Ashes and Arsenic

by SM Reine

  My arm locked around the passenger’s throat, holding him against the headrest.

  “Stop the car or I’ll shoot,” I said.

  The woman’s eyes were wide in the mirror. “You don’t have a gun. I searched you myself. I grabbed the only one I could find.”

  “You missed the other one.” The key to selling a bluff is confidence. Gotta have it in the voice, the eyes, the posture, everything. Believe it yourself and other people will, too.

  I’m not a great bluff. I always lose at poker.

  But the woman got all tense, and I could see her thinking about it. Trying to decide if I could really have a gun. Assessing how likely I was to shoot.

  The guy with the bottle in his side? Well, he was just sweating.

  “Don’t do this, man,” he whimpered. “You don’t understand how bad shit will get for you.”

  I pressed the bottle in harder. “I told you to stop the car, lady.”

  Now he was sweating and trembling. “Stop the car, Gina!”

  “I can’t! We’re almost there!”

  “Good to know,” I said. “Stop the damn car and let me out. Now.”

  “There’s no shoulder here,” Gina said. “There isn’t anywhere to stop.” She was talking too fast, babbling with panic. My captors were pretty panicky, considering they were thugs. What the fuck was I supposed to do if they called my bluff, however unintentionally?

  “Okay, then turn the car around,” I said.

  My arm got too loose around the passenger’s neck. He managed to squirm around, look down at his side where I was holding the bottle.

  He barked a laugh.

  Shit.

  “He doesn’t have a gun,” the guy said.

  I grabbed him again, gripping him tighter. “That doesn’t mean I can’t hurt you. Both of you.”

  We were traveling as slowly as I could hope for. It was time to bail. But when I reached back to open a door, the lever didn’t do anything. It was unlocked; it just wasn’t responding.

  We were in some kind of sedan, maybe just a few years old. Family car. That meant it had child locks. Couldn’t open the doors from the inside unless I disengaged them.

  Gina was still watching the road as it climbed and twisted through the hills. “We’ll go right off the road if you kill us.”

  Before I could decide what to do, the man broke out of my grip and jumped into the back seat with me.

  I got my first good look at the guy who had stuffed me in his trunk. The stained jeans with dirty fingernails told me that he wasn’t a guy who sat on his ass all day pushing papers. He was a guy who got down in the mud and got shit done.

  He’d found zip ties somewhere. “Hold still so I can tie you down.”

  Yeah, that sounded like a great fucking idea.

  I leaned back, kicked him in the face. He wasn’t expecting it. He took my heel in the nose and the bone snapped.

  “Stop fighting!” Gina was on the brink of hysterics now. The car swerved.

  “Watch the goddamn road!” I yelled back.

  The man tried to punch me. I lurched out of the way and his knuckles only connected with one of the windows. He shouted with pain.

  His second strike connected with my gut, forced the air out of my lungs.

  He tried to grab my hands. The plastic of the zip ties scraped my wrists.

  Not gonna happen.

  I grabbed his shirt, flipped us around so that he was flat on his back on the seats. As I’d learned several times with girls in high school, there wasn’t enough room in the back seat of a sedan for me to flatten him out. The back of his head smacked into the door of the car hard enough to stun him.

  “Fuck,” he groaned.

  Holding him down with one hand, I fumbled at the driver’s side door. Gina shrieked when I brushed her ribs accidentally. “Stop it! Stop it!”

  My hand slipped over the child lock button.

  Got it.

  I yanked on the lever of the rear door, throwing it open.

  The car swerved again. The tilt almost made the door slam closed, but I jammed my foot in the way. It bounced off my leg instead. Not gently. There’d probably be a bruise.

  The passenger recovered enough to sit up and wrap his arm around my throat. He tried to drag me away from the door, forcing one of my arms behind my back.

  When the car swung around the next corner, the door opened again.

  I twisted my head, sank my teeth into the hand of the guy holding me. He tasted like motor oil and dirt. Fucking delicious.

