Crime Spells

The Sweet Smell of Cherries by Devon Monk

Mama’s restaurant is a greasy dive hunkered in the kind of neighborhood outsiders avoid during the day and insiders try to ignore at night. Magic isn’t what’s wrong with the neighborhood. It’s a dead zone, far enough outside the glass and lead lines that carry magic throughout the rest of Portland that it takes someone with college learning, or a hell of a knack, to cast anything stronger than a light-off spell. Yet even without the help of magic, dark things move on these streets. Very dark and hungry things.

But I was there because Mama’s food was so cheap even I could afford to eat out once a week. A girl needed a place to get away from her job, right? This was my place. Or at least that’s what I’d been telling myself for the last month. What I didn’t like to admit was that I wasn’t sleeping so well any more, wasn’t eating so well, and lately had been having a hard time deciding if I should spend my money on rent or booze. Rent still won out (what can I say? I’m a creature of comfort and like a roof over my head), but it didn’t take a genius to see how dangerously close I was to burning out.

And burnout is a fatal sort of situation in my line of work.

Hounding magic is not for the weak of heart. Use magic, and it uses you right back. And I’d been magic’s favorite punching bag for months now. It wasn’t any one thing-I knew how to set my disbursement spells, I knew how to choose what price magic would make me pay: headache, flu, bruises, bleeding, breaks-all the old standbys. But after a year of Hounding on my own, the little pains were starting to add up.

I needed a month-hell, I needed a week-off. I’d even settle for a full twenty-four hours blissfully free of any new ache or pain. After this job, just this last one, I’d take some time off.

Yeah, right. I’d been saying that for a year.

“You eat, Allie girl.” Mama, five foot nothing and tough as shoe leather, dropped a plate heaped with potatoes, eggs, and onions on the table in front of me. I hadn’t even ordered yet.

“Someone skip out on the bill?”

She pulled a coffee cup out of her apron, set it on the table, and filled it with coffee that had been sitting on the burner so long it had reduced down to a bitter acid syrup.

“I know you come tonight. You meet with Lulu for job.”

Apparently this Lulu-my might-be client-had a big mouth. It irritated me that she had spoken to Mama. I’d been doing my best to keep a low profile since coming back to town, but really, who was I kidding? Everyone knew my father-or knew his company. He was responsible for the technology that allowed magic to go public: all those lead and glass glyph-worked lines that ran beneath the city and caged in the buildings, all those gold-tipped storm rods that sucked magic out of the wild storms that came in off the Pacific Ocean. A modern miracle worker, my dad. The Thomas Edison of magic. And an empty-hearted, power-hungry bastard I was doing my best to avoid.

I shoveled a fork full of potatoes into my mouth and almost moaned. I was hungry. Really hungry. I had no idea how long it had been since I last ate. Maybe yesterday? Night before?

“It’s really good.” And it was. The best I’d ever eaten here. Which might make me suspicious, if I were the suspicious type. And I was.

She scowled. “You surprised Mama cook you good food?”

I thought about telling her well, yes, since I’d never tasted anything here that wasn’t too greasy, too spicy, or too cold before, it did seem strange that she’d be waiting for me on this particular evening with a plate of killer hash browns.

I took a drink of coffee to stall while I thought up a convincing lie. The coffee hit the back of my throat in a wave of bitter and burned, and I suddenly wished I had about a quart of water to wash it down with. Forget the lie. Mama was the kind of woman who would see right through it anyway.

“I’m not surprised, just suspicious. What’s so unusual about this Lulu friend of yours that I’m getting the special treatment?”

Mama held very still, coffee pot in one hand, her other hand in her apron pocket and quite possibly on the gun she carried there.

I kept eating. I watched her out of the corner of my eye while trying to look like it didn’t matter what she said. But my gut told me something was wrong around here-or maybe just more wrong than usual.

Finally, Mama spoke. “She is not my friend. You Hound for her, Allie girl. You Hound.”

So much for keeping a low profile. I wanted to ask her why she thought I should take the job, but she stormed off toward the kitchen yelling at one of her many sons who helped her run the place.

