A Criminal Magic Page 7

  “Are you attempting to threaten me, sir?”

  “Just stating the facts.”

  My facade of a smile feels even stiffer, thinner. “Sounds more like rumors to me,” I manage. “You’d need more than that to even get the papers’ ears.”

  But Frain’s face stays stone. “We also pushed your father in prison, Alex. Offered him a better deal if he walked us through the process of shine transference. Even put some pressure on him. And he couldn’t do it.” I don’t move, I don’t speak, but my heart pounds like a drum inside my chest. “Can you imagine that? The country’s most well-known white-collar sorcerer can’t brew sorcerer’s shine, a magic spell that every sorcerer’s capable of,” he says, “which leads me to the only real conclusion. That Richard Danfrey was obviously the mastermind behind his D Street racket, but he wasn’t the magic.” He leans forward, drops his voice, and says, “Now, I’ve got you on low-level charges, eyewitnesses to your little reveal off O Street tonight. Plus enough to go on to reopen Richard Danfrey’s case—your case. And if I’m successful? You spend the rest of your life behind bars.”

  My heart is now sputtering, racing, flying. But it’s not the threat of jail that’s set me off, or my father getting “pushed” by the Feds. It’s my mother. I think of the mania of the press when my father was indicted, the reporters banging on our door, Mom locking herself in her room, crying, sobbing at all hours of the night. Her walking into my room like a strange, tormented ghost: He betrayed us . . . you’re nothing like him, Alex, nothing. Tell me. Swear it. Even though she knew. She had to have known.

  I close my eyes to blink out the memory.

  “I know you joined the Unit to try and escape your past.” Frain uses a different, softer tone. “But sometimes fate’s chips fall in the damnedest of ways. You can use what’s happened to your family and put it to work for your country. You can help, Alex, and in a way that only you can.”

  I choose to focus on the trees, because the forest is too dark, too thick, too dangerous. “Sir, let’s just say I was even entertaining the idea of doing this. Guys like Colletto, like McEvoy, they’re smart. They’ve lied and cheated and killed their way to the top. I can’t just be planted and expect it to all work out—”

  “Like I said, we’d do it right, Alex,” Frain interrupts gently. “Believe me, this is one shot for us, too. We’d sever your ties with the Prohibition Unit. We’d stage a bust, charge you for attempting to move some of Danfrey Pharma Corp.’s remedial magic into the black market on your own. A minor charge, but enough to look credible. We even have a cell mate lined up for you out at Lorton Reformatory, some low-life, low-rank runner in McEvoy’s operation who got picked up by the coast guard a couple weeks back for smuggling fae dust. You make nice with him, he introduces you to the Shaws when you get out. Then you win them over one at a time and claw your way up to McEvoy.”

  I lean back in my chair. The fear is in my throat now, tastes like metal, bile. Could I even do something like this? Do I have a choice? “Those thugs would eat me alive.”

  He shakes his head. “You know how to reinvent yourself, what it takes to stay above water, that much is clear,” he says. “Think about what you’ve done to survive the storm surrounding your father—you’ve lied, manipulated, deceived your way right into the agency that should have brought you down. You’re a survivor, Danfrey.”

  A survivor. I’ve never, ever thought of myself that way.

  “We’ll stay in contact discreetly, of course, but this is your show. Your game. And if you do this for us, if you excel, if you fight for your country, in a way I think you really want to, maybe even need to, I promise, all the charges, they all fall away. And I guarantee you’ll be a national hero instead.”

  I study the top of the card table, running it all through, piece by painstaking piece. “So you hook me up with this cell mate, and I’m supposed to make sure he knows I’ve got it out for D Street. I use him to angle my way to Boss McEvoy.” I breathe out. “I help you catch the big fish, and then I walk away.”

  Frain nods. “That’s the deal.”

  I close my eyes and think through everything that’s led to this moment: my father demanding that I help him, after he caught me sneaking back into my room after a night out with Warren, my magic self-replica still lying in bed as a decoy for my parents. My reluctance, then my slow acceptance of the raw, unbridled magic coursing through me. Then the feeling that my father and I were above the law, the world, that no one and nothing could touch the Danfreys, that the world was our oyster. And then the day it all came crashing, tumbling down.

