Magic Steals (2 page)

Lie, think of something quick, lie, lie . . . “I've got a cat.”

“What kind of a cat?” My mother's eyes narrowed.

“A big one.”

“I want to see,” Mom said. “Bring him down.”

“He's a stray and a little wild. He's probably hiding. I probably won't even be able to find him now.”

“How long have you had him?”

“A few days.” The more I lied, the deeper I sank. My mother had a brain like a supercomputer. She missed nothing.

Mom pointed a teaspoon at me. “Is he neutered?”

Oh my gods. “Not yet.”

“You need to neuter him. Otherwise he'll spray all over the house. The stench is awful. And when he isn't out catting around, little female cats in heat will show up and wail under the windows.”

Kill me, please. “He is a nice cat. He's not like that.”

“It's instinct, Dali. Before you know it, you'll be running a feline whorehouse.”

“Mother!”

My mom waved the spoon and went back to making coffee.

I turned to Iluh. She gave me a sympathetic glance that said, “Been there, endured that, got the good daughter T-shirt for it.”

“What can I do for you?” I asked.

Iluh folded her hands on her lap. “My grandmother is missing.”

“Eyang Ida?”

Iluh nodded.

I remembered Ida Indrayani. She was nice lady in her late sixties with a friendly warm smile. She still worked as a hairdresser. The family didn't really need the money but Eyang Ida, Grandmother Ida, as she was usually called, liked to be social.

“How long has she been missing?”

“Since last night,” Iluh said. “She was supposed to come to my birthday party in the evening but didn't show up. Sutan, he's my husband, and I stopped by her house on the way back from the restaurant. The lights were off. We knocked on the door, but she didn't answer. We thought maybe she'd fallen asleep again. Her hearing isn't the best now, and once she falls asleep, it's hard to wake her up. My parents keep wanting her to move in with them, but she won't do it. We went back to her house first thing in the morning, but she wasn't there. She hadn't opened her shop either, and that's when we knew something was really wrong. My mother has a spare key so she unlocked the door. My grandmother was gone and there was blood on the back porch.”

Not good. “How much blood?”

Iluh swallowed. “Just a smudge.”

“Show her,” my mom said.

Iluh reached into her canvas bag. “We found this next to the blood.”

She pulled a Ziploc bag out of her purse. Inside it were three coarse black hairs. About nine inches long, they looked like something you would pull out of a horse's mane.

“We tried going to the police, but they said we had to wait forty-eight hours before she can be declared missing.”

I opened the bag and took a sniff. Ugh. An acrid, bitter, dry kind of stench, mixed with a sickening trace of rotting blood. I shook the hairs out on the table and carefully touched one. Magic nipped my finger. The hair turned white and broke apart, as if burned from the inside out. Bad magic. Familiar bad magic.

Iluh gasped.

“I told you,” my mother said with pride in her voice. “My daughter is the White Tiger. She can banish evil.”

“Not all evil,” I said, and pushed a sticky-note pad toward Iluh. “Could you write your grandmother's address down for me? I'll go visit the house.”

Iluh scribbled it down and got a key out of her purse. “Here is the spare key.” She wrote down another address. “This is my parents' house. I'll be over there today. Is there anything I can do? Do you want me to come with you?”

“No.” She would just get in the way.

“Do I need to pay you?”

My mother froze in the kitchen, mortally offended.

People often confused ethnicity and cultural upbringing. Just because someone looks Japanese or Indian, doesn't mean they have strong cultural ties to their country of origin. Cultural identity was more than skin deep. Because of the nature of my magic, I was known to many Indonesians in Atlanta, and learning about the culture and myths of my parents wasn't only a part of my heritage, it was part of what made me better at what I did. Iluh chose to have less ties to Indonesian families. Culturally she was more mainstream. You can't be offended by someone who simply didn't know how things worked.

“You don't have to pay me,” I explained gently. “I do this because it's my obligation to the community. Generations ago
my family was given the gift of this magic so we could help others. It's my duty and I'm happy to do it.”

Iluh swallowed. “I'm so sorry.”

“No, no, I'm sorry you felt uncomfortable. Please don't worry about it.”

“Thank you,” she said. “Please find her. She is my only grandmother.”

