Black Market (Black Records Book 2)

by Mark Feenstra

  In the space of four or five minutes, not a single trace of the kids body remained. His clothes lay in a pile as though he’d evaporated right out of them, but I was certain not a trace of DNA remained to identify who they’d belonged to. It was then I remembered the knife’s initial purpose. This kid had been about to attack Chase and Lailani. A quick slice across each of their throats, and the bodies would have been consumed by the blade’s enchantment before anyone could find them.

  As far as anyone would ever know — as far as I would ever know — they would have just disappeared without a trace. Had this kid gotten to Chase before I stopped him, I’d never have known what happened to my friend.

  It would do no good for anyone to discover the disturbing arrangement of clothing that was all that remained of the kid, so I snatched up the shirt and scattered the rest of his clothes with a few quick kicks. If anyone wandered down here, it would look like nothing more than garbage left behind by a drifter. Satisfied there were no clues to what had really happened in the darkness fifty yards away from several hundred people strolling through the night market, I wrapped the blade in the t-shirt and went to find Chase. I was in no rush to let him know how close he’d come to taking his last breath, but after what I’d just seen, I wasn’t about to leave him alone until I knew he was home safe.

  And as luck would have it, they were heading for the food stalls when I caught up to them. My gut still churned at the memory of the kid’s lifeblood leaking out onto my hands while he spasmed and flailed beneath me. Repressing those kinds of feelings comes so naturally to me, I was able to shove them into a dark recess of my psyche, not to be dealt with until I was wrapped safely in the fuzzy chemical security of one of my bitter little therapists.

  In the meantime, the emptiness from having burned magic gnawed at me with enough ferocity to override the already fading nausea. If I had to stick around the night market for a while longer, there was nothing to say I couldn’t gorge myself on street cart food while keeping and eye on my buddy and his date.

  Chapter Ten

  “…then I hopped on the train and went home after I was sure you and Lailani were safely in the car again.”

  Chase steered the car around a corner with a little more speed than was entirely necessary, forcing me to brace my knee against the center console to keep from being thrown against my seatbelt. The further I’d gotten into my retelling of the previous nights events, the more aggressively he’d started driving. The car now weaved in and out of traffic like Chase had stolen it and was running from the cops. He jerked the steering wheel sharply, jamming his foot down on the clutch while downshifting before slamming on the brake just in time to avoid rear-ending a garbage truck.

  I lurched forward just long enough to put my hand on the dash to keep from cracking my forehead open. Before the inertia fully subsided, I was slammed back against the seat when Chase spotted an opening and accelerated into it.

  “You’re pissed I didn’t tell you about all of this last night.”

  “You think?” Chase snorted air through his nostrils and shook his head. “It’s not like it was my life in danger. Oh wait, it was totally my life in danger.”

  “I didn’t want to ruin your date.”

  It sounded stupid when I said it out loud. Chase must have agreed because he turned to stare at me with wild eyes.

  “Ruin my date? You don’t think having an enchanted knife drawn across my throat would have ruined my date?”

  “Yeah, but that didn’t happen. I stopped him before he could attack you.”

  Tires screeched in protest when Chase hit the brakes again to keep from flying through a red light. The car came to a stop halfway into the pedestrian crossing, yielding a few withering glares from the people forced to walk around us in order to cross.

  “What if you hadn’t stopped him in time?” He asked. “You said he was able to resist your magical attack, right? What if you’d tried a spell instead of tackling him? What if he’d turned and stuck that knife into you when you tried to take him down? What if he’d had enough time to stab Lailani?”

  “I’m sorry, Chase.” I shrunk down in my seat. “This is uncharted territory for me. I’m not used to having to look out for someone else. I’m even less used to having to be accountable to anyone.”

  Chase turned his head to face me. Hands white-knuckled on the wheel, he exhaled sharply through his nose, clearly trying to calm himself before saying whatever it was he had to say.

