“Okay then.” I cast a brilliant light spark into the center of the room, revealing an open door that looked like it would give me access to the house. As a bonus, I got to enjoy watching the kids throw their hands and arms up to cover their eyes against the sudden flare of blinding light.
Without another word, I strolled right past them and out the door. I yanked it shut behind me, then placed my palms against either side of the frame. Breathing deeply to clear my mind, I wove energy into the spaces between the door and the frame. Starting from the topmost hinge, I filled it with a kind of magical caulking that would seal it shut until someone came to unravel it or maybe rammed into it with a school bus.
Hoping it would take them some time to summon either form of help, I pulled Johnny’s phone from my pocket. It was locked, but only with a four digit passcode. Chase had made an attempt to teach me a few of his tricks, and I began punching in the most common numeric passcodes I could remember from the list of twenty I’d been given.
1234
0000
6666
“Seriously?” I muttered to myself as the lock screen faded away, giving me full access to Johnny’s phone. I brought up the dialer and punched in the number for one of the secure lines Chase had set up for just such an emergency. Even if Johnny did somehow manage to recover his phone, he’d have no way of tying the number back to us.
“Alex, are you okay? You were supposed to check in hours ago.”
“I’m fine now. Route me through to Quan’s number, then come get me as soon as you can. I’ve got the kids locked up with the stolen merchandise, but I don’t know how long I can keep them there.”
As if on cue, I heard the grinding of a garage door motor humming away inside the garage.
“Shit,” I mumbled into the phone. “Scratch that last part. They seem to have escaped already. Call Quan, tell him his gear is at the house. Warn him that they’re on to us and he’ll have to get here quick if he wants to get his hands on it.”
“Will do.” I heard the slam of a car door on Chase’s end, followed by the spluttering of his car being started. “I’ll be there in twenty. Try to get someplace safe. I’ll track you via this phone, so don’t lose it.”
I tucked the phone into my pocket, then wiped a drop of blood from my neck. These guys weren’t playing around, and I only had a few seconds to figure out how to get clear of the house before they managed to block me in. The front door was out, so I beelined for the now empty kitchen. It was easy enough to slip into the crowd of people still partying around the pool, the crush of humanity giving me a few extra seconds to plan my escape. Fighting the persistent tug of the music on the still drug-addled puddle of goo masquerading as my brain, I pushed my way towards the DJ table. The way the lights had been positioned around the makeshift stage left the area behind it blotted out in darkness. All I had to do was slip past the DJ, disappear in the forest behind the house, and circle around to the nearest road.
Moving through the packed group of dancers was like wading through molasses. Bodies pressed hard against me from all sides, both by accident and intentionally. More than once I had to send the smallest spark of electric energy out of my skin to repel hands that grabbed my waist or tried to slip up under my shirt when a blissed out dancer thought I was reciprocating his efforts to grind up against me. I was trying desperately to keep from using magic too openly around such a large group of people, but the longer I spent in the crowd, the more I worried I wasn’t going to make it out of the area before Trey and his buddies managed to surround me.
Just as I reached the far end of the dance floor, I looked up and made eye contact with the DJ. Her eyes narrowed, slipped down to her phone, then locked back onto me. She reached for the microphone, thumb flicking the switch to turn it on as she brought it to her mouth.
“Yo, Tre—” her amplified voice called out before the rest of her words disappeared beneath the music.
The DJ’s eyes followed the cord out of the back of the microphone to where I held it in my hand, jack dangling free of the mixer it had been plugged into. Without another moment’s hesitation, she reached behind her back. The dull gray barrel of a nasty looking semi-automatic pistol made an appearance. The DJ aimed the gun at my forehead, and I plunged backwards into the crowd, praying she wouldn’t fire into the wall of people. I didn’t dare raise my head above the shoulders of the oblivious dancers moving all around me, holding my breath in anticipation of the bullets that might tear into my skin at any second. By the time I reached the edge of the pool at the center of the dance floor, I knew I was trapped.