“I'll do what I can,” I told her.

•   •   •

I
walked Iluh out to the door. When I returned, my mother crossed her arms. “Pay? What, like you're some kind of maid?”

“Let it go, Mom. She just didn't know.”

“She should know. That's my point. Are you going over there?”

“Yes. Let me just get dressed.”

“Good,” my mother said. “I'll make you dinner while you're gone. That way when you come back, there will be something to eat.”

No! “Thank you so much, but I'm okay.”

“Dali!” My mother opened the refrigerator. “There is nothing in here, except rice. You might have to purify a house today. You don't even have cakes for the offering.”

There was nothing in there because I was planning to store leftovers from Jim's and my dinner. Jim, who was currently hiding upstairs and whom I had to sneak out of here. “I was going to go grocery shopping today. And I'll steal some of your donuts for the offering.” I had apples in the fridge and my garden was in bloom. That would be plenty for the offering.

“I'll make you something to eat. Look at you, you're skin and bones.”

“Mother, I'm perfectly fine. I'm twenty-seven years old.”

“Yes, you are. Your sink smells funny, your refrigerator is empty, and your trash is overflowing. And!” My mother pulled two dirty wineglasses out of the cabinet.

How did she even know? It was like she had radar.

“What is this? Have you been drinking?”

Help me.

“Drinking alone? That is not healthy for you. Look, you couldn't even bother to wash the glass. You just got another one and then stuck the dirty one in there. That's what alcoholics do.”

“I'm a shapeshifter, Mom. I can't get drunk even if I tried.” Technically I could. If I drank an entire bottle of whiskey, I would be buzzed for about twenty minutes or so, and then my body would metabolize the last of the alcohol and I would be sober as a baby.

“Drinking, not eating, messing with stray cats.” My mother shook her head. “You know what you need? You need to meet a nice man. You need to get married and have lots of healthy children . . .”

I put my hands over my face.

Something thudded above us again.

“That's it.” My mother marched to the stairs. “I'm going to see this cat.”

“You'll scare him!” I chased her up the stairs. “Mother!”

My mother opened the door to my bedroom. It stood empty.

“Puss, puss . . .”
My mother bent down and glanced under the bed. “
Puss, puss
 . . . Does your cat speak Indonesian?”

Actually he does. He learned it just for me.

“I told you, he's hiding.” Maybe he went out the window.

The door to the closet stood open. The tomato red lingerie I had left on the carpet was missing.

“Kitty, kitty,
puss, puss . . .”

Jim was still here. I could smell him. I edged into the closet and raised my head. Jim stood above the door, legs propped up on the top shelves of the closet, his back pressed against the wall. The stupid lingerie hung from his fingers.

I wished I could fall through the floor.

Jim shook the lingerie at me and raised his dark eyebrows.

My mother turned around. “Why are you blushing?”

I had to get her out of my bedroom. “I really have to go and look for Eyang Ida,” I said. “I'm going to get dressed now.”

My mother looked at me.

“May I have some privacy?”

“Fine.” She shook her head and went out of the room. I heard her walk down the stairs, locked the bedroom door, sagged against it, and let out my breath.

Jim stalked out of the closet, moving completely soundlessly across the carpet and leaned against the door next to me.

“How much did that thing cost?” he whispered.

“Never mind,” I whispered back at him. “You did that on purpose.”

“Did what?”

“Dropped things. Are you a jaguar or an elephant?”

“I'm a stray cat, apparently. And your mother wants to neuter me.”

“She wouldn't want to neuter you if you stayed quiet.” Neutering was the last thing he had to worry about. If she found him, she'd be overjoyed and run out of the house so we could get busy making grandchildren.

He grabbed me and picked me up. His eyes sparked with an amused light.

“What are you doing?” I whispered. “I'm mad at—”

His mouth closed on mine. His lips brushed me, teasing, coaxing, and I melted, opening my mouth. He brushed a single sensual lick across my tongue and I shivered. His scent swirled around me, amber and musk, and tangy sweet citrus, carrying me away to a secret place, where there was only Jim, my hot, crazy Jim, with his strong arms locked around me. His kiss grew intense, passionate, then possessive. Every stroke of his tongue said, “I want you.” I wrapped my legs about his hips and let him kiss me. Our tongues mingled, as we shared the same breath. He had no idea how beautiful he made me feel when he kissed me like this.

