My reasons for being at this party were quickly becoming difficult to keep at the fore of my concentration. I am not one of those girls who goes to bars to drink overpriced sugary junk while grinding against sweaty people on the dance floor. I am the quiet toe-tapper at the back of a concert. I take personal space bubbles seriously enough for it to be a religion. Watching thirty or so teenagers bounce to a mix of dirty rap, EDM, and dubstep would normally be enough to make me want to run screaming in the opposite direction.
Yet for some reason I found myself drifting towards them. Head bopping of its own accord, I slipped into crowd without even thinking about it. I didn’t have the first clue of how to dance to this kind of music, but I quickly discovered I didn’t care. Arms above my head, I gyrated my hips and shuffled my feet to the music. The beat pulled at me like a puppeteer yanking my strings. Blurry bodies moved around me. I knew I was supposed to be doing something — looking for someone — but I had all the time in the world to get around to whatever it was. Fuck responsibility.
I threw my head back and roared into the night. “Fuck you, responsibility!”
As if on cue, the beat dropped hard, sending everyone around me into a frenzy. I threw my fist into the air, pumping it wildly as I jumped in place along with everyone else. Sweat poured down my face, drips flicking off my chin with each wild shake of my head. An unseen DJ transitioned smoothly from one song into the next. Time stood still while the world raced forward. All I knew was music and the urge to move. Head empty of thought, I acted on pure impulse. My legs ached, and my throat was so dry I could barely swallow, but still I danced on.
The music reached a frenzied crescendo, then came crashing to a halt so quickly I felt my heart lurch to a painful stop. I scanned the area, spotting the small table where a girl with gigantic headphones was setting her laptop on a stand mounted above two turntables and a mixer. She plugged a few cables into her computer, spun up a subtle loop, and leaned into the microphone.
“Give it up for DJ Nighthawk,” she said. “I’m Lady J, and I’m about to burn this fucker to the ground. You ready to get mutha-fucking turnt?”
The crowd roared, and I saw that it had nearly tripled in size. The abrupt end to the first DJ’s set had knocked me right out of the drug-induced trance that had eaten me whole only to spit me out feeling lost and confused. I pushed my way to the fringes of the crowd before the music had a chance to drag me back down again. Head spinning, my stomach felt like it was full of lead. An invisible corset cinched ever tighter around my torso, making it impossible for me to draw a proper breath. When I lifted my hand to wipe sweat from my face, it moved with impossible slowness, wobbling rubber-like.
Someone walked past and I pawed at their arm in a feeble attempt to get their attention.
“Time is it?”
The girl glared at me, taking a step back to put some distance between us. Her face refused to hold one shape, morphing and shifting like something crawled beneath her skin. I don’t know if I was more afraid of her unhinging her jaw and eating me, or of her walking away and leaving me alone with what was turning into a decidedly bad trip.
She plucked her phone from her back pocket and looked at it, light from the screen illuminating her face from below.
“It’s two-thirty,” she said. She half turned to leave, then looked back at me. “Are you okay? Maybe you should drink some water.”
What started as a pathetic nod ended in a thin spray of watery vomit that hit the grass between us. Bile dripped from my chin and onto my shirt. Dimly aware of how pathetic I looked, I tried to wipe the mess from my face with a floppy and useless hand that refused to do what I told it to. All I succeeded in accomplishing was swiping my knuckles against my jaw a few times.
The girl hesitated for only a second before seeming to make up her mind to help me. She slipped her arm around my waist and helped me stagger towards the house. As we walked what might as well have been miles for how poorly my feet responded to my mental commands to keep them moving, I tried to figure how I’d so easily lost track of the last three hours. Nothing I’d ever taken had so thoroughly carried me away as whatever was in that pill I’d snorted. I’d expected MDMA or Oxy, but this was so much more than both of them combined. Worse, it was still flowing almost as hard as it had been from the get-go. After three hours of dancing, I should have metabolized at least enough to feel a little more clear-headed. Instead, it was more like the air itself was trying to suffocate me. My skin crawled, itching and tingling like a limb that had fallen asleep.
