The Best Defense by Kristine Kathryn Rusch 7 page

Why not tell him to stay in the white house?

Hands shaking, she set the postcard down. She laid her copy of Eugene Sue’s The Wandering Jew atop it and set to folding more brochures.

She spent the entire weekend wondering if the postal inspector would reappear. She assumed he’d be at the East Portland postal station, but with him anything seemed possible. She sat on bus benches and waved the drivers past, then shuffled onward when she’d been in one place too long.

They’d run more than a few times, she and pappy back in those years. Somehow it had always been funny. Afterward, at least, if not in the moment. Sheriff’s deputies, town constables, preachers, angry wives, angry husbands‑her memory was a parade of red faces and southern accents and the squeal of tires on gravel. Even when they’d been cornered, as happened once outside New Orleans, and probably a few other places as well, pappy would launch into some oration in that voice of his and eventually find the keys to unlock the hearts of their pursuers.

She’d thought her grandfather was old then, but she would swear to being older now. His gift had been the gift of gab, the flim flam grift that flowed from his lips like sand from a child’s fingers.

Her gift was real. They both knew it back then. They just never used it for anything. She could have played the ponies, picked stocks, found some way to make it into real money so they could retire to Havana or Miami or Nag’s Head. But it was never time, and there was always an element of danger, of betrayal.

So she’d told fortunes across the south and west for so many years she’d forgotten to ever make her own. Besides which, people didn’t want to know their real future. They wanted to know their imagined future, the one they cherished instead of fearing.

He was waiting for her Monday. He had her mail again, one grubby letter. Sometimes those didn’t even have money, just a simple request. Rarely begging, but she knew how to read an envelope just like she knew how to read a mark.

“Tell me,” the postal inspector asked as they walked to coffee‑and‑tea. “What is the true secret of magic?”

In spite of herself, she laughed. “You really want to know?”

“Sure. We got time.”

She heard the lie in his voice and knew that something drove this man, something invisible to her but as real as cholera in a well. “A dollar ninety‑eight.”

“You want me to pay you?” He sounded disgusted now.

“No, no, you don’t understand. The true secret of magic is in the numbers. You have the numbers, you have everything. Like elections, you see? It’s not the votes, it’s the counting.”

“Hmm.”

She went on. “Wall Street. Who makes money? The brokers, not the poor bastards who pay for the stock. Numbers are magic.”

“That’s not magic. That’s… that’s economics.”

“An economist can tell the future.”

“But he’s not right,” the postal inspector protested.

“How do you know? Anyone can call spirits from the vasty deep, but will they come?”

His eyes narrowed. “You’re twisting the question.”

“Oh, a big cop like you, he never did such a thing?”

He laughed. “You must have been quite something in your day, lady.”

“Ma’am,” she said quietly.

“Ma’am.”

“I’m still something today, sonny. I’m just something different.”

A few minutes later, over their steaming mugs, he leaned toward her. “So, what do you know about my boy there?”

“ Texas,” she said, surprising herself. She wasn’t inclined to trust him, not a cop, especially one who wouldn’t even give her his name.

“He the one sending you those postcards?”

“Who knows?” She sipped. “All I can say is Texas. I don’t know why.”

“I hope you get better at spirit calling.”

Step outside on a new moon night. Walk to a park or a railroad siding, or even a rooftop, somewhere away from the street lights and the late night buses. Now look up and try to count the stars.

How many did you find? How many do you think there are?

Magic tells you that you don’t need to know, that there are as many stars as the sky can hold. Magic tells you how to find the one you want, like looking for a diamond in a mile of beach sand. Magic is the art of picking out the impossible from all the things which might be or have been. Magic is the star under which you were born.

They went on into the autumn, meeting every week or two. He badgered her, he twitted her, but he never pushed her. She came to respect him for not trying to pull the answer from her. Somehow this man with the gray suit and the badge understood at least that much about what she did.

He let her keep answering her letters. Eight dollars one week, twelve the next, once a twenty‑dollar week. She put three dollars aside that week, in her coffee can, and that was after buying a pork chop at Fred Meyer’s.

Still, something drove him. His attitude became slowly more urgent. She got more postcards from Dallas, all of them cryptic. Pappy whispered the answers to her, no less strange.

A textbook killing.

Hobos hidden atop the grassy hill.

Officer Tippit has three children.

She kept the answers to herself. There were some things he did not need to know. Coffee every week or two did not buy trust. Besides, he’d surely read all the Texas postcards.

In mid‑November, she got another one of the postcards from Texas on a day when there were no other letters. This one had a mail order rifle ad from the Sears catalog pasted over the face. On the back it read, Why only one bullet?

