A Criminal Magic (36 page)

“You having second thoughts about the deal?” he says slowly. “About all this?”

“No,” I say instinctively. I steal a look at him. “Maybe. It just—it doesn't feel like I expected it would.” I look at my hands. “How am I supposed to do what I'm doing when my little sister's right upstairs, you know?” I shake my head. “It's just gotten more complicated. And I have no idea what's in store for us after tomorrow. I'm trying to get it out of Gunn.”

Alex runs his fingers through his hair, then inhales real big, like he's gearing up to sprint. “Joan . . . I need to tell you something.”

I have no idea what he's about to say, but his face tells me that I don't want to hear it. “What's wrong, Alex?”

“Before I do this,” he says quietly into his lap, “I need to know that despite all the lies for Gunn, the manipulations we've conjured under this roof, that this is real.” He points to me, then to himself. His hands are shaking a little as he does it, which sort of scares the crap out of me. “If you trust me,” he adds with a breath, “just like I trust you.”

“Alex, seriously, what's this about?”

He looks at me sideways. There's so much brewing in his eyes. “It's important.”

“Yes. I trust you, maybe more than anyone,” I say, without even needing to think about it. “Hell, these days I might trust you more than I trust myself.”

A slow smile breaks across Alex's face. But he still looks nervous.

Wildly, jumpy, out-of-his-skin nervous.

He starts rubbing the inside of my palm. “I know you think you need to do this, that this shine deal is the answer for you and your family,” he says, “that there's no other way out but
working alongside Gunn. But you'll be no good to your family rotting behind bars.” He pauses. “Tomorrow night—it isn't going to happen. The Feds are onto it. The deal might start, but it's going to end with the largest Prohibition Unit bust in history. You need to get out now, while there's still time.”

I shake my head. What Alex is saying is so far-fetched, it sounds like a story, one of the fairy tales I used to ramble on about to Ruby at night. “Alex, why are you . . . what—how would you even know this?”

“And I have a way,” he talks over me. He starts breathing heavier and slower. He lets go of my hand, and then his words come out in a rush: “Colletto's gang is due here sometime tomorrow. The troupe's to make sure that all the shine we've brewed over the past few days, the glass quarts that you've been binding, are packed and ready for loading in the VIP lounge. That's where the deal is going down,” he keeps talking, “but before D Street walks out of there, we clue in the rest of the troupe to what's going on and spellbind the room. If we time it perfectly—not too early to risk betrayal, not too late that we miss our chance—we force the troupe on board. And then we lock both gangs in like sitting ducks for the Feds.”

“Alex.” I finally find my voice
. Lord, he's really starting to unravel, to lose it
. “What's gotten into you, how on earth would the Feds—”

“I promise the Unit will cut a deal with you. I'll make sure of it.” His words are soft, but now assured, and he keeps his eyes trained on a random spot to the left of my head. “We say that Gunn was the mastermind, that he had you and the rest of his sorcerers working like dogs for him, that he was blackmailing you—at the end, that's what it's been like, it's not too much of a stretch from the truth. We'll tell the troupe the same—have them corroborate the story. They all think there's something else going on between you and Gunn anyway.”

He steals another breath as my head starts spinning. “If you give up Gunn and his team and everything you know, you'll walk. But it needs to be all of it, Joan—everything about the eternal shine, anything Gunn's said about his plan for expansion, plus D Street's distribution routes. And that spell, Joan—it can't get out, you need to tell the Unit everything, we need to contain it. You give all that up, and I promise your family will stay safe. I'll make sure the cabin stays yours if that's what you want. Maybe the Feds will keep you under surveillance, but you'll be free.” He pauses, then adds in a more tentative voice, “Or you and your family could stay here in DC with me.”

I can't speak. The world feels like it's opening up underneath me, and that I'm falling, unable to hold on to any of his words, descending
down down down
. “What are you—Alex,” I stutter, “how the hell do you know this?”

He shakes his head.

He looks pitiful. Repentant. Afraid.

And then the pieces start falling into place.

Or maybe the picture has always been completed, and I've just been too blind—too willfully blind—to see it.

“Are you . . .” I close my eyes. I can't look at him anymore. “Are you a cop?”

