A Criminal Magic (29 page)

“This is insane,” Alex whispers next to me. He glances over at me, his eyes as bright and wild as the stars. “Do you think this is what shine feels like for people without the magic touch?”

“Shine's probably even more intense for them,” I say. “Because we see a world that's full of the
possibility
of magic”—it feels very important that I explain this to him—“but normal people, well, they just see the world.”

“Wow,” Alex deadpans. “That's deep, Joan.”

He laughs, and I go to punch him playfully, but he ducks away from me and scrambles to his feet. And then he pulls me up, folds me into a foxtrot pose beside him. “We need music,” he whispers.

A nonexistent phonograph jumps to life, crackles through our sanctuary in the middle of the Shaws' VIP lounge, and then the sultry voice of an unknown crooner wails through the space. Both of us burst out laughing, and then we begin to dance. The foxtrot, then the Charleston, then Alex begins some complicated tap maneuver he somehow continues halfway up one of the walls, before he collapses into a fit of laughter on the floor.

The music's tempo becomes slower.

Then Alex stands up, approaches me. He takes my hand and pulls me closer. And this time I don't just smell his trademark scent of soap and that almost spicy cologne—I smell something heady and fresh, all-encompassing: the scent of possibility.

“We got lucky that the room isn't being used tonight,” Alex says. “It's better being here, alone with you, than sharing you with the entire crowd on the floor.”

I smile into his shoulder. “I feel lucky too.”

Alex's chest rises and falls underneath my cheek. “Why's the room empty, anyway? Where'd Gunn run off to tonight?”

Just the mention of Gunn's name is like an alarm, threatening to end a perfect dream. I give a deep exhale. “I'm not sure. He said he had some business on the road.”

“Right.” Alex nods, rubs his chin softly against my hair. “But he only manages the Den, from what I understand. Where else would he be?”

Despite the throb of the shine inside me, Gunn's warnings push through it, wrap around my mind like rope.
No one can know about the shine, about the deal
. “Probably on a run for McEvoy or something.”

“Strange, because McEvoy was looking for him—”

“Hey, Alex?” I say softly. “I don't want to think about Gunn right now.”

He nods, pulls me tighter, and the music's singer starts to croon, “Time stops when you're in love. . . .”

And then Alex opens his mouth beside me, and somehow the woman's voice starts to pour from his lips, “As timeless as the stars above . . .”

I laugh, lean my head against his shoulder. “I don't know how you're doing that, but please stop. It's kind of creepy.”

He laughs with me, but stops singing, and pulls me closer too. And then the music fades away and it's just our heartbeats jumping, beating like a pair of drums.

BUM. BUM. BUM.

“This is nice, Joan.” He puts his hand on the back of my hair, lets his fingers wrap around the nape of my neck. And then he whispers, “No, this is wonderful.
You
are wonderful.”

I burrow a little more into his shoulder. The way Alex looks at me is almost as intoxicating as the shine. The way he sees me makes me feel like I
do
deserve him, that I might even deserve another chance—not just this chance to do right by my family. But a chance, maybe, to leave the past behind.

“What past, Joan?” Alex says softly.

“Wait. Was I talking out loud?” I practically whimper.

“I don't know . . . but either way, I can hear it.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I see a flash of white—a nightgown, hands grasping for me, a worried, strained face watching me from the corner.

I gasp, pull back from Alex—

And then the image is gone.

“You okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, I'm fine.”

But on the other side of the room appears a thin, haunting-looking girl standing at the door, reaching for me, crying, “Joan, I can't see her. Joan, I'sm losing her—”

The high is suddenly too much, too intense, too loud, and I crawl onto the floor, pull myself into a ball, my back to the edge of the sofa. I close my eyes.

But all I see is blood curling around wrists
—

“Make it stop.” But the voice that comes out of my mouth is Ruby's. “Oh my God.” I push my hands into my eyes. Stop.
Stop stop stop stop stop—

“What is it? What happened?” Alex sputters as he sits down beside me.

