People like Dennis Parrott. Not that he’d known about Parrott’s charisma Gift back when he was busy pissing on everything he’d spent a lifetime fighting for. Dennis Parrott had found him easy prey, twisting him around until it made perfect sense to kill Ruben Brooks because he was in charge of the magic-users in the FBI. Perfect sense to conspire to kill a U.S. senator—not that he’d known exactly how Parrott planned to do it, but that was no excuse—and frame Brooks for the murder. Perfect sense to do whatever it took to rid this country of magic.
Whatever it took…until he learned that his associates thought that meant killing twenty-two people to make death magic. Parrott and Chittenden had kept him in the dark about the death magic. They shouldn’t have been able to do that, but he hadn’t been at his best, had he? When he did find out, it had been almost too damn late. When he found out…
Al Drummond didn’t deny one ounce of the blame that was his. He’d earned the hell that hadn’t eaten him. But magic made the playing field too damn uneven.
And Lily Yu wanted to know if he still hated magic?
God, yes. Just like he hated the gun laws in this country that made it too fucking easy for bastards to blow each other away along with whoever else might be standing nearby. Didn’t mean he hated guns—just the ones used by goddamn idiot losers who had no business being handed power like that.
That’s what he hated about magic. That it could be wielded by losers at least as easily as by the good guys. That it could—like all power—turn a good guy into a loser.
He should have told Yu that. She didn’t trust him, which proved she wasn’t an idiot. But he needed her trust. He needed her, period. Needed her more than he’d needed his mother’s tit as a baby.
Just went to prove…if there was a God, He had one sick sense of humor.
FOUR
“I’M fine, Mother. Really.” Beth Yu dropped to the floor, lifted the bed skirt, and peered into the crowded darkness under her bed. Nope. Not there. Which meant it had to be Deirdre…again. “The apartment may be small, but you saw it. It’s in a perfectly decent part of San Francisco, and…he did? Well, you can tell Uncle Feng to butt out of—”
That, of course, was a mistake. While she listened to “Respect Your Elders” speech number twenty-seven she pushed to her feet and headed to the door of her closet, aka bedroom. Through superhuman organizational ability she’d managed to make room for her desk, but that’s about all it held. That and a small file cabinet and the twin-size bed she’d swapped out her old bed for so she could wedge the desk in. When you were freelancing from home, you had to have a desk.
The door to closet number two—Deirdre’s room—was three steps down the hall. She opened it and frowned at the debris covering every surface. Was it only two years ago that she’d lived like this, too? Back then, it had seemed deliciously hedonistic. Liberated. Now it just looked stupid. You couldn’t find anything in a space this messy. Like shoes. Her shoes, which Deirdre liked so much she kept borrowing them, maybe because she couldn’t find any of her own.
Beth stepped into the one spot of carpet that showed between piles of cast-off clothing and started digging.
When her mother paused for breath, she said, “I’m sure my uncle meant well, but I hate that he got you all worried. There’s nothing wrong with this neighborhood. People can get shot anywhere. No one was killed, and it isn’t like it was a gang shooting or something—”
Another mistake. Usually she handled her mother better than this. She started tossing clothes around as her mother explained how very stupid it was to assume it wasn’t gangs when the police didn’t know who’d done it, and if the victim wasn’t dead yet, he probably would be soon, and if he didn’t die, he’d probably be paralyzed. How was that any better? Not that she wouldn’t far prefer to have a paralyzed daughter to a dead one, but this wasn’t about her feelings, it was about Beth’s safety.
Beth sighed and pulled out the big guns. “I really think this neighborhood is safe, but you’re right, I have to be careful. I’ll ask Lily to check those crime statistics for the area again. Maybe they’ve changed. I know she said they looked pretty good when I moved here, but…”
It worked. It worked so well Beth ground her teeth. Citing her sister calmed her mother as nothing else could these days. It was as irrational as it was infuriating. “You want to call her yourself? Oh, of course. I know…” Where were those damn shoes?
“And just what do you think you’re doing in my room?”
She must have been listening to her mother more than she’d thought. She hadn’t heard the front door. Beth looked up at the skinny girl lounging in the doorway. Deirdre had short, shiny blond hair, a nose stud, five piercings in one ear and three in the other. She didn’t trust even numbers. “Looking for my—hey!”
Beneath the ragged hem of Deirdre’s jeans were the sky-high hot pink wedges Beth had bought when she got her first check as a freelance website designer. She waved at her roommate’s feet. “Take ’em off. No, Mother, I didn’t mean you. Deirdre borrowed my shoes and I want to wear them, so…listen, can I call you back? It might be late, but—okay, tomorrow, then. Love you.”
She disconnected quickly.
“You don’t need your shoes now,” Deirdre informed her. “It’s Tuesday. You’re going to the dojo. You don’t do kung fu in wedges.”
“I don’t do kung fu at all, and I wear shoes to get to the class, which is not held in a dojo. Today I will wear those shoes. Which are mine.”
Deirdre rolled her eyes and stepped over two newly redistributed piles of clothes. “You weren’t this selfish in college.”
“I wasn’t buying my own stuff in college. Do you know what I paid for those?”
“They were on sale.” Still, Deirdre sat on her bed—and a red sweater, a yellow and green skirt, and a pair of jeans—and unbuckled one shoe. “So who’s the target?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
Deirdre waved a vague hand. “You’re wearing a new sweater—which I love, by the way, and when did you get it?—and you’re desperate for your fuck-me wedges. There is a target.” She handed Beth one shoe, and her narrow face lit in a grin. “Oooh. Are you finally moving on Sean?”
Beth slid the shoe on. “Sean and I are just friends.”
“These are not just-friends shoes.” Deirdre dangled the second shoe by its skinny strap.
“Anything more would be inappropriate, now that I’m working for him.” Beth reached for the shoe.
Deirdre jerked it back, out of reach. “Nuh-uh. Not until you come clean. And you aren’t working for Sean. He’s a client, or his firm is, which is not the same thing at—hey!”
Beth had tackled Deirdre back onto the bed, snatching her shoe in the process. Beth rolled off, sat up, and bent to fasten the shoe in place. “He doesn’t see it that way, plus he’s hung up on the age difference.”
“Hence the shoes and the sweater.”
Beth couldn’t help sliding her friend a grin. “Hence the shoes and sweater. “
Deirdre squealed. “Go you! He’s one heavenly hunk of man, and what’s a couple of years? Besides, older guys can be so considerate.”
It was twenty years, not a couple, and Beth knew that ought to matter. It didn’t. It just didn’t. “He’s picking me up in…Jesus. Any minute now.” She bolted to her feet and hurried to the bathroom. She needed to check her makeup.