“They had me, Joan, over a barrel,” he rushes, squeezing my hands, “all my old crimes. At first I was doing it because I had to. But then I started to understand everything that magic is capable of, all the darkness of this underworld, and I met you, and—” He stops. “I believe in what I'm doing now, more than ever. I want to end Gunn and the rest of them. I want to save you. Please, please let me do both.”

A cop.

Alex is a fucking cop.

Of course, this all makes sense, looking back at the full picture. His cloudy past, his questions about Gunn, the way he
kept burning bright, right through the Shaws. But even still, it feels like the greatest magic—the one I've come to know as real, the one I've come to build my hopes and dreams on top of—it all teeters, then comes spiraling, crashing down.

“You piece of shit.” I close my eyes. The tears come hot, fast, and overwhelming. “You liar. You've been playing me this
whole time
?”

“I never played you.” Alex rushes to grab my hand again, but I jerk away from him, stumble to the edge of his gazebo manipulation. I want to tear it down with my nails.
Alex. Alex is a cop.

“Please, Joan, me and you—that's the only thing that's always been real.” His voice cracks. “I can't deny that I lied about some things—I had to in order to survive—but there're some things that you just can't lie about. You know that's true.”

I don't look at him. Alex tries to angle around, force me to, but I turn away. But he gently grabs my hand and pulls me around to face him. I want to resist again. I want to tell him to leave me alone. But his look, his face.
This
, right here, right now, there's no trick.

“I've made sure the Feds don't know your name yet, but they know about the eternal shine,” he says slowly. “I told you, I've got it all figured out. We'll get ahead of it, and spin your story—we'll tell them that you were coerced, that Gunn forced you to use your blood-magic. Like I said, we'll use the troupe to back it up. If they cooperate, they get off easy. Besides, we've always been after the gangsters, not the sorcerers—Gunn and Colletto are the masterminds.”

When I don't answer, because I can't, because everything I might say is stuck like a thick, knotted ball in my throat, he leans in and whispers, “I would never give you up, don't you see that? You were right, Joan. We're the same, we deserve this—we deserve each other.”

Those words. They're the right words.

Maybe, despite all things, they're the only words that matter.

“Please, Joan,” he says. “Think of your family, of yourself. Hell, think of me.” He takes my other hand, so that both of mine are wrapped in his. “This is the only way you get out of this. Please. Please tell me you're with me.”

I study Alex Danfrey, this man I know intimately and yet apparently, don't know at all. This expert sorcerer who's about to take down everyone I've worked with, everything I've worked for, all in one night. One bust. This double agent who's crossing his own agency just to carve a path that lets me walk away.

We'll get ahead of this—the only way you get out—we deserve each other.

Maybe . . . maybe we
could
start over, in another city—Alex, me, Ruby, and Ben. And once we clear our names with the Feds and move on, maybe . . . maybe we bury the caging spell like Alex said, keep it a secret as Mama always meant for it to be, and we get back to our performance. Alex and I had true magic on our stage, that's something you can't walk away from. We could open our own place. A
different
place—without the violence, without the Gunns of the world breathing down our necks—just a place to make magic together. Alex says he's working for the Feds, but I've seen him in action. And I know what he can do, what he won't be able to live without forever, despite how much he's turned himself around otherwise.

We'll work it out, we'll figure it all out, together.

“Promise me you'll take care of my family after all this is through?” I say slowly, as I wipe a tear from my eye. “And my name is never tied to any of it. As far as the papers,
anyone
is concerned—Joan Kendrick never existed.”

Alex rests his hands on my shoulders. “I will, Joan. I promise. It's what I want.” He glances toward the window. “Stay up here, get some rest if you can. I'll be in the lounge with the others tomorrow, finishing up our shipments, just to avoid
tipping Gunn off that anything's wrong. You do the same. You act like everything he's been planning is finally coming together. Soon as I know when Colletto's coming, I'll phone it in to the Feds,” he says. “And when the gangsters exchange the cash and the goods, we pull our final trick—we clue in the troupe, and lock those thugs in the VIP lounge. Then the Unit arrives to take them down.”

I nod slowly, wipe my eyes with the back of my hand. “I understand.”

