Ashes and Arsenic

by SM Reine

  It wasn’t so bad when we were kids. We mostly messed around the house, went to the movie theater, read lots of comic books. Ofelia would deny it, but she liked comics almost as much as I did at the time.

  During the week, we went to public school. On the weekends, Pops and Abuelita taught magic to Domingo and me. It was a fun pastime. We got decent at our respective specialties. And being a kid who casts magic is great. The three of us pretended to be the Fantastic Four all the damn time, using actual magic to emulate their powers.

  I always ended up as The Thing. That’s what happens when you’re a chunky kid.

  Anyway, childhood with Pops was good. Better than it had been with Mom and Dad.

  Then we became teenagers.

  We pushed boundaries. We started breaking rules. Domingo got ambitious and started breaking actual laws.

  When we didn’t behave, Pops would curse us.

  Literally.

  He was great at curses. The guy could burn off your eyebrows from fifty miles away. And he cast lightning-fast, so I’d be fine one second and barfing my guts all over the sidewalk in about three minutes flat. He’d kept an active circle of power in his closet for speedy discipline.

  Pops was getting old now. He was almost the same age Abuelita had been when they took us in. He’d broken his hip a couple times, fucked up his back. He didn’t walk too well.

  He could still cast curses like a motherfucker, though.

  If there was anyone who could protect Domingo from an entire coven bent on murdering him, it was Pops. And if there was anyone who could force Domingo to stop being an idiot, it was Pops.

  I wasn’t sure who I felt sorrier for—Lenox’s coven, or Domingo.

  Pops limped into Domingo’s hospital room an hour after I called him. I hadn’t seen him since delivering his iPhone for Christmas, and it shocked me how old he looked. The dashing, black-haired man who’d raised me had aged into a wrinkled, gray-haired man with a hunchback who looked strikingly like Abuelita.

  I’d seen him since he’d gotten old, of course. We weren’t that out of touch. But in my mind, Pops would always be strong, middle-aged, and intimidatingly huge.

  He carried a lumpy duffel bag over one shoulder. It looked much too heavy for a man in his seventies to carry.

  “Let me take that,” I said.

  He slapped my hand when I reached for the strap. “Look with your eyes, not with your hands.” Same thing he’d told me when I’d tried to get into the circle in his closet. I wasn’t a kid anymore, but I behaved as automatically as I had when I lived under his roof.

  Pops didn’t need my help anyway. The limp was deceptive. He was aging, but hardly getting old. He’d probably die twenty or thirty years down the road because he’d gotten struck by lightning while repairing his roof.

  Like all the Hawke men, Pops was tall and sturdy. Built for work, he used to say. The curve to his spine was from a back surgery gone wrong. His skin was a shade of warm brown a fraction darker than mine, his eyes more black than brown, with a thick crop of white hair that showed no signs of thinning.

  “Thanks for coming,” I said, glancing at the clock on the wall. It felt like I was waiting for an appointment even though I didn’t have anything planned. “The nurse said she’d be around to make the guest bed in a few minutes, but—”

  “Guest bed.” He snorted, dropping the duffel bag on the floor. “You know I don’t sleep. Especially not when I’m expecting someone to try to kill us.”

  “You’ll call me if anything happens?”

  “I’ll call you if I need you,” Pops said, which was his way of saying that he wouldn’t call for help if he were on the brink of death.

  He kicked the duffel bag under the chair before sitting in it. The glare he threw at Domingo’s unconscious face was familiar. I’d seen that face a few times when he’d left to pick Domingo up from the police station, or caught him climbing out of the windows at night, or when Pops had discovered a rabbit sacrificed under my brother’s bed.

  That was the “you’re in deep shit” expression.

  “Domingo told me that he’s in the middle of a territory war with a coven from San Francisco,” I said. “If anyone comes, I think—”

  “Shut up, Cèsar. I want to hear the story from Domingo’s mouth.”

  I was a grown man, out of my family’s house for years, and it still stung to hear that from Pops. You never grow out of feeling like a child when a parent talks like that.

