Once dressed for the temperature, Quan led us down a long wide corridor. Dim fluorescent lights, the kind that took several minutes to warm up once turned on, buzzed overhead, bathing the hallway in a yellowish green light. It felt more like we were being taken to a forgotten solitary confinement wing of a foreign prison rather than to the office of a wealthy businessman. The more suspicious side of me considered that we were very likely being led to the scene of our gruesome murder by dismemberment, yet still I followed Quan to the set of ornate teak doors at the end of the of the hallway. The doors had been intricately carved with a detailed depiction of ancient Chinese warriors engaged in grisly battle with a winged serpent. The beast was so massive it dominated the top half of both door panels, dwarfing the soldiers below.
“Brace yourself,” I said quietly to Chase when Quan pushed the doors inward.
Inside was a luxuriously decorated office that looked more like a Wonders of the Ancient Orient museum exhibit than anything else. Delicate vases sat next to gold and jade statues. Impossibly well preserved parchments depicted evocative mountain and river scenes in remarkable economy of brush strokes. Even the carpets looked like relics rescued from the throne rooms of emperors who’d ruled over kingdoms that hadn’t existed for thousands of years. At the center of the room was a well worn desk, its simple design a stark contrast to the opulence of the room around it. It was bare of anything but a thin black laptop, the glow of which illuminated the most astounding thing in the room.
Sitting behind the desk, staring at me with eyes that burned into the depths of my soul, was something I’d written off as myth even knowing as much as I did about the seemingly endless variety of non-human beings prowling the shadows of our world. The idea of something so utterly mythological being real despite no one being able to claim having met one was too much to swallow.
Yet somehow there I was, standing face to face with a dragon.
Of course, there wasn’t actually a giant scaled beast curled up behind the desk. The dragon was in human guise, a body that suited an aging Vietnamese businessman with a name like Mr. Trang. Dressed in a tailored gray suit with matching tie, a gold watch that I guessed to be a Rolex flashed beneath his shirt cuff when he folded the screen of his computer down. He wore thin framed glasses that were about twenty years out of fashion, yet perfectly suited his wrinkled face.
Only the activation of my mage sight upon entering the room had let me view the dragon within. To Chase, Trang would seem nothing more than a slightly balding gray-haired businessman in an expensive suit. Beneath my sight, however, his aura practically filled the room, an ethereal ghostly dragon glaring at me with fiery red eyes. There was a remote possibility it could have been an elaborate ploy to fool me into thinking he was a dragon by projecting a false aura with some kind of spell, but my gut told me that wasn’t the case. I forgot all about having to pee, shutting off my mage sight to avoid spluttering like an idiot in the face of something so ancient and powerful.
“I wanted to personally thank you for your service,” Mr. Trang said. His voice was soft and tinged with a subtle accent, but it carried a solemnity that made Chase swallow audibly. “Quan tells me you’ve been most helpful in tracking down the parties responsible for breaking into my warehouses.”
An image of Trey and his crew chained to wall in some fetid dungeon hidden behind a secret panel flashed through my mind.
As if in answer to my unspoken thought, Trang followed up with “I also asked you here to ensure there are no misunderstandings between us. I am a businessman who must make difficult decisions that best benefit my interests. As such, I’ve come to an arrangement with the young men in question so they might work off their ill-advised transgressions.”
“Let me guess,” I said, trying hard to regulate my anger in light of who, or rather what exactly I was talking to. “Under this arrangement, they fall under your protection.”
“Quite so.”
“One of those shitbags tried to kill me,” I said. “I’m not exactly comfortable knowing that he’s walking free of consequence for what he did.”
“They are under strict orders not to come near you or your associate,” Mr. Trang assured me. “Our business is concluded. Quan will provide you with payment on the way out, along with a cash bonus that I’m sure you will find quite generous.”
“Is that all?” I asked a little too harshly. “You called us down here for that?”
Mr. Trang’s eyes narrowed ever so slightly. I imagined his dragon aura seething with rage at my impertinence, but I didn’t dare activate my mage sight to find out.
