didn’t doubt it, but I also didn’t want Hain being found dead within a day or two of me mentioning his name to Kona. “Why don’t we give the police a chance first.”
He nodded. “All right.”
“I need the car for a while longer,” I said, already eager to get going. “Is that all right?”
Jacinto opened his hands, smiling faintly. “Mi coche es tu coche.”
“Thanks. And also for the Glock, by the way. It came in handy.”
“Where are you going next?”
I took a breath. “To be honest, I’m not sure.” I checked the time. Two o’clock. Daylight was slipping away, and I didn’t have much confidence in my ability to win this fight and exonerate myself before night fell and the phasing began.
“He needs a place to spend the night,” Rolon said. “He can’t go home.”
“Is that true?” Amaya asked.
“It’s true that I can’t go home.” As soon as I gave the matter even a moment’s thought, though, I knew that I couldn’t stay here, either. “But I have somewhere else I need to be.”
“With the woman? Miss Castle?”
I shook my head. “The police will be looking for me there. But Saorla will be looking for me out at my father’s place in Wofford. And if I’m not there, she’ll hurt him.”
“If you are there,” Rolon said, “she’ll kill you.”
“She’ll try.”
“Where does your father live?” Amaya asked, drawing my gaze.
In his saner moments, my father would be no happier than Kona about me working for Jacinto. He certainly wouldn’t want the man on his property, even to fight on the right side of a magical battle. Twenty years after leaving the force, my dad was still a cop to the core. And I wasn’t sure I gave a crap.
Long ago, as a safety precaution, I had memorized the GPS coordinates for my dad’s trailer. I wrote them down for Amaya.
He glanced at the paper and met my gaze once more. “Your old man crazy?”
I bristled at the question but kept my voice under control as I said, “Most of the time.”
He nodded. “Mine, too. If you let me help, I won’t allow anything bad to happen to him.”
“What’s your interest in this, Mister Amaya? You hired me, you put me on Regina Witcombe’s trail, you’re being more kind to me than I have any right to expect. And for the life of me, I don’t understand why. What’s in it for you?”
“Isn’t it possible that I do this because it’s the right thing to do? Even vicious drug lords have moments of altruism.”
I said nothing. I waited, watching him.
A brittle smile touched his lips. “Rolon, if you’re feeling up to it, find Paco and tell him we might be heading out to Wofford later in the day.”
Rolon eyed us both, then stood. “Sure thing.” He left the room, his gait steadier now than it was when we reached the house.
Once we were alone, Jacinto said, “There is an element of altruism in this. You can believe that or not, but it’s true. I meant what I said to you the first night you came here. Blood magic is an abomination. Even on those rare occasions when the ‘donors’ are volunteers, they rarely have a full understanding of what it is they’re about to do. And most of them are conscripts.”
I thought of Heather, and of Jeff, the man in Sweetwater Park, and I couldn’t quite suppress a shudder.
Amaya took a breath. “And as it happens, in this case my altruism dovetails nicely with my business interests.”
“How so?”
“Dark sorcerers are relatively new to the Phoenix area. They haven’t yet established themselves here to the extent they have in, say, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, New York, even Chicago. But in those other places, they have insinuated themselves into the street culture. They deal drugs, run prostitution rings, sell weapons to gangs.”
“Forgive me for saying so, Mister Amaya, but they sound a bit like you.”
I thought he might take offense, but he merely raised an eyebrow, a faint grin curving his lips.
“I told you, I have a business stake in this. The last thing I want is to have my . . . enterprises competing with those of dark sorcerers.” He sobered. “But it’s more than that. Yes, some of the drugs I bring into the city find their way to people you and I would call kids, even if they don’t see themselves that way. And some of the prostitution money that comes my way is sourced in the same age group. But when these dark crafters are hunting for blood for their spells, they almost always prey on the young, the kids living out in the streets. That might not be the pattern here yet, but it will be soon enough. It’s what they do in those other cities I mentioned. They kill kids for spells. That’s how dark magic works. And you in particular know this as well as I do, because it’s what Etienne de Cahors did with the Blind Angel killings.”
He was right. Almost every one of the Blind Angel victims, more than thirty all told, were street kids, many of them Latino or African American.
“I don’t want the competition,” he said, without any apparent shame. “And I don’t want them killing off my clientele.”
“That’s hardly admirable,” I said.
“I never claimed otherwise. You asked about my interest in all of this. I’m being honest.”
“But not entirely.”
Amaya’s expression calcified. “Meaning what?”
