“Fine,” I eventually said. “I’ll accept a contract to take down Trey’s crew. Nothing more.”
Montgomery nodded. “That’s all I ask. Remove them from the equation, and the money is yours.”
“What if I’m not able to do that?” I asked.
“You don’t want to find out.”
“Okay then, how do I contact you if I need more information?”
“You don’t. I’ll contact you,” was all she said before she strode across the room and out the front door that one of her bodyguards had opened as if by telepathic command.
After a quick check of the time to see how late it was, I got up and collected the binoculars to take them up to my room. I stashed them on the top shelf of my closet, hoping I wouldn’t forget about the gift in the intervening months before his October birthday. It was now nearly two o’clock in the morning, and he still hadn’t come home yet. I thought about texting him to see how things were going, but if he was still out, he deserved to be enjoying himself instead of worrying about whatever new mess I’d just signed us both up for.
Chapter Sixteen
This time it was my turn to wake Chase by pounding on his door at nine o’clock in the morning. I hadn’t heard him come in the night before, but since I hadn’t fallen asleep until nearly three, I doubted he’d made it back into his own bed more than a few hours ago. Normally, I’d have simply slipped out without bothering to wake him. He’d been clear about his desire to be kept in the loop though, and if he wanted to hear about the shift in our client focus before I had to go meet Karyn, it was going to cost him a bit of beauty rest.
“So we’re working against Mr. Trang now?” he asked after I’d summarized everything for him while he made himself breakfast.
I scooped a large handful of cereal from the open box on the counter.
“Not technically?” I mumbled around a mouthful of half-chewed sugar bombs.
It sounded as hollow to me as I imagine it did to Chase. There was no way a guy like Trang wouldn’t perceive action against his employees as a direct affront to himself. There was little room for interpretation of his order for me to stay away from Trey and his crew. If anyone thought I was going to let that stop me, I guess they didn’t know me all that well. Even if I could bring myself to ignore the murders they’d so casually committed in pursuit of temporary magic abilities, I had unfinished business with Trey and his crew of poseur gangsters. Ever since leaving Johnny alive the night I’d escaped their house party, I’d wondered if maybe I’d gone too easy on him. I didn’t know if I was ready to start playing judge, jury, and executioner with the kinds of people I’d lately found myself butting up against; but the part of me that viewed mercy as a character flaw grew significantly larger every day.
Even thinking about Trey and his little box of pills made me sick to my stomach. By letting him live, was I just dooming countless other girls to terror and abuse by his hand? This was the kind of question that kept me up at night. The kind of question I’d do almost anything not to have to deal with.
Chase said something I was too lost in thought to hear.
“Huh?”
“I still don’t like it,” Chase repeated. “If this Montgomery woman is the person who set Trey and his gang loose, what possible reason could we have for aligning ourselves with her? And don’t tell me it’s the money. I know you’d rather be broke than work for someone like her.”
“At the end of the day, I couldn’t care less what people like Montgomery and Trang do to each other. They’re both opportunists of the worst sort. I’m not going to shed a tear for any idiots willing to act as their foot soldiers in some stupid corporate war. What’s really bothering me is that there’s a third player in this game. That person is putting magic into the hands of people like Trey and Johnny. Indiscriminately handing out arcane knowledge to those who use it to do harm isn’t something I can ignore. Innocents are getting killed just so Montgomery can get away with stealing from Trang. I may be working alongside her at the moment, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to stop myself from taking her down too if I get the chance.”
Chase sighed. “That’s pretty much what I thought you were going to say. What’s the next step then?”
“I’m off to meet Karyn in Gastown to get her opinion on everything. The techniques Trey’s crew used to tap that power nexus are far more in line with witchcraft than anything I’m familiar with. I’m hoping she can give me a few tips on what to look for when I’m tracking down Montgomery’s contractor. Better yet, maybe she can point me towards a few likely suspects.”
“That’d be ideal,” Chase mused. “Having a list of names to work from would make it a simple matter of identifying even the remotest connection to Montgomery.”
“Hell of a lot easier than operating on the slim chance I stumble into one of Montgomery’s employees sitting in a candle-lit pentagram on the floor of a janitor’s closet.”
I gulped down the last of my coffee then unplugged my phone from the charger on the kitchen counter. There were still thirty minutes before the meeting time Karyn had set. My own sleep had been fleeting and restless, so I decided to walk in the hopes it would clear my head a little.
“Oh,” I said, pausing at the door on my way out. “Could you dig into Montgomery while I’m gone?”
“Already started,” Chase said from his computer desk. “Ping me when you’re done with Karyn and I’ll let you know what I have.”
Satisfied Chase would have a full workup on our new client in no time, I left the house and started walking. The day was bright and warm again, yet another in a long stretch of abnormally hot days. While most city residents probably weren’t complaining, I kind of missed the overcast conditions we tended to get throughout the year. For one, it didn’t require squinting against the fiery ball of light in the sky that seemed intent on inflicting the maximum amount of pain on my tired eyes. It also meant saving me from sweating like a madwoman before I was halfway to my destination. Dark half moons had spread out from the armpits of my vintage Joy Division t-shirt, forcing me to walk with my elbows thrust out in the hopes that the slight breeze from my movement might dry them out a little.