If I were a smart girl, I’d eat the food, leave some cash, and get out of Dodge. If I paid my electricity bill short, I could probably make rent without this job. I could take my day or maybe a whole week off right now. There were too damn many crazy people in this town who had access to magic, and my gut was telling me this whole Lulu thing was a bad idea. I swigged down as much of the coffee as I could stand and ate one last bite of potatoes. I put a ten on the table, hoping it would cover the bill.

That was when the door swung open, and in strolled Lulu.

How did I know it was her? Let’s say it was the way she stopped, like a child caught with one hand in her mother’s purse, when she got a look at me. Let’s also say that I didn’t even have to Hound her to smell the stink of used magic, the sickening sweet cherry smell of Blood magic to be exact, that clung to her thrift store sun dress. From the glassy look in her eyes, she’d been mixing Blood magic with something that had her soaring high out of her head.

Blood magic was not something I wanted to deal with. Not today. Not any day. Time to cut out and call it good.

I walked toward her. Since I am a tall woman, six feet barefoot, and since I also had on three-inch heels, I towered over Lulu, who probably clocked in at about five-five and maybe a hundred pounds. I had the physical advantage, which meant I had the power of intimidation on my side.

Hooray for me.

“You’re Lulu,” I told her.

She did the one thing I didn’t expect. She whispered a soft mantra-a jump-rope rhyme-and moved her left hand in an awkward zag. She might be an awkward caster, but she was fast. I didn’t even have time to pull magic, much less a defense, before she and I were surrounded by some sort of sound-dampening spell. The clatter of dishes and Mama’s constant yelling weren’t gone, they just sounded very far away.

A sheen of sweat spread across Lulu’s face and dripped down her chest. Along with the smell of sweet cherries, I caught a whiff of a vanilla perfume that wasn’t doing any good to cover up the stink of her terror.

“He already told you, didn’t he? Sent you to find me?”

Great. She was one of the crazy ones.

“No one’s sent me anywhere. I’m not going to take the job,” I said. “Get yourself another Hound-try the phone book and the net.”

Her eyes, which were so brown they were almost black, narrowed. “You don’t even know what the job is.”

I didn’t answer. I actually did know what the job was-or rather I knew what she had told me it was over the phone. Her dog had been lost, she thought kidnapped, maybe by an ex-roommate. I thought it would be easy money. I thought wrong.

“I’m out.” I said. “Nice meeting you.” I tried to move past her, which shouldn’t be a problem because even though we were in a quiet zone, it wasn’t a solid sort of thing and would unravel as soon as I got out of her range. But she was quick, that crazy Lulu.

She took my hand and pressed her palm to mine. Her hand was hot-fever hot. I felt the cool press of paper, maybe a photo, between us. Lulu smiled, shook my hand as though we were old friends, and let the spell drop away. She wavered, just slightly, and I wondered if I was going to have to catch her before she passed out.

“Sorry it didn’t work out,” she said. And there was more she didn’t say, in her body language, in her eyes. There was “please help me.”

Sweet hells. Nobody should love their dog that much.

I gave her a noncommittal nod and walked out the door, but not before sticking the photo in my pocket.

I hit the night air-humid and too hot for a Northwest summer-and headed into the city at a brisk walk. Evening was just coming on. Streetlights sputtered to life and cast an orange glow that only made the night feel hotter. I wanted some distance, like maybe half a city, between Lulu and me. I cut across a few streets, mostly to make sure no one was following, and ducked into a bar to use the bathroom. Only there, with the bathroom door closed, the overhead fan humming, and the lock set, did I pull out the photo.

It was not a dog in the photo, it was a woman. Maybe twenty years old with short, dark curly hair and a white, white smile against her maple-honey skin. She wore a t-shirt, looked as if she should be in college and wasn’t, and had Lulu’s eyes.

A sister maybe. Too old to be a daughter. She might be the roommate Lulu thought kidnapped the dog. But Lulu had said something about a man, about “he” already telling me something.

Let her be the roommate, let her be the roomate. I turned the picture over. Written on the back, in very small, very neat handwriting was a name: Rheesha Miller, her age: fifteen, and the last place she’d been seen: at a convenience store on Burnside.

