Devon Monk - Magic In the Blood

“Mind if I leave it open?” I asked.

“That’s fine. I’ll be back up in a sec.” He had turned the corner, out of eyesight from the top of the stairs. “Phone’s here on the table. Allie?”

I took a deep breath. Hounds are not trusting people. But Grant had given me more than his word. He’d gone out of his way to run interference with Dr. Nosy up there. And besides, we were friends. I think. I shut the door and clomped down the stairs. “I’m leaving wet footprints on your carpet,” I said. Then, “Wow.”

The room opened up at the bottom of the stairs and was most definitely not a dungeon. A full apartment, it was nicely furnished in leather and linens, with accents of deep blues and greens and lights set along the walls and ceilings in just the right way to make it feel airy and spacious instead of like the brick basement it was.

“You decorate this yourself?” I asked.

“Mostly. Had some help from a friend or two. Do you like it?”

“It’s fantastic.” I meant that.

“Thanks,” Grant said. “The phone.” He gestured to an old-fashioned standing candlestick phone with a rotary dial.

“Serious?”

“Authentic. Works too.”

I walked across thick carpet to the phone table next to a very comfortable-looking easy chair.

“Take your time. I’ll be right back.” He headed up the stairs, leaving me to make my call.

I dug in my coat pocket and pulled out my blank book and thumbed through it until I found Violet’s number. I dialed the number and got her on the second ring.

“Beckstrom speaking,” she said.

Strange to hear my father’s name, my name, from her lips. I wondered if I’d ever gotten used to that before, when I had known her, before I had forgotten her.

“Hi, Violet, this is Allie.”

“Allie. Is everything okay?”

Note to self: start living the kind of life that would make that question no longer the first thing everyone thought to ask me.

“Fine. Except I need to cancel our dinner appointment.”

“That’s too bad. I was looking forward to it.”

“Yes, well, I got a Hounding job that needs to be done tonight before the spell fades. Maybe breakfast?” I offered.

Violet hesitated. “I think I could do breakfast. What time?”

“Eight?”

“Eight should work,” she said. “How about Kickin’ Cakes?”

“I’ll be there.”

“Perfect,” she said. “And, Allie?”

“Yes?”

“Be careful.”

Note to self number two: start living the kind of life where people weren’t always ending their conversations with me like that.

“Sure thing,” I said.

I hung up the phone and dug in my pocket for the card Pike had given me.

I dialed the number. I was about to hang up on the fifth ring when a man’s sleepy voice answered. “ ’Lo?”

“I’m looking for the Pack?”

“Found it.” He yawned loudly and I heard rustling, like blankets being swept aside, and the wind-chime clink of a couple of beer bottles thunking onto carpet.

“Pike told me to call for the next meeting time.”

“Yeah?” he said.

“Yes.”

There was a long pause.

“Listen, if there’s a secret password or something, he didn’t tell me what it was,” I said.

“Wait,” he said. “Who is this again?”

And I thought Pike said not all the Hounds were as dumb as Anthony.

“Forget it.”

“It’s cool, it’s cool,” he said. “It’s just early, right?” More sounds of him grunting as though he’d stood up, and then the plastic-on-tracks rattle of window blinds being pulled aside. “Damn,” he said. “Not early. So what was your name?”

“Allie Beckstrom.”

“No kidding.” He suddenly sounded much more awake. And happy. That made me suspicious. “Nice to finally hear from you, Allie Beckstrom. Meeting’s at noon at Ankeny and Second. You know where that is, right?”

“I’ll manage,” I drawled.

He laughed, and it sounded like a dog’s bark. “Right. You got this town down, dontcha? Okay. Lower level. Today. Noon.”

“Is there a room number?”

“You’ll find us.”

And then he hung up on me. Hung up. Fab.

I hooked the ear piece on the receiver and stood there in Grant’s apartment, feeling a little less lost. At least I had a plan for finding out more about ghosts from Pike, and once I talked Pike into going to the police with me, we could take care of Trager too. The muffled thump of footsteps on the floorboards above my head was a comforting sound. Down here, in this place, I was alone, removed from the world. Hidden. Safe.

Safer than I felt in my own apartment. Which was all sorts of wrong that I didn’t even know how to begin fixing.

No, that wasn’t completely true. I knew why I didn’t feel safe at home. My dad. Or rather, my dad’s ghost. I rubbed my hands up and down my arms as the memory of being naked and vulnerable while my dad’s ghost touched me sent chills down to sour in the pit of my stomach.

I thought about what Grant had said-ghost hunters believed spirits of people who had died traumatic deaths lingered here and that people who used magic were sensitive to them. Maybe I didn’t believe in all that stuff, but I could not ignore what I had seen today. My dad’s ghost. Glyphs that bore my dad’s signature. The empty-eyed watercolor people.

Maybe I was seeing things because I carried magic inside me. Or maybe all the ghost stuff was my subconscious telling me I needed to face my father’s death-something I had not done in any physical manner since I’d come back to town. I should just do the one thing I was avoiding and go to my dad’s grave, and get it through my head that he was dead and gone.

And not hanging out in my bathroom waiting to ambush me.

I dialed the phone again and called a cab. They said they’d be by in about three minutes.

Just as I hung up, Grant came back down the stairs. “Everything okay?” he asked.

Sweet hells, there was that question again.

“Yes. Thanks. For everything.”

“You leaving now?”

“Have an appointment at noon and some other things to do before then.” I fished my wet gloves out of my wet pockets and thought briefly about going home first to change into something dry. Since I would be out in the rain anyway, it seemed like a waste of laundry. Hopefully I’d have time to go home and change before the Hound meeting.

“Need a cab?” Grant asked.

“Just called one.” I started walking toward the stair.

Grant hitched his thumb in the opposite direction.

“How about I take you out the back way? Quicker than going through the whole shop again.” He crossed the living room area, and I got a quick peek at a very nice modern kitchen before he opened a door revealing a freight elevator that had been redone in gaudy Gothic cage work. Not at all what I expected out of mister-casual-cowboy Grant. A set of brick stairs lit from above by the morning light stacked up to the left, wall-hugging sconces of sword ferns placed against both stairwell walls. A nice touch of green so far belowground.

Grant started up the stairs. “You sure you’re going to be okay?”

“I am.”

We reached street level. No great surprise-it was raining. I pulled my hat out of my pocket and put it on. I zipped my coat to keep the chill wind at bay. I wondered if we’d have worse winds by tonight, wondered when the storm would blow through.

A black-and-white Radio Cab drove up. I didn’t think it was the one I had called, but I waved it to the curb anyway.

“Thanks, Grant. Really.”

“Any time.” Grant crossed his arms over his chest, hunched against the gusty wind.

I opened the passenger door.

“And, Allie?”

Don’t say it. Don’t say it.