I risked a peek at the DJ. The hand holding her gun was hidden just out of sight behind the screen of her laptop, and she scanned the crowd from her slightly elevated vantage point. There was no way I’d make it past her without giving her an easy opportunity to sink three rounds into my back. Going back towards the house wouldn’t work either. Trey and his crew were busy working their way around the mass of dancers, effectively hemming me in with no place to run. I had to get out of there, and I had to do it before they thought to shut the party down. As long as music blared from the speakers mounted around the pool, I’d be able to stay lost in the miniature sea of humanity.
That was it. The speakers were my ticket out of there. I couldn’t exactly bust out a giant fireball or stream of electricity to take out the DJ or one of Trey’s crew, and using an invisible blast of kinetic energy to send one of them flying would draw exactly the wrong kind of attention to me as I tried to run for the woods. Blasting the speakers, however, might just give me the cover I needed.
Planting my feet firmly against the ebb and flow of crowd, I tried to focus my mind. What normally took little more than instinctual thought was made nearly impossible by the drugs still thrashing my brain. Closing my eyes unleashed visions of flying monsters trailing rainbow firework chemtrails in their wake. Each heavy bass thump pushed my heart outside of its normal rhythm, leaving me lightheaded and unstable. Opening my eyes wasn’t much better. Time had become a little too uneven over the last few hours, the girl to the right of me moving in exaggerated slowness while the guy beside her was little more than a twitching blur.
Summoning magic under these conditions was easy, but keeping it from flowing out in anything but a focused form was not. My skin prickled with heat, and I realized with terror that I’d somehow managed to set myself to glowing like some kind of freakish sea creature from the bottom of the Mariana Trench. The glow would fade when I let my spell loose, so I focused everything I could muster on targeting the four huge stacks of speakers. Whether through magical enhancement, or as a byproduct of the drugs, I could see electricity pulsing into them via a tangle of extension cords. All I had to do was funnel a little extra juice into the mix and…
Bang.
All four sets of speakers exploded at once, the shower of sparks flying over the crowd, the only illumination as the backflow of extra energy shorted the entire neighborhood’s electrical grid. Someone in the crowd whooped in excitement, probably thinking it was all part of the show. For a moment, everyone simply stood waiting for the lights to come back on, as though all of this was a bit of showmanship on the part of the DJ.
“It’s the fucking cops!” I yelled at the top of my lungs.
That did the trick.
A girl screamed not far from me, followed shortly by a loud splash of a body landing in the inky black water of the pool. A hand shoved me hard in the lower back, its owner barreling over anyone in his way as he fought to get clear of the area. Kids streamed away from the pool, pushing past Trey and his crew. The crushing onrush of kids absolutely terrified of being busted for possession or underage drinking was too much for any one person to slow down. As luck would have it, Johnny was the one closest to me when everything went to hell. The expanding crowd had forced him back to the tree line at the edge of the property. He scanned every passing face, head swiveling like an owl on crystal meth as he tried to grab hold of anyone who looked even remotel
y like me.
Rather than walk right past him when he wasn’t looking, I sidestepped a sweaty football player looking guy to keep from being trampled, moving right in line with Johnny. His eyes widened in fear when they locked on mine. Despite everything that had happened to me that night, I was smiling and unconcerned.
Johnny was right to be afraid.
Unable to properly temper the kinetic blast I unleashed into his chest, I most likely broke a few ribs when I sent him flying into the tree trunk a few feet behind him. He bounced like a discarded rag doll, too dazed to even try to break his fall before he flopped to the ground. I paused just long enough to nudge his shoulder with my foot. He shook his head, eyes pleading for me to spare him. Lucky for him, I had no intention of killing anyone. If his friends cared enough to take him to a hospital, he’d most likely make a full recovery. That was, if Quan didn’t find him first.
As I melted into the trees, free of my pursuers, I didn’t much care one way or the other.