“Did you just come from a sweating to the oldies aerobics class?” Karyn snarked when I walked into the café.
I folded my arms self-consciously over my chest. It was tough not to feel like a total slob next to Karyn in her crisp white sleeveless dress. Her hair had been done up as though she’d just come from a stylist, and her makeup was equally precise and glamorous. She was the only witch I knew who looked more like a lawyer than someone who spent more than a few nights a year naked and chanting in the woods while smearing mud and other substances on her body.
“I’m going to get a coffee,” I said before turning away to step up to the counter.
After waiting in line behind a guy with more hair product on his head than I’d used in the last year, I ordered an overpriced pour-over from the extensive menu of single origin coffees. For almost four bucks, I had the privilege of watching the barista trickle water over coffee grinds with agonizing slowness. The coffee wasn’t even that hot by the time my cup was passed over the reclaimed wood countertop, and it didn’t taste any different from what I’d have gotten for half the price at the Starbucks across the street. I could practically feel the barista’s horrified stare boring into the back of my head as I dumped sugar and milk into my cup.
Karyn was pecking furiously at the keyboard on her phone when I sat down across from her. She didn’t look up when she said “I only have a few minutes. Whatever it is you want, make it quick.”
I kept my voice low to keep from being overheard by anyone. “You remember those power nexuses you helped us tie to the mysterious dead old guys? I need your help tracking down someone who’d not only know how to channel power into a non-gifted, but who wouldn’t think twice about teaching others to do the same.”
“Could be anyone with a basic knowledge of the Craft,” Karyn said with a d
ismissive shrug. “It’s dangerous as hell. Most of us know better than to play with that kind of fire, but it’s not like the concept is all that difficult to learn.”
“Doesn’t teaching that kind of thing to outsiders go against some kind of witchy code though? I know you answer to the Conclave same as the rest of us. It can’t be in your best interest to have a rogue witch sharing your secrets with the highest bidder.”
Karyn pressed the button on the top of her phone to put it to sleep. She set it on the table where she could keep an eye on it, and she took a careful sip of her as yet untouched latte. A small spot of foam remained on her upper lip when she pulled the cup away. She licked the lip clean, then blotted the area once with a folded up napkin that came away smudged with crimson lipstick.
“We do answer to the Conclave, but just as there are mages who operate in the Light and Dark, so too are there practitioners who follow a looser set of moral guidelines.” A notification popped up on her phone, distracting her for the time it took to flick her eyes to the screen and back to me before continuing. “Personally, I’d never stoop to such a thing. There are far too many amateur witches stumbling around the edges of genuine power after trying their hands at spells they found in a book or on some website. Hedges are exasperating enough without encouragement from those who actually know what they’re doing.”
This didn’t seem to be getting me anywhere. Karyn’s attention seemed far more focused on her phone, which she had back in her hands again. I wasn’t sure what I’d expected; this was Karyn after all. Despite her assistance in disguising Chase at the SkyTrain station a few days earlier, I could see that our relationship hadn’t evolved beyond the animosity we seemed to have shared since our first meeting. To be honest, I couldn’t have said why there was such friction between us. There was, however, no denying that little sparks tended to flare into rampaging wildfires when we spent too much time together.
“Can you at least tell me what I should be looking for if I’m trying to identify this rogue witch?” I asked.
“Or warlock,” she replied. “Could be a warlock.”
“Isn’t that just a male witch?”
“Aren’t you just a wizard?”
“Point taken.”
Phone still on, but at least not her main focus for the moment, Karyn pursed her lips in thought.
“It’s not like you’re looking for someone with scraggly black hair and a pointy black hat,” she said. “For every practitioner who wears charms and dresses in black lace, there are two like me who wouldn’t be caught dead looking like I just came from a casting call for The Craft 2. What’s probably going to make it even more difficult for you is that your mage sight will be pretty much useless unless you catch someone in the act of casting.”
She had a point. It wasn’t what I’d hoped to hear. Then again, if I’d known what I was looking for, I wouldn’t have put myself through the displeasure of meeting up with Karyn. I had to assume that if Montgomery’s private witch or warlock was worth what she was most likely paying them, they’d probably be as professional as Karyn. To look at her typing away on her phone across from me, I’d never in a million years guess she was one of the more powerful witches in the Pacific Northwest. Wrapped in her perfectly fitted dress, flaxen hair done up in a neatly wrapped bun, she looked more like a model taking a break between photo shoots.
“Is that all you wanted to ask me?” Karyn asked with a little frown. “I had to push back a client for this. I thought you said it was important.”
“You don’t care that someone is teaching scumbags to harness magic energy through human sacrifice?” I asked in a harsh whisper that attracted a few stares from neighboring tables. “I always knew you were self-absorbed, but I never pegged you as the kind of person who’d be able to ignore a threat to your very existence. If the Conclave decides to get involved, you know they’re going to come down hard on everyone. You and your friends will be first on the chopping block if it comes out that you stood idly by all along.”
