Back Lash

  “You have a dark streak, you know that, Dash?”

  “It’s not like this is my first roller derby.”

  “True. Terric?”

  “It makes sense. Let’s ask her what she knows. Find out who we can lean on, set up a meeting. Did you find anything on the IDs of our magically dead, Shame?”

  “I have someone working on it. Should have something by tomorrow,” I said. “What about you, Dash? You found a fresh corpse?”

  “Already down at the morgue by now. Middle-aged white guy. Found in an alley. Magic burns on his chest, face, neck.”

  “Shit,” I said.

  “Who found him?” Terric asked. “Where? When?”

  “Some kids. He was in an alley behind the bar down on Third, this morning.”

  “Did you get pictures?” Terric asked.

  “No. Police were on the scene. I tried to snap something on my way into the pizza place next door, but couldn’t get a clear shot.”

  “Did you recognize him?” I asked.

  He shook his head.

  “Someone needs to go wipe the magic marks off of him,” I said.

  “Police already saw it,” Dash said. “There’s no changing that.”

  “Someone needs to ID him,” Terric said.

  “They probably already have,” I said.

  “So we wait?” Dash asked.

  “I hate waiting,” I said.

  “Okay.” Terric stared off in the distance and tucked his hands into his pockets, the breeze stirring the edges of his short, white hair.

  I watched Dash watch him with steady eyes. Wondered why the two of them were arguing over the job offer in Canada. Wondered if it was something more—the flame of the relationship burning out. But no, from the look on Dash’s face, he still cared for Terric. Loved him.

  “Shame,” Terric said, “you and Dash go down to the morgue, see if you can slip in and get a first-hand look at the guy and the glyphs. Chances that the police will actually reveal the cause of death are slim - to - none. We’re going to make sure it looks like magic wasn’t the thing that killed him, it was something else. We’re going to make sure the magical marks look like they were carved into his skin as an afterthought.”

  “We’re covering the tracks of a serial killer by making him look like a serial killer?” I asked.

  “We’re keeping the magical component out of these deaths. Until we find out who the hell is doing this and how the hell they’re accessing magic to do it.”

  There was a reason Terric was given the job of running the Authority. He was a natural leader.

  “All right. Fine,” I said. “Are you going to talk to your sister about all this?”

  “Enough of it. What she needs to know. And I’ll get the information on her contacts. We’ll decide who to contact,and how, when you get back from the morgue.”

  “Corpse molestation. And here I didn’t think the day could get any worse than getting shot.”

  “You got shot?” Dash asked.

  “I’ll fill you in on the drive.” I tossed the cigarette and strode over to my car.

  I gave Dash and Terric an awkward moment to decide if they were going to talk. When all they did was sort of stare at each other I rapped knuckles on the car hood.

  “Dash. Dead guy isn’t getting any deader. Let’s go.”

  Dash mumbled something to Terric, eyes on his boots.

  I didn’t have to look at Terric to feel the mess of emotions Dash had just stirred in him.

  Terric nodded slightly.

  Dash strode to the car, got in. “Someone shot you? Again?”

  “It’s been a delightful morning.” Then, as Terric walked past my window: “There better be pizza left when I get home.”

  Terric ignored me and walked into the house.

  Chapter 7

  My mum told me to work hard. Insisted that if I did, I’d make a good life for myself. But all my hard work had gotten me dead, tortured, re-dead, kicked out of heaven, re-alived, and now squatting in the bushes behind a morgue.

  “It’s called breaking and entering, Dash, not gently picking the damn lock for an hour.”

  He shifted to get a better angle on the window lock. “Shut up and keep an eye out.”

  “No one’s coming. Doesn’t take my eyes for that. There’s dead in the basement and all three of the living are in the upstairs lunch room. Except for the one guy who’s out pissing on someone’s grave north-ish of here, we’re alone. Alone enough I don’t know why we don’t go through the open front doors.”

  “Cameras. We don’t have magic to turn them off any more, Shame. You know that.”

  I sighed, stared at the bellies of clouds gone gray with rain. I did miss the easy tricks we used to have in a world more magical.

  “He wants you to stay,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Terric. I know he told you to take the job, but he wants you to stay.”

  “Jesus. Haven’t you heard of privacy and none-of-your business?”

  “Yes and yes. He only told you to go because he thinks you want to. He thinks it will be a good career move for you.”

  Dash paused, his hands steady on the lock picks while he gave me a hard stare. “If that’s what he thinks, he can tell me that. Not you. Got it?”

  “Got it,” I agreed. “But one of you is going to have to call a truce before neither of you gets what you want out of this standoff.”

  He grunted. “Just like one of you called a truce with the whole Life/Death magic connection?”

  Huh. I hadn’t thought my connection to Terric was a problem for Dash. Maybe the old pain of the old shit we’d done to each other was something Dash still carried around.

  I should probably just respect his space. Keep my mouth shut. Make his business none of mine.

  But what would be the fun of that?

  “Jealous of what we have, mate?”