A chill ran down my neck even though it was hotter in the bathroom than it had been outside. I’d seen this girl’s picture on the news. Missing person, no leads. Disappeared in broad daylight. One minute she was on the street. The next, she went into the store and never came out. The owners, an elderly Asian couple, hadn’t seen her come in, nor was there any trace of her on the store’s security camera. Strange, to be sure, but the Hounds who freelance for the police hadn’t picked up any traces of magical wrongdoing. It was a runaway or a kidnapping, straight up, no magic.

There was nothing I could do about this. Nothing.

I committed her face to memory, just in case, then tore the edge of the picture, intending to flush it down the toilet. A chemical and fertilizer smell rose up from the photo. I held very still. There was a trip spell on the photo. Maybe it was for tracking where the photo went. Maybe it was supposed to make sure the photo couldn’t be damaged. Or maybe it was set to trigger an explosion spell. Damn, damn, damn. I knew I shouldn’t have taken the photo. I knew I shouldn’t have gotten involved in this mess.

I took a deep breath and tried to think calm thoughts, because magic is a bitch and you can’t cast it when you’re angry. I whispered a mantra until I calmed down a little. Then, while carefully holding the photo in my left hand, I drew a quick Disbursement spell with my right. I’d have a migraine in a day or two, but at least I’d be alive. I drew upon the magic stored deep in the ground below the building and traced two spells, Sight and Smell.

Magic flowed into the forms I gave it, and my vision shifted. Like turning on a single light in a dark room, I could now see the traceries of spent magic and old spells hanging like graffiti in the air. And since I was a Hound, and good at it, I could smell even more than I could see: the too-sweet cherry stink of Blood magic mixed with drugs, the slightest hint of Lulu’s vanilla perfume, and something else-a subtle spell that stank of hickory and smoke.

I leaned forward until my lips were almost touching the photo and inhaled. I got the taste of the spell on the back of my throat, the smell of it deep in my sinuses. Not an explosive. A tracker. Someone had gone through an awful lot of trouble to know exactly where this photo was going-or maybe where I was going. This was a complicated spell. One that took a hard toll on the caster. And I knew the signature of the man who put it there. A Hound named Marty Pike. He freelanced mostly for the cops. I was pretty sure he was ex-Marine.

I let go of Sight and Smell, and the room settled back to normal. Except for the fact that I was sitting in the bathroom stall of a bar being tailed by an Hound who worked for the police, I wasn’t in any danger, hadn’t done anything wrong, and could still back out of this job by flushing the photo down the commode.

But here’s the thing. Lulu had said “he.” And right this minute, I’d take bets that “he” meant Pike. There hadn’t been any real reason for Lulu to put the quiet on our conversation back at Mama’s, there hadn’t been anyone but a few regulars at the tables. If Pike thought she was going behind his back and hiring a second opinion on her sister’s disappearance, then I could see her wanting to keep it quiet. Cop Hounds don’t much like it when freelancers take a piss in their sandbox. Hell, Cop Hounds don’t much like freelancers, period.

So I could either believe that Pike didn’t want Lulu going behind his back, or maybe that he was counting on her to do just that. To hand off the picture to some sorry sucker-say me, for example-and that I’d… what? Find something he hadn’t or couldn’t find? Come up empty-handed? That didn’t make any sense.

Well, screw this. I was not going to be used for anyone’s patsy. I kept the photo and headed out into the bar. Tracking spells don’t work over great distances, so Pike should be close by. I scanned the crowd, a humorless bunch of hard drinkers who were watching the game and ignoring everything else. It was a small enough place there wasn’t anywhere for Pike to hide.

Plus, I couldn’t smell him.

Outside then. I made a point of leaving the door open nice and wide and stood there for a couple of extra seconds, just so he’d know I knew he was following me. Sure enough, the familiar short and shaved figure of Pike emerged from the shadows between a couple of parked trucks and started across the parking lot toward me. I’d heard from someone down at the city that the cops had nicknamed him Mouse. That was before his first case with the police. It was a high profile situation, and bloody. He saved a couple of guys on the force and did some other medal-worthy things that fell into the above-and-beyond-the-call category. Ever since then, the cops just called him Pike.

I still couldn’t smell him-he’d been standing upwind, the clever boy.

I walked down two steps and out into the parking lot, my heels making a solid, staccato sound.

“Allie.” His voice was low and carried the hint of a prior life spent in the south. His hair was gray, buzzed, and in better light his eyes might be brown instead of black. The lines on his face made him look angry without even trying. This close, I could smell his aftershave-something with a helluva lot of hickory overtones.