  “I really am sorry,” I said again.

  “We’re either a team, or we’re not.”

  “We are a team, Chase…”

  “Teammates don’t let their friends walk around as unknowing bait.”

  The light turned green. A car honked behind us. While we sat unmoving, several more angry car horns joined the protest.

  “I see how that could piss you off,” I told him. “I promise not to keep you in the dark about stuff like this in the future, okay?”

  Chase reluctantly returned his attention to the road. He pulled into the intersection, this time settling into the flow of traffic and maintaining his lane instead of veering into every opening that might get him half a car length ahead. We drove in silence awhile. Chase focused on driving while I pretended to be absorbed in the view outside the passenger window. For as long as I’d known him, I’d never seen Chase this upset. I’d only been doing what I thought best, but I supposed he had something of a point. If our roles in last night’s little drama had been reversed, I’d sure as hell have wanted to know a supernatural killer had been following me.

  “So, uh, how was your date then?” I ventured after a few blocks. “I heard you come in more than an hour after me last night. Considering how long it took me to get home, I assume you didn’t just drop Lailani at home after the night market.”

  Conflict raged in Chase’s expression. I could see his urge to gush about his date warring with his desire to stay mad at me. Chase could be as stubborn and persistent as a mule, but if there was one thing he was terrible at, it was brooding. He maintained his stony silence for all of two blocks before the thin veneer of his cold shoulder cracked and fell apart.

  “She invited me up for a drink,” he said.

  “A drink, or like, a drink?”

  He shrugged noncommittally. “I don’t kiss and tell.”

  “Since when?” I rolled my eyes with more than a little exaggeration. “Remember when you were dating that raver girl a couple of years ago? You didn’t shut up about all the crazy stuff you two did together. Seriously. That was way more information than I ever needed to know about anyone’s sex life, Chase.”

  “In my defense,” he said, the iciness falling from his voice, “I was doing a lot of molly at the time.”

  “So did you and Lailani make the beast with two backs, or what?”

  Chase grinned and shrugged, leaving me to draw my own conclusions.

  “Atta boy,” I said. “Not to be a bitch or anything, but do you think you’d have had such a positive ending to your date if you’d known about the guy following you?”

  “That’s beside the point. It’s the principle of the thing.”

  “All’s well that ends well.”

  “No, Alex, that’s exactly the kind of thing that gets us into these situations in the fir—”

  “Oh look, we’re here,” I interrupted as we pulled up to Viktor’s house. “Don’t lag behind, or the plants will eat you.”

  I popped the door open the second the car came to a stop at the curb, forcing Chase to run to catch up with me before I was halfway through the overgrown jungle path that lead to Viktor’s front door.

  “None of these plants can really eat me, can they?” he half-whispered.

  “Not in the classical sense.” I gestured towards a dense knot of vines hanging just off the side of the path. “That one could grab you, wrap you up, and then slowly dissolve and digest you over a period of several weeks. Technically you’d die of dehydration, I think.”

/>   As if to punctuate my explanation, a tendril of vine snaked out and brushed Chase’s leg before curling back up into the cluster by the tree. I knew it was only giving him its version of a puppy sniff as a form of welcome. Judging by the way he yelped and jumped away, Chase must have thought he’d been about to lose his leg.

  “Sometimes I regret ever getting involved in any of this,” he told me when I caught up to him at the front door. A few drops of sweat had formed on his brow, and his complexion had gone waxy and pale.

  “After every bit of weirdness you’ve experienced over the last few months, every nightmare made reality, that’s the thing that makes you wish you’d taken the blue pill and stayed ignorant of magic and the fae?”

  “Plants shouldn’t move, Alex.” He stated firmly. “That’s just unnatural.”

  I considered launching into an explanation of all the non-magical plants that were mobile or deadly, but I didn’t see how it’d help. Instead, I twisted the door knob and went into the house. I hadn’t told Viktor we were dropping by for a visit, but he’d know we were coming. It was kind of his thing. That kind of knowledge was exactly the thing we’d come for.