  He stopped again, this time pivoting in his crouch to fully face me. “You mean that connection that you hate, Shame? Soul-to-soul so you feel every damn thing the other is feeling? That thing that Terric says he doesn’t want but can’t live without? Can’t leave this town without? Is that the thing you want to know if I’m jealous about?”

  “Well, not anymore.”

  I wondered for a moment if he was going to stab me with the lock pick, but he turned and stabbed the lock instead. “It’s not...it’s not that,” he said, all anger out of his voice. “Terric’s my boyfriend, but you...well, you’re like the dog we adopted together.”

  “Whoa. Better back up, mate.”

  “Surly, messy. Growl a lot. Bite. Don’t bathe enough.”

  “I bathed. Recently.”

  “But you are something...you are someone we both care for. Someone we both can’t see living our lives without. So. No. I’m not jealous of your connection. I just wish he’d tell me....”

  He inhaled, exhaled. “I’m not going to gripe about my relationship issues with you, Shame.”

  “Fair,” I said. “Then might I suggest you tell him all these things you’re almost telling me? Just tell him you want him to tell you not to go. That you want him to tell you he loves you and can’t live without you.”

  That stilled him—hands, body, breath. Only his heartbeat was racing.

  “You sure think you know how people work for someone who doesn’t give a damn.”

  “Well, what does that tell you? Jesus. Give me the picks. I think that lock’s a girl. You have no idea how to open one up.”

  Dash choked on a laugh, rocked back on his heels and shook his head. “And now you think you’re funny.”

  “I think I’m hilarious. Gimme.” I grabbed for the lock picks. He slapped them into my palm and moved out of the way so I could get to the lock.

  “All right,” I said, cupping the picks and making a fist
around them.

  I punched out the lowest square of the window pane.

  “Fuck, Shame.”

  Stuck my hand through and turned the lock from the inside. “There we go, you naughty girl. Daddy knows you like it rough.”

  “Daddy better hurry up,” Dash said. “They probably have alarms on the windows, you ass. That’s why we brought the picks.”

  “Details.” I pulled on the window. The bottom half of it slid up, leaving an open space big enough for Dash and me to scramble through. I went first.

  Short drop onto concrete floor. Long, dark room. But the darkness could not hide the smell of death, the awareness of the dead that brushed beneath my skin like a cool breeze.

  It was both uncomfortable and soothing. So I did my best to ignore it.

  Dash dropped down behind me. Clicked something. A flashlight.

  “Boy Scout,” I said.

  He handed me another flashlight. “Eagle, actually. Can you tell which drawer he’s in?”

  I flicked on the flashlight and strolled over to the wall of four drawers. Only two of them were occupied. One by a woman. One by a guy killed by magic.

  I tapped on the drawer. “Want another shot at the lock?”

  “Can you do it fast? Without your fist?”

  I rolled the lock picks into my fingers and handed him the flashlight. “Let’s find out, shall we?”

  He leveled the light and I jimmied the lock. Got it sprung in ten seconds. “Look who gets his lock picking badge.”

  “It only counts if we don’t get caught, Tiger Scout.”

  I took the flashlight, tugged the drawer, rolling it open.

  Body bag. Zipped shut. Tag said John Doe.

  “Maybe the cops haven’t ID’ed him yet.” I unzipped the bag, stared down at the guy. “Shit.”

  Dash stood on the other side of the drawer. “That’s messy.”

  It took me a second to register what Dash had said.

  He was right. This guy had been killed with magic, the same three glyphs: Pain, Binding, Surrender. But our killer was a lot sloppier about it. The glyphs were burned into his eyes, burrowed into one side of his face, and slashed across his throat like a dull saw blade had done the work.

  But that wasn’t what had stopped me cold.

  “I know him.”

  “Who is he?”

  “Lyle Carpenter.”

  Dash shook his head. “Friend?”

  “Acquaintance of an acquaintance of my mum’s. Decent man.”

  “Ah. Sorry, Shame.”

  “Notice the ink?” I pointed toward his chest.

  It was a fish, maybe a Koi, tail curled down across his ribs, body curved over his heart.

  “Think it’s the same as your guy?” he asked.

  “Might be.”

  I unzipped the body bag the rest of the way and studied his skin, looking for other marks, other signs of the asshole who had done this. Nothing. Just those sloppy, untrained glyphs.

  “Was he part of the Authority?” Dash asked.

  “No. Not that I knew of. He wasn’t even a casual magic user. Ran a real estate office out on the TV Highway.”

  “Why use magic to kill a real estate agent?”

  “Fuck if I know. Do you smell oranges?”

  He took a tentative sniff. “No. I smell chemicals and dead flesh.”

  I zipped the bag back up to his chest and pressed my palm over his forehead. The cold meat gave way with a sort of squish beneath the gentle pressure.

  I sent Death magic into the decaying organic matter, through flesh and bone and urged the remaining matter to form a clot in the veins. It was tedious, sweaty work, like pressing clay that had gone too dry into shape while it crumbled in my hands.

  Finally pulled away.

  “What did you do?”

  “Aneurism. Pretty sure. Or tumor, or blockage. Something that will explain his death if they go all out for an autopsy.”

  “What about the glyphs?”

