probably the one that tagged the building that burned, and would never fess up. Or… something else was bothering him.
“I’m not here to finger you guys, if that’s what you’re worried about,” I said, eyes fixed straight on Keif, who glanced away guiltily. “I’m not a rat. I walk the Edge. Your secrets are safe with me. But I have to know everything, Keif. I need what you learned from the tagger.”
Drive abruptly stopped and stared at Keif. After a moment, Keif sighed.
“Look, we call ourselves writers, not taggers-but yeah, I know the guy,” Keif said. “Not personally, but from his pieces. Super technique, great caricaturist, but he switched up, doesn’t do figures or signature tags anymore. Back when he did, he did these fat-hat little devils and signed them Streetscribe, written with X-R-Y not S-C-R- I-”
“That’s the guy,” I said. “Go on.”
“He’s got himself a three man crew now, from the looks of it,” Keif said. “An apprentice and a toy-no, that’s harsh. The senior apprentice just copies, but he’s got real skill with a can. The junior apprentice is still real sloppy, lots of drips, but he’s got a flair for new designs.”
“The two-and-a-half Siths theory again,” I said, and Keif grinned. “But what about you? What have you learned from him?”
“Look, I’ve never met him, or any of his crew,” Keif said, smile fading. “Not that I’d know if I had. But… you asked what my secret was earlier. I use walls that have mold, just like the Streetscribe, but that’s not all of it. I’ve been biting his designs.”
“Aha!” Drive said. At my baffled look, Drive explained. “Keif means he’s been reverse-engineering the Streetscribe’s pieces. You sly dog, I’ve been wondering where you’ve been getting some of your better circuits.”
Keif looked away. I stared at him. He was still acting like he had something to hide, but for the life of me I couldn’t see why he’d want to hide studying the tags. Or maybe it wasn’t something wrong from his perspective-the Streetscribe was a killer, after all.
“So why is that a secret?” I said. “You afraid copying his art will piss him off?”
“Copying?” Drive said. “Circuits are one thing, but don’t tell me you’re a cribber-”
“I’m not cribbing his art,” Keif insisted, staring at the table. “I’m not! I’m biting his designs -a lot of other magical writers are too-but I am not ripping off his art! I want to make a name for myself . I can’t do that if I’m spending my time throwing up his pieces. Streetscribe and I are both representational artists-artists!-with our own styles. I do-not-crib!”
I stared at him. Maybe he was telling the truth. Maybe he wasn’t a cribber. Maybe he was as artistic as he claimed. But he still looked embarrassed-and he’d just admitted that he and the Streetscribe were competing for the same walls. I decided to toss a line out and see if he bit.
“Let me guess,” I said. “You’re not above whitewashing his tags if he’s taken prime wall space. You’re both targeting special surfaces for your largest tags, and he’s nailed all of the best ones first. And since you can’t ink magic directly over magic… you’re wiping his out.”
Keif let out his breath in a sharp hiss, but he didn’t deny it.
No one said anything. After a moment, Drive stood up. “A crossout is one thing, but an actual whitewash? What were you hoping to do, learn his tricks, wipe out all the evidence and take credit for them as your own? Man, that’s low,” he said, and stalked out of the room.
Keif glared up from his clenched hands. “Happy now, Nancy Drew?”
“I prefer Encyclopedia Brown,” I replied, “but if you’d just been up front about what you knew, then I wouldn’t have had to expose you.”
“Why the hell are you butting into this?” Keif said. “Why can’t you let it alone?”
“ You popped up when this started going down, and I had to know why,” I said. “And now I know-he’s a giant, and you’re standing on his shoulders, using his work as your canvas.”
“Who cares?” Keif said. “That’s how graffiti works. You don’t build your own damn buildings to mark, you mark what’s already there. Who cares if I’m doing it atop his shit?”
“I told you his shit killed one of my friends, right?” I said. “Did I tell you the total body count is nearing twenty, including two close friends, one of them more than close?”
