I gestured at the wreckage.
'Sorry about your boys, Terrence. I hope everyone's okay.' I tried to make my smile as wide as his.
On the way back to Santa Monica, my juice buzz warred with the adrenaline crash. My vision was almost painfully sharp and the wind whipping through the open car roared in my ears like storm surge. My skin felt tight and itched, and I could feel my hair growing. At the same time, the burn I'd felt when I cast the repulsion spell had softened to a warm, euphoric afterglow that was making me wet. In short, I was fucked up.
Most of the time, flowing juice doesn't have that kind of effect. I might get a pleasant tingle, just enough to look forward to the next time, but I'd flowed too much at the junkyard. When Rashan had brought me into the outfit, he'd warned me that juice can be addictive. I'd seen enough crack-heads and junkies in the neighborhood to take him seriously, and I always tried to pull my juice in small doses. Most of the everyday spells I used-like the traffic and parking spells-were just like that. A heroin addict would call them bumps or taps.
For larger spells, I had my little rituals, and I had Mr. Clean to take some of the juice. The spell talismans were handy, too. Not only did they allow me to trigger an effect more quickly, but I was also able to charge them with a little juice at a time.
At the junkyard, I'd been rushing, hard. I'd flowed enough juice to toss around a couple tons of scrap metal like LEGOs. The gangbangers had been trying to kill me and I did what I had to do. Some of them were dead-probably all of them-but I wasn't planning to stop by their funerals or anything. Bad guys die. Someday I'd be on the wrong end. And goddamn that juice had felt good. Even the burn had been a good pain; the kind of pain you get from doing something your body needs but doesn't like.
I threw my head back and let the wind thunder over my face, and laughed. Outside of the bosses, there probably weren't five gangsters in L.A. who could have handled that much juice. Terrence probably couldn't. Fuck him-he was pretty good, but I doubted he could've moved that pile.
'I am a fucking monster!' I yelled, and laughed again.
Moon Dog whined and stared at me with those fucked-up yellow eyes. He'd been lying on the passenger seat with his muzzle tucked between his paws all the way from the salvage yard.
I looked over at him. 'What? Look, Moonie, you don't got to worry about those fucking guys. I'll set you up, you can lay low for a few days if you want, but no one's going to fuck with you. Not after that, they ain't gonna fuck with you.' What I meant was they wouldn't fuck with me.
Moon Dog just whined again and dropped his nose to his paws.
When we got back to the pier, I waited outside the building while Moonie changed back. When he came outside, he was trying to wipe away the blood matted in his beard with a dirty rag. For whatever reason, I hadn't even noticed the blood on the werewolf's muzzle.
I pulled out my roll and peeled off five bills. 'Moonie, thanks for helping me out back there. You didn't have to get involved, and I want you to know I appreciate it.' Moon Dog grimaced and took the money like it was a job application.
'That was fucked up, Domino.'
'Fuck those guys, Moonie. I went out to talk and they tried to put me in the ground.'
Moon Dog didn't seem to want to look at me. He was quiet for a minute. 'I did a lot of fucked-up shit in the Nam,' he said finally. 'Had to, or thought I did. I didn't have to like it, though. Thing is, some guys did.' He looked at me then-more like squinted at me.
'Jesus, Moonie, I didn't like it,' I said, trying it out. It didn't sit quite right.
Moon Dog nodded. 'That's good, babe. Most of those guys never made it home. They just kept going back, one tour after another, until they finally got to stay there. Some of them came back when the government made them, but their minds are still in the bush. Always will be.'
'And you, Moonie?' Without the juice buzz, it probably would have seemed like a rude question.
Moonie chuckled. 'I guess I made it out of the bush but never quite made it home. That's all right. I got no complaints.'
'Well, me, either. I guess I won't turn into some psychotic baby-killer just because I decided not to let a few gangbangers shoot me.'
Moon Dog flinched at the term 'baby-killer,' but he seemed to have put in enough words for one day. He just nodded, told me to be careful and wheeled himself back into his hole. The whole experience hadn't been too good for him. His PTSD was probably acting up.
By the time I got home, the buzz was gone and my mood was foul. I slammed the door, slammed myself onto the couch and stared at the peach-colored wall. Then I got up and went to the kitchen, grabbed a beer and slammed the refrigerator door. When I got back to the living room, Honey was hovering there.
'Bad day?' she piped. Her cheerfulness was annoying. I dropped back on the couch and drank my beer.
'What happened?' Honey landed on the coffee table and looked at me, concerned.
'Nothing much,' I said, and glowered.
'It doesn't look like nothing much.'
That pissed me off. 'I don't want to talk to you right now, Honey.'
'Yes, you do.'
That really pissed me off. I thought about yelling, but I couldn't work up the energy for it.
'You're hurt, Domino,' Honey said. She lifted into the air and hovered near my shoulder. She started to reach out, and then drew back.
I craned my neck to look at my shoulder. I'd forgotten about it. 'Thanks for reminding me. Now it hurts like hell.' I got up and went to the bathroom, grabbing the bottle of aspirin from the cabinet. I returned to the couch, reached for the juice and chased down a handful of the pills.
This time, the spell didn't come together at all. The juice and the tablets both made it halfway down. The juice burned off and faded away, but the tablets stayed there and I damn near choked on them. I finally forced them down with beer, and then slammed the empty bottle on the table, coughing.
'Let me, Domino.' Honey flew over to the French doors and wrestled with the doorknob. She pulled open the door to the balcony and went out to her garden.
'What are you going to do, roll me a joint?'
'Don't be sarcastic, Domino. Take off your shirt.' Honey came in with an armful of green stuff and flew off to the kitchen. I wasn't in the mood to be helped, but I wasn't in the mood to hurt, either. I stripped down to my bra, wincing and cursing.
I heard cabinets opening and closing and pots rattling in the kitchen. Then Honey started singing. It might have been chanting, but it sounded like music. I didn't recognize the language. It was either something humans didn't speak anymore or something humans had never spoken.
After about ten minutes, Honey came back in carrying a saucer that was almost as big as she was. She set it on the couch beside me and I saw there was some kind of yellowish paste on it.
'Looks like honey, Honey.'
'I used honey for the base.' She rubbed her hands in the paste and then held them up, like a surgeon who had just finished scrubbing. Pixie dust drifted down from her hands. 'Now relax,' she said. 'This isn't going to hurt, but it might feel a little strange.'
I grunted. Honey came to me and started rubbing the salve into my wounds. It didn't hurt, but I still flinched the first time she touched me.
'Jesus, that's cold!'
'Relax, Domino.'
And it did feel weird. It felt like my flesh had gone as liquid as the salve, like Honey was moving it around, smoothing it out with her hands. She went back and forth to the saucer, working on my shoulder, arm, neck and scalp. I didn't look until she was finished. When I did, my skin was liberally coated with the salve, but it was a healthy, undamaged pink underneath.
'Jesus,' I said. 'That's a hell of a lot better than my aspirin spell, even when it works.'
Honey shrugged. 'It's glamour. I'm pretty good at it.'
'Glamour,' I said. 'You mentioned that before, about the walls. What does that mean, exactly?'
'It means the magic will come undone if sunlight touches it,' Honey said.
'Really?'