“I think there was another reason you had me brought here that first night. For some reason you thought that Witcombe and the others might come after you. You wanted them worrying about me instead.”
His mouth twitched to the side. “They were already worried about you,” he said. An admission. “I think you know they were. After Cahors you were
more important to them, more of a threat. I gave them one more reason to focus their energy on you.”
“And in the process you took some of the heat off yourself.”
“Yes,” he said. “But the rest of what I told you is true. They’re a danger to my livelihood, and I don’t take that lightly.”
“So you think that Regina Witcombe is prepared to bankroll a criminal empire to match yours?”
“No. Missus Witcombe is providing money now, to get them started. But I’m sure she’ll steer well clear of the drugs and prostitution.”
That made sense, too. Something Patty had said to me about Witcombe when I was under her control came back to me now. Before long, I’ll have access to enough income that we won’t need her . . . Did Patty Hesslan-Fine envision herself as a potential rival to Jacinto Amaya? Was that what Saorla had promised her, a criminal empire run from behind the unimpeachable façade of Sonoran Winds Realty? And in return, Saorla would have a veritable blood factory: thousands of kids trapped by drugs and prostitution, easy pickings for her and her weremancers. It made sense, in a twisted, terrifying way.
For now I kept this thought to myself, saying instead, “I figured out why they went to Washington, by the way, and why it is that Saorla would have been willing to kill Jimmy Howell and ground the plane to keep Witcombe and her companion safe.”
“Tell me.”
“They’ve figured out how to kill the Runeclave’s runemystes.”
For the first time since I’d met Amaya, I had the feeling that he had no earthly idea what to say. He stared at me, appearing stunned and more than a little frightened.
“They murdered one near Washington,” I said. “That’s also why they wanted me. They tried to use me to kill a runemyste I know. I was reluctant to tell you because generally speaking I don’t like to announce to the world that a runemyste has taken an interest in me. But I figure that if Saorla manages to kill me in the next day or two, someone else should know.”
“Does that mean you’ve come to trust me?”
I checked my watch again—another fifteen minutes gone. “I suppose so. Don’t tell anyone, all right?”
We both grinned.
“You have a reputation to uphold.”
“Exactly. Listen, I have to leave. I’m guessing that Saorla wants to find me again before the phasing begins and her weremyste friends are no longer any use to her. And that’s fine with me, but I need to be prepared.”
“As I’ve told you before, I can help you with this. I’ll fight.”
“I’m not sure that’s such a good idea.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m still wanted by the police, and I’m not sure it would be helpful to either of us to be seen together.”
“You were planning to bring in the police for a fight against dark sorcerers?”
I started to shake my head, then stopped myself. And as I did an idea came to me, a crazy idea, but one that might allow me to solve all of my problems at once. Something else occurred to me as well, and before I knew it I had the bare outlines of a plan. “All right,” I said. “I’d be glad to have your help with this.” I pointed at the paper on which I’d written the coordinates of my dad’s trailer. “Meet me there an hour before the moonrise. And bring Paco and Rolon—Luis, too, if you can get word to him.” I started toward his front door.
“Anything else?”
I heard the irony in his tone; he wasn’t used to taking orders from anyone. Fortunately, he seemed more amused than offended by my manner. “Yeah,” I said over my shoulder. “Make sure you ward yourselves.”
I climbed back into the Lexus and drove to one of the fancy malls in Scottsdale that had a covered parking complex. Once there, I sent Kona a text message telling her to meet me on level three of the parking garage.
I knew that it would take her some time to get there, and also that she wouldn’t know what car to watch for. I was fine with that. I didn’t think that Kona and Kevin intended to arrest me for Heather’s murder, but I preferred to go into this encounter with a few advantages, just in case. I sat in the car and waited, checking out each vehicle as it cruised onto the third level, making sure that none of the cars carried detectives.
I spotted Kona and Kevin about half an hour later, almost as soon as they drove into the lot. Still, I remained in the Lexus as they pulled into a space and turned off their car. They got out right away. I didn’t. I hunkered down a bit lower and watched them for a few minutes, waiting for any sign that they had backup with them. When I was convinced that they didn’t, I got out and walked toward them, my steps echoing off the low cement ceiling.
Kona spotted me right off, but she didn’t move and she didn’t seem to say anything to Kevin, at least not until I was close to them.
I halted about twenty feet short of where they stood, and glanced around. “Thanks for coming,” I said.
Kona buried her hands in her blazer pocket. “There a reason we’re here, and not in the open someplace?”