  “I’m investigating the case. I know what’s going on,” I said.

  “You’re his brother, so you’re not going to tell me any facts. Just what you think are facts. And I don’t want to hear that. I want to hear what he’s done in his words.”

  Yeah, I did too. I’d have loved to know what the fuck Domingo had been doing hiding out at that mausoleum.

  “Did you know there were Mejías in Los Angeles?” I asked.

  Pops scratched his whiskered chin. “Of course there were. Abuelita was a Mejía. Some of her nieces and cousins came this way, too.”

  “Witches?”

  “Not exactly,” he said. “Magically inclined, yes. Trained, no. Women of the Mejía line aren’t allowed to cast magic.”

  I remembered that. Ofelia had been endlessly frustrated by the way Pops stonewalled her training. She’d have been as good a witch as Domingo, easy, but she hadn’t been allowed to study with us. “Why can’t they cast magic? And don’t tell me that family curse bullshit again.”

  “It is a family curse. It’s dangerous for the women to cast. Draws the wrong kind of attention on us.”

  “Like rival covens looking to steal power from our family in some way?” I asked. “That wouldn’t have anything to do with magical artifacts, would it?”

  Pops gave me an appraising look, like he was trying to decide if I was old enough to know about the Mejía women. “The Mejías are the best magical craftsmen I’ve ever heard of. They created foci that could funnel unusual amounts of power. Some dimensional work, too.”

  Now that was rare. Suzy was the only witch I knew who could bend dimensions at all. The OPA had only discovered her because she’d modified her townhouse so it was bigger on the inside than the outside, after all.

  “Could I do dimensional work?” I asked.

  “Don’t be stupid. Just the women. Are you a woman?” Pops shook his head. “No, there’s something special about their blood—our blood—and that went into every magical artifact they crafted. But they don’t make them anymore. None still exist, either. Everything was destroyed.”

  “Destroyed?”

  “Burned, melted down, the magic stripped. It was all too dangerous to exist. Abuelita wouldn’t talk about it. All she would ever say was that Mejía magic was forbidden and I’d be smart not to ask questions. So I haven’t. The same goes for you.” He folded his arms, sat back in the chair. “How did you find out about them?”

  “You wanted to hear everything from Domingo’s mouth,” I said. “You’ll have to ask him.”

  That was the kind of talk that would have gotten me grounded for a week as a kid.

  Now Pops only nodded, letting me drop the subject.

  He grabbed a paperback I’d left on the bedside table and read the title off of the spine. “Neuromancer?”

  “It’s a good book,” I said. “One of my favorites.”

  “I’m borrowing it. Go arrest some witches before they finish off Domingo.”

  “Don’t you want to know who to look for? What kind of magic you’ll be up against?”

  “I think I can identify an enemy when they try to kill us, kiddo. I was hexing other witches before your father shot his first load across a Playboy.”

  Talking about Dad’s jizz was always my cue to leave.

  Cell reception wasn’t very good in the hospital, so when I got close to the exterior hall, text messages were delivered to my phone in a big batch. Most of them were automated updates from the OPA dispatcher, but a few were from Suzy. The case was
spinning its wheels. Aniruddha had kept his promise and told the OPA nothing about what had happened with Lenox.

  That didn’t mean I liked the guy, or his relationship with Suzy. It just meant I didn’t have another excuse to punch him yet.

  After I checked all of the text messages, my phone rang. I didn’t recognize the number. I answered it as I walked through the hospital parking garage. “Cèsar Hawke.”

  “Agent Hawke, it’s—it’s Gareth Milbourne, I don’t—God, please help me!” The manager of the First Bank sounded like he was running, breathless, terrified.

  The spike of adrenaline instantly slaughtered the melancholy hanging over me. I picked up my pace, pulled out my keys. “What’s wrong? Where are you?”

  “I’m at the bank. I thought that I was alone…” He stopped talking, but I could still hear his choppy breathing. Metal slammed against metal. Cloth scuffed against the phone.

