Magic and Loss

“I think so, Mamma,” the bartender replied as he lowered his father onto the sidewalk. Cowpen’s limbs abruptly spasmed and he started to cough as Gaza’s sleeper spell finally began to wear off.

“Tyr—go see to your sisters,” the older dancer said, pointing to the gaggle of strippers staring worriedly in our direction. “The last thing we need right now is someone getting rustled.”

The bartender nodded his understanding and went to put himself between his siblings and the leering throng of looky-loos that had gathered about them. Mrs. Cowpen knelt beside her husband, gently wiping the soot from his face with the end of her tail. She smiled up at me, tears shining in her cornflower blue eyes. Now that I was aware of the exact relationship between her and the rest of the club’s employees, I suddenly found myself too embarrassed to look anywhere but directly at her face. I’d heard of family businesses before, but nothing like this.

“Thank you, young lady, for helping us. My name is Svenda.”

“Well, we Golgothamites have to stick together, ma’am,” I replied. “And you can call me Tate.”

Suddenly there was the sound of a loudly clanging bell, and I looked up to see an old-fashioned pumper wagon, pulled by a brawny centaur wearing a fireman’s helmet and a heavy canvas coat, arrive on the scene. There were identically dressed firefighters clinging to the sides of the wagon, one of whom was Octavia, our new boarder. As the pumper came to a halt, the faun leapt down and snatched up a four-foot-long metal tool that looked like a cross between a pry bar and a sledgehammer, wielding it like it weighed no more than a broom.

“It’s a nasty one, Chief!” she shouted as she eyed the smoke and flames belching from the Big Top’s entrance.

A Kymeran bearing the badge of fire chief on his helmet reached into the pocket of his canvas coat and removed a small glass bottle the size of a Christmas ornament. “There you go, my friend,” he said as he removed the stopper. “Eat your fill!”

The jinn shot forth like a flash of lightning, and a second later the outline of a creature composed not of flesh and blood but from smokeless fire hovered in midair above Duivel Street. As the elemental turned its attention to the inferno before it, its eyes literally burned with hunger. It tossed back its blazing head and opened its fiery mouth and inhaled mightily, like a child preparing to blow out the candles on a birthday cake. A cascade of flame suddenly came pouring out of the building like the torrents of a flash flood. The gathered onlookers shouted in alarm and raised their arms to shield their faces and eyes from the blistering heat as the fire shot toward the hovering jinn. This seemed to amuse the elemental, whose laughter rang out like the peals from a great bell.

Within the space of a few heartbeats the conflagration was extinguished, and what had moments before been a raging inferno was now no more than a swelling in the jinn’s belly. The elemental yawned and stretched its flickering limbs as it disappeared back into the safety of its bottle, where it could digest its meal in peace.

The moment the jinn was contained, the firefighters trained their hoses on the front of the building, dousing it in high-pressure streams of water. Once they finished with the exterior, Octavia entered the burned-out club through the clown’s head, only now one side of it had melted from the extreme heat, causing the face to sag as if it had suffered a stroke. Using her metal fire tool as a walking stick, she made her way, sure-footed as a goat, through the charred ruins, searching for hidden hot spots to extinguish.

Bjorn Cowpen seemed woozy but otherwise unharmed. As his family gathered around him, he kissed each of his daughters on the forehead, muttering endearments in their native tongue, before warmly embracing the son who had carried him to safety. He slipped an arm around his wife and heir, using them as living crutches to hobble over to where I stood.

“I’m sorry about what happened to your club, Councilman,” I said, and was surprised to realize that I actually meant it.

“I have others,” he said with a weary shrug. “But this was the one I inherited from my father, when I was Tyr’s age.” As he looked me in the eye, I could tell he was truly seeing me for the first time. “You’re Canterbury’s apprentice, are you not?”

“Yes, I am,” I replied. “He sent me to hand over the title to your new carriage and take the final payment. But I’m afraid I left the paperwork in the club. . . .”

“That old horse-wizard must really trust you,” Cowpen said as he reached into the pocket of his skintight pants and pulled out a folded piece of paper, which he then handed to me.

I unfolded the paper and saw that it was a cashier’s check drawn on Midas National Bank. I checked that the zeroes lined up before and after the comma and decimal were of the correct number, then nodded my head and carefully transferred it to my own pocket.

“I appreciate what you did, human,” the councilman continued, stepping in close to shake my hand. “But if anyone asks you what happened today, you didn’t see nothing. Understand?”

I stared down at the tightly bundled wad of hundred dollar bills pressed into my palm. Part of me wanted to give the money back and tell Cowpen that pretending nothing happened wasn’t going to keep the Maladanti away. But then I remembered my own delicate standing with Boss Marz, the stack of bills on Hexe’s desk, and the future cradled inside me.

“More than you realize,” I replied.

Chapter 11

While my “tip” from Cowpen wasn’t going to solve all our financial worries, it was enough to give us the first breathing room we’d known in months. For the first time since Jubilee Night, not only did there seem to be a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel, for once it didn’t appear to be a train barreling down on us. However, the moment I set foot in the door and saw a scowling Hexe waiting for me in the front parlor, my high spirits came crashing back down to earth.

“Octavia tells me that you ran into a burning building today. Is that true?”

“For crying out loud, Hexe!” I groaned, setting down my lunch pail on the coffee table. “I didn’t do it for kicks! Did Octavia also mention I went in there to save Bjorn Cowpen?”

“What were you thinking?” Hexe exclaimed, coming out of his seat like a jack-in- the-box.

“I was thinking that I was the only person who saw him collapse and knew where to find him,” I replied. “Are you actually mad at me for saving a man’s life?”

“No, I’m more upset than anything else,” he admitted, the scowl disappearing from his face. “You did a very brash thing. What if you’d been hurt? Did you give any thought at all to what might happen to you—or the baby?”

I blushed and dropped my gaze. He had me there. The fact I was now pregnant had not occurred to me in the heat of the moment. I simply knew what I had to do, and I just went ahead and did it, without taking anything else into consideration. “I guess you’ve got every right to be pissed off at me,” I agreed. “It’s not just me anymore, is it?”

“It hasn’t been ‘just you’ since the day we met,” he replied. “Were you in the club when the fire started?”

“Yes,” I admitted grudgingly. “The Maladanti are raising their protection fees. Bjorn told them to get stuffed in no uncertain terms—so Marz’s croggy Gaza hellfire-bombed the bar and put Cowpen under a sleeper spell. That’s why I had to go back in and get him. I’m certain Cowpen’s going to insist it was all an accident, though, and his family’s going to back him up on it.”

“What you did today was very courageous, Tate. But you’ve always been a brave woman—we would have never met if you didn’t have the guts to move to Golgotham in the first place. Just promise me you won’t do anything that dangerous again—at least not until after you have the baby.”

“And here I was planning on juggling chainsaws to bring in extra money!” I laughed. “I’m just joking!” I added hastily, seeing the flash of alarm in his golden eyes, and planted a kiss on his cheek. “Oh—and speaking of putting off things until the baby arrives—have you told your parents the news yet?”

Now it was his turn to look at his shoes. “Not yet. I’ll call them in a day or two.”

“How about we put all this behind us and go out for dinner? After all, you were complaining about feeling cooped up earlier. . . .”