I don't look at him. “The shine's getting intense. I can't tell what's real and what's in my head anymore.”

“I think that's the point.” I open my eyes, and Lord, I can
see
Alex's whisper slink around my shoulders like a rich, gray mist.
Like the mist behind the cabin that night, Mama's pleading, her cries, show me, Eve, show me
—

“I'm not who you think I am,” I blurt out.

Alex falters, pulls back a little bit. “Joan, it's all right, you're high.”

“It's not the shine, it's me.” I squeeze my eyes shut tight again. “There's something wrong with me.”

The words open a dam inside me, and a river of tears starts running over my cheeks, winding salt into my mouth. And then I know I'm going to say the words I've never been able to say, not out loud at least, the words that make me loathe myself as much as I loathe Jed. Even as I'm thinking,
Stop, Joan, don't don't don't say it don't make it real
, I blurt out, “I killed my mother.”

Alex looks at me, confusion—
fear? repulsion?
—stitched across his features. “What are you talking about?”

“Nine months ago,” I whisper, “right around the time I was coming into my magic. I was scared of it, a late bloomer, hadn't expected that I was going to get the magic touch at all. Mama was the only one who knew I even had the ‘gift' until that night.” I try to stop the crashing rush of blood to my head, but I can't. And even still, my mouth keeps moving. “I found my uncle abusing her, using her—I tried to fight him—but instead I ruined everything.”

When Alex doesn't say anything, I rush on, “Sometimes I feel like if I give everything I've got, work myself into the ground to help my sister and my cousin, maybe then I'll make it right. I'll earn the right to leave the past behind.”

I gasp, trying to collect myself. I must look a mess. I feel the dull ache of snot and tears, the heaviness of bawling. “But I don't deserve that. I don't deserve you.”

“Joan, stop. It was a
mistake
, an awful, gut-wrenching mistake,” he says slowly. “And you're doing everything you can to help your family.”

I wipe my eyes with the back of my hand.
How did I just take this and ruin it, take something bright and eclipse it with the dark?
“You must think I'm a monster.”

“You're not a monster. You're a good person.” He pulls me into him. “I see it. I see you. And I understand, maybe more than you could ever know.”

I want to ask him what he means, what he
sees
. I want more, like always from him, I want more. He wraps both arms around me. It's the first time I've been held in a long, long time.

“Sometimes I don't know who I am anymore, Alex,” I whisper. “What I am.”

“I know the feeling.” He begins to stroke my hair, edges closer. “I . . . hurt my family too, in a different way,” he says slowly, as he rests his chin on my head. “The news said it was all my father.” His breath catches. “But it was
my
magic that let him pull that racket, that ended with those D Street bastards selling him down the river. Without me, none of it would have ever happened.” He pulls me a little more into his lap, so he can look at me. “I have to believe we get another chance, Joan, a chance to do things differently, be somebody else—better versions of ourselves. That's why I found myself here, working with you.” He shakes his head. “I've never told anyone that.”

“I've never told anyone about my mama, either.”

Alex lays me down, gently, on something soft. And in the starry space between consciousness and unconsciousness, I pat the soft blanket below me. “Did you just sorcer this?”

“Just rest, Joan. I'll be right beside you.”

I think I'm asleep, but then I feel the softest of pressures on my forehead, the smell of Alex's soap and cologne, a beacon through all the sensory noise of the shine. A kiss, above the bridge of my nose. “I do know you, Joan,” he says, once he's pulled away. “I see you. I know who you are. Maybe not everything, but the important things.”

I want to tell him that I see him, too. But my thoughts are too heavy, my mouth sealed shut. I'm no longer aware if I'm in the throes of the shine, or if I've survived. I close my eyes and let the dark creeping around my mind finally up and swallow me.

DUST-BUNNIES

ALEX

Joan's hair is splayed out on the pillow I conjured earlier, the dark tendrils cascading around its edges. A soft white blanket—another manipulation I vaguely remember ­sorcering—is spread out underneath us. Joan's beside me, eyes closed, curled tight, like even in her sleep she somehow protects herself and keeps everything locked up inside.