  He released me with a shout.

  And before I could think too much about it, I hurled myself out of the back seat of a moving car.

  I like to think of myself as kind of an athlete. Sure, I’ve always spent more time nerding out over comic books than playing sports, but I’d done my fair share of football, baseball, and soccer at school. Anything that let me run around a few extra hours at school so I wouldn’t have to go home.

  In other words, I’ve been getting minor concussions since high school. Ever had a teenage linebacker flatten you to the grass? It doesn’t feel good. Neither does getting hit in the face with a baseball bat, which I’d gotten to enjoy a few times as an umpire.

  You learn to deal with that kind of pain after a while. Visit the hospital once, pop some Tylenol a couple times, and it stops being impressive.

  Or your brain just gets knocked so silly that you don’t feel it as much.

  Whatever.

  I’ve done the hard impact thing before, is what I’m saying, and jumping out of a car moving at thirty miles per hour is a hell of a lot worse.

  The ground lifted to meet my body. I smashed into something that tasted like granite and blood. Then I dropped. I dropped fast and far and kept rolling. Sky and earth flashed around me. Thorny fingers raked down the neck of my shirt, in my hair, across my knees.

  At some point, my body stopped.

  Took a while for me to notice because it felt like my brain kept doing flips in my skull. I couldn’t focus on anything.

  But I also couldn’t hear car noises anymore. I must have fallen far enough from the road to escape the car. For now.

  “Bad idea,” I groaned. “Bad goddamn idea.”

  “Took you long enough to figure that out, dumbass.”

  I rolled over, looked up at what I thought was the sky. There weren’t any trees above me. Just a single tall, blurry figure.

  “I must have knocked myself stupid, because I can’t be hearing what I’m hearing,” I said.

  “The fall didn’t knock you stupid. You were already stupid.” The man crouched beside me, bringing the knees of his tracksuit into focus. They were blue with white stripes on the sides. Only one guy was tacky enough to wear something like that outside the gym. “What were you thinking?”

  It was hard to say what I’d been thinking in the car. The survival urge is powerful. It has a way of dominating common sense.

  But right now?

  All I could think was that I’d finally found my bank robber.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  BY THE TIME WE reached Domingo’s cabin, we’d hiked for a half an hour in the kind of temperatures that were usually reserved for the surface of the sun. My face and the back of my neck hurt. Salty sweat stung the beginnings of my sunburn.

  And the cabin didn’t have air conditioning.

  If a random hiker ever stumbled across the cabin, they would have thought they’d walked right into a horror movie. There were animal bones hanging from the walls, juicier body parts kept in jars, and all the crystals that had been missing from Domingo’s basement. His ritual knives were laid out on the table in a long line, sorted by size. The floor had a permanent pentagram painted on it, although living room furniture covered half of the thing.

  I knew none of that stuff was from a horror movie, but it still made me sick to see it. When a witch got into body parts and bloodletting—the main reason you’d need so many ritual knives and glass bowls—you knew they were getting i
nto big spellcasting.

  Someone had set a bowl of ice in front of one of the windows, which was cracked open. A box fan circulated the air through the room. I stood in front of it, let it cool down my sweat. “This is a hideout, isn’t it?” I asked. “People are after you.” People like me.

  “Yeah, it’s been one of those weeks.” He made a face at me. “Feels like it’s been one of those weeks for you, too.”

  I’d survived my brother’s kitchen explosion, but not unscathed—that much power had drenched me in residual magic. Attack spells left some of the worst residue. Other witches would sense power on me that was somewhere between “rotten eggs” and “mountain of dinosaur shit” on the magical-stench scale. Luckily, my head cold seemed to have left me metaphorically nose blind to it.

  Domingo elbowed me away from the fan. “That’s mine.”

  “You’re the one wearing a tracksuit in the middle of a heat wave. That’s your fault.” But I didn’t fight him for the spot. My heart wasn’t in it.