  Viktor’s voice rang out from the kitchen when we entered the living room. “Alex, Chase, have a seat. I’ll be right out.”

  He emerged a few seconds later, carrying a tray laden with cups, a carafe of coffee, milk, sugar, and a plate of assorted cookies that always seemed to be fresh from the oven whenever I came over. Dressed in a thin wool cardigan, faded brown corduroy pants, and a pair of house slippers; Viktor looked like he’d be better suited to a retirement home than this big old house. I’d always suspected that he was something more than he ever let on, but after the events surrounding the resurgence of the Amulet of Duan Marbhaidh a few months earlier, I no longer wondered whether he was more powerful than he tried to appear. The question that lingered long after the fact was why he didn’t use these abilities more freely.

  “Are those snickerdoodles?” Chase asked as he reached for a cookie. “I used to love these things as a kid.”

  “And oatmeal chocolate chip,” Viktor added with a smile. “Alex’s favorite.”

  I sank into the couch and snatched up a cookie while Viktor poured coffee for everyone. Two more cookies migrated from the tray to my mouth before our host sat down and asked us how things were going.

  I unwrapped the knife and placed it on the coffee table. “Someone tried to kill Chase with this last night.”

  Viktor frowned.

  “That is a nasty item,” he said. “Dare I ask what Chase did to provoke such an attack?”

  “The dumbest thing I’ve done in the last decade is become friends with Alex,” Chase muttered. “I was on a completely innocent date. I didn’t even know my life was in danger.”

  “Viktor, the kid I took this knife from was using magic that was way above his head. He’d managed to transform himself into some kind of flying shadow. I’ve been studying magic for longer than this kid has been out of puberty, and I don’t have the faintest clue how to do something like that. Have you heard about anything like this through your network?”

  “My network has been less than cooperative as of late,” he said. Then, raising an eyebrow, “Does this have anything to do with your visit to Trang’s warehouse last night?”

  “You know about that?” Chase asked with more than a little incredulity.

  “Not much happens in this city that Viktor doesn’t hear about,” I reminded him. “Although, I thought your little rumor mill was pretty exclusively fae. How did you know we went to see Trang?”

  Viktor gave me a brief appraising look before shrugging his shoulders.

  “I’ll let you piece that together on your own,” he said. “Tread carefully with Trang, though. Don’t go making any deals you’re not one hundred percent confident you can uphold.”

  Experience had taught me I’d get nothing more from Viktor if I pressed him further, so I let his last comment slide and moved on to the real reason we’d come to ask for his help. I explained everything we’d learned so far, from the ritual at the power nexus to the security footage in Trang’s warehouse. I then recapped in greater detail what had gone down at the night market. I caught a glimpse of Chase’s face during my recap of the fight, and was relieved to see a glimmer of sympathy in his face when I told them just how close I’d come to having that knife slashed across my face.

  “Hmm,” was all Viktor said when I was done. “That certainly is an exciting series of events. Do you have any leads?”

  “No,” I said, a little surprised he hadn’t offered even a bit of insight. “That’s kind of what we hoped you could give us.”

  “None of that sounds familiar,” Viktor said. “More coffee?”

  I put my hand over my nearly full cup to stop him from pouring more. Something about this was deeply wrong. Viktor would normally jump at the chance to fill me in on every thread of gossip in his sizable web of whispers. There was no way he hadn’t heard anything about the activity at the nexus or the dead guys turning up around town. Worse, he was trying to pretend like everything was fine. What could be so wrong that he’d lie to me?

  “Is everything… okay?” I asked, looking around as though I’d find a masked man with a gun peering out from behind the curtains.

  “Everything is peachy,” Viktor said, grinning as broadly as ever. “Why do you ask?”