  What I’ve been doing since—following Warren like a dumb puppy, skating by in the Unit, hating everyone and everything, wanting to bring the world to its knees? Maybe Agent Frain’s right. Maybe I do need this. Christ, maybe I need to own the sins of my family, walk headfirst into the underworld that ruined everything, and blow it apart, exact my true revenge, in order to fully leave the past behind.

  Besides, what’s the alternative? Decades, a lifetime, in jail?

  Still, the fear, it has me, taunts me, winds it way around my throat—

  “Alex,” Frain adds gently, “I can’t guarantee it won’t be a long road, and a bumpy one, but you are truly the only one who can do this for us.”

  And something about his tone, his words—the only one—massages a tender, deep and hidden spot inside. Before I can think through it anymore, I force out a whisper. “When will it start?”

  Frain reaches out and pats my hand. “I’ll take you back to your place. Trust me, you’re going to need some sleep.”

  He pulls his hand back to gather his file and close his briefcase. Then he stands. “We’ll come to arrest you in the morning. You tell your mother what you have to—that you slipped up, that you’re sorry,” he says, as the reality of what I’m doing, what I’m owning up to, the trash I’m going to be slumming with—it all winds its way around my throat like a collar and clicks shut with a snap. “No one can know you’re still working for me.”

  STICK, CARROT

  JOAN

  I barely dream: I’m usually so tired by the time I finish cleaning our cabin, maintaining what’s left of the herb garden out back, cooking, helping with Jed’s shows, and caring for Ruby, that most times my mind stops churning and surrenders to a big, blank nothing. And for that, I’m grateful—’cause the nights I have dreams, it’s almost always the same one.

  It starts with Mama’s long, low wail from outside our cabin. In the nightmare, I get up, leave Ruby gently snoring next to me, and grip the textured walls of our bedroom, trying to find the door, trying not to wake her and Ben. Then Mama’s call grows louder, and real worry starts gnawing at me. Mama’s not an actress, or a yeller. If she’s hollering, something’s wrong.

  I stumble into the moon-drenched clearing, wade through the tall grass, scan the rows of distant trees—nothing. I turn around, but there’s nothing by the back side of the cabin but rake and shovels, and I don’t see her by the silver lip of the brook across the yard. Then I hear rustling, from somewhere in the grass.

  A white-hot panic seizes me. This isn’t right there’s something wrong blares loudly through my mind, and I start running in all directions, calling her name as her cries become more urgent—

  Finally I see tall blades of grass on the far side of the clearing bend and quake. “Mama!”

  I run to her. But she’s not alone.

  There’s a man pitched on top of her, spread over her like a tent, whispering, pleading, forcing her to keep quiet—Show me, Eve, show me what I’ve done for you. That’s it . . .

  It takes me a full second to realize it’s Uncle Jed.

  In a wild, desperate moment my mind offers, Maybe he’s helping her she was out here alone she’s fallen, but it goes quiet, and the silence shatters everything I thought I knew in one furious blast.

  Rage, pity, pain, my magic—t
he new, red-hot magic that’s been burning in my veins since my magic touch ignited a couple weeks back—it’s all rising up inside of me, forces its way out of my mouth, screams, “GET OFF HER! NOW!”

  Jed’s head whips around. Pinprick pupils, almost grotesque childlike smile, steady movements—it’s obvious he’s all shined up, and not in the throes of withdrawal. And the bastard has the gall to say, “You’re dreaming, Joan, get back to the cabin.”

  Tears I didn’t feel starting are running down my cheeks. “I’m warning you, Jed, I’ll kill you if you don’t leave her alone—”

  “Joan,” Mama whimpers from underneath his body, “please. Just GO.”

  And her fear, her careful, cautioning pleading, that’s what does me in.

  I get a running start before Jed knows what’s coming. I throw myself into him, tackle him, wrestle him to the ground. I’m small but I’m fast. I get a few licks into his side, at his ears, before he tosses me off him and rolls over to recover.

  “Mama, run!”

  But she starts pulling me toward her. “Jed, don’t you touch her, leave her be, she’s got nothing to do with this, you hear, she’s just scared. Joan—” She lunges to grab both my arms—

  “You want this?” I wrestle away from her as Jed curses and starts clambering to his knees. I won’t believe it. Mama is my hero. Mama is my salvation. Mama is my sun.