  We hadn’t talked on our walk to the cabin. It’s hard to talk when you can’t even breathe through the heat. Now that we were somewhere fractionally cooler, it was time to face reality.

  “It’s not a coincidence that the people who kidnapped me dragged me to a road right by your cabin, is it?” I asked.

  “By ‘kidnappers,’ do you mean Gina and Murray? I saw you jump out of their car.”

  I didn’t want to ask, but I had to. “Who are they? Gang members? Accomplices?”

  “Coven members,” Domingo said. “Remember last time we talked? I was looking at starting a coven. I recruited Gina at my gym, Murray at the body shop I go to.”

  “Emcee’s?” I asked.

  Domingo gave me a suspicious look. The air from the fan made his tracksuit ripple around his body. It was stained at the pits and chest, just like my shirt was now. “Are you investigating me?”

  “I was at your house. That’s where this happened.” I pointed at myself, indicating the foul residue hanging off of my clothes and skin. “Someone tried to blow you up, Domingo.”

  He didn’t look surprised. “My house?”

  “Only partially demolished. Who’s out to get you?”

  “Fuckers,” he said. “Motherfuckers with no respect.”

  “Did you arrange to have me abducted?”

  “I’ve got no idea how that happened. We’ll have to ask when they catch up.” He checked his Rolex. “It’s a long way when you’re driving instead of falling down the hill. Give them fifteen. Do you really think I’d keep thugs around? Or that I’d tell them to abduct you?”

  I paced his creaky wooden floor. It was dusty, dirty, covered in his laundry. I kicked a pair of his shoes into the corner. “I didn’t think you were a bank robber, and I just got proved wrong about that, so—”

  “Bank robber?”

  “I saw you on First Bank’s security footage,” I said. “Your magical fingerprints were all over the break-in. It’s your style.”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “I haven’t been this serious about anything since I thought Jennifer Henry gave me herpes in sophomore year of high school.” She hadn’t, for the record. I’d just gotten intimate with poison ivy on a camping trip. But that was a story for another time.

  Domingo leaned against the windows, folded his arms, fixed me with a hard look. “I’m going to give it to you straight, Cèsar. I know what happened to the bank and it’s bad. It’s real fucking bad.”

  “You did it,” I said.

  “Hell no. My coven’s in a territory battle with another coven. They’ve framed me for the robbery and taken the money for themselves.”

  It was exactly what I wanted to hear—that someone else had committed the crime that I was investigating for the Office of Preternatural Affairs. That I wasn’t going to have to black bag my brother, send him to a Union detention center, and never see him again.

  And that was exactly why I didn’t believe him. It felt too good to hear it.

  “Try again,” I said.

  Domingo lifted his eyebrows. “You don’t believe me?”

  “If you weren’t guilty of anything, then why’d you ditch your house to hide out in this shitty cabin?”

  “Because they’re trying to kill me,” he said.

  Someone had blown up his house. I’d seen it myself. Maybe someone was trying to kill him.

  That didn’t change the footage I’d seen at the bank.

  “Come on, Domingo. Don’t lie to me. You’ve done shit like this before.”

  “I cleaned up years ago. You still don’t fucking trust me?” Domingo shook his head. “Well, you’re right. If I’d thought of it first, I would have robbed that bank and pinned it on that bitch Lenox. But I didn’t do it.” Something I didn’t recognize burned in his eyes, something cruel. “The high priestess of this other coven—Lenox—she fucking deserves it. She’s killed two of my guys so far.”

  “Who?” I asked. “Give me names. Give me something to verify.”

  “Ahmed MacFarlane and Susana Barb. Look them up—they’re missing.”

  “And you’re sure they’re dead?”

  “Pretty fucking sure. I haven’t seen bodies, but…” He shook his head.

  I dragged a wooden chair with a broken back over to sit across from Domingo.

  “Okay,” I said. “Tell me about this supposed other coven, this…territory battle.”

  He sat back, narrowing his eyes at me. “Are you saying you believe me?”

  “I’m saying I’ll listen.”