“Very well,” he said. “I had thought to extend an offer for you to work for me on a more permanent basis. Having someone with your abilities might have been valuable to me.”
“But?”
A riot of memories exploded in my brain. Snatches of moments from my entire life flashed by like a terrifying slideshow with an easily identifiable theme. Drug use. Violence. Rebellion. Raging against authority. Trang sifted through my memories like river sediment, plucking out each and every golden nugget of stupidity and insolence I’d ever displayed. I was powerless to stop it. By the time he was done with me, I was left on the verge of tears from having to relive events I’d long since buried in the darkest recesses of my mind.
“I have no interest in working with anyone so unstable. You’re not like those children who stole from me, Alex. They may be unreliable in the long term, but they’re wonderfully disposable foot soldiers. Your lack of self-discipline makes you a liability more than anything else.”
Silence hung over us. The look on Trang’s face said we were done, but the last thing I wanted to do was slink out of there with head hung in shame. Still, what could I say that wouldn’t just prove his point? He’d dug into my skull as easily as clicking a button on his TV remote to watch the Alex’s Most Shameful Thoughts marathon. In a matter of seconds, he’d learned every shitty thing I’d done in my life, the only mercy that they flashed by so quickly I could hardly process the sheer volume.
Quan stepped forward, gesturing towards the exit with an outstretched arm. Eyes on the floor in front of me, I walked out through the ornate double doors, down the long musty corridor, and back to the elevator where I numbly stripped out of my insulated suit. Chase rubbed his bare arms and made a brrrrr noise, but I didn’t register the cold. We stood in silence waiting for the elevator to take us back up to the ground floor, and I walked straight out to the car as if in a daydream. After images of my hellish trip down memory lane floated around me like ghosts come to collect on unfinished business.
Chase appeared a minute later, a cheap leather briefcase clutched in one hand. He tossed the case into the backseat before reaching over to unlock my side of the car, and we drove home without saying a word about what had just happened. I knew Chase had questions. I didn’t begrudge him the answers, but even thinking about opening my mouth and using the muscles in my throat in order to speak was so exhausting that I just went straight up to my room. I locked the door behind me, retrieved the wooden box from my bedside table, and curled up on the bed. I just needed to turn off for a while. Then I could deal with what I’d just experienced.
Chapter Fourteen
Thump thump thump.
“Alex, it’s been a day and a half,” Chase said from the other side of the locked bedroom door. “I know you’re awake. I can bang on this door all day long if I have to.”
Feeling only marginally less fucked up than I had been when Chase had found me on the roof the morning before, I rolled out of bed and went to the open the door. My legs wobbled beneath me, and my throat felt like a box of kitty litter from not having had anything to drink since the coffee at May’s. Chase had sprouted an evil twin that refused to disappear until I rubbed my eyes several times. The urge to throw up competed with the dizziness threatening to take me to the floor. With the help of the door frame and a long deep breath, I managed to keep from doing either.
“You look like shit
,” Chase said flatly.
“Thanks for the update. That why you’re banging on my door?”
Chase held up his tablet. “I discovered something you might find interesting.”
“That’s not our concern anymore.” I shuffled back to my bed and sat heavily. My head felt like it weighed more than the rest of my body. Keeping it upright was proving too much of a challenge. “You heard Trang. Trey and his crew are off limits now.”
“That’s the other thing I wanted to talk to you about.”
Chase wrinkled his nose when he followed me into the room. Instead of sitting down, he unlatched my window and heaved it upwards to let in a bit of fresh air. I’d sweated through a hell of a lot of drugs in the tangled mess of sheets over the last few days. Hastily discarded clothes piled here and there on the floor didn’t help much either. “What exactly was that between you and Mr. Trang?”
Right. Chase still didn’t know anything about the fact that feeble Mr. Trang was really a mind-reading dragon. I recapped how the meeting had gone from my perspective. I thought about leaving out just how troubled I’d been by the memories Trang had dredged up, but after disappearing into my room for an entire day, it seemed unfair to pretend it hadn’t affected me. It was obvious I wasn’t dealing well with any of it. I owed Chase better than to try lying to him.