“Pike. You lose something?” I held the picture out for him.

He was wearing a long-sleeved button-down shirt, which seemed odd in the heat of the night. Both his hands were in the front pockets of his jeans, and he did not move to touch the photo.

“Lulu talk to you?” he asked.

“You know the answer to that.”

“No, I don’t. I haven’t seen or heard from her in three days.”

Wasn’t that interesting? If he didn’t know where Lulu was, then he couldn’t have been the one who put the tracker on the photo. But that spell had his signature on it. You can’t fake a magical signature. It’s just like handwriting. Every caster has his or her own unique style.

And if he had put the spell on the photo, then he knew where Lulu was. He could have followed her around twenty-four seven and still had time for an ice cream cone. Not that Pike looked like the type who ate frozen desserts.

I found myself not so much caring what part Pike played in this but why the hell the girl, Rheesha, hadn’t been found yet.

“What’s going on with this girl?” I asked.

“Did Lulu hire you to find her?”

“No.”

“She was just handing out pictures to strangers when you happened by?”

“Has anyone ever told you you suck at sarcasm?”

“No.”

Yeah, that was probably true. “You know what?” I said, “I don’t have to tell you anything, but here’s the truth. I’m out. Good luck finding Lulu and Rheesha. I want nothing to do with it.” I held the photo out for him again. He kept his hands firmly in his pockets.

“It’s too late for that,” he said.

“For what?”

“Backing out. You’re a part of this, Beckstrom.”

“Really? Since when?”

“Since you touched that photo. They’re looking for you now. And they’ll find you.”

Then the bastard turned around and started walking away.

Oh, no. Hells no. He was not going to leave me with some cryptic statement and fade to black. I caught up with him. “You know I haven’t ever gotten in your way-on a job or any other time.”

“So?”

“So level with me. Tell me who’s looking for me. Tell me why. I know how to lie low. This is your job, Pike. I don’t want anything to do with it.”

He stopped next to a beat up Ford truck and opened the passenger door. “Get in. We’ll talk.”

“What about…” I held up the photo.

Pike shrugged. “Keep it. At least we’ll know where they’ll be: right behind us.” Then he gave me a sideways glance. “You might be useful after all, Beckstrom.”

Comforting. I tucked the photo in my pocket and climbed into the cab. I wanted to know what Pike knew. Or at least enough of it to keep myself alive.

I half expected his truck to be loaded with secret military gear, but I didn’t see anything unusual, unless you counted the bobble-headed dog on his dash.

“Cute.”

“Grandkid gave it to me.”

He started the car and headed out of the parking lot, which was fine with me. I had no idea Pike had a family. For that matter, I had no idea he had a life except for Hounding. Hounds tend to be loners-the kind of people who work nights and dull the pain of using magic with pills, needles, and booze. Not exactly white picket fence compatible. Still, watching Pike in the sliding light from the street gave me a sort of morbid hope. He was not a young man, and he seemed to be holding up okay.

“How long you been Hounding Portland?” he asked.

“About a year.”

“Before that?”

“College. Don’t you read the headlines? Billionaire Daniel Beckstrom’s Daughter Drops Out of Harvard.”

He glanced at me. He was not amused.

“Why did you come back here?”

That was a question I’d asked myself almost every day for a year. Maybe because Portland and the Northwest were familiar to me. Home. Or maybe because I wanted to succeed on my own terms, right under my father’s nose.

Yeah. Mostly the second thing.

“Family ties,” I said. Then, before he could ask anything else: “Who’s looking for me, what does it have to do with Lulu and Rheesha, and where the hell are we going?”

“Do you know Lon Trager?”

“No.”

“High-end dealer. Blood magic mostly. Owns a place down Burnside. Likes to make the rich come begging him for it.” He turned a corner and we were heading down Burnside. About every other streetlight worked, and there were an awful lot of people leaning against buildings for this late at night.

Pike turned down a side street and into the neighborhood a bit. He parked and turned off the truck engine.

“You any good at lying, Allie?”

“No,” I lied.

That almost got a smile out of him.

“Good. Here’s what you’re going to say. You want to see Trager. Tell them your name-they’ll know who you are, because they’re the kind of people who do read headlines.”