A dismissive eye roll made it clear what Karyn thought about my admittedly weak threat. “Doubtful,” she said. “The Conclave is too wrapped up in their own self-interest to worry about what happens among us plebeians. Besides, if I haven’t heard even a whisper about any of this, what are they odds it’s even on the Conclave’s radar?”
The phone was back in Karyn’s hand before she even finished talking. I don’t know if she was angry because I was trying to implicate someone she knew, or if she was just annoyed that I’d bothered her with something she deemed ridiculous. Either way, it was becoming clear I wasn’t going to learn anything useful from her.
I took one look at the cold dregs of my coffee at the bottom of my cup. I was as likely to get answers from attempting to read the puddle of creamy brown liquid flecked with coffee grounds as I was from pestering Karyn any further. And while the sad little coffee cup had nothing left to offer me, I figured I might still need Karyn’s help before all of this was said and done. Better to leave now before I managed to say something that would piss her off completely.
“If I hear anything suspicious, you’ll be the first to know, okay?” Karyn said as I made to leave.
I flashed her a grudging smile and dipped my chin in a curt nod before leaving the café.
Chapter Seventeen
I waited until I was on a quieter stretch of Cordova Street at the edge of Gastown before calling Chase to find out what he’d learned about the mysterious Elisha Montgomery.
“She’s a ghost,” was all he said.
“I’m pretty sure she’s not a ghost,” I told him. “Come to think of it, I’m not even sure ghosts are real.”
“Not that kind of ghost,” he clarified. “The woman is a digital ghost. I’ve searched every database I have access to, and there’s no record for an Elisha Montgomery matching the description you gave me. Without a business name or something like a Social Insurance Number, there’s nothing more I can do.”
Great. Another dead end. Fictional as they may be, I envied gumshoes like Marlowe and Poirot who never had to contend with the supernatural. People like Montgomery and Trang were part of a longstanding tradition of fae and magic users who had more than ample resources when it came to hiding their true identities. It’d take a hell of a lot of asking around to find someone who knew anything useful about Elisha Montgomery, especially in a city like Vancouver. At the end of the day, I didn’t know a single thing about my new client other than the fact that she’d been indirectly responsible for turning Trey and Johnny into more powerful warlocks than they had any right to be.
“Alright, I guess I’m going at this blind then,” I said, happy Chase couldn’t see my disappointed expression over the phone. “Maybe I can convince Trey to give up whoever taught him how to use magic.”
“Or you could stake out Montgomery’s office to see if anyone suspicious shows up.”
I could practically hear the self-satisfied grin I knew was plastered across his face.
“And how, pray tell, would I go about doing that if you weren’t able to find any information on her or her company?”
“By tracking the phone of one of her bodyguards,” he said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “I’ve got a honeypot wifi node set up at the house. It automatically installs a bit of malware onto any computer that connects to it. One of Montgomery’s goons must have been too cheap to use his data plan, because I own his phone now.”
My pride in Chase’s resourcefulness only lasted a few seconds before it occurred to me that my phone had been probably been hacked in exactly the same way. Not that I had anything on there I felt I needed to hide from him, but there was something creepy about anyone having access to all my private emails and chat messages.
“Tell me you don’t have that program running on my phone,” I said, irritation creeping into my tone.
“Don’t worry,” he said quickly. “Your phone does have it’s own custom rootkit running on it, but it does the opposi
te. Your phone’s operating system is as immune to this kind of remote hacking as I can possibly make it.”
“So you’re not tracking my every movement or looking at every Doge meme I save to my photo gallery?”
“I can use your phone to track you in an emergency, but it’s not like I’m watching a map with your location on it every time you leave the house,” He almost sounded offended. “I’ve got better things to do with my life, Alex.”
Deciding that the benefits of having a hacker as a best friend far outweighed the potential downsides, I told myself to forget about it and move on. Short of going back to Trey’s house for a head-on confrontation, I hadn’t yet figured out what to do about them. Spending a bit of time watching Montgomery’s office would at least be something productive to keep me occupied while I mulled the whole situation over.
“So where is this place?” I asked.
I heard the clicking of Chase’s keyboard and mouse on the other end of the line. “I’ve been reviewing the GPS track of everywhere he’s been since he left here, and although there are a bunch of strange dead zones where I lost him, the only place he spent more than five minutes is a building about eight blocks from where you are now.”
Chase forwarded me the relevant information, and I clicked on the address to bring up a map. It meant backtracking towards the café where I’d left Karyn, but I doubted she’d even notice if I walked right past the front window. Even more likely, she probably wouldn’t be sitting there. I’d never been all that clear on how she made her money, but given her expensive tastes and downtown address, she did a hell of a lot better for herself than most of the witches I’d known over the years. I’d never been able to tell if she thought associating with me was beneath her or not, and I honestly couldn’t have said why there’d always been so much friction between us. The truth was that I’d once been optimistic about having a new friend who could relate to the difficulties of keeping our abilities secret from the general population. That relationship had never exactly blossomed as I’d hoped.
Black Market (Black Records Book 2) Page 16