  “Yeah, all right. The coven is based in Half Moon Bay, up by San Mateo. They’re one of the older covens. They go back five, maybe six generations in America. But the line of witches is a lot longer than that. You know what those types are like.”

  Unfortunately, I did. The old coven families were arrogant to a fault—and dangerous, too.

  After a few generations to perfect their magic, which they passed down in tomes called Books of Shadows, old covens tended to accrue significant wealth. Wealth meant sway over businesses, politicians.

  Domingo and I were the latest generation of an old witching family—the Mejías—but our forebears’ coven was in El Salvador, along with all the influence, wealth, and knowledge that went with that. My siblings and I weren’t into the politics that most old coven witches were.

  Or so I’d thought.

  “So you’re fighting them on it,” I said.

  “Hell yeah, I’m fighting them on it. What am I supposed to do? Roll over and let them have the city? Lenox is crazy. She’s mean. She’ll fuck everything up.”

  “Then let the Office of Preternatural Affairs handle it. If the Half Moon Bay Coven’s as much trouble as you think, we’ll take them off the map.”

  “They’ve already killed two of my guys,” Domingo said. “Where the fuck has your agency been?”

  I started pacing again. I couldn’t hold still. The air in the cabin was hot and my whole body itched. “I’ll get these guys, Domingo. If what you’re saying is true—I’ll get them.” More words got caught on my chest. I had to clear my throat to keep talking. “But right now, I need to take you in.”

  “Arrest me?” he asked.

  “Your face is on the bank’s security footage. I told you that. If it was manipulated to frame you, then we’ll find out, you’ll get released, and your information will help us catch this Lenox.”

  “But I didn’t do it!”

  “Let me prove it,” I said. “And let me do it the right way.”

  “You think it’s right to throw your brother to the dogs?”

  “Don’t be such a drama queen. We’re not dogs. We’re the law.”

  “Stop pacing,” Domingo said. “You’re going to scuff my pentagram.” I stopped where I was standing. I folded my arms, unfolded them. Still too much energy not to fidget. “Think about this. If you take me in and Lenox has done her job right—hiding the evidence real good—then I’m fucked.” He rubbed a hand ove
r his sweaty upper lip. “How much did she steal from the bank anyway?”

  It was technically confidential, like all the details of an ongoing investigation, but there was no way a robbery that size wouldn’t hit the news soon. “Five million.”

  “Five—” He stood up, took two steps toward the knives on the table, then stopped himself. He rounded on me again. He was pale. “Five million?”

  “She can’t use it. We’re watching for that money.”

  “Lenox can use anything she wants. She’s into illusion magic. She can make everyone who handles that money see different numbers. You know what an enemy coven can do with that much money?”

  I had a few ideas. “You’re telling me that this illusion magic is why you’re on the security footage.”

  “What do you think?”

  I didn’t know what to think. Domingo seemed genuine, but it was so hard to trust. He’d always been convincingly earnest.

  “Either way, the OPA has resources I need to investigate properly. And my contract says—”

  “Fuck your contract.” He caught my hand, clenching it hard in his fist. “We’re brothers. That’s more important than any contract.” I tried to pull away. He just hung on harder. “I helped you when shit got real and you were on the run from the OPA. Didn’t I? Doesn’t that mean anything?”

  Damn it.

  My resolve was wavering big time.

  This was a bad idea. A real bad idea. I’d investigated off of the OPA’s radar before, but only because I’d been accused of murder and had no other choice.

  Now Domingo was facing essentially the same thing.

  “How’s this going to go down, Cèsar? Are you going to arrest me?”

  It shouldn’t have even been a discussion. I should have taken him into custody. Walked him to the road, stolen Gina’s car, taken him straight to the OPA campus for questioning.

  But I wavered.

  What if he was telling me the truth? What if I turned him in and the Union made him disappear into a black bag, like they so often did? A single day in a Union detention center had almost driven Suzy insane.

  “You asshole,” I said. The seed of doubt had been planted. It was too strong.