“Nothing.”
“You took Julie to their gathering place. How did you know where it was?”
“I didn’t spill, I swear.” Julie paled a little.
Red kept his gaze locked on me. “Same as I found this place. Got some of her mom’s hair off a brush at her house. Made a charm, spilled some blood, and let it lead me.”
Julie’s mom had to be alive at the time he cast his spell. Shamanistic spells were life-tied; to sense a dead body required a much more complicated ritual and the kind of power Red probably didn’t have. Not yet anyway.
“You went there by yourself first.” It was a guess, but I saw the confirmation in his eyes. “What did you see there, Red?”
His fingers twitched. He turned slightly to the right, hiding the side of his face from me.
“Let me see the right side of your neck.”
He swallowed.
“Now.”
Red turned. Three long gashes marked his neck from the earlobe all the way down to the collar of his rags. A thin line of yellow pus gathered under the puffy red edges of the wounds.
Not so good. I reached over and touched his head. He jerked back.
“Sit still, knucklehead.”
He felt feverish. I reached into the fridge and took out a jar of Rmd3 from the middle shelf. Red’s eyes flickered to the brownish paste and back to me.
“What’s in there?” Julie asked.
“Rmd3. Better known as Remedy.”
“It’s the stuff the People carry. I don’t need it.” Red shifted in his seat.
I looked at his face and saw the decisive thrust of the adolescent jaw. No intelligent life there. I turned to Julie. “It’s an herbal treatment for the infection he has brewing on his neck. This is the South-Pacific variety, the best one there is. It can cure the necrosis you get from the undead and takes care of all sorts of nasty infections.” I set the jar on the table. Real kava root, and pine-leaf geebung, and a half dozen other things. Expensive, but well worth it.
“I don’t need it,” he repeated.
“Shamans who topple over in the middle of the street from fever don’t live to grow up.”
“Take the Remedy, Red.” Julie moved the jar to him.
He stared at it as if it were a snake, reached in, and slathered some on his neck. The paste touched the wounds and he winced.
“What clawed you?”
“Creatures,” he said. “Odd life. Didn’t feel right. Very
He pronounced “powerful” with respect, almost reverence, tinted with longing. The way an alcoholic ordered his favorite poison after a long dry streak, tasting the name on his tongue.
“Lust for power is a dangerous thing,” I said.
He bared his teeth at me. A little feral light danced in his eyes. “You only say that because you have some. People who have power never want anybody else to get it.”
Julie tugged on his sleeve. “But you have power. You’re a shaman.”
He whirled to her. “What good is it? The gangs still knock out my teeth and take my food. So what if I can make them piss blood the day after? Next time, they’ll just kill me and be done with it. I want real power. Strength. So nobody fucks with me.”
“I can give you what I have,” Julie said in a small voice.
“Not yet,” he said. “Let it grow bigger.”
What was going on between the two of them? The way they looked at each other gave me the creeps.
“Tell me about the creatures that hurt you.”
“They were fast, with long hair. The hair grabbed me like it was alive. They were afraid of the bowman.”
“Tell me about the cauldron.”
Red twitched as if shocked with a live wire, burst from his seat, and ran out the door. Julie was sitting closest to the door, and she beat me to the stairs by a quarter of a second. She dashed down, and I forced myself to stop.
They were kids.
Life had beaten them until they had nearly turned wild. They had no refuge, they trusted nobody except each other, and I would be damned if I were going to go down there and threaten Red with a beating to scare the truth out of him. Enough was enough. If they came back, they came back. In the meantime, I’d figure it out my own way.
I went back into the kitchen and ate a piece of sausage off my plate. Through the window I could see Red and Julie on the street. They stood close together, his dark head against her blond. As I watched, the tech hit. The electric lamp came on in the living room, bathing the apartment in a comfortable muted glow. Down on the street, the lone surviving lamp shone from the top of the post, illuminating the kids. They moved to the left, just beyond its light. The faces of the new world: a street shaman and his girlfriend. Starved, feral, magic.
They talked while I finished my plate and drank my water. Finally Red pulled something from his pocket and put it around Julie’s neck. Probably a charm.
Julie hugged him. He sort of stood there, very rigid, while her arms were locked around his neck. He probably didn’t want to look weak in public. Dread crept up on me. Why was it that watching these two gave me a bad feeling?
Kind of like imagining me with Max Crest.
If Greg had still been alive, I wouldn’t have given Max a second glance. Greg’s death had hit me harder than I thought it would; I was lonely, scared, and desperate for a warm, loving guy to come home to. For someone to lean on. Max just happened to be at precisely the wrong place at the wrong time. Our relationship had been doomed from the start, because it was based on grief, and unlike love, grief eventually passed. Now that time had filed off the sharp edges, I felt no jealousy toward Myong, nor did I feel any longing for Max. I didn’t miss him. Yet every time his name came to mind, I felt a vague unpleasant sensation, not guilt exactly, but something akin to embarrassment.
Ugh. I wanted to take the whole thing, wrap it up, stick it in a box, and drop the box off a pier. If I had never run across Max Crest again, I would’ve been perfectly happy. But now I had to arrange his wedding. How the hell did I get myself into these things?
Speaking of the wedding. I tried the phone, got a dial tone, and called the number Derek had given me.
“Southeast office,” a female voice answered.
Either I had gotten the wrong number or boy wonder was moving up in the world. “Derek, please.”
The phone clicked and Derek’s voice came on the line. “Yes?”
“You have a secretary?”
He laughed. “No, it’s just Mila. She screens the calls. What can I do for you?”
“I have the packet.”
“Awesome!” He checked himself and continued in a more even tone. “When can I pick it up?”
“I’ll drop it by tomorrow.”
“Did you beat the shit out of him?”
Ha! Derek was still in there, under the Mr. Cool Pack Wolf veneer. “Sort of. You’re right, he disappears. He also regenerates while he’s gone.”
Julie came back into the apartment. She was wearing a small monisto: a necklace of coins and tiny metal charms. She paused in the hallway, testing the waters, decided I wasn’t going to explode, slid back into her chair, and checked the bowl for more boil. Only potatoes were left. She took a handful and ate them, licking her fingers.
“I have a favor to ask.” I moved the butter and salt closer to her.
“Anything I can do,” Derek said.
Julie was watching me covertly, probably trying to gauge if any fussing was forthcoming.