  “Get back inside. He’ll kill us both.”

  I don’t move. “How long has he been using you like this?”

  She doesn’t answer. But her face says everything. “Better me than you,” she whispers to herself, her voice breaking. “Thank God for my protection spells.”

  All words are silenced, stay dammed in my throat. Images flood my mind from the past, of Mama in our washroom, of her slicing a pocketknife into her thumb for a spell she wouldn’t explain, rubbing her blood over my lips and eyelids, her whispers I could barely hear: Not to be seen by him, not to be touched, when he looks at her, he sees me, and all at once the memories crystallize, take on new meaning. I’m so livid I can’t move—it’s like the anger has me hostage, or under a spell—

  But then I realize I can end this abuse and her pain with one desperate, powerful trick.

  Slow, fearful realization settles over Mama’s features, and I can tell she knows, that all the times she’s told me that magic is dangerous, poisonous, that it takes as much as it gives—her words have fallen on deaf ears. ’Cause as Jed is shaking off pieces of high grass behind us, coming over to give me hell’s reckoning, she reaches for me—

  “NO, JOAN, DON’T!”

  But I wrangle away from Mama, conjure this new, untamed magic force inside me, picture the dark, awing, invincible something running through my veins turning into pure lightning, command the lightning to burst out of my frame like a storm of hell, and I mutter, “Destroy—”

  I see it too late, of course, in that split second where I throw a pitch of pure magic force, that Jed already knows what’s coming too. He beats me to it, sends his own swath of wrath and sorcery toward me to swallow me and my amateur trick—

  But not before Mama leaps in between us.

  Long ago there was an arrogant sorcerer, a child of a sorcerer, a black hole of a sorcerer—

  The wind stops, the sounds of the clearing are gone, the texture of the night is flattened into one never-ending moment, as Mama is suspended, perfect, floating in between us—

  And then she turns brittle, like she’s made of glass. She bursts, shatters into pieces, falls to the ground like scattered dust. A magic wind swirls her away into nothing, and then she’s gone.

  I hear a long, low, primal cry before I realize that I’m the one wailing. “Oh my God, no, oh my God, no I—wait, no no NO . . .”

  Jed collapses on the ground beside me. But he doesn’t say a word.

  “No . . . no, we need to undo it,” I sputter. “Jed, bring her back. Jed, you need to undo it.” He doesn’t answer, stares straight into the grass. “Take it back, you hear me?” The world is a melting blur of sounds and colors, my tears drowning all time and space. “We need to take it back.”

  Jed sighs into his hands. I don’t know if he’s crying. I don’t care. I hate him, I hate him so much I want to break him. I want him to break me. “PLEASE, Jed!”

  He doesn’t move for a long time. Finally he looks at me with pink, watery eyes, more sober than I’ve seen him look in a long time. He whispers, a hollow sound of defeat and regret, “All the magic in the world can’t undo it.”

  * * *

  Jed’s whisper sends my eyes flying open, my hands instinctively reaching around my knapsack-turned-pillow, like I’m trying to claw my way back out of the past.

  And then I’m curled on a coil-riddled cot in the warehouse, the bruised sky of early dawn sneaking into its windows, face-to-face with a lightly snoring Grace.

  I sit up, stare at the sad sea of sleeping bodies around me, attempt to shake off the remnants of the dream—my sputtering pulse, the few tears that trail around my ears.

  All the magic in the world can’t undo it.

  If I keep thinking about what magic helped me to do, how it beat through my veins and told me I was strong enough, how it convinced me, enabled me, to go and destroy everything—

  I’ll want to banish my magic again and cage it back inside a bottle.

  No. I need to put the past in a bottle, on a shelf, keep it all preserved but hidden in some dark corner of my mind. I don’t deserve to get rid of it, but I need it out of my way right here and now. This needs to be about the future—Ruby’s future, Ben’s future, the ones I devoted the rest of my life to.

  Magic is the only thing that can save us now.

  Magic is all I got. I need to make peace with it. A truce.

  Temporary, but necessary.