  “It feels like you’re trying to sidestep my questions,” I said. “You’ve never withheld information from me before. Why now?”

  Viktor seemed to realize he was still holding the coffee pot. It clipped the edge of the tray when he tired to set it down on the table. Both tray and plate cookies clattered to the ground. Viktor dumped a stream of coffee across his lap when he tried to keep from dropping the pot as well. Chase and I bent to pick up the tray and scattered cookies while Viktor went to the kitchen fetch a tea towel. When he returned, he fell heavily into his chair, dabbing at the wet spot on his leg a few times before folding the tea towel into quarters and setting it on the table.

  “I am an old man, Alex,” he eventually said. “I overstepped certain limitations when I helped you last year. Now I am suffering the consequences. My connection to the fae world is not what it once was.”

  “But you helped us with that thing last week,” Chase interjected. “Without your suggestion, we’d never have known to question that woman’s guide dog.”

  Viktor crossed one leg over the other and folded his hands over his knee. “A lucky guess, I’m afraid.”

  “What about the stuff we witnessed at the nexus?” asked Chase. “They killed a kid just to channel that power into themselves. That’s got to be against whatever rules the Conclave have laid down. Shouldn’t the whole magic community be shouting and gossiping about this?”

  “Most definitely,” Viktor agreed. “Yet I haven’t heard anything remotely related to such an event. If something so truly terrifying has been happening out in the open, it would be the the proverbial talk of the town.”

  “Could someone be shielding them?” I asked. “It would have to be someone with considerable ability if neither you nor the Conclave has caught wind of it, but it could be possible, couldn’t it?”

  Viktor tilted his chin in the slightest of nods. “Possible, yes.”

  “So do you have any ideas on how we can track these kids then?” Chase asked. “There has to be something you’ve heard that ties into a gang of teenagers who’ve suddenly come into an extraordinary amount of power.”

  “Sorry, but nothing comes to mind.” Viktor brushed a piece of lint from one of the snickerdoodles then popped it in his mouth.

  We sat unspeaking, the only sound the soft mastication of the cookie in Viktor’s mouth. Viktor was stonewalling me, and I had no idea what to do about it.

  “All this talk of teenagers does remind me that I have a lead on a job for you if you’re interested,” he said once he’d swallowed his cookie and washed it down with a sip of coffee.
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  More than a little frustrated, I did my best to keep an even tone. “Between Trang and these kids, we don’t have time for another job. This is important, Viktor. We really need your help here. Two people are dead already; one directly by my hand, the other through my failure to act.”

  “It’s quite a simple task,” Viktor continued as if I hadn’t said anything. “There is a small community of wood nymphs who’ve been complaining about the new owners of a house not far from their copse. It seems these new owners are quite young, and that they’ve cut down some of the trees at the edge of the property in order to accommodate very large and noisy gatherings. As you can well imagine, the nymphs are not at all happy about this. They’ve put the word out that they’d very much appreciate someone finding a way to relieve them of their suffering.”

  Very slowly, the pieces fell together. For some unknown reason, Viktor had been trying to move the subject away from Trang and the power nexuses. Not once since I’d known him had he so blatantly ignored a request for help. If he wasn’t talking now, there had to be a reason for it. Getting that reason from him would take more time than we had to spare, but if he was so insistent we look into the house upsetting these wood nymphs, he must have a good reason for it.

  “What’s the address?” I asked, drawing a look of confusion from Chase.

  Viktor plucked a pen from the coffee table and scrawled an address on the back of a piece of junk mail. Chase immediately typed it into his phone. He then handed it to me so I could see the satellite view of what looked like a large house at the end of a suburban cul-de-sac. It was set slightly apart from the next closest house on the block. Clumps of well-manicured hedges surrounded the property, long shadows in the photo giving the impression that they were tall enough to serve as a natural barrier from prying eyes. The image became a mess of pixels when I tried to zoom in further, and I couldn’t make out any signs of anything unusual.