Mama scowled. ‘‘No magic. If I had magic, would I be poor? Would my Boy be in hospital dying? Would I live here?’’
I gave her a noncommittal shrug. Mama was smart and tough. Tough enough to take a few hits, or live with less if it meant hiding what she had from those who would want to take it. She was also smart enough not to wave magic around in front of someone she didn’t know very well—me.
‘‘I don’t know what you’d do if you had magic,’’ I said quietly. ‘‘Maybe you would be poor and Boy would still be hurt.’’
I was very aware of the gun in her hand. And of the fact that she and I weren’t exactly best-buddy girlfriends.
‘‘No magic,’’ Mama repeated, flat. Final. But she didn’t smell right. I didn’t think she was telling me the truth—or at least not all of it.
The door handle rattled behind me. A key slipped into the first lock and the dead bolt snicked.
I moved to one side of the door. Mama tucked her gun into the pocket of her robe.
‘‘Boy?’’ she yelled.
‘‘Yes, Mama,’’ said a man’s voice. ‘‘It’s me.’’
Mama seemed happy with that, but I wasn’t feeling nearly as confident. I could smell the man, a heavy musk and spice odor.
I thought I knew all of Mama’s Boys, but the man who walked through the door was a stranger to me. Lighter hair than the other Boys I’d met, his dark eyes glittered in the low light, hard and glassy against the deeper tone of his skin. He looked more like Mama than most of her boys. I was pretty sure he was actually her son and figured he was older than me by maybe ten years. He looked like he’d recently taken a shower, and was clean-shaven and polished in a casual corporate way, all the way from his button-down white shirt, dark tie, and gray khakis to his loafers. He smiled and there was a smooth, slick coldness about him that made me think of reptiles. Or politicians.
‘‘I didn’t know we had company.’’ He extended his hand. ‘‘James.’’
It took everything I had to put my hand out. I might have been raised by wolves, but I still had social graces. I shook his hand and pulled mine away as quickly as possible. His hands were cold and smooth, and I had a real desire to wipe my palms on my jeans.
‘‘I was just leaving,’’ I said. So what if I didn’t give my name. Sue me.
His eyes narrowed and the smile slipped. ‘‘That’s too bad. You look familiar . . . have we met?’’
I got that question a lot, and I had zero intention of telling him I was Daniel Beckstrom’s daughter. But here’s the thing. He didn’t look familiar to me at all. His voice wasn’t ringing any bells and neither was his face. But his scent was familiar. I may not have met this man before, but I had been around him. Close enough and long enough that the smell of him—musky to the point of being sour and peppery—was imbedded in my memory. He carried other odors too—he’d been somewhere with organic death, like at the edge of the river, among fish and rotted things. He smelled of sweat too, like he’d recently done something very physical. What creeped me out was that he also carried the slightest stink of formaldehyde, very faint, like he’d brushed against someone or something that carried that scent. Maybe the big man in the street?
Despite the overriding smells, I knew I knew him. Or had known him. But I couldn’t remember him.
This is where the extra hit—the random double price magic sometimes takes out of me—really sucks. And there was a bad stretch in college where it happened every time I used magic—pain plus memory loss. I shrugged it off at the time, and yeah, I’d turned to booze and drugs to try to handle it. But it didn’t change anything. Unless a person was very diligent about always Offloading to a Proxy, magic left marks. It scarred. And I hated coming face-to-face with my own failings. Knowing I was missing memories, maybe even days or weeks of my life, was the sort of thing that gave me nightmares.
Not to mention the fact that I did not like this man, Mama’s Boy, or no.
‘‘No, we haven’t met,’’ I said. ‘‘Unless you went to Harvard.’’
He did a fair job of looking surprised and confused. ‘‘The college?’’
Right. So we weren’t going to really find out how we knew each other. I’d had enough of this. ‘‘Listen, I don’t care what your game is, but tell your buddy out there to keep his hands and magic off me or I will report you both to the police.’’
From the corner of my eye, I could see Mama stiffen. James’ face flushed with a fury he dampened with aplomb. ‘‘I don’t know who you’re talking about. I’ve been alone tonight. And there is no magic here. Not in this part of town.’’
‘‘No magic,’’ Mama repeated firmly. ‘‘You go now, Allie girl. Go.’’ She shoved me toward the door, and opened it for me.
‘‘No magic,’’ she said. Mama was sweating even though the air outside was cold enough to sting my eyes. She was afraid, or lying. I glanced back at James. He stood with his hands in his pockets, relaxed, cool on the outside and burning on the inside, watching me watch him. He was hiding something. I figured Mama knew too, but for her own reasons didn’t want to admit it. I also figured she had a gun and it was time for me to go.
I stepped through the door. Mama closed it so quickly behind me that the doorknob literally hit me in the hip. Every lock snapped into place.
‘‘You go to those men again?’’ Even through the thick wood door I could hear her yelling at James. ‘‘Those worthless men, huh? You go to them? Do what they want like dog to them?’’
‘‘My business dealings are my own,’’ James said.
‘‘Your own! What you do, you do to family. To Mama.’’
‘‘Then you should be happy,’’ James yelled. ‘‘I’m the one who’s going to get us out of this hellhole. Don’t you want that? Don’t you want to get away from this rotted dump? Have some money, some power?’’