I sit up, realizing that we're still in the VIP lounge, my head throbbing with a dull, shine-induced headache as I arrange myself into a seating position. I have no idea what time it is.
When did we finally pass out?

I take out my pack of cigarettes, dislodge one, and turn away from Joan as I light it. I think about us last night, guards thrown down, her telling me about her dark secret, me blubbering to her about mine.

Christ. Last night was dangerous, taking that shine with her, dangerous bordering on reckless. I remember the convoluted logic I used to justify doing it:
Joan is my strongest contact at the Den, and you do what you need to, to please that contact. Get her shined. Get her vulnerable, angle her, get more out of her, push your hunt forward.

But the truth? I wanted to, because she wanted me to. Joan
has me under some kind of spell. She's at the center of this whole affair, is right in the line of my hunt. She's the most ­talented sorcerer at the Red Den, some suspicious sort of confidante of one of the gangsters I'm spying on for the Feds
and
for McEvoy, and yet, she somehow feels separate from all of this.

This whole night has been reckless, from my little tryst in this lounge to McEvoy showing up shot out of his skull, shouting that he caught his underboss Kerrigan in some convoluted lie about a job tonight. Threatening that he was going to confront Kerrigan, confront all his underbosses, and if the night ended in a bloodbath, so be it. Thank God none of them were here, and I could talk McEvoy down, tell him the dust was just making him extra paranoid, get him to sleep it off. In fact, that's what
I
need to do: sneak out before anyone sees me, go home, get some rest.

But I don't want to leave Joan like this.

I stare at her, beautiful, formidable, even as she's sleeping. And the secret that I've been tricking myself into not ­believing flashes across my mind: I'm completely falling for this girl.

Being with Joan might be the only time I feel like I'm not performing. In this house of lies and magic manipulations, she might be the only thing that makes me feel like a shade of my old self anymore.

“Joan.” I shake her awake, gently. “Joan, you fell asleep. You need to get upstairs, get some rest, all right?”

She comes to slowly, and then as soon as she sees me hovering over her, she gives a little start. “Where are we?”

“The VIP lounge, off the performance space.”

“Gunn,” she says in a panic, and then collapses back down when I say, “He's on the road tonight, remember?”

She shakes herself awake. “Wait, but—”

“You don't remember our little shine experiment?” I say.
“Watching the ceiling break open into stars? Dancing? Passing out on the floor?” I give her my best smile. “All your idea, for the record.”

I watch realization sink into her, even as I'm trying to joke. She remembers what she told me. She remembers how she cut herself open and showed me all her darkness inside. I wonder if she regrets it. God, I hope she doesn't.

“Alex.” She puts her hands over her face. “My Lord, I was such a mess. I can't believe . . . those things I told you . . .”

I reach out tentatively, begin to stroke the top of her hair. “I'm glad you told me about your past. I'm glad I told you, too.” And I realize, above all else, that I am. It felt
right
, coming clean to her about how essential I was to my father's crimes. Cathartic, and freeing. Like a last confession, before I can fully leave it all behind.

Joan sits up next to me, leans her head against the soft green fabric of the couch behind us. The heady dance of before, the shine stripping off our inhibitions, the ­electric feeling of possibility at being alone with her: that's all passed. It's left us with something more honest maybe, but also more uncomfortable. I still want to kiss her, obviously, wrap her up in my arms so bad it almost hurts—

But not right now. Not like this. “You want me to help you get upstairs?”

She gives me a wan smile. “Probably a good idea.”

I help her up, take her arm around mine, and walk her across the main performance space, which is now dark and abandoned, pristine from the stagehands' nightly cleanup. I glance at the clock hanging above the double doors: almost two a.m.

“Happy New Year,” I whisper.

She smiles up at me. “Happy New Year.”