“Wait. I am not going into the office, drug den, or whatever the hell it is, of a known Blood magic dealer. I wanted out of this, remember? I wanted to lie low.”

Pike just sat there and stared at me. Then, in a voice devoid of inflection:

“The cops think she’s a runaway. There’s no evidence of kidnapping. None. There’re no lines of magic to sniff down. But I know she’s in there. And you know why I’m not going in after her? Trager and I have history. Bad history. For all I know, she’s already dead. It’s been two weeks. Two weeks.” He stopped as a car passed by. I had the strangest feeling he wasn’t talking to me, that he was looking across the cab of his truck and staring down demons I could not imagine.

“I can’t get in there short of blowing up the building,” he finally said. “There’s no proof. No evidence. The cops won’t push for a search warrant on a teenage runaway. But you fit Trager’s clientele.” He nodded. “Rich, young, looking for a good time. You can walk right in there. And the best thing? Trager doesn’t know you’re a Hound. If the girl, if Rheesha’s in there, you’ll know. You can get her out.”

Okay, this had just gone way out into holy-shit crazyville territory.

“Listen Pike. I’m not a cop, a private detective, or a secret agent. I have no military training. I’m just a Hound. I can track magic better than anyone out there, but I have no idea how to rescue kidnapped girls. I don’t even know how to shoot a gun.”

That got through to him. He blinked, and his eyes cleared. I knew he was looking at me. Right at me.

“Rheesha’s my granddaughter.”

Oh, fuck.

My mind started working through all the things that one statement meant.

“Lulu?” I asked.

“Her half-sister. She’s-” He took a deep breath and let it out loudly. “She’s not the girl she was before the drugs and Blood magic. I think she sold Rheesha for her debt, for her fix. She doesn’t know I suspect her. I haven’t told the cops. Yet. I can’t-I just can’t. Her mother is all I have.” He laughed, a raw bark that sounded more like a sob. “You still want to be a Hound, Allie? Want to become a sorry son of a bitch who’s too afraid to save his own granddaughter?”

“What does Rheesha smell like?”

“What?”

“Does she smell anything like you? Like Lulu? Do you know what the last spell was that she cast? What are her favorite spells? Does she have any pets? Has she ever touched this picture?”

Pike’s eyebrows arched up, and he gave me one respectful nod. He was going to owe me a lot more than that for Hounding his granddaughter. Still, the questions and my all-business, no-bullshit attitude seemed to pull him out of what I feared was a suicidal spin.

That was another way Hounds died young. One of the easiest ways.

He took five minutes telling me what I needed to know, the perfume, her pets (snakes), and the spells she most used.

“I’m not going to get her out,” I said, “but I’ll try to find her and get out as soon as I can. If she’s in there, we’ll call the police. I’ll tell them what I know, and I’ll try to keep Lulu out of it. We’ll let the law take over from there.”

Pike nodded. “She was right about you,” he said.

“Who?”

“Mama.”

Sweet hells, who wasn’t trying to make me Hound this girl? I decided to get angry at Mama for selling me out later.

“Tell me about it when I come back.”

I left the photo on the seat of the car and headed down the street toward Trager’s address. After about fifteen minutes, I was right in Trager’s backyard. If any of his people had brains, they’d come out and escort me to their boss.

“What’s a lovely lady like yourself doing out alone tonight?” A man appeared out of the building’s corner shadow and took a few steps toward me. He was dressed in a suit and had one of those cell phone things sticking off of his ear.

“I’m looking for Trager. Is his place down this way?” Here’s one of the things I didn’t think Pike, or really anyone, knew about my family line. We are very, very good at Influence. With just the slightest nudge of magic, we can pretty much make people want to do what we tell them to do. And this guy was not immune. I hated using it, because it wrecked hell with a person’s free will, but, hey, there could be an almost-dead girl in there who needed my help.

Suit smiled, and the streetlight caught a glint of gold off his incisor. “Yes, it is. Who may I say is calling?”

“Allison Beckstrom. I’d like to see him now. Take me inside.”

“Of course. Right this way.”

Bingo.

I gave him what I hoped was a bright smile. Inside I was pretty terrified. I wasn’t kidding when I told Pike I didn’t own a gun, and it took more than Influence to dodge a bullet.