Ranger went pale and put her Coke down. “Is that what went down last night?”
“Yeah,” I said quietly. “Almost got killed, but I made it. My.. . friend wasn’t so lucky.”
“Aw, shit, man, why are you doin’ this to me?” Keif said, staring up at no-one in particular. “This was a good gig-”
“You kill anybody?” I interjected.
“What? What? No!” Keif said, raising his hands. “My tags don’t have that kind of juice.”
“Then I don’t need to tell anyone anything,” I said. “I can keep this quiet, but I’ve got to know how the graffiti works. Looking at images has helped, but both me and my graphomancer are stumped. It crucifies vampires, tears up werewolves, and can catch buildings on fire even after you paint it over. It can create wide area effects, like wind. It can be triggered remotely-it’s powered from an external source. Tattoo magic can’t beat it. I need to know how to short-circuit it, before the tagger snaps his fingers and sets half Atlanta ablaze.”
Keif was silent for a second, eyes scanning the air.
“How many tags are there in the Candlesticks?” Ranger asked abruptly.
“I get it, I get it,” Keif said. “I’m thinking. To answer Dakota’s question, Streetscribe’s blackbook, his library of designs, is very complex. I don’t fully get it. But there are some base patterns that serve as conduits of power. Call them spreading throwups, doorway tags, and octopus roses. Those last ones are his real masterpieces, and they’re the most dangerous.”
“ Thank you,” I said. “But how do you use his magic if you don’t understand it?”
“I’m a leech,” Keif said bitterly. “Normally, you can’t write magic over complex magic unless you know it inside out. But remember you said you already knew whitewashing doesn’t destroy the magic? So I whitewash the underlying tag to lock it down, then lay down new circuits on the same lines to power my own designs.”
“Like magical induction,” I said.
“Yeah,” Keif said. “Though the rules aren’t so simple as electromagnetism. Even figuring out what parts of the design are the power elements is tricky. Unless you know graphomancy in and out, it’s hard to follow.”
“I know a witch who can help me out with that,” I said. “But you’ve worked with his designs enough to know how their power flows. Is there a way to short-circuit them?”
“ May be,” Keif said, eyes closing, head moving as if he were tracing circuits from memory. When he opened his eyes, he said, “Never thought about how to make his designs less effective, but I’m sure I could come up with-”
“That’s great,” Ranger said, an edge in her voice, “all this is fucking great, but, Keif-you never answered my question. How many tags are there in the Candlesticks, that you’ve painted over, that may catch on fire?”
Keif sighed. “About a dozen pieces, most painted over, by me or others.”
“Jeeezus,” Ranger said. “What triggers it? Are these just ticking time bombs?”
I thought about that a moment. “Maybe,” I said. “It isn’t quite clear yet. At first I thought they catch fire because they’re painted over, but today I learned that wasn’t true.”
I stared at Keif, hunched over, dreadlocks spreading out like a porcupine; at Ranger, frowning over her Coke, at Drive, lurking just outside the door, listening with a disgusted look on his face. This was about more than just unsightly graffiti. “Anybody die in those fires?”
Ranger nodded. “Seven in the first fatal one, then fifteen in the second.”
“ Twenty-two people? Jesus,” I said, leaning back in my chair. Count all the vamps and werekin who’d vanished or died, add in humans who died in suspicious fires, and you got a total body count of almost forty people. “Let’s assume the tag’s magic will be disrupted if painted over with a new tag, and diminished under a whitewash. Sound reasonable?”
“Sounds… reasonable,” Keif said. “It might depend on the original purpose of the tag. Maybe yours were stronger. Intended to kill. The Candlestick tags may just be routine shit.”
“All right. Then the right thing to do now is go to the new tag, photograph it, then figure out how to shut it down. If it works, we repeat the process here, first on any remaining whitewashed tags, then on your own. When they’re defused, we whitewash them.”