“A dragon,” he said, eyebrows furrowing a little. “But… I mean… Mr. Trang?”
“Yup.”
“Like a Game of Thrones type of dragon, or are we talking more like a Dragon Ball Z type of dragon?”
“Dragon Ball Z, I guess. Only a hell of a lot less cartoony.” I pinched the bridge of my nose and shut my eyes, still trying to come to terms with what I’d seen. “Honestly, this is as crazy to me as it probably is to you. It’s not something I’ve spent much time thinking about, but if you’d have asked me last week, I’d have laughed and said that dragons most definitely did not exist.”
“And he just… read your mind?” Chase asked.
“As easily as you might open up Twitter and see every dumb thought anyone ever felt like sharing with the world.”
For once, Chase had nothing to say. He sank down onto the bed next to me, staring dumbly at his knees. I had no way of knowing the specifics of what was running through his head, but it wasn’t a stretch of the imagination to guess it was a mix of heady excitement from having been in the same room as a dragon mixed with the terrifying thought of having his every dark thought or action laid bare for a total stranger to pick through. No matter how kind-hearted someone was, everyone had skeletons in their closet. Sure, my skeletons might make the average person’s seem like chaste snow angels by comparison. That didn’t mean the average person didn’t have a suitcase full of memories they wish they could erase. We’ve all done things we’d rather not admit to. Psychic invasion of the kind I’d experienced in Trang’s office didn’t exactly leave you with any choice in the matter.
“What was it you wanted to tell me?” I asked, feeling shitty for dragging Chase into the gloom with me.
“What?” He looked up, his expression telling me his thoughts had been a million miles away. “Oh, the guy whose phone you snatched wiped it remotely, but not before I cloned it to my hard drive. I spent most of last night and this morning going through all the data. These guys are just dumb kids, Alex. Most of his message history centers around getting drunk and trying to get laid. I’m kind of amazed they were able to pull off the warehouse break-ins so cleanly.”
“They had some pretty potent magical assistance, don’t forget. Someone taught them precisely what to do. With the right spells, it’s not too hard to slip in and out of some place unnoticed.”
That was something that was still bothering me. Trang had effectively taken the kids out of my line of fire, but someone else had taught them how to draw power from the nexus in the first place. That person was still out there somewhere, and they were probably none too happy with me.
“There’s no mention of that in here,” Chase said, gesturing towards the data on his tablet. “Trust me. I looked at every file stored on the phone, even the ones he thought he’d deleted. You wouldn’t believe how many selfies this kid posts to Instagram. Worse, how many dick pics I had to look at while going through his instant messages.”
The urge to vomit returned with a vengeance. “I didn’t need to know about that, Chase.”
“Consider yourself lucky all I did was tell you about them.” He gave an exaggerated shudder. “The point though, is that I ran every photo through a geo and time filter to block them into distinct patterns. There’s loads of photos at the house, at a few shops and restaurants around town. Pretty normal stuff. But what’s really interesting is this.”
He turned on the tablet and handed it to me. On the screen was map of the Greater Vancouver Area. Clusters of markers identified every place Johnny had taken a photo that his phone had automatically added GPS co-ordinates to. The only thing that stood out to me was that some place called Burger Heaven had more data points than even the party house. The rest of the markers seemed too spread out to indicate any kind of useful pattern.
“Johnny liked burgers,” I said, handing the tablet back. “So what?”
“That’s where I was stuck too.”
Chase tapped the screen a few times. The map faded away, a graphical timeline taking its place. It took me a minute to figure out what had him so proud of himself. Once I saw it, it seemed too obvious to be simple coincidence.
“This group of photos were all taken at exactly 9:00 PM on Fridays,” I said.
Chase used his thumb and forefinger to expand the cluster of miniature thumbnails, blowing the images out into a clickable gallery. I stared at each of them, looking for the connection. Unlike the selfies and shots of money and cars Johnny posted to his personal account, these images had all been uploaded via the same anonymous Instagram account @Fire$ale. There was nothing in any of the snapshots that might identify the person who posted them, but if my guess was correct, these were locations of pop-up venues for their crew to unload stolen merchandise for cash.