  Grace gives a little sigh, flutters her eyes open, studies me. She whispers, “Did you sleep at all?”

  “I did, just a bad dream.” I nod to the little pool of drool on the back of her hand and smile. “Looks like you slept all right.”

  She gives me an embarrassed smile and sits up, wipes her hand on her pant leg. “Guess the traveling, and the nerves, it all came to a head and knocked me out.” She pulls out a half-empty pack of cigarettes, takes two, lights both, and hands one to me. We sit there for a minute, just inhaling the first smoky breaths of the day, enjoying the quiet before the sleeping sorcerers around us get up and remind us why we’re here.

  “You see that duo over there, sharing the same cot?” Grace whispers. She nods toward the corner, points to a burly middle-aged man with his arm wrapped around a younger woman who looks hard even in her sleep—straight brows, flat nose, grim expression as she wheezes.

  “That’s Rose and Tommy Briggs from Tennessee, the brother-sister act I mentioned last night.” I look at the way the pair is lying all tangled up in each other, and look back curiously at Grace. “My thoughts exactly. Haven’t been able to get close enough to mine their minds for what’s going on, but they’re famous for running some all-night secret shine orgy somewhere in the thick of the Blue Ridge Mountains,” she says. “Apparently the Briggs are gifted in visual manipulations, excel in conjuring what folks call staccato tricks. You know, where a magic manipulation gives way to something permanent that then gives way to another manipulation.”

  Grace might as well be speaking Greek right now, but I mumble a little “Right, sure” like I’m following. I try my damnedest to keep my mind blank, so there’s nothing for her to go mining for. Grace can’t find out how little I know about making magic. How the more I hear about my competition, the more panic blooms inside me like a thorny rose. “And which one’s Stock, the rat-conjuring jerk from last night?”

  Grace points at the cot next to Tommy’s. “Stock Harding, barely twenty and as arrogant as sorcerers come. Apparently Gunn was after his daddy out in West Virg
inia, but the pop’s got the sleepy sickness. Meeting Stock, you’d think he was the first in his family with the magic touch.” She rearranges herself into a cross-legged position and gives a low whistle. “If Gunn’s after performers, though, Stock’s a strong contender, as much as I hate to admit it. He comes from a long line of sorcerers with a special talent for living and moving manipulations, like you saw with his little rodent trick last night.” She looks at me. “That ain’t no easy feat, conjuring a manipulation, breathing life into it and letting it run around on its own—for as long as the magic lasts, anyway.”

  A few of the other sorcerers start groaning, yawning, and fighting with themselves to stay asleep.

  Grace drops her voice another octave. “Over there’s the five sorcerers from North and South Carolina—who others have been calling the Carolina Boys. Got a thing for fire, at least their leader, Gavin Rhodes, does. But I’ve been watching them, and so far I ain’t impressed. Besides, I get a bad sense from Gavin—don’t think he can be trusted.”

  I give her a knowing smile, knowing damn well that she shouldn’t trust me, either, as I’m only going to disappoint her. Hell, I wonder if I should even be trusting Grace, or if she could be as slippery as her magic snake. But I think through my alternatives.

  There aren’t any.

  “So you’ve been sizing everyone up? Do you know everyone’s strongest gifts?”

  “Almost everyone.” Grace stubs her cigarette out. “I think it’s what Gunn wants us to do, assess each other, and make magic alliances. After all, he’s only planning on keeping seven of us.”

  “Right,” I agree slowly, as Gunn had said as much last night. Still, I can’t help but ask, “But why seven?”

  “Guess Gunn’s done his research, and knows his sorcery.” Grace shrugs. “Look across cultures and religions from the beginning of time, and you’ll find seven as a source of mystical importance. Seven sacraments, seven sins, seven elements in some of the most secretive, powerful spells.” Grace drops her voice to a hum. “Back when the line between magic and reality was a lot more blurred, before this world started regarding sorcery with such fear and suspicion, magic was like a language among sorcerers. It was a thing to share, not a thing to hide. And for a long time, it was rumored that a worthy ring of seven sorcerers could unlock a magic within the magic. That seven was the key to strengthening gifts and surpassing weaknesses—and could even bend and flex the laws of magic itself.”