Crime Spells

Let her be the roommate, let her be the roomate. I turned the picture over. Written on the back, in very small, very neat handwriting was a name: Rheesha Miller, her age: fifteen, and the last place she’d been seen: at a convenience store on Burnside.

A chill ran down my neck even though it was hotter in the bathroom than it had been outside. I’d seen this girl’s picture on the news. Missing person, no leads. Disappeared in broad daylight. One minute she was on the street. The next, she went into the store and never came out. The owners, an elderly Asian couple, hadn’t seen her come in, nor was there any trace of her on the store’s security camera. Strange, to be sure, but the Hounds who freelance for the police hadn’t picked up any traces of magical wrongdoing. It was a runaway or a kidnapping, straight up, no magic.

There was nothing I could do about this. Nothing.

I committed her face to memory, just in case, then tore the edge of the picture, intending to flush it down the toilet. A chemical and fertilizer smell rose up from the photo. I held very still. There was a trip spell on the photo. Maybe it was for tracking where the photo went. Maybe it was supposed to make sure the photo couldn’t be damaged. Or maybe it was set to trigger an explosion spell. Damn, damn, damn. I knew I shouldn’t have taken the photo. I knew I shouldn’t have gotten involved in this mess.

I took a deep breath and tried to think calm thoughts, because magic is a bitch and you can’t cast it when you’re angry. I whispered a mantra until I calmed down a little. Then, while carefully holding the photo in my left hand, I drew a quick Disbursement spell with my right. I’d have a migraine in a day or two, but at least I’d be alive. I drew upon the magic stored deep in the ground below the building and traced two spells, Sight and Smell.

Magic flowed into the forms I gave it, and my vision shifted. Like turning on a single light in a dark room, I could now see the traceries of spent magic and old spells hanging like graffiti in the air. And since I was a Hound, and good at it, I could smell even more than I could see: the too-sweet cherry stink of Blood magic mixed with drugs, the slightest hint of Lulu’s vanilla perfume, and something else-a subtle spell that stank of hickory and smoke.

I leaned forward until my lips were almost touching the photo and inhaled. I got the taste of the spell on the back of my throat, the smell of it deep in my sinuses. Not an explosive. A tracker. Someone had gone through an awful lot of trouble to know exactly where this photo was going-or maybe where I was going. This was a complicated spell. One that took a hard toll on the caster. And I knew the signature of the man who put it there. A Hound named Marty Pike. He freelanced mostly for the cops. I was pretty sure he was ex-Marine.

I let go of Sight and Smell, and the room settled back to normal. Except for the fact that I was sitting in the bathroom stall of a bar being tailed by an Hound who worked for the police, I wasn’t in any danger, hadn’t done anything wrong, and could still back out of this job by flushing the photo down the commode.

But here’s the thing. Lulu had said “he.” And right this minute, I’d take bets that “he” meant Pike. There hadn’t been any real reason for Lulu to put the quiet on our conversation back at Mama’s, there hadn’t been anyone but a few regulars at the tables. If Pike thought she was going behind his back and hiring a second opinion on her sister’s disappearance, then I could see her wanting to keep it quiet. Cop Hounds don’t much like it when freelancers take a piss in their sandbox. Hell, Cop Hounds don’t much like freelancers, period.

So I could either believe that Pike didn’t want Lulu going behind his back, or maybe that he was counting on her to do just that. To hand off the picture to some sorry sucker-say me, for example-and that I’d… what? Find something he hadn’t or couldn’t find? Come up empty-handed? That didn’t make any sense.

Well, screw this. I was not going to be used for anyone’s patsy. I kept the photo and headed out into the bar. Tracking spells don’t work over great distances, so Pike should be close by. I sca

Plus, I couldn’t smell him.

Outside then. I made a point of leaving the door open nice and wide and stood there for a couple of extra seconds, just so he’d know I knew he was following me. Sure enough, the familiar short and shaved figure of Pike emerged from the shadows between a couple of parked trucks and started across the parking lot toward me. I’d heard from someone down at the city that the cops had nicknamed him Mouse. That was before his first case with the police. It was a high profile situation, and bloody. He saved a couple of guys on the force and did some other medal-worthy things that fell into the above-and-beyond-the-call category. Ever since then, the cops just called him Pike.

I still couldn’t smell him-he’d been standing upwind, the clever boy.

I walked down two steps and out into the parking lot, my heels making a solid, staccato sound.

“Allie.” His voice was low and carried the hint of a prior life spent in the south. His hair was gray, buzzed, and in better light his eyes might be brown instead of black. The lines on his face made him look angry without even trying. This close, I could smell his aftershave-something with a helluva lot of hickory overtones.

“Pike. You lose something?” I held the picture out for him.

He was wearing a long-sleeved button-down shirt, which seemed odd in the heat of the night. Both his hands were in the front pockets of his jeans, and he did not move to touch the photo.

“Lulu talk to you?” he asked.

“You know the answer to that.”

“No, I don’t. I haven’t seen or heard from her in three days.”

Wasn’t that interesting? If he didn’t know where Lulu was, then he couldn’t have been the one who put the tracker on the photo. But that spell had his signature on it. You can’t fake a magical signature. It’s just like handwriting. Every caster has his or her own unique style.

And if he had put the spell on the photo, then he knew where Lulu was. He could have followed her around twenty-four seven and still had time for an ice cream cone. Not that Pike looked like the type who ate frozen desserts.

I found myself not so much caring what part Pike played in this but why the hell the girl, Rheesha, hadn’t been found yet.

“What’s going on with this girl?” I asked.

“Did Lulu hire you to find her?”

“No.”

“She was just handing out pictures to strangers when you happened by?”

“Has anyone ever told you you suck at sarcasm?”

“No.”

Yeah, that was probably true. “You know what?” I said, “I don’t have to tell you anything, but here’s the truth. I’m out. Good luck finding Lulu and Rheesha. I want nothing to do with it.” I held the photo out for him again. He kept his hands firmly in his pockets.

“It’s too late for that,” he said.

“For what?”

“Backing out. You’re a part of this, Beckstrom.”

“Really? Since when?”

“Since you touched that photo. They’re looking for you now. And they’ll find you.”

Then the bastard turned around and started walking away.

Oh, no. Hells no. He was not going to leave me with some cryptic statement and fade to black. I caught up with him. “You know I haven’t ever gotten in your way-on a job or any other time.”

“So?”

“So level with me. Tell me who’s looking for me. Tell me why. I know how to lie low. This is your job, Pike. I don’t want anything to do with it.”

He stopped next to a beat up Ford truck and opened the passenger door. “Get in. We’ll talk.”

“What about…” I held up the photo.