Three times I had to remind myself that the girl dragging me towards the house was trying to help me. I only managed to sink to my ass once, and bless her, she hauled me right back up.
“Just a bit farther,” she coaxed. “We’ll get you in the kitchen and get some water into you.”
“No kitchen,” I mumbled. “Can’t in there.”
“It’s okay. You can make it. We’re almost there.”
She pushed the door open and shoved me through, doing her best to keep me upright as she followed. Hoops and Trey were gone, as were the other girls. The kitchen was blessedly empty when my savior dumped me into a chair. She disappeared for a moment, reappearing with a glass of cold water that she pressed to my lips. My fingers were too numb and stupid to grab the glass, so she tipped it into my mouth. Water sloshed over my lips and onto my shirt, icy cool rivulets snapping me back to some sense of alertness as they flowed down my chest and over my belly. I gulped greedily at the water, finally able to muster enough focus to hold the cup myself.
“Better?”
I nodded and held the glass out, waggling it to indicate I wanted a refill. The girl obliged, and I drank this one down almost as quickly as I had the first.
“Is there someone I can call to come get you?” she asked. “Are your friends here?”
“It’s cool,” said a male voice from the door. “I’ll take care of her.”
The kitchen blurred when I turned my head to confirm it was Trey’s voice I’d heard. He stood leaning in the doorway, smug grin still plastered across his face. I wanted to beg the girl not to leave me alone, but she just shrugged and walked out. I guess she couldn’t have been that nice after all if she’d left me with someone as shady as Trey.
“Didn’t find your boy, Johnny?” he asked as he crossed the room.
“What was in that pill?” I managed to spit out. “Shit hits hard.”
“I call it a Phader,” he said. It’s a Molly and Adderall base with a dash of W-18 for the long slow ride down.” He held his hand up in front of me, rolling the fingers in a mesmerizing pattern that became a swirl of afterimages. “And a touch of LSD for that old school Hand of God feel. You like?”
“That stuff should not be mixed together.” Panic welled up within me, overriding a little of the mellow numbness that made me want to go to sleep. W-18 was a hundred times stronger than fentanyl. The tiniest miscalculation in dosage could kill a sumo wrestler with less than half a pill. “You let me snort that train wreck? You could have fucking killed me.”
Trey leaned in close, one hand gripping the back of my chair while the other brushed my hair back over my ear. His lips were so close that I felt the heat of his breath on my skin.
“I like to play with my food before I eat it,” he whispered.
His fingers closed around my throat. Before I knew what was happening, the edge of my vision flared white. I was already so far gone from the insane cocktail of drugs that I couldn’t even summon the feeblest of spells before I blacked out.
Chapter Twelve
Although the elephant-sized dose of drugs still wreaked havoc on my system, I had the wherewithal to stay absolutely still when I woke up. Eyes closed, I took stock of my situation. My neck ached from being slumped forward with chin on chest. My arms were pinioned behind me, wrists tied to the back of the chair I was sitting in. The soft scuff of shoes on the floor told me I wasn’t alone.
“She doesn’t look like a cop,” a teenaged voi
ce said from somewhere on my right.
The next voice came from behind me. “Because she’s not wearing a uniform? She’s probably undercover, dumbass.”
“Yo, I think it’s that girl who killed Chen,” said yet another voice.
On the upside, I’d found the kids I’d been looking for.
“She did know your name, Johnny.”
Now that one I recognized. Trey. My throat ached when I swallowed, and I flashed back to his fingers closing around my neck, squeezing until I’d blacked out. There was no telling how long I’d been unconscious, but at least I’d been able to process a little more of that psychotic drug cocktail he’d given me. My skin still buzzed and burned, yet somehow seemed detached from my muscles and sinew. I was like a goldfish swimming in the bowl of my own body. Luckily for me, this little goldfish had its shit together just enough to tap into her magic.
