I nodded. Six years ago, the Manellis hadn’t been a large Mafia. Back before the crack boom, they had been scraping by under their old protectorate, the Scappetis. The coalition spent their time scrapping with the other three big Families, mostly the Laguettas. The Laguettas were an old, old Family who ran all of Brooklyn and a good part of Manhattan out of Queens. After John Manelli arranged for Don Scappeti to have a premature heart attack, he took over his op and played the hand he’d been building for years. John Manelli was young and willing to bend the ‘code of honor’ he theoretically embodied to deal in drugs directly. While the old Mafioso clung to their ways, John was running the crack boom in the Eastern United States, cutting into our much older and well-established party drug business. That wasn’t enough for him, either: Young Dons like John were inevitably aggressive, ambitious, eager to fight. He wanted us bought under heel. For all we knew, he’d ground up his own Consigliere and thrown him over the wall, so to speak, just so he could point in our direction and get his men to willingly wage war on us.
“I say this must’ve been a pro-team job. Three or four guys.” Nicolai watched me, his hands restless. He patted down his khakis as if looking for something. He was nervous. I had never seen him nervous before.
“Can I let Vassily in on this?” I had to get up and back away, as the first waves of real, unstoppable nausea swept up and rolled me. I felt dizzy. Everything smelled like rotting fruit and burned wax. “I’ll be picking him up in five hours or so. He will want to know.”
“I will tell him, at my discretion.” Lev drew his coat around his arms. Even though it was still in the low seventies, he looked as cold as I felt. “Nicolai, could you leave us for a moment? Alexi and I need to take a walk.”
“Sure. We’ll get him loaded up.” Nic jerked his face to one side and sloped back off across the yard, disappearing into the shadows beyond the beam of the truck lights. I jammed my hands in my pockets, suddenly stranded in the presence of authority.
“Come, Alexi. I need to talk to you about something which no one else needs to hear.” Lev motioned with his head. He looked greenish, as ill as I felt.
“As you say, Avtoritet.” Was it the question of involving Vassily? I followed warily. Being alone with your Avtoritet was never particularly safe. “Is this about the money I owe Nicolai?”
Lev waited until we were some distance away before speaking. “No. I want to know how Semyon died. Did he admit that he wronged me?”
I looked down. “I regret to say it, Avtoritet, but no. I asked him, as you ordered. He died a coward.”
Lev heaved a deep sigh. “Did he confess anything? Anything about his magical activities or about the FBI?”
“No.” I shook my head. “Though regarding the latter, he implied they’d forced him into a deal.”
“I don’t doubt it. But he shouldn’t have accepted.” Lev was very, very unhappy. The tendons of his shoulders and wrists were taut under his skin. Even so, his face was as placid as Lake Baikal in the summer, and just as deep. “You will not tell Vassily what happened between Semyon and yourself. I don’t want anyone knowing what happened up there. I trust you’ll obey; Vassily is a good man, but he is as gossipy as a gypsy grandmother.”
I let the insult slide. “Of course.”
“I’ll take your word.” Lev stopped, and I halted mid-step so I didn’t pass him by. “There aren’t many men in this organization like you left. Loyal, quiet, sensible.”
“Thank you, Avtoritet,” I said, cautiously.
“You’re wasted on this grunt work, Alexi. Once you clear Vassily’s debt, you should finish your degree. Come and work for the firm.” Lev’s mouth lifted at the corners, but it never reached his eyes. “And speaking of Vassily, please do pass along my regards when you pick him up. He is welcome to take one of the Sirens lounges for a private session with the women of his choice. As are you, of course.”
The very notion turned my stomach. Lev’s voice was as pleasant as ever, but it raised the hackles on the back of my neck. Some instinct nagged at me, telling me to tread carefully. The Organizatsiya had given Vassily and me everything, but our benefactors—Lev, Nic, Sergei—kept a fistful of strings tied to every offered gift.
I forced a brief smile. “Of course, Avtoritet. I am sure he will take up your offer at the earliest opportunity.”
“I hope he does. No matter how well we handle the events of the night, I fear we are all soon going to have to turn our energies to war.” Lev dipped his head slightly, turned, and left me to stand there in the middle of the yard, watching him disappear into the humid night.
The lead caster was cold through the leather of my glove, colder than the overripe air. My fingers clenched in the moment before I started after him, boots ringing out against the hard ground. The only certain thing about the mess had been left largely unsaid. Someone had summoned a demon: Aamon, the lord of feuds, and was driving my small Organizatsiya from skirmishing with the largest Mafia family in New York to outright conflict. Nacari’s murder transcended brutality and moved well into the realm of horror, and Lev was right: if John Manelli ever found out what had happened to his favorite Captain, he was going to give us Hell.
Chapter 3
By the time I arrived at my apartment block, my head was a little clearer. It was a temporary reprieve: it was close to five in the morning, and I was exhausted, weary, blood-spattered, and looking forward to a cold shower before the grueling three-hour drive to Fishkill.
Binah hung placidly along the length of my forearm on the way up the stairwell, which smelled of old urine and cigarettes. My door was on the third floor, near the exit to the roof. The stereotype was of wizards locked in ivory towers, but my apartment was a meat locker with balconies, Spartan and uncluttered save for the Tetris-like mass of bookshelves lining the walls: Row after row of books, neatly filed in floor-to-ceiling shelves by color, height, and subject. The shelves spanned most of the rooms and over some of the doorways. There was even a small one in the bathroom.
Enfolded in the papery silence of the hall, I shucked my shoes, unbuttoned my cuffs, and rolled them up to the elbow. Binah leaped from my arms and wandered off into the house to explore. I lost track of her on my way to the kitchen. The lead caster with the sigil was burning a hole in my pocket, but when I extended my senses towards it, feeling for any imprinted magical residue, it came up blank.
Still, Alexi Sokolsky is not known for being an incautious man, so before anything else, I got a clean tin chalice and filled it with coarse rock salt and water, burying the caster in the center. Tin is the metal of Jupiter, the Greater Benefic who oversees abstracts such as justice, purification, and good fortune. Salt and water are to magical effects what containment pools are to spent nuclear fuel rods. They don’t fix the problem, but they keep it confined and—temporarily—safe.
I got together an old litter box and food bowls for Binah in the bathroom and then shed my gloves and threw them and my keys into the bathtub to wash up. Exposed, my hands rang like a tuning fork: I pressed my teeth together and forced myself to touch the tap and turn it. The chilly metal sent a shock of bright sensation through my bare fingers. The sound of the screeching faucet and rushing water obliterated my vision with white haze while I washed the keys, my gloves, and then myself under the shower—twice with soap, once with lanolin cream. Too much heavy magic and not enough sleep turned up the dial on my nerves, overstimulating my senses to the point of disability. The sound of the water had color and shape. I was very overstimulated, and besides that, possessed of some strange, nebulous discontent.