Chapter Thirteen
Mornings were decidedly not my thing, yet there I was sitting on the roof of Chase’s house when the sun rose over the horizon behind me. The dawn erased the stars one by one, fading the sky from jet black to a too-warm orange, before eventually settling into the light blue of day. Most of the drugs had burned through my system by the time Chase had picked me up, leaving me hollow and empty on the car ride home. Tired as he was, Chase had stayed awake with me in order to coax out a full recap of the night’s events. Eventually, he’d told me to try to get some sleep before shuffling off to his own easy slumber. The problem with ingesting such an incongruous mix of drugs, was that instead of dealing with one predictable come-down, I was swirling in a whirlpool of lingering after effects. Doubt, fear, sadness, and hopelessness warred with each other to see which could most effectively pull me into the depths of crippling depression. I’d alternated between crying and staring blankly at the peaked roof of the house across the street, barely aware of the gradual passing of time.
“Alex?”
I didn’t turn my head. Some part of me knew Chase was worried, but turning my head to acknowledge him or even moving my lips to ask what he wanted, required more energy than I had to spare.
With a grunt and a few choice curses, Chase wriggled through the top floor window. I saw his shadow, long and thin in the early morning light, fall across the shingles before he sank down to sit beside me on the sloped edge of the roof. I wanted to tell him I was okay. I tried to tell him he should go back inside and give me some time to ride out the aftermath of Trey’s jagged little pill. Instead, I just crumbled when he placed his hand on my shoulder. Collapsing sideways, I buried my face in his chest. My body heaved when a fresh onslaught of sobbing found its way to the surface. Arm wrapped around me, Chase simply rubbed my arm and murmured platitudes into my hair.
“I’m sorry,” I said when the tears eventually stopped.
“You have nothing to be sorry about,” he replied.
Sitting up straight again, I wiped my snot slick upper lip with the back of my hand, then rubbed my eyes with my palms. The overwhelming emptiness receded enough for me to give Chase he faintest of smiles. I didn’t know what I’d do without him just then. Telling him as much would only bring on a new wave of sobbing, so I let my eyes drift back to the house across the way.
“I know this is probably shit timing,” he said, “but Quan called and said Mr. Trang wants to meet with us in half an hour. It didn’t sound like the kind of invitation I could turn down.”
I didn’t say anything, but my expression must have conveyed exactly how little I cared about meeting with a client just then.
“I could go alone,” Chase offered. “He was pretty specific about wanting to talk to you, but I could tell him you’re still recovering from injuries you sustained last night. I mean, you do have a nasty cut on your throat. It wouldn’t even be that much of a lie.”
“No, I should go,” I managed to say. “Trang is going to want to hear it from me. There’s no point in putting off the inevitable.”
Perhaps sensing my inability to physically follow up on that statement, Chase got up first. He offered me his hand, keeping me steady while we traversed the treacherously steep roof. I had little memory of climbing out there in the first place, and now that I had a supportive arm to hold onto as we made our way back to the window, I half wondered if trying to get back alone would have sent me tumbling to my death.
“Shower and change into something clean,” Chase said when we passed the upstairs bathroom. “We’re leaving in ten minutes. If you’re still in the shower, I’m coming in to fetch you. I’m also going to videotape it and put it on YouTube.”
Too tired to glare at him, let alone snap a snarky comeback, I shuffled into the bathroom and pushed the door closed behind me. Off came the hastily modified party clothes that reeked of sweat and vomit. Thin streaks of blood stained my skin like thin fingers of rusty red paint. The cut on my throat stung violently when the water hit it, the accompanying jolt of adrenaline at least serving to resuscitate my lagging brain somewhat. I scrubbed at my skin as vigorously as I could manage, trying to strip away more than just the fear and panic that seemed to have sweated through my pores and into my hair and clothes.