  “Getting there.”

  I stuck two fingers against the middle of his forehead like some kind of holy man giving last rites. But this wasn’t a blessing.

  I tipped my head and closed my eyes. I wanted to know how magic had been used to kill him.

  The magic that clung to these glyphs wasn’t like any I’d felt before. This magic felt like a hot blade, acid that couldn’t be handled, shouldn’t be touched.

  This magic wasn’t power and potential that could be guided to take shape and action.

  This was an atomic reaction that consumed everything it touched.

  How had someone manipulated something like that? How had they contained it with such poorly drawn glyphs?

  There might be a reason why the glyphs were drawn so poorly. Either whoever was casting them was in immense pain while doing so, or....

  Or what?

  Or we’d just found someone who had discovered how to wield magic that no one should be able to use as an executioner’s blade.

  There were a hundred easier ways to kill a man. Breaking magic out of the locks we’d put on it should take enormous effort.

  And why kill these men? What did they have in common? Who the hell had they all pissed off?

  I drew the residue of magic out of the burns. As carefully as I could, I changed the glyph wounds so they were just magic-less burns.

  Looked like someone had done a shit job with a branding iron.

  I stepped back, swallowed against the sick taste in my mouth.

  “There is something wrong here,” I said.

  “What gave you that idea?” Dash asked. “The dead guy?”

  I flipped him the finger. “Snap a couple pictures and let’s get the hell out of here.”

  Dash snapped, I zipped the bag back over Lyle. We wiped our prints off every surface, shut the drawer, cleaned the handle, then reset the lock.

  We scrambled up out the window. I closed it behind us, took time to wipe it down, gave the frame one last brush.

  “They’ll know someone broke in, since it’s broken,” Dash said as we pushed out of the shrubs and strolled to the car.

  “Someone, but not us,” I said. “Let’s get home. It’s time for our ex-Russian vigilante hacker to help us track down a killer.”

  Chapter 8

  “No,” Terric whispered, his back against my closed bedroom door. “My sister is not going to hack, track, or get involved in the magic deaths.”

  I sat on the edge of my bed. The faint honey and cinnamon of Jolie’s perfume clung to the blankets. Nice. Distracting.

  “She took on the Russians,” I said. “Found a way to funnel their money into charities. That’s out-of-the-box thinking. We need that right now.”

  “No. She doesn’t know anything about the magic...about us.”

  I knew he meant she didn’t know we carried magic, didn’t know we had been the ones who were responsible for locking it away.

  “It was Lyle Carpenter,” I said.

  “Who?”

  “Realtor. My mum pointed him out once or twice when he stopped by the inn.”

  “Part of the Authority?”

  “Not that I know of. But if your sister could run his records, maybe break into his banking so we can see who he’s been working with, we might be able to figure out who wanted him dead and who might be next.”

  He looked away from me, pushed his fingertips to the bridge of his nose. “What about the other bodies?”

  “Don’t have IDs on them yet.”

  “We’ll wait until we have their names. If we can’t see an obvious connection...we’ll go from there.”

  “We’ll tap your sister’s talents.”

  He pressed his lips together into a thin line. Body language said no. Connection between us said hell no.

  But all he said was, “We’ll find another way.”

/>   I scrubbed at my head and shrugged. “All right. Fine. Did you get anything on the Russian situation?”

  Outside, beyond the closed door, Dash’s laugh rolled out, mixed with Jolie’s brazen chortle.

  As soon as we’d gotten back from the morgue, the two of them had quickly fallen into a card game. It was a new game Dash had helped develop for the small company in Canada. The company that now wanted to hire him.

  The game had opened the doors onto a wider audience for the company and it would open doors for Dash, if he accepted their offer.

  “Not much more,” Terric said. “We have a contact number. She thinks if we call, they’ll pick up.”

  “Why are we waiting on that?”

  He crossed his arms over his chest. “I want to take this away from here. Leave Dash to look after her. Tonight.”

  “You’re going to sneak out and talk to the Russian mob behind your sister’s back?”

  I could tell from the tug of guilt through our connection that that was exactly what he wanted to do.

  “She’s not the kind of person who wants to stand aside while someone else solves her problems,” I said. “She’s not a child, Terric.”

  “And how does her being there when we confront the mob make anything better?”

  “I’m not arguing with you. I’m just warning you that she’s going to kick your ass when she finds out you did this without her.”

  “We’ll tell her,” he said.

  “Before we do it.”

  He paused, and I could feel the catch of his worry. “Fine,” he said. “Before we do it.”

  “Good man. Now get out of my room. I want some shut eye.”

  He moved away from the door, opened it.

  “Also, don’t let Dash go,” I said before he was out of the room. “Idiot loves you. Thought you should know that if he hasn’t told you.”

  “I know.”

  “Then do me a favor and tell him you love him back.”

  “Worried about us? Careful, Shame. I might think you like having us around.”

  “I don’t like having you around. Move out. Together. Go to Canada. Go to Mars. Just where ever you go, go together. I’m done with your angst.”

  “Oh, I don’t think I have the market share of angst in this house.”