Devon Monk - Magic In the Blood

“Thanks,” I said, feeling like I might have a chance at making friends with her. I guessed her drug of choice was probably weed, mushrooms, and wine coolers.

“Jamar Legare.”

Jamar was at least three inches taller than me and wore his mustache and beard in a circle around his mouth, his dark curls shaved close to his scalp, and a pair of thick-rimmed glasses that did nothing to hide his deep brown eyes. He had on a jean jacket with a hoodie under it and seemed comfortable surveying the room, one thumb tucked in his front pocket.

“Afternoon,” he said.

I nodded to him. Tough call, but I’d guess alcohol.

“Jack Quinn.”

Whiskey Guy, the closest person on my left, was in the middle of lighting a cigarette. He gave me a brief nod.

The prospects of me having my own bit of wall to lean against were pretty low, since the room wasn’t very large, something made worse by the low ceiling. Everyone was scattered to maximize the distance from each other. So I just stood to one side of the door, nearest Whiskey Guy-I mean Jack-and blond Sid on the other side of the door to my right.

“Davy,” Pike said, “is this it?”

Davy, the Hangover Kid, opened his eyes and looked around the room. “Yep. Everyone who said they’d come.”

I was right. He was the one who answered the phone.

Okay, so my theory that Hounds didn’t know one another had been seriously thrown out the window in the last minute or so. It looked like all these people knew one another and knew other Hounds working in the city. Maybe I was the only one disinclined to hang out. Maybe in my push to be free of my father and his expectations, I’d taken the concept of solitary into every other aspect of my life. Maybe Hounds hung out all the time at special Hound bars, had Hound parties, and, hells, did Hound job-share and babysat one another’s Hound kids.

“Anyone have any news?” Pike asked.

No one spoke. Not even me. I had no idea what they considered news. Did ghosts count? Being hunted by a blood and drug lord? Magic assassins?

“Anyone have any complaints about an employer?”

Silence.

“How about leads on jobs?” he asked.

Nothing.

At this rate, the meeting was going to be over in about thirty seconds.

Pike pulled a small notebook and pen out of his shirt pocket. “Who’s working where?”

Sid cleared his throat. “Gotta job with the cops. Don’t know where yet.”

Pike noted that in his book and then looked expectantly at motherly Dahlia next to Sid.

“Nothing that I know of,” she said.

“Davy?” Pike asked.

Davy didn’t even bother opening his eyes. “The college wants me to run the halls for a couple days. Probably do it this week.”

“Do it sober,” Pike said.

Davy shook his head like he’d heard that before and hadn’t listened last time either.

Anthony spoke up. “I’ll be wherever you are, old man.”

Pike noted something in his book. From the motion of the top of his pen, I was pretty sure he’d just written “ass.”

Theresa the elephant wrestler said, “I’m still on retainer with Nike.” She shrugged. “It’s been quiet.”

“Good,” Pike grunted. “Tomi?”

“Jesus, Pike,” the cutter girl said, “do we have to do this every week?”

“Every week you show up. Every week you want someone to know where the hell you are and who the hell you’re putting your life on the line for.”

She chewed, blew, popped. I noticed Davy’s body language changed, and Tomi glanced from beneath her heavy bangs over at him, at his still-closed eyes, at his just-a-little-too-shallow-to-be-relaxed breathing, at his hands that had clenched, probably unconsciously, into fists.

She bit her bottom lip and looked away.

“I have a private client,” she said in a dull tone. “In the West Hills. That’s all I’ll say.”

Davy’s fists went white at the knuckles.

“Bea?” Pike asked, shifting the tension in the room.

“Me?” Beatrice smiled, and those dimples nipped her cheeks. She nodded, her wild curls bouncing. “I’m still pulling morgue duty for at least the rest of the month. And if I get killed there, at least you’ll have plenty of witnesses on the slab. If you can get them to talk!” She giggled.

My eyebrows shot up. Okay, she wasn’t all freckles and sweet strawberries and cream like she looked. I made a mental note: never underestimate Beatrice. Or anyone else in the room for that matter.

Jamar just shook his head and smiled. “Damn, girl. You gotta get a different job. You sound like you’re starting to enjoy sniffing corpses.”

Bea, still giggling, gave him a huge smile and shrugged, her hands up, like who could blame her.

“I’m working a new section of MLK Boulevard for the police,” Jamar said. “Mostly day work, looking for trap and trigger spells, illegal Offloads. Gang crap. Nothing I can’t handle.”

“They going to open that up for another Hound to work it with you?” Pike asked.

Jamar pushed his glasses back up on his nose. “I asked maybe a month ago. Don’t think they have it in the budget.”

Pike noted that and then waved his pen at Whiskey Guy. “Jack?”

Jack exhaled smoke. “City called me in for some piddly things. Public nuisance illusions, screwing with the art in the parks, stink spells in public halls, that sort of shit.”

“Okay,” Pike said.

And that left me.

“Allie?” Pike looked over at me.

“I have a job for the police. Tonight. With Detective Stotts.”

At the mention of his name, the body language in the room changed. There wasn’t a person in that room who liked Stotts. Interesting. Apparently his cursed reputation had proceeded him.

“Has anyone ever worked for him?” I asked.

Sid, next to me, rubbed at the side of his nose. “I Hounded for him. Once. Spooky shit happens around him. People die.”

“So I’ve been told,” I said. “But since I’ve been out of the loop with all this”-I waved my hand to include them all-“Hound bonding stuff, I was hoping someone here could tell me what’s so dangerous about working for him. Maybe give me a couple examples of what happened to other Hounds.”

No one said anything for so long, I figured the Hound bonding stuff didn’t include sharing the details with the new girl of how one another died. Or maybe they didn’t know.

Then Jamar spoke. “I heard about a guy, name was Piller, I think. He worked a serial murder case for Stotts. Some lowlife robbing old people, killing them, and dumping the bodies up in the coast range. Used a lot of Binding, Hold, and Influence spells. There was always a mark of magic left behind in the old people’s houses. The killer liked to leave a ‘note,’ you know? Anyway, on the third time out, Piller was Hounding back a spell-getting close, real close to the killer. But just before he could pin the guy, Piller walked off the Steel Bridge and died.”

“Walked off the Steel Bridge?” I asked.

“That’s what I heard.”

Bea piped up. “Remember Rosalee? She took a job with Stotts. Illegal tapping into the cisterns of magic beneath the city and Offloading the price of using that magic onto some unregulated S and M joints-killed a few politically influential customers while they were doing some back door ‘negotiations.’ ”

She giggled, and several other people chuckled. “I would have killed to see that! Anyway, Rosalee took her money and left the state the day after the job was finished. They found her dead at a truck stop in Nebraska.”

“That could be a horrible coincidence,” I said with little conviction.

Sid snapped his fingers. “Wasn’t Herm-Har-What was his name? The Swedish guy?”

“Herlief,” Dahlia chimed in.