Note to self: If I survive this, take a martial arts class and go to the shooting range.

The walk wasn’t far-just two more doors down. Okay, I don’t know what I was expecting-a seedy room, people lying around in their own filth, maybe. Bad lighting at least. But the room looked like a fine restaurant. White linen tables all arranged behind silk privacy screens were tastefully up-lighted to give off pastel tones of gold and amber and plum. It looked trendy, expensive as hell, and stank of cherries, cherries, cherries.

“Very nice,” I said. I was starting to sweat under the strain of Influencing Suit. He wasn’t resisting, but I think deep down, he knew he was screwed. “I’d like to see the girl named Rheesha Miller. Take me to her.” I dug magic out of the ground and threw it behind my words. Unlike other spells, I could use Influence without a mantra and without tracing the glyph for it with my fingers. But it still took effort, still took magic, still took calm and concentration.

Suit’s smile slipped just a little, but he couldn’t break the Influence. “Follow me.”

He butlered me along a walkway that obscured the occupants behind the screens, then down a plush, red-carpeted hallway. At the end of the hallway was a modern glass and lead door that both contained and blocked magic. Behind that was probably Trager’s suite.

My heart started beating too fast. I didn’t want to go behind those doors, didn’t want to see what kind of man Trager really was.

Suit walked up to the door, and my stomach tightened in fear. Please, no. Don’t open that door. He walked past the door and down the darker hallway to the left. Plain wood doors were spaced out evenly on either side of us.

Now would be a good time to try Hounding. I wasn’t kidding when I said I went to Harvard. I knew how to recite mantras silently. I knew how to draw magic into my sense of sight and smell by casting the spell with one hand and adjusting my bra strap with the other. It was similar to how stage magicians keep the audience’s eyes where they want them to be, except, you know, this might be a lot more dangerous because there might be people with guns pointed at my head.

I pulled magic into my senses. The stink of Blood magic went from overwhelming, to so thick I gagged. Sweet cherry mixed with too many other odors: turpentine, animal sweat, rot, sex. I inhaled carefully as we strolled down the hall. It was damn near impossible to untangle the smells and signatures of the hundreds of spells that lingered in the air. I couldn’t smell anything that might be even remotely close to Rheesha’s scents.

Maybe Pike was wrong. Or crazy. That thought had crossed my mind. Maybe he was grieving for his granddaughter and grasping at straws. Or maybe he’d been part of a plan to get rid of me-take out the newest Hound on the block. Suit could be in on it. Maybe Suit wasn’t really under my Influence. Maybe I was about to lose hold on my concentration, my spells, and really fuck this up.

Fingers of panic rose up my throat.

I thought calm thoughts, took a deep breath, and tried not to choke. If I panicked, this whole charade was going to crash around me.

Then I smelled it, the hint of Rheesha’s perfume and the musty smell of snake. Not a sure thing, but something to hope for.

Suit stopped at a door and scanned a key card over the lock. He opened the door and stood aside.

“Thank you,” I said. “Now, walk to the nearest empty room and go to sleep.”

He stood there, and my heart beat harder. “Be a good boy. Go to sleep.”

Suit walked woodenly down the hall to the right.

I stepped into the room and turned on the light.

Small, with just enough space for a king-sized bed and two chairs. There was also a table on top of which were tubes and rubber hoses, knives, and other things I didn’t have time to get pissed off about.

Rheesha Miller sat with her back against the headboard. Her legs were drawn up close to her body and her wrists were tied to the headboard, just high enough that her hands were blue. Her bare arms looked as though someone had inked a red tattoo from wrist to shoulder, but the smell of her blood and sex was heavy in the room. That wasn’t a tattoo-she’d been cut. Since she was naked, I knew they hadn’t had time to carve up the rest of her yet. It took her a full minute to look over at me. Brown-black eyes like her sister’s but wide, bloodshot, and doped up.

Note to self: After I learn to use a gun, come back here and kick some ass.

Screw the call-the-cops plan. I was getting this girl out of here now.

“It’s okay,” I said softly. “Stay quiet.” I put Influence behind it, but I don’t think I had to. By the time I found a knife from the table and had cut her free of the rubber shackles, she had passed out.