We cross the space to the other hall, walk quietly side by side. When we pass Gunn's office, we both notice a dim light
reaching out from underneath the door, and Joan's eyes go wide. She puts her finger to her lips.

That quick, there's a different energy between us, as if Joan's awareness of Gunn inside the Den has set her to a new gear.
Is she just his best sorcerer? Something more? Is she really involved in the score I'm circling in on, or is there something else—­something
personal
—going on between them?

She pulls me past the door swiftly, to the bottom of the stairs. She mumbles a good-bye and begins to climb the steps quickly, like now she can't get out of the hall fast enough.

Then, like a second thought, she turns around, descends just as fast. She throws her arms around me. “Thank you,” she whispers.

But before I can figure out how to answer her, she's gone, and I'm left alone at the base of the stairs.

I wait, look back anxiously to Gunn's door. This is a gift, a stroke of fortune finding his office closed without one of his sorcerers around to spellbind and protect it. I approach it quickly but quietly, lean in, whisper the word, “
Amplify
,” and the muffled voices behind the door louden into audible exchanges.

“You really think the troupe can pull off fifty gallons in a few days?” The voice is familiar, low and gravelly. Win Matthews.
Win must somehow be involved in whatever's shaking down too. And fifty gallons . . . fifty gallons of shine?
That's fifty times the amount that we brew for a show.
Why?

“They'll have to. Anything less looks like an amateur operation.” Low, flat, even tone—definitely Gunn. A pause. “Before we go any further, I need each of your words that if this goes through, I have your backing.”

Another pause, a longer one this time.

“You have it,” a third man answers slowly.
How many gangsters are behind this door?

“And mine,” another voice, this one higher, tighter, chimes
in. “You make this deal happen with Colletto? I can convince O'Donnell to fully step on board too.”

O'Donnell—McEvoy's underboss who works on the loan-
sharking side. Win Matthews and Gunn. My guess is, the rest of the men behind this door must be Shaw higher-­ups too.
And a deal with
Boss Colletto
? Just the man's name sends a familiar, hungry rush of vengeance surging through me.
The Shaw underbosses are breaking bread with
D Street
?

“You've got the support of the majority of the underbosses,” Win says softly. “This will happen, Gunn.”

“Hell, you ask me, this is your birthright, Harrison,” the third gangster adds.

There are mumblings of agreement. “We shouldn't go after McEvoy until we have D Street fully signed on,” Gunn says. “Once we shake hands with Colletto, then we'll deal with the loose ends, and make the changing of the guard official.”

Go after McEvoy, loose ends, changing of the guard.
Christ, Gunn really plans to take McEvoy out—

“When do you want to hold the demonstration?” Win asks.

“It needs to be here. I want Colletto to see the full scale of everything we can do. I want him to buy into all of it, taste and crave all of it. It's the only way he'll sign on.”

I close my eyes, pray for another clue as to what this demonstration is about, whether it's of our troupe's immersive magic, or something else altogether.

“A live demonstration is going to be tricky, though—we'll need to close, and that could arouse suspicion,” Gunn adds.

“There's always Sunday,” the third gangster chimes back in. “You're closed that night, right? Plus, the Bahama Boys say there's a smuggling party out on Magic Row: some four-night spirit-raising voodoo bender on the water, right behind the coast guard border. McEvoy, all his top dogs on the smuggling side, they're all invited.”

The fourth answers, “So we need McEvoy, Baker, and Murphy on that boat, and out of your way.”
Baker and Murphy
—the names are familiar. They're two of McEvoy's underbosses—Murphy's in trafficking, Baker manages a few middling shining clubs somewhere in the city. They're likely McEvoy's last two remaining loyal underbosses, from what I'm gathering.

As the men give a round of nervous laughter, I try to figure out my next move. McEvoy's going to expect my daily check-in—maybe I can avoid him tonight, but there's no avoiding him for long.
Do I tell him, warn him about this somehow?
I can't. He could take matters into his own hands, bring this whole place crashing down, blow this monumental score before Gunn can bring it home and the Unit can bust it.

