“An answer about what?” she asked, her voice so soft she could barely hear herself.
“Why I’m so afraid of this picture.”
“Big man like you, afraid of a photo?” She was sorry for the words as soon as she said them, but it was too late. His face hardened and he turned away.
Go to Dallas, said pappy plain as day just behind her ear.
The postal inspector turned back. “What?”
“My father says you should go to Dallas.”
He drew a deep breath. “It’s too late, I think. You should have told me that a long time ago.”
“I told you Texas, the first time we met.”
He nodded. “Yes… I suppose you did.”
She went home and folded brochures. It all made sense now, except the why. Something in the numbers of the world had tried to warn her of the true secret that would arrive tomorrow. A man, a gun, a bullet. She wondered if the postal inspector would board a night airmail plane and fly to Texas, looking to stop whatever might have been.
The shadows deepened in her tiny apartment, day slipping westward as the night took up its watch on the horizon’s battlements. As the first stars came out, she found her coffee can and took five of the eleven dollars out.
She hadn’t eaten steak in years, and besides, the world was going to end tomorrow, or good as. Magic was little more than grift, pappy had been dead for years, and the postal inspector had never asked her the right questions that might have saved a man’s life on November 22nd, 1963.
The boatman who would be king was going to die tomorrow. She ate well on the scant proceeds of her mail fraud and drank to his life, before stumbling home amid the memories and ghosts of night.
Maybe it was time to change her ad.
The Sweet Smell of Cherries by Devon Monk
Mama’s restaurant is a greasy dive hunkered in the kind of neighborhood outsiders avoid during the day and insiders try to ignore at night. Magic isn’t what’s wrong with the neighborhood. It’s a dead zone, far enough outside the glass and lead lines that carry magic throughout the rest of Portland that it takes someone with college learning, or a hell of a knack, to cast anything stronger than a light-off spell. Yet even without the help of magic, dark things move on these streets. Very dark and hungry things.
But I was there because Mama’s food was so cheap even I could afford to eat out once a week. A girl needed a place to get away from her job, right? This was my place. Or at least that’s what I’d been telling myself for the last month. What I didn’t like to admit was that I wasn’t sleeping so well any more, wasn’t eating so well, and lately had been having a hard time deciding if I should spend my money on rent or booze. Rent still won out (what can I say? I’m a creature of comfort and like a roof over my head), but it didn’t take a genius to see how dangerously close I was to burning out.
And burnout is a fatal sort of situation in my line of work.
Hounding magic is not for the weak of heart. Use magic, and it uses you right back. And I’d been magic’s favorite punching bag for months now. It wasn’t any one thing-I knew how to set my disbursement spells, I knew how to choose what price magic would make me pay: headache, flu, bruises, bleeding, breaks-all the old standbys. But after a year of Hounding on my own, the little pains were starting to add up.
I needed a month-hell, I needed a week-off. I’d even settle for a full twenty-four hours blissfully free of any new ache or pain. After this job, just this last one, I’d take some time off.
Yeah, right. I’d been saying that for a year.
“You eat, Allie girl.” Mama, five foot nothing and tough as shoe leather, dropped a plate heaped with potatoes, eggs, and onions on the table in front of me. I hadn’t even ordered yet.
“Someone skip out on the bill?”
She pulled a coffee cup out of her apron, set it on the table, and filled it with coffee that had been sitting on the burner so long it had reduced down to a bitter acid syrup.
“I know you come tonight. You meet with Lulu for job.”
Apparently this Lulu-my might-be client-had a big mouth. It irritated me that she had spoken to Mama. I’d been doing my best to keep a low profile since coming back to town, but really, who was I kidding? Everyone knew my father-or knew his company. He was responsible for the technology that allowed magic to go public: all those lead and glass glyph-worked lines that ran beneath the city and caged in the buildings, all those gold-tipped storm rods that sucked magic out of the wild storms that came in off the Pacific Ocean. A modern miracle worker, my dad. The Thomas Edison of magic. And an empty-hearted, power-hungry bastard I was doing my best to avoid.
I shoveled a fork full of potatoes into my mouth and almost moaned. I was hungry. Really hungry. I had no idea how long it had been since I last ate. Maybe yesterday? Night before?
“It’s really good.” And it was. The best I’d ever eaten here. Which might make me suspicious, if I were the suspicious type. And I was.
She scowled. “You surprised Mama cook you good food?”
I thought about telling her well, yes, since I’d never tasted anything here that wasn’t too greasy, too spicy, or too cold before, it did seem strange that she’d be waiting for me on this particular evening with a plate of killer hash browns.
I took a drink of coffee to stall while I thought up a convincing lie. The coffee hit the back of my throat in a wave of bitter and burned, and I suddenly wished I had about a quart of water to wash it down with. Forget the lie. Mama was the kind of woman who would see right through it anyway.
“I’m not surprised, just suspicious. What’s so unusual about this Lulu friend of yours that I’m getting the special treatment?”
Mama held very still, coffee pot in one hand, her other hand in her apron pocket and quite possibly on the gun she carried there.
I kept eating. I watched her out of the corner of my eye while trying to look like it didn’t matter what she said. But my gut told me something was wrong around here-or maybe just more wrong than usual.
Finally, Mama spoke. “She is not my friend. You Hound for her, Allie girl. You Hound.”
So much for keeping a low profile. I wanted to ask her why she thought I should take the job, but she stormed off toward the kitchen yelling at one of her many sons who helped her run the place.
If I were a smart girl, I’d eat the food, leave some cash, and get out of Dodge. If I paid my electricity bill short, I could probably make rent without this job. I could take my day or maybe a whole week off right now. There were too damn many crazy people in this town who had access to magic, and my gut was telling me this whole Lulu thing was a bad idea. I swigged down as much of the coffee as I could stand and ate one last bite of potatoes. I put a ten on the table, hoping it would cover the bill.
That was when the door swung open, and in strolled Lulu.
How did I know it was her? Let’s say it was the way she stopped, like a child caught with one hand in her mother’s purse, when she got a look at me. Let’s also say that I didn’t even have to Hound her to smell the stink of used magic, the sickening sweet cherry smell of Blood magic to be exact, that clung to her thrift store sun dress. From the glassy look in her eyes, she’d been mixing Blood magic with something that had her soaring high out of her head.