  Jumping into my car, I turned on the engine. “Mr. Milbourne, try to stay calm and tell me what’s happening.”

  “The witches!” he cried.

  The call went dead.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  SUZY ARRIVED AT THE First Bank of the Sierras only a few seconds before I did. She was still tucking her shirt in, buckling her underarm holster, pulling her jacket on. It was the middle of the night, so the temperature had dropped to eighty degrees—nowhere near jacket weather, but openly carrying guns in Los Angeles was a bad idea, even with a fake FBI badge.

  I parked in the fire lane and jumped out.

  “What’s going on?” Suzy asked. I’d been in too much of a hurry to explain when I’d called her.

  “I got a call from Gareth Milbourne twenty minutes ago,” I said. “I think he’s been attacked.”

  I peered through the shattered window. It was boarded up until contractors could install new glass, but through the gaps, I could see the empty lobby.

  There should have been a security guard posted on the sidewalk.

  “Look too empty to you?” Suzy asked grimly, drawing her gun.

  “Much too empty,” I agreed.

  I kicked the boards in. They splintered in half. Punching the remnants away, I forced my way inside of the lobby. Suzy followed.

  Magic buzzed all over the ground floor of the First Bank of the Sierras, a place where magic had no right to be. My nose itched. I breathed shallowly, trying not to sneeze, but I couldn’t do anything about my watering eyes.

  “Why would someone come back here?” I asked Suzy. My every footstep crunched against the glass. “They already robbed this place.”

  “Your guess is as good as mine.” Suzy shone her flashlight on each of the desks in turn. Nothing had been moved since we’d arrived the morning of the robbery. “Are you going to tell me what happened at the warehouse today?”

  I was so focused on the magic that I didn’t register the question the first time. She had to repeat herself before I could answer. “We got in a tangle with the bad guys. That’s what happened.”

  “And then? Where did you and your brother go?”

  It was hard to swallow around the sudden lump in my throat.

  “Domingo’s been poisoned by arsenic,” I said. “I had to get him to St. Agathon’s.” It was true, aside from skipping everything in between that had happened with Lenox and Aisha.

  Suzy actually managed to look sympathetic. “Does he know how it happened?”

  “He’s not awake. We can’t question him.”

  “Fuck,” she said. “That’s bad, that’s really bad.” The sense of magic being cast inside the building spiked. Suzy frowned. “Did you feel that?”

  I could feel it all the way into my aching chest. It was similar to the sensation that I’d experienced underneath the Mejía mausoleum, although it was weaker—or maybe more distant.

  The witch who’d tried to sacrifice Domingo wasn’t far.

  “We’ve gotta search the building,” I said.

  Suzy was already trying the elevator button. “Way ahead of you.”

  The elevators didn’t work. No surprise there. The bank probably hadn’t returned to utility power since the robbery.

  I explored behind the teller desks, looking for a sign of the magic I was feeling. I didn’t find anything new. The elevator to the basement, where the vault was hidden, was still locked safely behind a door that I couldn’t get through. As far as I could tell, the witch hadn’t come back for money.

  Papers slid off of one of the desks near the back wall, crashing to the floor.

  Suzy was still on the other side of the room. She hadn’t knocked those papers over.

  Gun half lifted, I approached the desk.

  There was a woman crouching behind it. She wore so much black that she blended into the shadows surrounding her. If she’d been trying to hide from me, I never would have seen her, but she wasn’t trying to hide.

  It was Aisha.

  She beckoned me over, a finger to her lips.

  I lowered my gun, then lifted it again. I had no idea how I was supposed to treat her now. Good guy? Bad guy? Chaotic neutral, like she was fucking Catwoman?

  In any case, it was probably safer to keep her in my sights.

  “What the fuck are you doing here?” I hissed, crouching beside her.

  She glanced over the top of the desk, making sure Suzy wasn’t nearby. “I came for the same reason you did. Someone’s cast a big spell here. The magic feels like Domingo’s.”

  “Domingo’s in the fucking hospital,” I hissed. “He almost got sacrificed!”