I agree with Gunn and Win on one thing—McEvoy needs to be out of sight, on that voodoo party cruiser, and out of my and the Unit's way.

“Well done, Harrison. Never thought I'd see the day, but you've proven yourself. You've delivered.” I hear the clinking of glasses, the squeak of leather. “To Sunday. To the Gunn legacy.”

They're wrapping up. I back away from the door quickly, run back through the hall, out of the performance space, and hit the street.

It's far too late to dial Frain, so I take the walk home to run everything over and through again:
Gunn is challenging McEvoy as top dog and already has the support of the majority of the Shaw underbosses. But it all rides on some unprecedented deal with D Street happening, and there'll be a demonstration to ensure that it all goes down.

But a demonstration of what? The troupe's performance?

And why
D Street
?

I stumble to a pay phone, put my obligatory call into Boss
McEvoy, pray that he doesn't answer his phone at this hour, since I've got no idea what I'm going to say if he does. I let the phone ring four times, and then I hang up, relieved, and head home to sleep everything off. I'll sort out what I'm going to tell him, and stop by his house as soon as I wake up. I won't make it through the day without some rest.

*    *    *

I dream about Joan. But instead of warm, or even seductive dreams, they're disorienting. Her teasing me, racing ahead of me, and then turning into a raven right before I can hold her. In one, I follow her through a strange house of illusions until I think she's around a corner, but instead of finding her, I find Gunn. Needless to say, when I wake to a loud, insistent “
Mister, Mister
!” outside my door a couple of hours later, I'm not happy. It's not even seven a.m.

I open the door to find a young boy standing on my crumbling front stoop. He's in a cap, no more than nine or ten, scrawny and hard in that street-rat sort of way. No coat, despite the weather. He holds a piece of folded stationery, which I take and read:

Be in the back alley in exactly one hour.

After he hands it to me, he bounds down my stairs and runs away.

I study the note again. I'm playing so many parts that I'm not certain who to expect is coming to call.
McEvoy? Frain? Joan?

I take a quick bath, get changed, make a cup of coffee, hit the back alley right at the hour mark. A black car pulls up minutes later. The passenger door cracks open two or three inches, and McEvoy calls through it, “Get in.”

Nerves on fire, I settle in beside McEvoy and steal a quick
glance at him. And then my anxiety doubles. He looks even worse than he did at the Den: faded gray skin, wild, wet eyes, hair that looks like it needs to be washed. I'm not positive, but I think the suit he's wearing is the one from last night. “I tried calling you,” I say quickly. “I was going to stop by first thing this morning. Have you been up all night, sir?”

“There's someone behind every door. Watching me, waiting for me, changing the locks,” he rambles. “I need to be all eyes, all ears, all the time.” His hands shake as they grip the wheel. “Can't sleep. Not with them watching me.”

Christ, he's high as a kite. He shouldn't be driving. He's unraveling, dangerous, a liability at this point. The conversation I overheard between Gunn and the underbosses last night flashes across my mind.
The boat party out on Magic Row—

McEvoy starts his engine.

“Sir—”

“I trusted you, Alex.” McEvoy slams on the gas and screeches into the alley full throttle. “You told me you could get to the bottom of this, you could find the monsters for me, but you're a liar.”

“I
am
getting to the bottom of this, sir, just like you asked—”

“NAMES, Alex! I need names!” He swerves his car onto P Street, nearly crashing into a Buick as his car rights itself on the road, and a barrage of beeps and honks blare through his half-open window. “Who's after me? Who thinks they can take me down? Time's up, Alex. I'm tired of twiddling my goddamned thumbs. Is it Gunn?”

But I can't confirm Gunn's involved, not for sure. If I give him Gunn, or hell, Win, or any of the underbosses planning to take him down, then McEvoy's likely to start a war in this state.
And all my work, for nothing. No, I want all these animals behind bars. I want to stand right beside Frain as we lock these monsters away—