‘‘No. Not if that man hand it to me on gold and diamond platter. There is no paying back his
kind
. They will use you. That
kind
always uses. We are dirt to them. You are dirt to them.’’
‘‘I’m not that stupid,’’ James said. ‘‘I know how to play their game. I know how to give them what they want and take what I want. We all win. We all get what we want.’’
‘‘Good.’’ Mama lowered her voice, but I could still hear her. ‘‘I want smart Boy. Boy who pushes pride away. Boy who breaks ties with those men and is not ashamed of his real family.’’
There was a pause. Finally James spoke. ‘‘Well. Maybe you won’t get what you want after all.’’ I heard his footsteps pound across the wood floor, retreating deeper into the building.
‘‘You go now, Allie,’’ Mama’s voice said through the door.
So I did.
This was so none of my business. If Mama needed me for the trial against my dad, I’d happily be there. But I did not want to get involved in her personal life.
It was cold out, so I hit the street at a pretty fast clip, heading toward the nearest well-lit street with a bus stop. Luck was on my side for a change—it wasn’t raining. Dawn smudged cobalt blue over black clouds and faded to a hazy gray by the time I found a bus stop.
Get Mugged would be roasting coffee beans about now, and I’d be there for the first cup. After that, I’d go down to the police station, file my report on Boy’s hit, and then I’d get out of town to Nola’s for a couple weeks before the trial started.
I pictured her little farmhouse and the hundred acres she farmed. In my mind’s eye it was always summer there—the summer I’d left college and landed on her doorstep trying to sort out my life. Nola and I had met in high school. She married her sweetheart her senior year and seemed happy as pie to move almost three hundred miles away to help him run the family alfalfa farm. But with Nola and me, time and distance didn’t matter. She’d always been there when I needed her and I’d tried my best to be there for her too, especially when her husband, John, had been sick with cancer.
There weren’t a lot of people out on the street yet, which suited me fine. Even better was that I didn’t have to wait long for the bus. I flashed my bus pass and settled into the relative peace of the fluorescent lights and rumbling engine.
It had been a strange twenty-four hours. The hit on Boy, seeing my father again after seven years, working blood magic to find a Truth I still couldn’t accept. The feeling of my dad’s blood and words still resonated beneath my skin. Maybe they would for a long time. Blood magic was a powerful branch of spell casting, and except for Truth spells, it was all but outlawed.
My father told me he didn’t hit Boy.
My father was really good at Influencing people to think what he wanted them to think. He was also an expert caster, and probably knew twelve different ways to fake a Truth spell. But it was hard to believe he could lie so completely held blood to blood.
Twenty-four hours had also gotten me hurt and sick from Hounding Boy and, just to make things even more interesting, I’d also gone on a nondate with a nonstalker my father had hired to either protect me or spy on me.
My thoughts circled Zayvion. There was something about that man that made me stop and want to look. Made me stop and want to feel. It wasn’t just the outside of him, which was, I had to admit, pretty nice: shy smile, quiet voice, and a gaze that made me feel like he was looking closer at me than any person had in my life. There were other things, unspoken things, that drew me to him. The long silences. The sense of calm he radiated. His willingness to step in when people were in need, like standing up to Mama for Boy. There was something about him that seemed honor-able, and yes, kind. And just thinking about that kiss sent a thrill through me.
Survival instincts said step away and leave the man alone. Something else, something deeper that was probably my heart, if I indeed still had one, told me to draw near and fold into the warmth of him.
The last time I listened to my heart all I got was a mooch of a boyfriend I couldn’t get rid of for months.
The bus finally dropped me off a few blocks from my apartment.
I decided not to go home yet, so I turned the corner toward Get Mugged, which was down another five blocks.
Someone was following me.
Dawn spread dove wings across bruised cloud bellies, lending the day some light, but not enough for the streetlamps to switch off. The city was waking up, streets and sidewalks more crowded, but not so crowded that I could easily lose my pursuer. I stopped on a corner to wait for traffic and to try to get a better look at the guy on my tail. Shorter than me, stocky. Dressed in a practical coat, knit hat, jeans, running shoes. At first I thought it might be Marty Pike, the ex-marine who Hounds for the cops. Then the wind shifted and my follower moved. I got a whiff of him—just the lightest scent of baby powder and soap, and beneath that, the peppery stink of lavender. I was being stalked by a woman.
Interesting.
The light changed and I crossed into traffic. I could lead her on a chase, maybe trap her down the end of an alley and then ask her why she was following me. I could walk to the police station and report her. Hell, I could get a cab, go to the cops, and fill out a report about her, and one about my father and Boy all in one easy trip.
But unless she got up in my face for some reason, there really wasn’t much to report about her. And I needed a cup of coffee like nobody’s business.
Lovely morning. The snap of cold air on my face, the sound of birds in the trees, the gut-wrenching joy of being stalked. It was great to be me.
The next three blocks went by quickly. I kept an eye on her without being obvious about it, but she was good. I saw her once, then lost track of her at the next crosswalk. Maybe she realized she was tailing the wrong woman. Why would anyone want to follow me around anyway?