Which presented another problem. How was I going to nonchalantly stroll out of this place with a naked girl over my shoulder?

Sweet hells.

I looked around the room for clothing, found nothing.

Think, Allie. You went to Harvard. You’re supposed to be smart. I couldn’t Influence everyone in the building-I was already fatigued and headachy from pushing Suit around. I didn’t have time or the equipment to set something on fire, couldn’t afford a stupid cell phone.

What was it one of my roommates had once told me? It was easy to steal something big if you just looked as if you had already bought it.

And since I didn’t know where the exits were, didn’t even know the floor plan, that’s exactly what I was going to do. Walk out of this place with a naked girl on my shoulder.

First, I repeated a mantra. My voice was shaking-hells, all of me was shaking. I pulled magic up into my hands and then into a glyph of Obscuring. That spell was most often used by people who wanted to cover up dry patches in their lawns or fruit sellers hiding bruises. It didn’t work well on large-scale things like people, but it was the only thing I could think of at the moment.

I arranged Rheesha’s arms and legs and lifted her across my shoulders in a fireman’s carry. She probably weighed ninety pounds.

I took a deep, calming breath, opened the door, and strode down the hall.

I have never taken a longer, more nerve wracking walk in my life. Calm, stay calm.

The door to my left, one door away from the glass and lead monstrosity, opened.

Don’t look, don’t look. But I looked.

His eyes were soft brown with flecks of gold, and they widened in surprise when he saw me. He was dark skinned and had the bone structure that hinted at Native or Asian in his blood. It was just a moment, but I was sure he recognized me. Too bad I’d never seen him before.

He stepped closer, and I noticed he wore a clean white shirt and black slacks-a waiter’s uniform-and he smelled of pine cologne. He touched my wrist gently.

“This way.” He tugged me back through the door he’d just come through and down a windowless passage that was maybe a delivery entrance. I noted belatedly that he was muttering a mantra, throwing around hiding, warding, and other high-level spells that I wouldn’t expect a waiter to know, spells that left the taste of mint in my mouth.

We exited on a side street. He let the door close behind him.

“Who is she?” He pulled off his shirt and handed it to me.

“Rheesha Miller.” Smooth, Beckstrom. Way to keep a secret.

The man shook his head. “I didn’t know. Do you have a way to get her to the hospital?”

Before I could ask him why he was helping or even who the hell he was, the sound of a Ford truck started up. Apparently Pike had no trouble Hounding me. “Do I know you?”

“No. But you’re Beckstrom’s daughter, right?”

I nodded.

“Welcome home.” He glanced over as Pike’s truck turned the corner. Then he ducked back inside, as if maybe he didn’t want Pike to see him.

Crazyville. But damn, anything that got me out of that hell hole was okay with me.

Pike got out of the truck and left the engine running. “Allie?”

“She’s alive.”

Pike helped me get her inside the truck, and I draped the white shirt over her. Neither of us said anything on the way to the emergency room. Rheesha slept. Pike didn’t look over at me, his gaze locked grimly on the street ahead. Only the bobble-headed dog nodded like everything was going to be okay. I, for one, hoped the dog was right.

I spent the next month dealing with the police, the courts, and a constant migraine. I got one look at Trager during a hearing, and he got one look at me. He was a frightening man, and he has since taken up residence in my nightmares. From what the police told me about him, I had just made myself a very dangerous enemy.

Pike didn’t call, didn’t thank me in any way. He really was a bastard. He owed me a hell of a favor, and I was not going to let him forget it.

But right now, there was someone else I wanted to talk to: Mama.

I strolled into the restaurant and took a table near the window. The smell of coffee, steak, and onions made my mouth water. I looked around for Mama and spotted her coming out of the kitchen. She strode straight over to my table, filled a cup with coffee, and set it in front of me.

“Why did you tell Pike he should send me in after that girl?”

She shrugged one shoulder. “You are strong, Allie girl. She needed you. Pike needed you.”

I took a drink of coffee. It was fresh, rich, and hot. “This is really good,” I said. And yes, I was surprised.

“You come here any day or night. Any time.” Mama nodded. “Coffee always be fresh for you, Allie girl.” I knew that was all the apology and thank you I was going to get out of her. That, and the best steak dinner I’d had in years, were enough for now.