  “I know.” Aisha looked disturbed by the fact. “That witch wasn’t working under Lenox’s orders.”

  “Then who was it?”

  “No idea. He escaped.”

  “So you think there’s maybe a tiny chance you’ve been wrong about everything? That Domingo has nothing to do with the pentagram ritual, and you’ve been trying to kill an innocent man?”

  “He might have nothing to do with the pentagram,” Aisha said, “but he still killed DeShawn.”

  For fuck’s sake. She wasn’t dropping it.

  We didn’t have time to argue, though. “Leave this scene to me. I’ll investigate. This place is about to be crawling with OPA personnel and you don’t want to be on site when they arrive.”

  “But Lenox sent me here to investigate.”

  “What? Why?” I’d assumed she was responsible for the magic, just as she was responsible for the robbery in her basement. “Do you think Lenox knows you’re not on her side? Maybe she sent you here to throw us off her trail.”

  “She’s smart, but not that subtle. If she realized that I’m trying to take her down, I’d be chained in a basement with so many curses on me that I wouldn’t cast straight for a month.”

  Voices from the front.

  The Union had arrived.

  It was tempting to call out, have the guys arrest her. But I didn’t want them to take Aisha for the same reason I didn’t want them to take Domingo. They’d make her vanish.

  “You need to get out without being seen,” I said.

  Aisha’s jaw clenched. “And lose a chance to nail whoever’s casting this big spell? No way.”

  “It’s Lenox. It’s gotta be Lenox.”

  “What if it’s not?”

  The Union unit was talking with Suzy. Their voices echoed through the lobby. Sounded like they were moving in our direction.

  I turned back to Aisha to urge her to leave again—but she was already gone. I was alone behind the desk.

  Yeah, definitely most like Catwoman.

  I jogged over to join Suzy and the Union unit.

  “Elevator isn’t working,” she said. “We’ll have to take the stairs.”

  The Union aspis beside her laughed. It was a man I’d worked with before named Harding, a skinny guy with white tattoos ringing his wrists. “This building is, what, only forty floors tall? No problem.”

  “Take these.” The team’s commanding kopis, Alfredo, gave Bluetooth headsets to Suzy and
me.

  I stuck it in my ear, pressed the button. The voices of OPA dispatch and the entire team immediately filled my skull. The Union coordinated all their movements using those headsets. Never saw the guys without them. I didn’t like putting one on—it made me feel like the entire agency had crawled into my brain.

  But like Harding had said, we had forty floors to cover.

  Sometimes a little help didn’t hurt.

  Even taking the stairs two at a time, getting up those forty floors was slow. We had to stop on every landing to search for signs of spellcasting.

  Alfredo scouted ahead, searching the higher floors for danger. His voice was a constant stream of updates shot straight into my ear. “Floor twelve is clear. No power here. Heading up to thirteen… Thirteen’s dark, too. Looks like nothing but offices. Feeling anything yet?”

  “Not yet,” I said.

  And I didn’t feel anything until we got to the top level.

  As soon as my foot hit the landing on the fortieth floor, I started sneezing. Almost slipped back down the stairwell again.

  “This is it,” Suzy said, grabbing my arm, hauling me onto the landing.

  “How can you tell?” Harding asked. I was surprised he hadn’t heard about my weird allergy. It was one of those things that got talked about at the office for a laugh. My coworkers were assholes.

  But Suzy didn’t tell him. She just winked. “It’s the only floor left.”

  Alfredo slammed through the doors, and the other members of the unit pushed through, fanning out to take the whole hall—Harding, a healer, a couple of muscular guys who looked like they’d been hired because they could shoot straight. Probably ex-military.

  “Hang back,” Alfredo told us.

  Suzy and I followed as they checked each of the rooms. The sensation of magic grew as I went further down the hall. Got hard to breathe. I started to wheeze, smothering the sound in my sleeve.

  “You’re so fucking lame,” she whispered.

  She was probably just jealous of my awesome mutant sneezing powers.