Devon Monk - Magic In the Blood

A headache was looming, pressing at the back of my skull, not bad yet, but I knew in an hour or two, it would probably be a migraine.

“Disbursements, Allie,” I said out loud, trying to fill the emptiness of my apartment with my voice. “Why do you always forget to set Disbursements? You are such an idiot sometimes.”

I set the candle on the edge of the sink and left the door open. If the lights went out again, I wanted something to see by and a clear escape route. I took a deep breath and pulled back the shower curtain. Nothing but my empty shower. Good. I turned on the shower to give the water time to warm up. I undressed and kept glancing out at the hallway and peering at the corners of the bathroom.

I tossed my clothes in the hamper and checked myself for bruises and cuts in the full-length mirror standing next to the hamper.

No cuts, which was great. But the site where Trager had shoved the needle in my thigh was a hard, sore, hand-sized lump. A bruise spread out in thin tendrils that looked more like a broken spider web than a bruise. A glyph? I ran my fingers over it carefully and didn’t sense any magic left in it. But, yes, it was a glyph. Blood magic, though not any kind I was aware of. It had to be the thing that had made me feel so dizzy after he had stabbed me.

I swore.

But the glyph wasn’t the only new mark I carried. There were four dark red circles down my neck, a lot more on my left shoulder, and several on the outside of my hips, thighs, stomach, and what I could see of my back. They looked like finger-bruises, only they weren’t the right color for bruises. I gently rubbed the marks on my left shoulder.

Ouch.

Sticky moisture clung to my fingertips. Those red spots hurt. I wasn’t exactly bleeding, but I was sort of weeping fluid. The marks burned like someone had peeled my skin off. I touched the ones on my neck more carefully. Same thing-raw and painful.

I didn’t think Trager could have caused these marks. I would have known if he touched me like that, no matter how glyphed and dizzy I was.

No, I knew where I must have gotten them from-the watercolor people touching me outside Get Mugged. I had felt light-headed after that-drained and sort of sunburned. And these were the marks left behind from their attack.

I didn’t have any Band-Aids.

I wasn’t even sure I had any painkillers in the house.

I bet this was going to sting like hell in the shower.

I could do this. I could get in the shower, wash off despite being afraid my dead dad was going to show up again, and despite the pain it might cause my new wounds.

I stepped in the shower and did not pull the curtain closed. So what if I got a little water on the floor? It probably needed to be mopped anyway. With the curtain open I had a better chance at that clear escape route.

The water hit my shoulders, and sure enough, it stung like mad.

Fabulous.

So instead of taking a nice relaxing soak, I shivered in the heat of the water and made it quick. I washed my hair with shampoo that stung, then rubbed soap that stung over my skin, and patted myself dry, which also stung.

Not that I was bitter about it or anything.

I got out of the shower, wrapped the towel around me, and brushed out my hair, tucking it behind my ears. Then I opened my medicine cabinet. That lingering headache was moving in, sinking down into the back of my head and squeezing at my temples. All I had in the medicine cabinet were some cold pills, cotton swabs, a bottle of aspirin, and Bactine.

I pulled out the painkillers, tipped four tablets into my palm, and then swallowed them down. Next I uncapped the Bactine and squirted the antiseptic over each of my raw marks. It helped some-took the sting out-but the cold rivulets of antiseptic that snaked down my body made me shiver.

I blew out the candle and took the aspirin with me into the bedroom. If I was going to get through tonight, I would need to chew down at least another eight of these things.

I didn’t keep prescription painkillers in the house for a reason. Being a Hound and using magic for a living made it way too easy to fall into abusing substances for pain relief.

I dressed in an extra layer, a soft cotton long-sleeve shirt so that the raw marks wouldn’t get scratched by my wool sweater, and wore a pair of tights beneath my jeans for the same reason.

Next on were wool socks, a black scarf my friend Nola knitted for me, a spare pair of leather gloves, and the only other coat I owned: a short black leather trench. It wasn’t as warm as my other coat, but it would keep me dry. I pulled on a new slouchy knit hat.

Back in the living room I picked up my journal, and my wallet, and after locking the front door behind me, I strolled back down the hall and stairs to catch the bus to the meeting.

I looked good. Very secret agent-ish.

I made it to the bus stop just as the bus pulled up and found an empty seat near the door. For the next twenty minutes of stop and go, my headache thrummed along merrily. The painkillers weren’t doing squat so I went over everything that had happened today and what I understood about it.

A lot, and not much.

I was apparently being haunted by my father. He wanted me to look for dead people or dying people, or the just plain dead. If he wanted me to “seek the dead” by doing something stupid like killing myself, he was so outta luck. Still, he had said those words with Influence, so even while I was sitting on the bus tapping my foot impatiently, my mind kept going back to his words, to the need to seek the dead that he had put on me.

Thanks a lot, Dad.

Meanwhile, Zayvion, who I still had feelings for and really shouldn’t trust, all but told me he was part of a secret group of magic users who went around killing people. I should tell the cops about them, about him, but first I needed to find out what he knew about my father’s death. I didn’t want to tip off the people who might be watching me that I had caught on yet-people, for all I knew, who might be involved in where my dad’s body was. I wasn’t going to do anything drastic until Zayvion gave me the information I needed. If I could find my dad’s body, make sure he was all buried and happy, he might stop haunting me.

So much for me not believing in ghosts.

But I wasn’t the only one. Grant believed in ghosts and was all buddy-buddy with the kooks who hunted them. Okay, maybe not kooks, since I myself had seen some weird shit today. But I was so not going to let any ghost chasers check out my apartment. After all, I’d seen my dad in the freaking middle of a freaking intersection today-I didn’t think this ghost problem was limited to my shower.

And even though the watercolor people must be ghosts, they were different from my father’s ghost. For one thing, they didn’t speak and use Influence on me. For another, they had those empty black eyes. And they could pull apart perfectly good, perfectly strong spells and eat them.

Freaky with a capital “eeky.”

Sure, my dad had touched me in my bathroom, and I’d smelled his familiar, living scents, but his touch hadn’t hurt, hadn’t left marks. The watercolor people’s touch sucked.

Literally.

So maybe there was more than one kind of ghost running around the city.

Pike had said he’d talk to me at the meeting. And since he ran with the cops I figured he might know as much or maybe even more than Zayvion.

The bus stopped in Ankeny Square. Today wasn’t Saturday, so the open air market that usually drew people to this area, even in bad weather, was not set up, leaving empty parking lots, a handful of old and renovated brick buildings, and, beyond more buildings toward the east, the Willamette River.

I got out and took a good sniff of the place. Dirt, diesel, oil fumes, river, and the stink of people, restaurants, and garbage. Too many smells for me to know if I were being followed by anyone.