She stood in the post office, looking at the card. His hand reached around and plucked it from her grasp. “You’ve received one hundred and two letters since I’ve had you under surveillance, Miss Redheart. That’s one hundred and two separate counts of postal fraud. You’ve also received twelve of these postcards from Dallas, mixed in with thirty‑eight others from around the United States. A secret admirer in Texas, perhaps?”

“I’m sure I don’t know.” She thought of the earnest young man in his photograph of the previous summer. “Maybe you should ask that fellow whose picture you showed me.”

“I’d like to,” he said. “I really would. I just don’t know who he is.”

“Why did you bring him to me?”

He glanced at his shoes a moment. “Because I saw your classified in the Oregonian. I… I received that photo in a very strange fashion. Nothing I could make sense of.” He tugged it out of his pocket and turned the picture over. On the back was written 11/22/63 in the same bold, black handwriting as all her postcards. Below it was a drawing of a goblet with a line through it. He continued, “I’ve been waiting for an answer I could give someone. Something I could say.”

“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.

Blood magic was not something I wanted to deal with. Not today. Not any day. Time to cut out and call it good.

I walked toward her. Since I am a tall woman, six feet barefoot, and since I also had on three‑inch heels, I towered over Lulu, who probably clocked in at about five‑five and maybe a hundred pounds. I had the physical advantage, which meant I had the power of intimidation on my side.

Hooray for me.

“You’re Lulu,” I told her.

She did the one thing I didn’t expect. She whispered a soft mantra‑a jump‑rope rhyme‑and moved her left hand in an awkward zag. She might be an awkward caster, but she was fast. I didn’t even have time to pull magic, much less a defense, before she and I were surrounded by some sort of sound‑dampening spell. The clatter of dishes and Mama’s constant yelling weren’t gone, they just sounded very far away.

A sheen of sweat spread across Lulu’s face and dripped down her chest. Along with the smell of sweet cherries, I caught a whiff of a vanilla perfume that wasn’t doing any good to cover up the stink of her terror.

“He already told you, didn’t he? Sent you to find me?”

Great. She was one of the crazy ones.

“No one’s sent me anywhere. I’m not going to take the job,” I said. “Get yourself another Hound‑try the phone book and the net.”

Her eyes, which were so brown they were almost black, narrowed. “You don’t even know what the job is.”

I didn’t answer. I actually did know what the job was‑or rather I knew what she had told me it was over the phone. Her dog had been lost, she thought kidnapped, maybe by an ex‑roommate. I thought it would be easy money. I thought wrong.

“I’m out.” I said. “Nice meeting you.” I tried to move past her, which shouldn’t be a problem because even though we were in a quiet zone, it wasn’t a solid sort of thing and would unravel as soon as I got out of her range. But she was quick, that crazy Lulu.

She took my hand and pressed her palm to mine. Her hand was hot‑fever hot. I felt the cool press of paper, maybe a photo, between us. Lulu smiled, shook my hand as though we were old friends, and let the spell drop away. She wavered, just slightly, and I wondered if I was going to have to catch her before she passed out.

“Sorry it didn’t work out,” she said. And there was more she didn’t say, in her body language, in her eyes. There was “please help me.”

Sweet hells. Nobody should love their dog that much.

I gave her a noncommittal nod and walked out the door, but not before sticking the photo in my pocket.

I hit the night air‑humid and too hot for a Northwest summer‑and headed into the city at a brisk walk. Evening was just coming on. Streetlights sputtered to life and cast an orange glow that only made the night feel hotter. I wanted some distance, like maybe half a city, between Lulu and me. I cut across a few streets, mostly to make sure no one was following, and ducked into a bar to use the bathroom. Only there, with the bathroom door closed, the overhead fan humming, and the lock set, did I pull out the photo.

It was not a dog in the photo, it was a woman. Maybe twenty years old with short, dark curly hair and a white, white smile against her maple‑honey skin. She wore a t‑shirt, looked as if she should be in college and wasn’t, and had Lulu’s eyes.

A sister maybe. Too old to be a daughter. She might be the roommate Lulu thought kidnapped the dog. But Lulu had said something about a man, about “he” already telling me something.

Let her be the roommate, let her be the roomate. I turned the picture over. Written on the back, in very small, very neat handwriting was a name: Rheesha Miller, her age: fifteen, and the last place she’d been seen: at a convenience store on Burnside.