“And I told you, I’ve never seen her before,” said the voice I assumed belonged to Johnny.
Goldfish me latched onto the golden thread of power that had danced tantalizingly out of reach until now. I drew it into my veins, burning it ever so slightly throughout my body. The taste of pennies and grapefruit soured my throat, a welcome indication that I was regaining normal sensation. By burning magic on a very low level, I could speed the metabolism of the drugs still holding my body and basic motor functions hostage. I wouldn’t be at a hundred percent, but it’d at least get me back to a point where I could fight my way out if need be.
I opened my eyes and lifted my head. A single bare lightbulb dangled on a cord above my head, creating a pool of light around my feet. The edges of the room were lost to shadow, but it wasn’t so dark I couldn’t just make out stacks of boxes marked with asian characters that looked suspiciously like those I’d seen in Trang’s warehouse. My first thought was that I was in the house’s basement, but the subtle smell of oil and the finished concrete floor told me it was actually the garage. Trey and the other four kids from the nexus stood in a loose horseshoe in front of me. One of them had my phone in his hand, thumb swiping quickly around the screen in an effort to guess my unlock code.
“It’s an eighteen point swipe code,” I told him. “You’re not going to brute force it.”
“Whatever.”
His voice identified him as Johnny. Now that I could see his face, I recognized him as the spiky-haired kid holding the invisibility spell around his friends when they’d ditched the body by the highway. A quick scan with my mage sight revealed no active spells in the room, and I made an educated guess that all of them had burned off whatever power they’d managed to accumulate during their brutal little ritual.
“Seriously though,” I said, turning to Trey. What the fuck was up with that pill you gave me?”
“Relax,” he said. “I’ve been working on that formulation for months. It’s all balanced. Although, the last guy that snorted it didn’t last nearly as long as you before his heart exploded.”
He held his closed fist up, fingers popping open to mime a little explosion. He was doing his best to appear calm and confident, but the band of tense muscle where his neck met his shoulder suggested otherwise. He hadn’t expected me to survive. Now I was chatting away as though he’d given me nothing stronger than a baby Aspirin.
“What are you doing here?” asked Johnny. “Where’s Chen?”
I flexed my arms experimentally, testing the restraints holding them behind my back. Using plastic zipper cuffs would have been a smart move had I been a helpless normal person. Instead, they’d made it that much easier for me to slip. Plastic melted with little fuss, unlike rope that had a tendency to burst into awkward flames. The hard edge of the straps cut into my wrists, but rather than pop them apart right away, I relaxed my arms as much as possible, waiting for the right moment to snap free.
“I don’t know who Chen is,” I told them flatly. “I just came to party.”
Johnny dropped my phone to the floor. I winced at the sound of the screen hitting concrete, and yelped in protest when he brought his heel crashing down on it. His soft soled skate shoes did little damage to the phone’s case, but the impact was enough to send a few shards of glass skittering across the floor. My phone was as good as dead, which meant I’d have no easy way of calling Chase for a pickup once I’d gotten myself away from the house.
Johnny stepped closer, leaning down until his eyes were level with mine. “Where’s Chen?”
I shrugged.
His hand came up fast, back-handing me across the face. My head snapped sideways, a light trickle of blood spilling into my mouth from where my inner lip had mashed against my teeth. Not content to leave it at that, Johnny grabbed a fistful of my hair. He yanked it backwards, pulling hard enough for my shoulder blades to dig painfully into the corners of the chair. I heard the telltale click of a folding knife snapping open a second before I felt cold steel pressed against the soft underside of my neck.
“Cute blade,” Johnny said with an evil grin. “Anyone ever warned you about the dangers of playing with knives?”
“Oh, wait,” I said as nonchalantly as I could. “I remember your buddy Chen now. He had a fancy knife too. At least, he did before I shoved it into his skull.”
No need for them to know that whoever had given Chen the knife had also put him under a compulsion spell forcing him take his own life rather than divulging his patron’s identity. If I could gain even a bit of an edge by enraging them with the idea that I had been the one to kill their buddy, I was sure as hell going to take it.