I shared my guess with Chase.
“And guess what was just posted to the @Fire$ale account thirty-seven minutes ago?” he said, already tapping the icon to bring up Instagram.
The latest post showed little more than a red wooden slat wall completely covered with graffiti. It was the kind of photo a high school photography student might have captured on a photowalk. Taken at a jaunty angle and processed to eye-watering proportions, it blended right in with thousands of similar images posted to social sharing sites on any given day. The only difference here was that I knew exactly which building it was. To a certain subset of the city, it was as much a cultural landmark as the Experience Music Project in Seattle or the Burnside skate park in Portland.
“That’s walking distance from here,” I said.
“Sure is.”
“What about Trang? You were there when he told us to stay away from these guys.”
Chase shrugged. “He never specifically said that. You said that they were under his protection, and he confirmed. That doesn’t mean you can’t go watch them for a bit in case whoever was teaching them how to use magic is there.”
“Don’t you mean ‘we’? I thought you’d be all over a bit of sketchy surveillance.”
“Normally, yes.” A goofy smile spread across his lips, and he fidgeted with the tablet. “I’ve got another date with Lailani tonight. We’re going to the midnight movie at the Rio.”
This was probably the point where I should have lectured Chase about the danger of bringing an outsider even further into our lives while in the middle of a dangerous job. Trey had already sent one of his crew after us, and even though we were supposedly off limits to them under Trang’s new arrangement, people like Trey had a way of forgetting their place. My guess was that he and Johnny would be out for blood. If he didn’t fully understand the reality of who he was working for, he may not see the harm in sidestepping th
e rules long enough to get a little revenge.
But what was I supposed to say? Chase clearly had a thing for this girl. After how shitty the last several months had been for both of us in the wake of Jessica’s death, I couldn’t bring myself to suggest he ignore his feelings.
“Be safe,” I said instead.
“First of all, ew,” Chase said as he stood up. “Secondly, and not that it’s any of your business, but I always use protection.”
The last thing I thought I’d do that night was smile, but the embarrassed disgust on Chase’s face was too much for me to handle.
“I meant watch your back, you dumb nerd.” I whipped a pillow at his head.
He batted it aside before it could connect, then rolled his eyes at me.
“You be careful too,” he said on his way out the door. “Something tells me you’re going to have the more eventful night. Though I hope that’s not the case.”
Once I was alone again, I rooted through one of my dresser drawers and dug a Twix and a Red Bull out of my secret stash. I’d learned the hard way that I had to hide my treats so Chase wouldn’t seek and destroy them after smoking one too many bowls of supposed medicinal marijuana. I stuffed an entire Twix bar into my mouth, chomping vigorously while I slipped into a pair of dark gray jeans and a black hoodie. I ate the other Twix while I collected my phone, keys, and wallet; then washed it down with the warm Red Bull. It wasn’t my first choice of refreshing beverages, but if I was going to get through the night I needed to cram caffeine and sugar into my bloodstream as quickly and efficiently as possible.
By the time I hit the sidewalk, I was revved up and ready to go. My headache was mostly gone. The lingering post-high depression almost comforting in its familiarity. I made my way through the neighborhood, cut through Strathcona Park, and followed the railway tracks up to the back of the warehouse that was now a collection of more than a hundred art studios. Every year in November, the old building was open as part of a local arts event called the Culture Crawl, and I’d been inside it several times. The place was a confusing warren of stairwells that only opened out to certain floors, narrow dead-end hallways that branched off the main throughways, and an entire basement level that I’d only ever managed to find once in all my visits. It was the perfect place for a crew like Trey’s to offload stolen goods. While some artists only used their spaces as galleries that opened and closed on lazy business hours, others preferred to work well into the early morning. There might be a small party or exhibit opening on any given night, a perfectly normal reason for strangers to be wandering in and out of the building.
Black Market (Black Records Book 2) Page 14
