Dirty Magic

by Jaye Wells

  I repeated the heating and grinding two more times until the ashes were very light gray. Then the ashes went into a beaker with ten times its volume of water. Tap water worked just fine since I wasn’t cooking clean. If I had been, only sterilized and distilled water would do. After all that, it was simply a matter of letting it boil down until all the liquid evaporated. The white crystals that remained were the Salt of Salt.

  I turned on my stool to look at the salt in the light. The white crystals gleamed dully in the poorly lit garage. I smiled at it and laughed at myself. It had been so long since I worked with magic that I guess I’d expected my first time back to feel … earth-shattering. Or at least dramatic. Instead, there had been a pleasing boredom to the process.

  Despite what movies suggest, magic isn’t a flamboyant process. It’s not flying lasers from fingertips or flashes of lightning or wands waved and chants shouted. Instead, it’s a subtle art. Adepts don’t force magic on items, we coax and harness their inherent energies. The process I had gone through that night drew the elemental salt from the rosemary. Purified it with fire to reach its essential energy. Some believed fire elevated that energy, too. All that was left was for me to decide what other energies to mix it with to create the magic I needed.

  But then I remembered that the kind of magic I needed was more complex than playing with simple herbs in a toolshed. I needed a lab and equipment and high-quality ingredients. One of those miracles I’d thought about earlier wouldn’t hurt, either.

  Before I could get too worked up about that, though, I realized my back felt very warm. Too warm considering the night air was filled with early autumn’s chill. I turned and cursed. Flames licked up the sides of the camp stove and were dancing dangerously close to the wooden walls of the shed. I jumped up, looking around for something with which to put out the fire. Since I’d dissolved all the water, the only liquid on hand was the last half of my last beer. The fire hissed at me but didn’t surrender. Panic started to rise in my chest like heartburn. The edge of a cardboard box began to smolder. I whipped off my sweatshirt and started beating the box and the camp stove.

  In the process of smothering the flames, my hand whacked the hot plate’s glowing red element. “Mother of fuck!” At that point, panic fled as rage roared in. With my right hand—the unburned one—I grabbed the cord of the stove and ripped it out of the wall.

  I try not to stew in self-pity often, but it was all too much. Boxes went flying and tools clanked and shattered to the ground. I kicked the mortar for good measure, which added a nice big toe contusion to my burn and the puncture wounds in my neck from when Danny attacked me. I’m not sure when the kicking turned into crying, but before I knew it I was on the floor in the smoky shed bawling like a child. Through the haze of tears, I looked down to see the rosemary salt crystals lying scattered among broken glass.

  Pressing the heels of my palms to my eye sockets, I tried some deep breathing to get my emotions under control. A pity party wouldn’t help Danny. I glanced down at the burn wound. An angry red blister slashed across my Ouroboros tattoo. I ran a finger along the snake design and remembered how proud I’d been the day I’d earned the right to get inked with the symbol of my coven. Within six months of that day, I’d walked away from magic completely.

  Obviously, the fire had been a sign that I should have stayed away.

  “I get it,” I said to the universe. “But as long as you’re sending signs, how about one to tell me what to do next?”

  I waited for a good minute in the silence before I sighed, hauled myself off the ground, and cleaned up the mess. Unfortunately, the universe doesn’t run on a human schedule. That’s why it waited until the next morning to send its message.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  When I dragged myself into Danny’s room the next morning, I felt about ten types of shitty. Sleep hadn’t been an option the night before, so I’d left the house at the ass crack of dawn. Unfortunately, no matter how fast I drove, I couldn’t outrun my existing problems and even more waited for me in Danny’s room.

  I froze at the door. Machines beeped like maniacal robots. The doctor shouted orders like a general in battle. And the nurses’ rubber-soled shoes squealed against the floors like stuck pigs.

  “Kate!” Nurse Smith saw me and rushed over. She had something yellow—bile?—all over the front of her scrubs. She grabbed my arm and tugged me away from the door. Shock prevented me from fighting her.