A chill ran down my neck even though it was hotter in the bathroom than it had been outside. I’d seen this girl’s picture on the news. Missing person, no leads. Disappeared in broad daylight. One minute she was on the street. The next, she went into the store and never came out. The owners, an elderly Asian couple, hadn’t seen her come in, nor was there any trace of her on the store’s security camera. Strange, to be sure, but the Hounds who freelance for the police hadn’t picked up any traces of magical wrongdoing. It was a runaway or a kidnapping, straight up, no magic.

There was nothing I could do about this. Nothing.

I committed her face to memory, just in case, then tore the edge of the picture, intending to flush it down the toilet. A chemical and fertilizer smell rose up from the photo. I held very still. There was a trip spell on the photo. Maybe it was for tracking where the photo went. Maybe it was supposed to make sure the photo couldn’t be damaged. Or maybe it was set to trigger an explosion spell. Damn, damn, damn. I knew I shouldn’t have taken the photo. I knew I shouldn’t have gotten involved in this mess.

I took a deep breath and tried to think calm thoughts, because magic is a bitch and you can’t cast it when you’re angry. I whispered a mantra until I calmed down a little. Then, while carefully holding the photo in my left hand, I drew a quick Disbursement spell with my right. I’d have a migraine in a day or two, but at least I’d be alive. I drew upon the magic stored deep in the ground below the building and traced two spells, Sight and Smell.

Magic flowed into the forms I gave it, and my vision shifted. Like turning on a single light in a dark room, I could now see the traceries of spent magic and old spells hanging like graffiti in the air. And since I was a Hound, and good at it, I could smell even more than I could see: the too‑sweet cherry stink of Blood magic mixed with drugs, the slightest hint of Lulu’s vanilla perfume, and something else‑a subtle spell that stank of hickory and smoke.

I leaned forward until my lips were almost touching the photo and inhaled. I got the taste of the spell on the back of my throat, the smell of it deep in my sinuses. Not an explosive. A tracker. Someone had gone through an awful lot of trouble to know exactly where this photo was going‑or maybe where I was going. This was a complicated spell. One that took a hard toll on the caster. And I knew the signature of the man who put it there. A Hound named Marty Pike. He freelanced mostly for the cops. I was pretty sure he was ex‑Marine.

I let go of Sight and Smell, and the room settled back to normal. Except for the fact that I was sitting in the bathroom stall of a bar being tailed by an Hound who worked for the police, I wasn’t in any danger, hadn’t done anything wrong, and could still back out of this job by flushing the photo down the commode.

But here’s the thing. Lulu had said “he.” And right this minute, I’d take bets that “he” meant Pike. There hadn’t been any real reason for Lulu to put the quiet on our conversation back at Mama’s, there hadn’t been anyone but a few regulars at the tables. If Pike thought she was going behind his back and hiring a second opinion on her sister’s disappearance, then I could see her wanting to keep it quiet. Cop Hounds don’t much like it when freelancers take a piss in their sandbox. Hell, Cop Hounds don’t much like freelancers, period.

So I could either believe that Pike didn’t want Lulu going behind his back, or maybe that he was counting on her to do just that. To hand off the picture to some sorry sucker‑say me, for example‑and that I’d… what? Find something he hadn’t or couldn’t find? Come up empty‑handed? That didn’t make any sense.

Well, screw this. I was not going to be used for anyone’s patsy. I kept the photo and headed out into the bar. Tracking spells don’t work over great distances, so Pike should be close by. I scanned the crowd, a humorless bunch of hard drinkers who were watching the game and ignoring everything else. It was a small enough place there wasn’t anywhere for Pike to hide.

Plus, I couldn’t smell him.

Outside then. I made a point of leaving the door open nice and wide and stood there for a couple of extra seconds, just so he’d know I knew he was following me. Sure enough, the familiar short and shaved figure of Pike emerged from the shadows between a couple of parked trucks and started across the parking lot toward me. I’d heard from someone down at the city that the cops had nicknamed him Mouse. That was before his first case with the police. It was a high profile situation, and bloody. He saved a couple of guys on the force and did some other medal‑worthy things that fell into the above‑and‑beyond‑the‑call category. Ever since then, the cops just called him Pike.

I still couldn’t smell him‑he’d been standing upwind, the clever boy.

I walked down two steps and out into the parking lot, my heels making a solid, staccato sound.

“Allie.” His voice was low and carried the hint of a prior life spent in the south. His hair was gray, buzzed, and in better light his eyes might be brown instead of black. The lines on his face made him look angry without even trying. This close, I could smell his aftershave‑something with a helluva lot of hickory overtones.

“Pike. You lose something?” I held the picture out for him.

He was wearing a long‑sleeved button‑down shirt, which seemed odd in the heat of the night. Both his hands were in the front pockets of his jeans, and he did not move to touch the photo.