I shook my head. “Not a good one. I didn’t feel like waiting for you in the sun.”
She gazed past me, trying to get a glimpse of the car I’d been in. “What are you driving?”
“A loaner. Anytime the forensic guys are done with my 280Z, I’d be glad to have her back.”
“I’ll let them know. You doing all right?”
“Considering,” I said. “It’s been quite a day.”
“Right,” she said. “About that, your friend Martell wasn’t at his place when the Avondale cops got there, but they tracked him down at the local hospital. Did you break his arm?”
“Yeah, but it was a leg when I did it.”
She frowned.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Kevin asked in a hard voice. I had the sense that he was less convinced than Kona of my innocence in Heather Royce’s killing.
“He’s a were,” I said. “He attacked me in his bear form and I used a spell to break his leg. When he shifted back to human form, that leg became an arm.”
He didn’t say anything. I couldn’t tell from the way he was watching me if he thought I was crazy or lying. Kona, for her part, seemed to be struggling not to laugh.
“Anything on Hain?” I asked.
“Not yet,” she said. “He doesn’t show up in any of our files, and he’s not listed as being a resident of Phoenix or any of the surrounding cities.”
I rubbed a hand over my face. “Yeah,” I said, as much to myself as to her. “I probably should have expected that.”
“We have your description, and the name. Even if it’s an alias, we should be able to track him down.”
“I hope so.” I glanced around again, and after taking a few steps toward them, cast the same muffling spell I’d used in Bear’s house. Neither Kevin nor Kona noticed, of course. But I didn’t want Saorla hearing what I had to say next.
“I need to get out to see my dad. Is anyone from the PPD watching his place?”
“That’s not—”
“No,” Kona said, talking over Kevin and glaring at him. “Nobody’s there. Your place, your office, Billie’s hospital room. They’re all being watched.”
“Kona—”
“What part of ‘he didn’t do it’ do you not understand?” she said, rounding on him.
“I thought we were friends, Kevin.”
He stared at her for another moment before turning back to me. “We are, Jay. But you’re wanted for murder, and I don’t take that lightly.”
“Neither do I. Neither does Kona. But these other murders you’re investigating—Jimmy Howell, the killing in Sweetwater Park and the others like it—those are real, and they were all committed by weremystes. I can help you with those, and the people who framed me for Heather Royce’s murder know that.” To Kona I said, “My father’s trailer would be a natural place for me to go to. How did you keep them from sending someone to watch it?”
She flashed her million-dollar smile. “By telling them that we’d tak
e care of it.”
I smiled back at her. “Thanks.” Sobering, I said, “There’s something else you should know. And you’re not going to like it.”
“Okay.”
“When I first mentioned to you that dark magic might have played a role in the murders you’re investigating, you asked me who my source was, and I wouldn’t tell you.”
“I remember. You’re going to tell me now?”
“Only if you promise not to blow a gasket.”
“I’m not promising anything.”
I stared back at her, saying nothing until she rolled her eyes and said, “Fine, I promise. Who was it?”
“Jacinto Amaya.”
Kevin muttered, “Shit.”
Kona looked like she wanted to take a swing at me. “Jacinto freakin’ Amaya?” She said, her voice surging upward and echoing so loudly I was sure Saorla would hear her, despite my spell.
“He hired me,” I said. “I’ve violated the privacy of a client in telling you that, but I thought you should know. A lot can happen between now and tonight’s moonrise, and I’m not sure I’ll survive it all. I know that you have list a mile long of crimes you’d like to pin on him, but in this one respect he’s on the side of the angels.”
“I’m not entirely sure I care. If I can nail him for anything, I’ll do it.”
“Not this, Kona. I need his help. And if something happens to me, you’ll need it, too.”
“What’s going to happen to you?” Kevin asked.
“I don’t know. But I had a similar conversation with Amaya not too long ago. I have a bad feeling about tonight. There’s a powerful myste out there—Namid calls her a necromancer—and she’s good and pissed at me. If she gets a chance to kill me she will. And she might have help from Patty Hesslan-Fine, Regina Witcombe, Palmer Hain, and whoever they hang out with on poker night. I have a lot of enemies right now. Plus, in case you didn’t know, I’m wanted for murder.”
“What can we do to help?” Kona asked.
I hesitated. “Probably nothing.”
“Probably?”
My gaze flicked toward Kevin. “I’m not sure how much I can ask of the two of you right now.”
Kevin and Kona shared a glance before facing me again. For the moment I ignored her and watched Kevin.