He presses his lips gently to my forehead and pulls me into him. And I smell his scent again, that mix of soap and cologne. I breathe it in. “We're in this together, Joan,” he whispers. “We always have been.”

We both climb through the window, Alex angling around Ruby to make his way to the foot of the bed. “Until tomorrow,” he says, after I break my spell on the door.

And then he's gone.

I lie back down. I toss and turn, running it all through, praying to God that Gunn doesn't get a whiff of this and break Alex apart, only to break me next. I'm angry, more scared than I've been in a long time, so twisted around that sleep is now a dream. But there's one thing I know deeper and truer than anything:

Alex was right.

Even though we didn't know why, or how, or what it was all for, Alex and I have always been in this together.

DEAL SWEETENER

ALEX

I leave Joan's room and creep downstairs, settle onto the sofa in the lounge, determined to catch a little rest before tomorrow breaks wide open. There's no way I'm going to be able to sleep—my nerves are shot, my heart is beating so fast that I'm surprised it hasn't taken off—but I should try. Tomorrow is going to be a long, backbreaking day of finishing up the shine shipment for Gunn, making sure Agent Frain is ready for our score, and then all the paperwork I'm sure will take place at the Unit, after.

Of course it was a huge risk, coming clean to Joan. A huge, potential career- and life-ending risk. But I trust her. Regardless of whether I should, I do. And I can't leave her behind. No matter how much I try to lie or trick myself, the truth remains. I'm in love with her.

What's left of the night passes by in a fit of strange dreams, and tossing and turning on the lounge's sofa. When Ral and Billy show up in the morning, they look me up and down, and Ral actually asks if I'm strung out.

“I'm fine,” I say, as I stand and light a cigarette. “Just tired is all.”

“After tonight, Gunn sure as hell better give us a night off.” Billy picks up one of the jugs of water resting in the corner and
pours the optimum twelve ounces into an empty bottle. “Can't take much more of this.”

“I'm with you,” I say.

Once the rest of the troupe arrives, we slowly get to work, dig our heels in, and we all keep a steady pace for a few hours, working as a team. Around late afternoon, we each brew our last trick of shine, and fill the final quart container. Despite the collective exhaustion, the air in the lounge becomes festive, excited. Win comes in a few minutes later, and when he sees the finished shipment, he calls for Gunn.

Gunn paces around the glass quarts of eternal shine, the 180 bottles that have already been caged by blood and sealed, plus the twenty that will still need to go to Joan to be finished this afternoon, and then brought back here to await Colletto.

He looks up and nods. “Excellent. As always, you've exceeded my expectations.” He moves toward the door. “Everyone should get freshened up, be down to greet Colletto's men before eight.”
Eight o'clock. So that's when the deal takes place. I need to call this in to Agent Frain
. “I'm not sure what Colletto expects, if he'll want another celebratory shine toast, or a magic performance, so be ready for anything.” Gunn looks back to me. “Alex, I know you've been carting yourself back and forth each night, running yourself ragged between here and home. Win, drive him home to get changed, will you?”

But I need this sliver of a window to get to a pay phone, to call the Prohibition Unit—
“I'm okay with walking, sir. I know you both have a lot on your plate.”

“Relax, I'll drive you.” Win stubs his cigarette into an ashtray on the end table.

“Thanks.” I force a smile. “I'd appreciate it. It's gotten awful cold.”

I follow Win numbly down the hall, to the stairs and out the bar front. Adrenaline has me flying. I need to shake Win
somehow, get through to Frain, give him the details so he can get set to move in.

Should I pretend I'm sick? There's a pharmacy on P Street with a telephone
—

“Where you headed?” someone says from across the lot.

I turn to see one of Gunn's minions, Dawson, strolling toward us.

“Running Danfrey home,” Win says. “Want to come along?”

A gangster ride-along would be somewhat comical if I wasn't so pressed for time.

Dawson smiles. “Sure, what the hell, if you lend me a smoke.”

Win opens the front door to his car and nods to the back of his old Model T. “You don't mind riding in the back, do you, Danfrey?”

“Not at all.”

I settle into the beige leather, the seat squeaking in protest, as Dawson and Win climb into their seats in front of me.