“Lulu talk to you?” he asked.

“You know the answer to that.”

“No, I don’t. I haven’t seen or heard from her in three days.”

Wasn’t that interesting? If he didn’t know where Lulu was, then he couldn’t have been the one who put the tracker on the photo. But that spell had his signature on it. You can’t fake a magical signature. It’s just like handwriting. Every caster has his or her own unique style.

And if he had put the spell on the photo, then he knew where Lulu was. He could have followed her around twenty‑four seven and still had time for an ice cream cone. Not that Pike looked like the type who ate frozen desserts.

I found myself not so much caring what part Pike played in this but why the hell the girl, Rheesha, hadn’t been found yet.

“What’s going on with this girl?” I asked.

“Did Lulu hire you to find her?”

“No.”

“She was just handing out pictures to strangers when you happened by?”

“Has anyone ever told you you suck at sarcasm?”

“No.”

Yeah, that was probably true. “You know what?” I said, “I don’t have to tell you anything, but here’s the truth. I’m out. Good luck finding Lulu and Rheesha. I want nothing to do with it.” I held the photo out for him again. He kept his hands firmly in his pockets.

“It’s too late for that,” he said.

“For what?”

“Backing out. You’re a part of this, Beckstrom.”

“Really? Since when?”

“Since you touched that photo. They’re looking for you now. And they’ll find you.”

Then the bastard turned around and started walking away.

Oh, no. Hells no. He was not going to leave me with some cryptic statement and fade to black. I caught up with him. “You know I haven’t ever gotten in your way‑on a job or any other time.”

“So?”

“So level with me. Tell me who’s looking for me. Tell me why. I know how to lie low. This is your job, Pike. I don’t want anything to do with it.”

He stopped next to a beat up Ford truck and opened the passenger door. “Get in. We’ll talk.”

“What about…” I held up the photo.

Pike shrugged. “Keep it. At least we’ll know where they’ll be: right behind us.” Then he gave me a sideways glance. “You might be useful after all, Beckstrom.”

Comforting. I tucked the photo in my pocket and climbed into the cab. I wanted to know what Pike knew. Or at least enough of it to keep myself alive.

I half expected his truck to be loaded with secret military gear, but I didn’t see anything unusual, unless you counted the bobble‑headed dog on his dash.

“Cute.”

“Grandkid gave it to me.”

He started the car and headed out of the parking lot, which was fine with me. I had no idea Pike had a family. For that matter, I had no idea he had a life except for Hounding. Hounds tend to be loners‑the kind of people who work nights and dull the pain of using magic with pills, needles, and booze. Not exactly white picket fence compatible. Still, watching Pike in the sliding light from the street gave me a sort of morbid hope. He was not a young man, and he seemed to be holding up okay.

“How long you been Hounding Portland?” he asked.

“About a year.”

“Before that?”

“College. Don’t you read the headlines? Billionaire Daniel Beckstrom’s Daughter Drops Out of Harvard.”

He glanced at me. He was not amused.

“Why did you come back here?”

That was a question I’d asked myself almost every day for a year. Maybe because Portland and the Northwest were familiar to me. Home. Or maybe because I wanted to succeed on my own terms, right under my father’s nose.

Yeah. Mostly the second thing.

“Family ties,” I said. Then, before he could ask anything else: “Who’s looking for me, what does it have to do with Lulu and Rheesha, and where the hell are we going?”

“Do you know Lon Trager?”

“No.”

“High‑end dealer. Blood magic mostly. Owns a place down Burnside. Likes to make the rich come begging him for it.” He turned a corner and we were heading down Burnside. About every other streetlight worked, and there were an awful lot of people leaning against buildings for this late at night.

Pike turned down a side street and into the neighborhood a bit. He parked and turned off the truck engine.

“You any good at lying, Allie?”

“No,” I lied.

That almost got a smile out of him.

“Good. Here’s what you’re going to say. You want to see Trager. Tell them your name‑they’ll know who you are, because they’re the kind of people who do read headlines.”

“Wait. I am not going into the office, drug den, or whatever the hell it is, of a known Blood magic dealer. I wanted out of this, remember? I wanted to lie low.”

Pike just sat there and stared at me. Then, in a voice devoid of inflection:

“The cops think she’s a runaway. There’s no evidence of kidnapping. None. There’re no lines of magic to sniff down. But I know she’s in there. And you know why I’m not going in after her? Trager and I have history. Bad history. For all I know, she’s already dead. It’s been two weeks. Two weeks.” He stopped as a car passed by. I had the strangest feeling he wasn’t talking to me, that he was looking across the cab of his truck and staring down demons I could not imagine.