“I knew it,” Johnny breathed. “I’m going to end you.”
The knife pressed harder against my skin, burning in a fiercely itchy sort of way. Blood ran down my neck, droplets pooling in the hollow of my collarbone. Once again, I drew my power up, mentally preparing for the kinetic blast that would fling my interrogator across the room before he could cut any deeper. Gambling that his hesitation was more of a scare tactic than an actual effort to slit my throat, I locked eyes with him and held the spell on a mental hair trigger. With luck, I’d release it automatically if he cut any deeper.
“Not yet,” Trey said with heavy authority.
Johnny sniffed in disproval, but the pressure on my neck eased up all the same. I felt him wipe the blade on my arm, two sticky red slicks of blood smeared across my bicep. He stepped back, flicked the knife closed, and slipped it into his pocket. Trey moved to stand in front of me, hands loosely clasped together behind his back while he stared down. His eyes were hidden in the shadow cast by the brim of his hat, making him look far more sinister than his spazzy partner. I sensed no buildup of power around him, so I ratcheted my own energy back a notch. If there was anything to be learned about these kids and who was feeding them knowledge, this looked like my only chance to get it.
“So what’s your deal here?” I asked Trey. “I can tell you guys don’t have any real power of your own. That trick at the nexus was far and away the sloppiest ritual I’ve ever seen. Using a human sacrifice as a focus? Super weak. Who taught you such a lame method?”
An almost imperceptible frown formed on Trey’s lips. He turned to look at his friends with obvious annoyance. “None of you idiots noticed someone watching you the other night?”
“Oh shit, she was the girl with that creepy old dude we saw when we were walking to the nexus,” said one of the kids who’d been hanging out quietly in the background. “I watched her go the other direction though. We made sure no one followed us the rest of the way.”
That was weird. Chen had told me they’d known I was watching them, but now his friends were saying the opposite. Could Chen have been operating under someone else’s instructions? A third player’s involvement would certainly explain a lot about how these kids had come to learn so much about power they should never have been able to tap into.
“You didn’t check the perimeter though,” I said in an attempt to get them talking. “I just snuck around the back and watched the whole thing from the bushes. I even followed you w
hen you ditched your buddy’s body.”
“How’d you see us?” asked Johnny, shifting nervously from one foot to the other. “I followed the instructions for that spell exactly like I was told. There’s no way you should have been able to see it.”
“Mage sight,” I told him. With little more than a thought, I focused intense heat on my finger tip, burning away the plastic band holding my wrists together. I casually reached up and brushed a strand of hair back behind my ear. No sense in pretending I was helpless anymore.
“The fuck?” asked Johnny a second before I sent a concentrated blast of kinetic energy into the center of his chest.
Air rushed out of his lungs with a satisfying whumph as he flew backwards. He crashed into a stack of boxes. His legs lay motionless, peeking out from behind an avalanche of packing materials and what appeared to be smartphone boxes. I crouched down to retrieve my knife from Johnny’s pocket, taking advantage of the confusion to snatch his phone from his other pocket. While down there, I took a closer look at the boxes. No question about it, this was the product that had been stolen from Trang’s warehouse. The only problem was that there was about five times as many boxes as what had been indicated on the inventory list Quan had given us. It seemed the break in at Trang Enterprises hadn’t been an isolated event.
“So I’m going to go,” I said to Trey and his buddies. “I mean, unless you guys have a problem with that?”
The muscle at the back of Trey’s jaw hardened, and he bunched his fists in anger. There was nothing he could do to stop me, and we both knew it. Had whoever was feeding them magical instruction been on site, I’d have had no doubt they’d have shown up to deal with me personally. If I was going have a chance at walking out of there, I had to give up on the notion of learning anything more about their operation. Casting a few flashy spells and strolling out of captivity relatively unharmed was one thing, but sticking around to question them would be pushing my luck a little too far.
Black Market (Black Records Book 2) Page 12