We rumble down M Street a few blocks and then stop at a traffic light. Before the light changes, two cars roll up next to ours simultaneously, one on each side. That's my first warning bell, since M Street is only four lanes wide, two lanes in each direction, which means the car on our right has had to use the shoulder to stop beside us. But I don't really process this. I'm still inside my own head, figuring out timing: how to get changed, sneak out to call Frain, whether my plan with Joan is bulletproof.

Then the doors to the cars bookending us open.

One man hops out from the car on the shoulder, and one hops out from the black Model T on our left. They each run to our car, open the respective backseat doors, and slide in next to me, surrounding me. Caging me, in seconds.

I look up. The guy on my right side is Howie Matthews. He gives me a knowing smile. “Heya, pal.”

My stomach starts to lurch as the two cars on either side of us screech away through the red light. When the light turns green, Win steps on the gas, and we go flying, the roar of the engine shattering the silence. The mixed scents of aftershave suffocate me, the steel of my captors' holstered guns starts poking at my hips.

I don't recognize the guy on my left, but he's a young thug, maybe my age, average build but with a face you don't want to mess with. He catches me looking at him, flashes me a crooked grin, and simply says, “Sorry, Charlie.”

“Win?” My voice is high, so high and strangled that I don't recognize it on its way out. The heat inside my stomach is starting to reach a fever pitch, and I can barely hear my own words over my heart. We make a right on 14th Street instead of a left. “You just passed the turn, we missed my turn—”

“Change of plans, Danfrey,” Win says. “Turns out Colletto had a problem with the son of his old spells distributor turning his back on him and attempting to go his own way. Turns out your hothead moves in jail didn't sit so well with D Street.”

I can't process, I'm not sure what's happening, my mind is scrambling, my thoughts stumbling to keep up.
Am I . . . am I part of the deal? This whole time, has Colletto been harboring a grudge against me, same as I have against him?

“But then again, we were all tricking each other, weren't we, Alex?” Win flashes me a smile through his rearview mirror. “When we got ahold of McEvoy on that boat, he sure had some interesting tales to tell in his final hour.”

They went to the voodoo party. They already got to McEvoy.

McEvoy must have confessed that he used me as a mole.

Time's up, Alex.

Jesus. Effing. Christ.

I can't catch my breath, can't slow my heart, as Win starts weaving in and out of the 14th Street traffic. He throws a glance
back at me, and the car does a little swerve into the closest lane. “What did you think would happen? That you'd just burrow your little rat face into the Den and keep McEvoy apprised? That he'd protect you when push came to shove?” Win laughs. “He's a junkie, and moreover a jackal. He's never known what loyalty is, and he treats his people like trash. Which is why he's at the bottom of the Potomac, floating alone right now.”

“Well,” Dawson says, “not alone for long,” and the entire crowd starts laughing.

I'm going to be sick.

“Howie,” I whisper to my old cell mate. “Howie, you don't want to do this.”

“Oh, but I do, Alex.” Howie puts his arm around my shoulder, maybe for the last time. He looks around the car, then drops his voice to a whisper, “You always thought you were so much better than me. So when I found out you were a rat for McEvoy, spying on my cousin and Mr. Gunn?” As he leans in, his greasy hair brushes my shoulders. “I
begged
them to let me ride along.” Howie stretches his thin legs out long under the seat in front of him, while I just get tighter and tighter. Then he leans in and adds, “Traitor.”

I turn away from him, blood pounding against my skull, my fear so intense I start seeing bright-white spots against the leather seats of Win's car.
Have they already told Gunn about me spying for McEvoy? They must have. Will Gunn think Joan knew about it? Will he punish her because of it?

I close my eyes. I can't think about that. She has to survive this.

She has to walk away.

Win slows at another traffic light. I look past Howie, out the window and a few blocks ahead. We're almost at the edge of town. There are about five more blocks until we're on the Highway Bridge, on a long road to an endless nothing.

I can't think, all my thoughts are just one long silent cry—
I'm going to die this is it this is real
—

But my fingers start to twitch, and my will to go down fighting takes over.
Should I take them out with magic? Conjure knives, and send them flying? If Gunn found out, would he hurt me by hurting Joan?

I can't take the risk. Besides, I'm not a murderer, or a criminal—I'm charged with taking guys like these animals down.

