“I don’t. You should stay here.”
“Right.”
I glanced over at him, surprised he’d agreed so quickly.
He raised one eyebrow. “I should but we both know I won’t. Are you taking the gun or the baseball bat?”
“The gun. For show.”
“How are you going to play this?”
“No playing. I’m going to walk in there and start killing people until they understand my point of view.”
“That’s . . . direct.”
“Things have changed, Cody. I don’t follow Authority rules now.” I drove down the hill a bit and parked the car in the driveway. Then I opened the car door, and he did too, climbing out with his bowling ball bag.
“That doesn’t sound very different than how things used to be,” he said.
“It’s different.”
Afternoon sunlight slipped yellow and heatless through the scattered clouds. It would be dark in a couple hours. I didn’t need the dark to get the job done.
I strode across the tasteful beige driveway to the tasteful beige stairway, up one flight to the glass-on-glass double-wide doorway framed in yet more glass. A balcony wrapped at that level around the wall of glass windows to my right, and a second balcony and wall of windows wrapped the same way on the next story up.
For people who lived on the wrong side of the law, they sure had picked a house that was nearly transparent.
Cody was behind me, not too close, and taking his time to enjoy the architectural details. Eleanor had already slipped into the house ahead of me.
I kicked the door.
Glass did not shatter, but a Break spell took care of the hinges and the whole thing fell inward.
Quick rundown: everything about the place was glass and chrome. A black marble bar curved a crescent to my left, red stools edging the outer arc, the floor was brown marble and a deeply textured beige carpet, and the three men in the room were all reaching for their guns.
I killed them before they even had their weapons in their hands. Lashed out with magic dark and fast, and stopped their hearts.
Cody, behind me, let out a little “huh” sound when the three gunmen collapsed to the floor. I didn’t wait to see if he was going to remove himself from the situation, or stick close.
He chose to stick close.
Around the bar, past a glass-tiled alcove holding wine bottles hung by chrome hooks, was a staircase. Just planks of glass going up, cabled wire and metal creating an open banister.
Either I’d been loud or, more likely, the place was wired and I’d been spotted on the security monitors. I could count the hearts pumping up on the next floor—four.
I pulled my gun and strode up to the second level. Short hall that likely ended in bedrooms, the rest of the space opened up in a huge vaulted ceiling level made even larger by the wall of windows overlooking another balcony and the wide green spread of downtown Portland broken through by tall buildings.
Rich wooden floor anchored the room and a stone fireplace stretched off to the left. Two gold couches did nothing to take up the space, and even the mini grand piano seemed dwarfed by the sky and city.
The four heartbeats belonged to four men, three who were standing, and one who was sitting at the gold couch to my right. No one had a gun in their hand, which surprised me. Maybe I hadn’t been spotted.
No, they wouldn’t be that careless.
I lifted my gun to get their attention.
“Have a seat,” I said to the men standing around. “This won’t take long.”
The three glanced at the man sitting on the couch. Black hair, soul patch, fake tan, he wore a jacket that was obviously designer and sat with his arms across the back of the couch.
“Mr. Shamus Flynn,” he said, a slight smile narrowing his eyes. “What brings you to my home?”
“I have a message I’m not sure has been made clear to you, Mr. Soto,” I said, guessing correctly who he was. “I don’t care how big a network the Black Crane has developed over the last three years. Don’t care how powerful or rich you think you are. This is still my town. And there are people within it who are off-limits to you and your goons.”
“Of course,” he said. “We respect the Authority has certain concerns for its people. Boundaries we respect.”
“I’m not talking about the Authority. This is just about me. You’ve pissed me off. You’re using people I care about. I’m here to make you understand that if you don’t back off and leave my friends and Terric Conley alone, I will destroy your little pop shop and kill your members one by one.”
“Mr. Flynn, please,” Soto said. “We are all reasonable men here. Surely we can discuss this without resorting to threats. It is a crude way to do business.”
“I want your word you will leave Terric Conley alone.”
“I don’t think you understand the situation properly,” he began.
He didn’t finish. Because I killed him.
Drank down his life without even twitching my fingers.
His eyes rolled into the back of his head, his heart stopped. He slumped forward and the remaining three men bolted off the couches, reaching for their guns.
“Keep your hands off your weapons,” I said.
“I’d do as he says,” Cody said behind me.
I didn’t look back, but the men in the room all glanced at him, then held their hands out to the side.
“Let me make myself clear,” I said. “I am not here to discuss the situation. I am not here to do business. I am here for an unbreakable guarantee that Terric Conley will be cut free from everything and anyone involved with the Black Crane. Who’s going to give me that guarantee?”
“I will see that Mr. Conley is removed from our attention,” one of the men said. He was taller than me, probably in his early fifties, with light brown hair going gray and receding at the temples. His eyes were heavy-lidded, and his mouth at the bottom of his long, narrow face was thick-lipped.
“My name is Rene Schuller. I have a position in this organization that can ensure my desires are acted upon.”
“And your desire is?” I prompted.
He smiled, even though neither of us was buying it. “To make you happy, Mr. Flynn.”
“Good. Make me happy, Mr. Schuller, and I won’t go out of my way to kill you.”
I could feel their pulses as if they were my own, three thrumming beats that would be so easy to slow, slow, slow until they were gone.
Instead I turned my back and walked across the room toward the stairs. Cody stood to the right of the staircase, holding a sawed-off shotgun at his hip. So that’s what he carried in the bag.
“Don’t bother,” I said to Cody loud enough they’d hear. “I could kill them before they squeezed a trigger.”
I paced down the steps and Cody followed behind. Passed the bar and dead bodies, then got into the car.
“You’ve become a little more blunt, I see,” Cody said as he got into the passenger’s seat.
“I tried subtle. It chafed.” I started the car but didn’t back out of the driveway yet.
I drew on the magic deep beneath the city and cast a spell. It was a spell that required quick, scribbling strokes, winding into a tightly coiled center.
A few seconds later, Scatter hung in the air between me and the windshield. I cast it with a push of both hands, and it rolled into the big house. If they had surveillance cameras, they were now fried, the information that might have been stored there scattered and irretrievable.
“In the old days you’d have done that first,” he said. “You’re getting sloppy, Shame.”
“I’m not sloppy,” I said, finally putting the car in gear and getting the hell out of there. “If I’d screwed with their cameras before we walked in, they would have known someone was coming and would have been waiting for us. This way, no one got hurt.”