  Through the tangle of bodies surrounding my brother, I caught a glimpse of Danny’s ghostly white skin and blue-tinged lips. The frothy spittle spilling onto his chin. The rag-doll reflexes as the nurses moved him and poked him with needles.

  A single word dove from my brain straight down to the dark pit of my stomach, where it cannonballed with all the force of a boulder: dying.

  My soul shriveled within my skin.

  “Kate, honey, I need you to listen to me,” she was saying from far away. “He’s gone into some sort of shock. Doc thinks it’s withdrawal from the potion.”

  I blinked slowly. Nurse Smith, black void, Nurse Smith.

  “We’re getting him stabilized and then Dr. Henry will come talk to you, okay?” She shook my shoulders. “Do you understand?”

  Inhale, exhale, inhale.

  Nodding took great effort. “Withdrawal. Stabilized.”

  Don’t lose it. Don’t lose it. Don’t lose it.

  She smiled, but it was fake. She patted my arm, but I didn’t feel it. “I’m going back in to help.”

  “Wait! Where’s Pen?” I said, grabbing her before she could walk away.

  “She left half an hour ago to run an errand. She’ll be back soon. Why don’t you go grab some coffee? Dr. Henry will be with you in a few moments.”

  Coffee? I turned slowly toward the direction of the coffeepot at the other end of the hall. Coffee couldn’t scrub the image of my brother’s blue lips from my eyes. It wouldn’t calm me down—if I were any more numb I’d collapse. But getting coffee was movement. It was active.

  So I marched down the hall. I grabbed the little white foam cup. I put the coffee pod in the machine and depressed the lever that injected a needle into the little plastic container of grounds. I punched the button that forced scalding water to churn against the bitter grounds. Then, abracadabra, a perfect cup of caffeinated alchemy. All that remained was for me to add the creamer or sweetener of my choice.

  How sad that the only thing I controlled in my life fit into a six-ounce foam cup.

  I stared at the steam rising from the dark surface. The white tendrils reminded me of a movie I saw once where a soul escaping a body was depicted by a puff of white smoke. I squeezed my eyes shut so hard that motes danced in my vision. They would have been beautiful if they hadn’t been accompanied by stabbing pain.

  “Kate?” A hand landed on my shoulder.

  I willed my eyes open and turned to face whoever had interrupted my own private psychic breakdown. Luckily, it was Pen.

  “Honey, what’s going on?”

  Gravity won the battle and I fell into her as if she was oblivion. She caught me and held on. “Shh.”

  I didn’t cry because I didn’t have the energy. But my limbs shook and I screamed inside my head so loud I was surprised no one in the hospital could hear my pain.

  “Tell me what happened,” Pen whispered.

  I shook my head because if I opened my mouth the screams would escape.

  Pen’s chest expanded and contracted on a sigh. Then she was guiding me farther down the hall to the waiting room. All the chairs were empty but she took me to the ones the farthest from the doorway.

  Once I was sure we were alone, I pulled away and told her what the nurse had said. And then I took a deep breath and confessed all my sins. Every one I’d committed since I’d taken over as Danny’s guardian all the way to the huge fight we’d had about magic on his birthday. Maybe I was hoping that by the time I’d finished, Pen would give me a list of tasks to do to wipe the slate clean. So
me degrading exercise that would teach me a lesson. Maybe once I’d completed the karmic chores, everything would go back to how it was before. Danny could return to being the goofy sixteen-year-old going on thirty, and I would go back to being the almost-thirty-year-old going on sixteen.

  But that’s not what happened. In real life, things don’t go back to normal at the end of the half hour. Confessing your sins more often damns you than saves you. And no matter how much you wish it were otherwise, you can’t just wish away the consequences to your shitty decisions.

  Pen held me close and told me it was okay to be scared because she was, too. And then I held her back and we were scared together.

  “Officer Prospero?” the nurse said from the doorway. “Dr. Henry will see you now.”

  I snapped my jaw shut and looked at Pen. She nodded even though I hadn’t asked her out loud to come with me.