My skin was red and raw from the hot water when I swept aside the shower curtain and snatched a towel. Steamy mist swirled around me, shrouding the bathroom in an impenetrable fog. I made a perfunctory effort to dry my hair, then stood there dripping wet from the shoulders down, staring into misty nothingness until a loud knock at the door jerked me from my thoughts.
“Four minutes,” Chase called from the hallway. “Hurry your ass up.”
I toweled off quickly, slipped on a bathrobe, and checked the slice across my throat. It looked like little more than three inch long paper cut. Since it wasn’t bleeding, I left it un-bandaged and went to slip on a pair of shorts and a t-shirt before following the scent of fresh brewed coffee that wafted up from the kitchen.
Guardian angel that he was, Chase was in the process of dumping three heaping tablespoons of sugar into a travel mug that was more cream than coffee.
“This should get you out the door at least,” he said as he handed me the sacred elixir. “Come on. Let’s stop at May’s for breakfast.”
I swallowed a gulp of coffee. “Breakfast? I thought you said we had to be at Trang’s in thirty minutes?”
“Consider it a little white lie to get you moving. We’ve still got about an hour. Plenty of time to get some food in you.”
Although the thought of consuming anything more solid than coffee made my stomach churn, I knew Chase was right. By the time we walked into May’s Diner, the little brass bell jingling over our heads as the door wheezed shut behind us, my mouth was watering from the rich savory smells coming from the kitchen. I quickly demolished a lumberjack breakfast special — four pancakes, two fried eggs, bacon, hash browns, and rye toast — a side of sausage links, and four more cups of coffee. When our server came, there was nothing left on my plate but a few smears of ketchup, egg yolk, and syrup beneath a veritable army of dead sugar packets and little plastic creamer containers.
I excused myself, and went to the bathroom to wash my hands and pee out most of the coffee. I then joined Chase outside after noting that he’d already left two twenty dollar bills on the table for our bill. May’s was one of the cheapest joints in town, but a post-magic eating binge never came cheap.
“Better?” he asked, a chewed-up toothpick bobbing between his lips.
“Much.”
“Let’s go meet the mysterious Mr. Trang then.”
By the time we pulled into the warehouse in Richmond, I had to pee again. I scanned the parking lot looking for some place I might be able to discreetly take care of business, but before I could even consider using a large concrete block as a makeshift privacy screen, Quan appeared at the entrance, beckoning us inside. We followed him into the warehouse, and once again the startlingly cold air made my
skin erupt in goosebumps. I was too exhausted to waste energy on a spell to keep warm, so I clenched my teeth and tried my best to ignore it until we got to Trang’s office where I imagined it would be a more normal temperature.
I couldn’t have been more wrong. Rather than leading us to an upstairs office, Quan guided us into a large service elevator that only had buttons for three levels below us. He punched the bottom-most button, and with a lurch we descended much farther than I would possibly have expected the warehouse to extend. When the lift finally came to a stop with a low mechanical creak, we were greeted by a blast of nearly sub-zero air from hallway beyond the opening doors.
I glanced at Chase, who was openly shivering with arms clasped tight in front of him. Little clouds of mist puffed from his nostrils, a large plume escaping his mouth when he spoke.
“Why the hell is so cold down here in the middle of summer?” he asked Quan.
“Mr. Trang requires very specific living conditions due to certain… health issues.” He stepped out of the elevator and gestured to a rack of what looked like bright orange arctic survival suits.
Quan himself retrieved a heavy black coat with a fur-lined hood that he slipped into while we sorted through the rack to find appropriate sizes. The smallest suit was still a little too large for my tiny frame. The sleeves hung several inches past my hands, and the thickly insulated legs bunched up around my legs, making it difficult to walk without feeling like a mutant penguin. Folds of fabric pressed into my stomach, putting unwelcome pressure on my bladder. I wasn’t about to complain though, since the outfit was as toasty as being back at home wrapped up in my favorite down blanket.
Black Market (Black Records Book 2) Page 13