So I focus on the window, watch the traffic light from the other direction flip from green to yellow to red. “Duck, Howie,” I whisper.

“What?”

“Shatter.”

Our car begins moving, while Howie's window breaks into a million pieces, shards of glass flying into his face, his hair. He closes his eyes, burrows his head—

“What the hell!” he screams.

I send a sharp elbow into the eye of the guy on my left, and then I turn and jab my fist into Howie's face. Blood starts gushing out of Howie's nose as he doubles over.

“What's going on back there?!” Win keeps his hands on the wheel but whips his head around to look at me as Dawson scrambles to grab my shirt. I shrug Dawon off, kick him in the stomach, and send him careening back—

People start beeping behind us, and Win turns back to the wheel and steps on the gas.

I focus on the road ahead, conjure a thick brick wall to stack itself five feet tall in front of us. Before Win can brake, the car smashes into it, and we all snap back against our seats—

And that's when I scramble over Howie.

“Grab him, Howie! Just do it now!” Win barks. He throws his
car into reverse, but before Howie can get a clear hold on me, I jump through the open window.

A rush of pain and cold wind snaps at my body as cars beep and drivers scream. Tires screech as Win pulls his car over to the shoulder ahead of me. I pick myself off the road, hip throbbing, face pounding, and dash between two cars just as Win's jumping out of his. I trip over a set of trash cans that line a row of storefronts on the other side of the National Mall, and cut into the alley behind them.

“I just heard him!”

“Over there.”

“Behind the alley, move!”

Footsteps pound the cement behind me, a chorus of angry shouts—“Get back here, you little shit!”

“It's worse if you run!”

The sound of bullets roars through the sky.

I sprint down the alley, turn a sharp bend around a brick corner grocery, push myself inside, and conjure the door to lock behind me. I nearly collide with the dodgy storekeeper, a large, tired-looking man who jumps out of my way.

“Stay back!” The grocer backs away, hands up, face frozen with fear, toward the counter. “I don't serve no sorcerers, you hear? I want no trouble.”

“Is there a roof?” I gasp, as I steady myself on one of his shelves for a second.

“Don't speak to me, hell spawn!” The grocer covers his ears.

I lunge toward him, grab his collar. “I need you to focus.” I nod to the stairs on the side of the store, behind neat aisles of Campbell's Soup and olive oil. “Do those stairs lead to a roof?”

He nods quickly, gasps, “Please, don't hurt me.”

I release him, stumble up the staircase, dart across a dingy, cluttered second floor. I climb another staircase until the steps
dead-end into a door. I heave my shoulder against it—
one, two, three
—and stumble out onto the roof of the grocery.

The brilliant colors of the oncoming sunset blind me for a second, but I get my bearings, dash to the edge of the store's blacktop roof, and peer out to the main drag of 14th Street. Win and his men are shouting, cursing, firing bullets into the alley, peering around every corner.

“Check the stores,” Win's steely voice echoes through the abandoned alley. “Every one. We can't lose him.”

As they stop to catch a breath in the front of the grocery, Dawson points to a drop of my blood that must have smeared across the window.

“Blood,” Win says, then surveys the grocery's door. “In. Open it.”

Panic starts to thrum again, my short burst of relief pinching out like a flame. I hear the breaking of glass, the smack of a door underneath me, then hurried footsteps echoing through the grocery's thin walls and shoddy floors.

They're coming.

Surrounding me is a smattering of rooftops, a patchwork of three-story town homes and squat two-story stores. And then an idea starts to take hold.

They need me dead. They're not going to rest until I'm dead.

I limp to the edge of the building, take a look below. There's a three-story drop-off, but about ten feet away, there's a building with a dangling fire escape on its second floor. My ribs, sore and bruised from the fall, are now aching, maybe broken.
This is the only way out
, I tell myself.
You need to jump
. I look across the alleyway, to the fire escape that shines like a beacon in the sun.
And they need to think you fell
.

I take a few steps back, close my eyes, and wait for them, and when I hear the trapdoor to the ceiling flap open, hear Win shout, “There he is, fire!” I dig in and run as fast as I can toward
the edge of the building. I don't falter. I don't stutter-step, and I jump, my legs propelling me like a windmill,
up around up around—