“Nobody has that kind of influence in this city,” Sliver said. “Not anyone who followed you. But these people do. They’re tossing around threats and cash like it’s Mardi Gras.”
“How mysterious,” Jack said. Sliver fell into step beside him when he started walking again.
“I was just keeping an eye on you,” the wraith said. “There’s a lot of mean and hungry bastards in this city who wouldn’t think twice about erasing you for the kind of things these dudes are offering.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time I banged a stick against somebody’s cage,” Jack shrugged.
Sliver blended with the shadows for a moment, then reemerged. “You need to watch your ass,” he said. “This isn’t merry England. The Black here, this is the Wild fucking West. And you’re stomping around in those big boots of yours across the top of everyone’s bridge.”
Jack thought about what Pete’s father, a detective inspector with bad lungs and a worse temper, had once told her. “When somebody tries to kill you, means you’re getting somewhere,” Jack said to Sliver.
“And are you?” the wraith said. “Getting anywhere?”
“No, not really,” Jack said. The missing trail of the thing that had murdered the Cases dogged at him, though he tried to ignore the obvious solution. That would open him up to all kinds of nasty things, lay his mind bare and at the mercy of his sight. He could go catatonic and never come back if he did what most psychics would do in this situation. But he wasn’t most. A mage with the sight was a time bomb as it was, without inviting the entire world of the dead inside his skull.
“Then what?” the wraith asked. “You’re going to wander around Hollywood waiting to get offed?”
Jack shook his head. “No, I do have one idea.” A stupid idea, but the only one, as was usually the way with him. “You know where I can find somebody who deals esoterica around here?” he said.
“Yeah,” Shiver said. “There’s a shop on Cahuenga that I’d trust to sell, and not drop a dime on you after you leave.”
“You want to get off me bad side, take me there,” Jack said, and tried to ignore the prickle on the back of his neck while Sliver walked them to his car. The feeling that he might have just had his last stupid idea, and the fear of what he was going to have to see. When he’d been shooting heroin, it had kept the fear at bay, along with everything else. Now there was nothing—a few tattoos to keep him from going completely around the bend when his visions kicked in, but beyond that, there was his sight and the void it looked into.
Sliver’s car was roughly the same vintage as Pete’s loaner, but dented on every sharp edge and pocked with rusted continents floating in a primer-colored sea. “It’s a piece of shit, I know,” Sliver said, “but who’d steal it?”
“Fair enough,” Jack said. A spring poked out from the upholstery and into the small of his back. They drove east, and Shiver pointed out a bridge across a concrete trough. “That’s the LA river,” he said. “Site of one million movie car chases.” He jerked his thumb at the ironworks lamps flashing by. “The bridge is famous too. Fourth Street Bridge. Look it up.”
“What is this city’s obsession with the movies?” Jack demanded. “Every bloody person I’ve met had some precious anecdote about the silver fucking screen.”
“Before the movies, this place was mostly orange groves, train tracks, and a few shitty apartment buildings,” Sliver said. “Not a lot of real history, so we take ours from films.” The shadows under the bridge rippled as they passed, and Sliver pointed ahead. “This is East LA. Badass neighborhood, my girl lives in, too. Don’t wander around here on your own.”
A few more turns, and Sliver pulled up in front of a bodega, saints’ candles lining the window. “Just tell the old lady I sent you,” he said.
“Cheers,” Jack said. The shop wasn’t anything special—graffiti covered one of the front windows and the door was bright red, but he could feel the protection hexes vibrating from the sidewalk. Somebody who knew what they were doing had put a tight net over the whole building, and Jack got the distinct feeling he wasn’t welcome. Not that it had ever stopped him. He pushed open the door and a bell jangled to announce him.
The front of the shop was crammed with dusty junk, rosaries and bundles of sage, more candles, prayer cards, and plaques of the Virgin and the crucifixion dangling from the ceiling. Most esoterica dealers had this sort of window dressing, to discourage the daylight world in general from looking too closely. What was true in porn shops was also true for magic shops—the good stuff was behind the curtain.
Jack pushed the red glass beads aside, setting up a clatter, and found himself in an even more claustrophobic back room. A small circle on the floor was painted with a
“Well,” she said, setting down her magazine. “Look at you.”
Jack flashed her a smile. Charming women wasn’t any harder than picking a recalcitrant lock—it just took a little time and a light touch. And working on the assumption that his mark went for scars, leather, and tattoos. The girl behind the counter returned his smile.
“Don’t get offended, but how the fuck did you get in here? This shop is reserved for select customers.”
“Didn’t see a doorman,” Jack said. He leaned on the counter, pulling her into the radius of his smile while skimming the surface of her talent. It was there, strong and bloodred. “So explain something to me,” he said, gesturing around the room. “Your select customers, they all
“We specialize,” said the girl. “We don’t discriminate.”
“Brilliant,” Jack said. He stuck out his hand. “And you are?”
She looked at his hand, looked at him, smiled with an expression that could razor flesh. “Out of your league.”
Jack retracted the hand. “My favorite kind.” She wasn’t touching him, so she was either being smart or really did think she was too gorgeous to be believed. She was, at that—long dark hair twisted in a rope with red ribbon, gleaming skin. She could be one of the saints pasted onto the sides of the candle holders, lit from within by a flame.
“Bloke who sent me here said you’d be old,” Jack said. “Glad to see he was wrong.”
“Maybe I am old,” the girl said. “Maybe I’m a wicked witch, sent to lure you into my candy house before I show you my true face.”
Jack shrugged. “There are worse ways to go.”
“Well, you’re not Santeria or
“Death more sticks out its foot and trips me if I try and follow it,” Jack said. The girl tilted her head, and then she reached across the counter and snatched his hand in a parody of their aborted handshake.
Jack got a strong, dark pulse, from his throat down to his cock—bodies piled in trenches, blood running through dirty gutters while wild dogs fought over meat, hollow-eyed men walking dusty streets with guns in their hands and speed in their blood. Skinless corpses dangling from balcony rails while the crows gathered on the roofline. Always the crows, their caws echoing in his skull.
“You don’t worship death,” the girl said. “But it sticks to you all the same. It’s under your skin.”
Jack yanked his hand away. His heart and his head both throbbed. “I’m spoken for, luv,” he said. “Death already has her claws in me, so get in line.”
The girl laughed. “I don’t want you, crow-mage. I’m Death from the dirt and the desert, not some rainy little shithole of an island.” She settled back on her stool. “Now, what can I do for you?”
Jack decided not to ask why a death avatar was running a shitty bodega in a bad part of LA. He’d seen stranger things—and in the last day, at that. “I need to read a crime scene,” he said. “Psychically. I suppose I need a censer, and the stuff to put me under.”
“Trancing out at a murder site,” said the girl, and grinned. “All you psychics decide to live on the edge lately?”
“All?” Jack said. She hopped off her stool and hurried around the room, getting an iron pot and tossing packets of herbs into it, along with a few candles, a bindle of red thread, and a packet of children’s blackboard chalk.
“There was another
“This wouldn’t happen to be a fat bastard in a Hawaiian shirt, would it?” Jack said.