  We rose together and she grabbed my hand for a quick squeeze. “It’s going to be okay, Katie,” she whispered.

  My gratitude for her patient listening morphed into anger. I didn’t need saccharine platitudes. I just needed someone to play straight with me for a change. Not use political maneuvering or double-talk or emotional blackmail. I just needed someone to cut the shit and be honest.

  “Kate? Doc Henry’s waiting.”

  For Doc Henry’s sake, I hoped he wasn’t planning on blowing sunshine up my ass. Because I was a woman on the edge and I wouldn’t hesitate to pull him and everyone else over with me.

  * * *

  The room that had been so chaotic an hour earlier was now silent as a funeral home. Which was fitting since I couldn’t help but look at Danny’s too-still form and feel as though I was looking at a corpse.

  Especially when I saw that regret in the doctor’s eyes.

  I didn’t speak to him. Instead, I crossed my arms, raised my brows, and braced myself.

  “He’s alive.” He motioned to the chair next to Danny’s bed. “But we need to talk.”

  I glanced at the bed to see if I could pinpoint the reason for his grave tone. The machines were beeping as usual, and—thank God—his chest rose and fell in an artificially rhythmic pattern. But it was hard not to see the damage the potion and the coma had done to him. His cheeks had hollowed into gaunt blades and his complexion was the color of wet cement. He basically had become a hollow shell that was alive only through the will of modern technology.

  I tore my gaze from Danny and looked back at the doc to let him know I was ready to take the punches. Pen stood next to me and held my hand.

  He clasped his fingers over the clipboard and held it in front of his waist like a shield. “There’s really no good way to say this, Kate, and I’m damned sorry to be the one to do it.”

  Frost lined my stomach. “Jesus, what is it?”

  “The potion we gave Danny to keep him in a coma is still working. The machines are doing their job keeping his respiration and fluid levels normal. He’s young and relatively healthy, all things considered.”

  I tilted my head. “So what’s the problem?”

  He waved a hand toward the third, silent body in the room. “We’re managing to keep him alive, but the dirty magic is eating him from the inside.”

  “But you said—”

  He nodded. “The machines and potions we gave him are working. But unless we find an antipotion, his body is going to consume itself to feed the bloodlust the potion created.”

  “What?” Pen said. “How is that possible?”

  Doc rubbed the bridge of his nose and took a deep breath. “If there’s no blood coming in, the blood magic in the potion turns to the host to get its fix.”

  I rolled up my sleeve. “Take my blood.” They could take every fucking drop. I didn’t care.

  “That’s not all.” He shook his head. “The attack earlier was withdrawals. We’ve stabilized him for the time being, but he doesn’t just need more blood, he also needs more of the potion. The blood magic needs more blood and the alchemical components need more potion to sustain themselves.”

  My mouth fell open.

  “In my opinion, if he doesn’t get more Gray Wolf soon, he’ll die.”

  Pen reached blindly for a chair and fell into it. As soon as her ass hit cushion, she crossed herself. Her inconsistent Catholicism was one of the many idiosyncrasies that endeared her to me. Right then I wished I believed in some sort of religion, too. One that would explain to me why bad things happened to innocent people. One that explained why bad people got away with murder. One that offered salvation in exchange for adhering to a few simple rules.

  But religion and me? We weren’t on speaking terms. Which meant all I had to guide me was the seething rage and a bottomless pit of regret. I stood on the lip of that well and looked into the inky blackness. Ahead of me was the abyss—a future spent mourning. Cold memories to haunt my nightmares. Six feet of dirt and a mountain of guilt separating me from Danny for eternity.

  A light rose from the abyss, and a voice in the back of my mind whispered, Are you ready to sell your soul to the devil to save him?

  “Yes,” I whispered without reservation. There wasn’t a choice. Not really. Not one I could live with that was easier than owing a debt to John Volos.

  “Kate?” Pen said, turning toward me.