“Dali! What's taking so long?”

I broke away from him.

He shook his head, his arms wrapped around me. “No.”

“I have to go.”

“No, you don't.”

I wiggled and felt him. He was hard and ready for action.

“Jim, let me go. We can't make out now.”

He nodded. “Yes, we can.”

“My mother is downstairs.”

He didn't seem impressed.

“It's that red thing, isn't it?” I whispered.

“No, actually it was your little tank top and panties as you jumped out of bed this morning. Or specifically what was in them.”

“Dali?” my mother called.

I slumped onto him. “She isn't going to let it go.”

“Which car are you taking?” he asked.

“Pooki.”

He set me down on the carpet. “I'll catch up with you.”

Before I could say anything, Jim opened the window and jumped out of it. I sighed, yelled, “Coming, Mom!” and went to get dressed.

•   •   •

POOKI
was my Plymouth Prowler. When you're barely one hundred pounds and other shapeshifters make fun of you behind your back because you're the only tiger who eats grass in the entire state, you have to do something to prove that you're not a wimp. My thing was cars. I raced them. Unfortunately being half-blind meant I crashed a lot, but being a shapeshifter meant I walked away from most of it, so the risk balanced itself out. Jim kept forbidding me to race, as the alpha of Clan Cat. I kept disobeying him. Some things just had to be done. When I raced, I felt powerful and strong. I felt awesome. I couldn't give that up no matter how many times I had mangled my cars.

Normally Pooki occupied a treasured spot in my garage, but a friend asked me to take care of his Corvette. He didn't
live in the best neighborhood and he was paranoid about his baby being stolen while he was out of town. So right now the Corvette chilled in the garage next to Rambo, my '93 Mustang, and Pooki had to suffer the indignity of being parked in the driveway. I looked around. No sign of Jim. Hmm.

I unlocked Pooki, got in, and began to chant under my breath. The magic was in full swing and it took fifteen minutes to get the water engine running. Pooki had two engines, a gasoline one and the enchanted water one. Internal combustion engines refused to combust during magic, which made no scientific sense, because gasoline fumes still burned in open air. But trying to measure magic by Newtonian laws of physics and Gibbs's thermodynamics was pointless. It didn't just disobey those laws. Magic had no idea they existed.

The engine purred. I waited for an extra second, hoping Jim would jump into the car out of nowhere, but nothing happened. His scent was still on me. I sighed, backed out of the driveway, and drove down the street.

It was too much to hope for a whole day together. The Pack was keeping him busy.

I pulled up to the stop sign. The passenger door opened and Jim slid into the seat next to me. I clicked the locks closed. Ha-ha! He was trapped.

“I'm going to try to find Eyang Ida. She's a nice old lady, who disappeared from her house and some sort of bad magic is involved.”

He nodded. “Can I come along?”

“Yes. Put your seat belt on.”

“I should drive,” he said.

I laughed.

“Dali,” he said, dropping into his “I'm a Serious Alpha Man” tone. “I've seen you drive.”

“Nobody drives Pooki but me. You know this. Seat belt.”

Jim clicked the seat belt in place and braced himself.

I stepped on the gas. We took the next turn at thirty miles per hour. Pooki didn't quite careen, but he thought about it. Jim swore.

I laughed a little bit. “The magic is up. The fastest it will go is forty-five.”

Jim braced himself with his legs. If he were in his jaguar
form, his fur would be standing up and all of his claws would be out, sunk into the upholstery.

We passed a crumbling wreck of an office building, jutting to the sky, its insides looted long ago by enterprising neighbors. Magic hated the by-products of technology, including pavement, computers, and tall buildings. Anything taller than three or four stories, unless it was built by hand and protected with spells, crumbled into dust. Atlanta's entire downtown lay in ruins, and buildings still crashed without warning here and there. Most Atlantans didn't care. Repeated exposure to fear-inducing stimuli creates familiarity, which in turn greatly reduces anxiety. We had acclimated to the chaos and technology. Falling buildings and monsters no longer terrified us. I wasn't that afraid of monsters in the first place. I was one.