  I shook myself out of the protective cocoon of shock. “Yeah?” I said, as if I hadn’t just come to a decision that would change the course of all our lives forever.

  “Did you hear what Dr. Henry said?”

  I nodded but the movement was jerky. “I’ll take care of it.”

  She went still. “What does that mean?”

  I pulled my eyes away from Danny’s emaciated form to look at the fear in my best friend’s eyes. “It means I’ll take care of it.”

  Pen shot a look at the Doc. “Excuse us for a moment.” She grabbed my sleeve and hauled me toward the door. I went with her without argument. The instant I realized how close I was to losing Danny for good, every drop of fight evaporated.

  “Explain yourself,” she demanded. She had me backed up against a wall.

  I couldn’t tell her everything. To do so would admit to things I wasn’t ready to admit to myself. So I simply whispered, “John said he could make the antipotion.”

  She reared back. “John Volos?” she hissed. “What the hell?”

  “He came here the other day to offer it. I turned him away, but now?” I motioned toward the doctor. “I don’t have the luxury of turning down help.”

  I fully expected her to launch into a lecture about healthy decisions and not compromising one’s principles. Instead, my best friend nodded solemnly. “You think he’s telling the truth? Can he really figure out the cure?”

  “Do you think I’d even consider going to him if I doubted he was capable of this kind of magic?”

  She chewed her bottom lip for a minute. She glanced back at the unconscious kid on the bed—the one she loved almost as much as I did. Then my friend, who fully understood the implications of what she was about to say, looked me in the eye and said, “Go.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  The text I sent to Volos read: We need to talk ASAP.

  His reply was an address and instructions to meet him in one hour.

  That gave me enough time to run home to grab a few things before I showed up for the meeting. The first thing I grabbed was my gun. It went into my shoulder holster. I stashed a salt flare in the holster at my ankle and a canister of salt-and-pepper spray in a jacket pocket. And, finally, I fingered the protection amulet Gardner had given me a few days earlier. I hadn’t put it on again since the day she’d given it to me in Danny’s room because it made my skin crawl with guilt. But considering I’d tried to cook the night before and was about to go meet a wizard to help him cook a dirty magic potion, my qualms about wearing a protection amulet were moot. The disc held a small bubble of glass in the center filled with a viscous green liquid. All I had to do was burst that bubble and an alarm would signal the
team that I was in trouble and tell them where in the city to find me.

  Once I had everything, I pulled out my phone and punched a couple of numbers. He picked up on the second ring. “Cupcake.”

  I smiled despite the nerves roiling in my gut like a nest of vipers. “What’s up, Macho?”

  “Ah, you know.” I could hear the smile in his voice and the creak of a chair as he leaned back to put his boots up on the desk. “Madman’s on the loose, the ASAC is breathing down our necks, and Eldritch is trying to blame the clusterfuck in the tunnels on Gardner, but beyond that I can’t complain. How’s Danny Boy?”

  My chest tightened. “We had a bit of a scare this morning.”

  The tension crackled through the line. “Shit, Kate. Is he okay?”

  I swallowed hard. “He will be.” The words were as much a vow as an explanation.

  “If there’s anything I can do—you know that, right?”

  I nodded even though he couldn’t see me. Problem was, the one thing I needed help with, I had to do alone. If Morales knew I was calling him right before I headed out to help a known criminal brew a dirty magic potion, he’d be speeding over to arrest me. I forced a laugh. “I thought you saw me as a pain in the ass and wanted me off the team.”

  He chuckled low, the sound oddly intimate. “Oh, you’re definitely a pain, but as it happens you’re also not a total loss at this cop stuff.”

  “Flatterer.” I sighed because I couldn’t force myself to fake a laugh. “Anyway, I think it’ll all be better soon.”

  “I hope so.” In the background, I heard Gardner’s voice echo through the gym. The shuffling sound that followed was probably Morales covering the receiver with his hand. A muffled response filtered through the earpiece. A second later he came back. “Hey, listen, I need to go. BPD just got a tip about a Bane sighting. Shadi and I are going to go check it out.”